Thursday, 10 November 2016

THURSDAY, 10 NOVEMBER 2016

THURSDAY, 10 NOVEMBER 2016

Mr Speaker took the Chair at 2 p.m.

Prayers.

Business Statement

Business Statement

Hon SIMON BRIDGES (Deputy Leader of the House): When the House resumes on Tuesday, 15 November the Government will look to complete the first reading of the Maritime Transport Amendment Bill, the third reading of the Patents (Trans-Tasman Patent Attorneys and Other Matters) Amendment Bill, and to progress a number of other bills on the Order Paper.

Motions

United States—Election of Donald Trump

Hon STEVEN JOYCE (Minister for Economic Development) on behalf of the Prime Minister: I move that the House convey its congratulations to President—

Mr SPEAKER: Order! Sorry, the member just needs to seek leave to move the motion first.

Hon STEVEN JOYCE: I seek leave to move a motion without notice in support of the election of the President of the United States.

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

Hon STEVEN JOYCE: I move, That the House convey its congratulations to President-elect Donald Trump on his election as the next President of the United States, and to Vice-President-elect Mike Pence on his election, and in doing so express our desire to work with the incoming Trump administration to continue building on New Zealand’s already strong relationship with the United States. New Zealand and the US have an excellent relationship and it has gone from strength to strength in recent years, as demonstrated by the visit of the USS Sampson to Auckland next week for the International Naval Review marking the Royal New Zealand Navy’s 75th anniversary. Secretary of State John Kerry is currently visiting New Zealand and is also travelling to Antarctica where we are, of course, natural partners. New Zealand and the US recently cooperated to create the world’s largest marine protected area, in the Ross Sea. This will cover roughly 1.55 million square kilometres, and showcases what we can achieve when we work together.

The people of America went to the polls yesterday, as we know, and will soon have a new President. The Prime Minister will be writing to President-elect Trump to offer his personal congratulations and to reiterate our commitment to continuing to work closely with the US on trade and economic cooperation, including progressing our shared regional interests in the Asia-Pacific region. We share many common values with the US: democracy, human rights, the rule of law, and a belief in free markets. Our two countries are very close defence and security partners, working to bring peace and security in Iraq, Afghanistan, and other parts of the world. An open and engaged United States is very important to New Zealand. The US is a valued trading partner for New Zealand. It is our third-largest trading market, worth over $8 billion. New Zealand will seek to build on this already-strong relationship with the incoming Trump administration, in order to advance our shared interests.

In closing, I would also like to pay tribute to the outgoing administration led by President Barack Obama. President Obama has been a good friend to New Zealand, and we wish him all the best in the future.

Hon ANNETTE KING (Deputy Leader—Labour): The Labour Party congratulates Donald Trump on becoming the 45th President of the United States. I also want to congratulate Hillary Clinton, who achieved much in her public life, and who has been a good friend to New Zealand.

There is no doubt, over the year-long, divisive presidential campaign, that many Americans have been left fearful and concerned as to where they fit in their country. I call on Mr Trump to follow through on his words and pledge last night: that it is now time for America to bind the wounds of division, and that he will be the President for all Americans. We can take heart from Hillary Clinton’s comments this morning. They must accept the result and look to the future. She said they owe the new President an open mind and a chance to lead. We support those sentiments.

I also call on Mr Trump to uphold the rule of law, the principles of equal rights and dignity, freedom of expression, respect, inclusion, and understanding, because these are the values that lie at the heart of a liberal democracy. In the Labour Party we do value our relations with the United States and we are committed to continuing those relationships, while at the same time making it clear that we will speak out against bigotry, racism, misogyny, or hate whenever and wherever we see it.

METIRIA TUREI (Co-Leader—Green): “The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.” These are the words of one of the truly great Americans, Martin Luther King Jr.

Yesterday’s result in the US elections has left me and the Green Party even more determined than ever to fight for the values that we believe in. We have generations of families living in poverty; people who face uncertain futures, without proper housing or healthcare or education; and people who do not believe that being involved can make a difference. That is something that we can—that we must—change. We must use the Trump election as a powerful motivator, a motivator to stay involved in the governance of our country, and to include others in that process; to organise; to be strong; to listen to each other; to speak truth to power; to find hope; and to be kind to each other—to be kind.

So, no, I will not support this motion to congratulate Trump, and neither will the Green Party. We vow to fight the climate change denial, the misogyny, and the racism represented by Trump. We will not let hate triumph. Thank you.

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS (Leader—NZ First): A week ago today I was honoured to speak in wine-growing territory in Marlborough, to its chamber of commerce. In a speech entitled “The Grapes of Wrath”, I predicted what so many experts did not.

Hon Members: Oh!

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: That was—not after the event, but beforehand—who would win, and who would become the 45th President of the United States. And that cacophony of embarrassment is not going to deter us today. Like so many other speeches we have made on matters so important to this country, the media and the experts and the pollsters, and this House as well—that side, of course—decided to ignore it, and that is why they were shocked by the outcome yesterday. It was all foreseeable, all predictable, and all forecast. But, no—these people who think they have got the prescience of mind to understand and run a country sit there in their snobby, sniggery way today and think that that is an excuse for their presence here. There are too many people in politics and experts who give their subjective judgment, laced with their personal preference, who think that that passes for professional comment. Well, it does not, and you are letting your country down. Everyone is entitled to their personal view on either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump, but politicians are meant to have some understanding of the environment in which they operate and the consequences of what they say both here and abroad.

This contest was never about the Democratic or the Republican parties. It was about those old parties being captured by big vested interests and controlling Washington—and the American people knew it. Seventy-two percent across the divide did not trust what was going on. That is why Bernie Sanders won 22 states in the contest with Clinton. That is why Donald Trump, an utter outsider, beat off 16 insiders for the nomination. It is not difficult to perceive what was going to happen. This was about the laid-off auto workers in Grand Rapids, Michigan—the ones who have seen their jobs moved to Mexico. It was about the workers in Arizona who lost their jobs when the parts they once supplied to Apple were no longer needed. It was about the workers in Circleville, Ohio, as General Electric closes a factory there. They flocked to hear Governor Mike Pence, now Vice-President-Elect, tell them why they should be in work and not looking for a job.

Does that sound familiar? These people are not the deplorables, but are honest, hard-working middle-America. They are real people. They are not uneducated; they are smart and they are motivated by promises that have turned to ashes in their mouths. It is not unique to the United States. They are people who expected the American Dream instead of a minimum-wage job packing shelves at Walmart. Like the Brexit campaign in the UK, you can pull out all your smart alec experts, and you did; every huge-salaried banker, and you did; every defender of the indefensible in terms of the economic and social malaise confronting ordinary people, and you did; but why would the ordinary person listen to these apologists for elitism?

David Bennett: Why are we having this commentary?

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: Why, the man who is actually retired, Mr Bennett—who is retiring—has not even got a party decent enough to thank him for being an absolute wet blanket all the time in the House. Mr Bennett, what are they going to do without you? Why would the ordinary people listen to politicians who defend the appalling concentration of wealth in the hands of the few at the expense of the many?

The US election repudiated the Trans-Pacific Partnership. New Zealand First will say what we told you on 4 February this year: we told you so. There is nothing so antiseptic as the statement “We told you so.”, but we darn well did. Instead of Nick Smith and John Key and “Mr Fixit”—“Mr Novopay”—and every ace amateur over there saying they might have something, no, they carried on regardless, at a cost of $5.5 million now, and there is a bill on the Order Paper today. How do you like that, eh? [Interruption] None. They are blinded to reality, sitting there, about to go, of course, and go they will because they are part of the process. There was an opportunity cost, you see, associated with the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement, which has been diverted away from real free-trade agreements.

At the beginning of this year we predicted that on 23 June the Brexit campaign would be victorious in the UK. Mr Key, of course, and all his experts in the National Party said they were supporting Mr Cameron—supporting the Remain side. You know, the campaign was hardly over, and what happened? Mr Key said: “Oh, we’re going to the UK to get a free-trade deal.” This guy has got no shame, and he has got no principles, and he has got no ability either. This man from Merrill Lynch has been exposed for what his is. He forgets what he said in the last hour and all of a sudden he is going to ring up Donald Trump. He has been dumping all over Donald Trump—dumping all over Donald Trump—and so have others in this House.

My message to members of Parliament in this House is that this is about the American people. It is not about the President. It is about the American people, and we need to continue our relationship that some of us worked hard to build up. But, no, no, the banality, the arrogance of these people knows no bounds.

Hon Member: Thank you, Winston.

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: And up they got—oh, no, no, do not call me Winston. You call me collect.

I want to say something: last year there was a by-election in Northland. What happened there happened in the UK. What happened in the UK saw a hung Parliament in Australia when Turnbull called a snap election and dissolved both Houses. What happened in Northland happened in the hamlets, in the villages, in the towns, and in the clothes factories of America yesterday—all so foreseeable.

I look around at some of the faces here today sneering and scoffing and I want ordinary New Zealand workers out there to know one thing: these people are staring at you. They are staring at your dreams and hopes. They are so up themselves; they are so arrogant that they think any decent sentiment about housing, health, education, and First World jobs is not worthy. No, no—they would rather have their own ephemeral, high-blown concepts and ideas prevail and to hell with the working people of this country. All the small businesses, all the medium-sized businesses are hard up against it now in a Government that has got no plan.

I have got 2 minutes to go and just want to say this: from Kaitāia in New Zealand’s Far North, to Lerwick in the UK’s Shetland Islands, and to New Orleans in Louisiana the elitist neo-liberal Mammonic curtain is collapsing around the globe. And it is coming to a place near you, because that is what this Government represents. The people who were most fearful yesterday, all around the country, were those small handful of highly wealthy, foreign-owned—in the main—people who support the National Party. [Interruption] What do you want, boy?

Mr SPEAKER: Order! Apologise to the member.

David Seymour: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. The member has now been speaking for over 8½ minutes and he has used a range of devices to avoid taking a position on the motion—

Mr SPEAKER: Order! That is not a point of order. The member has a 10-minute slot. He can use it.

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: Not bad for somebody who sits there because he is a political puppet. He got put in by the National Party. He got an office with the National Party. He got elevated by the National Party. He does not make 1 percent. The media give him an enormous amount of coverage. He just has to cough and they publish him. And he is going out of this Parliament so fast his little feet will not touch the ground. This revolution is the middle class and the worker revolution. People who work hard, pay their taxes, and just want a fair go. We have three words for these people, as in America, as in the UK, but now in New Zealand. One party, uniquely, has these three words: we hear you.

MARAMA FOX (Co-Leader—Māori Party): I had three words in mind and they were not those ones. I think they were pot, kettle, and black. Ha! We are here today to offer congratulations to the President-Elect, Donald Trump. Although I find it a little bit difficult, there was a collective sigh this morning and a girding of the loins for the next 4 years across the world. I am a pragmatist at heart. I like to see the silver lining around the clouds. As I look to America, I think “Well, you know what? The bricklayers are going to be happy and the concrete merchants will be happy.”, because they will be building a wall very soon to keep Americans in. And that might be because, if you watched the results as they came in overnight, you would have seen that a number of immigration sites around the world actually crashed from the inquiries of people trying to get out.

Hon Member: The people voted.

MARAMA FOX: But here is the thing: the people did vote. The disaffected people of America, the blue-collar people of America, stood up and voted, and they voted for Mr Trump because he represented something that we must take note of, and that is the fact that they feel disenfranchised in their nation. They feel like they do not fit in the system. But they used the politics of hate. They used the politics of divide and conquer in order to put their view across. We have seen a very good example of that just now meted out against my friend and colleague Mr Seymour.

Ron Mark: Sorry, he’s your friend?

MARAMA FOX: Mr David Seymour—yes, he is my friend. I have quite a number of friends in this House, across all the parties, and we will work with others. I think that we have shown, as the Māori Party of this nation, that we will work with others who want to support the advancement of our people for the value of this nation and not use the politics of hate, divide, and conquer that we see in this nation.

There is one fear I have after this election. The fear that I have is that we have opened the door for the redneck comment at the next election—the iwi versus Kiwi, the “brownmailing” of the Government, and all of those things that they throw out against Māori. That happens every time an election comes up. It has started already. It has started already. So all I say is that we must take note of the voice of the people, because that is why we are here. With that I agree. We need to understand that the voice of the people for Māoridom, which we represent, says that, actually, we like charter schools, and, actually, we want to have a say in the Resource Management Act, and, actually, we want to ensure that we have a voice in the democracy of this country. That is what we stand for. Before we start to go and point the finger in the coming up of this election that a vote for the Māori Party is a vote for National—it is not. A vote for us is a vote for democracy, just like the people in America yesterday stood up and took their vote.

We would like to congratulate President-Elect Trump, despite the misgivings that we may have, despite the girding of the loins, and despite the collective sigh that the world has given this morning and expressed today. We have to move forward and we have to look for the silver lining. One of them might be that we can thank Mr Trump for getting rid of the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

DAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): On behalf of the ACT Party, I would like to join with other leaders who have supported the motion congratulating the 45th President-Elect of the United States, Donald Trump. That occurs in the context—

Hon Member: What did you say about him the day before?

DAVID SEYMOUR: —of a long friendship between our two countries—I will come to you—that happens in the context of a long friendship between our two countries and our two peoples.

I think it is important that we respect the will of the American people. There have been many commentators in New Zealand over the last 24 hours, most notably the Dominion Post’s front page, who seem to think that we should respect the outcome of a democratic election only when we happen to like the result. We have to accept the result from the American people; only then can we start to understand it.

I have to say, we actually did get halfway to that from New Zealand’s own poor man’s Donald Trump, and you have to wonder what Donald Trump—Donald Trump the outsider, that is—would think of a 40-year career politician, the poor man’s Donald Trump, who sells exactly the same product and cannot break 10 percent.

It is important that we accept that there were people in the United States who did feel that they were not being included in America’s growth and that they were being left behind by dysfunctional markets. If we are to avoid the same winds of dissatisfaction and division in New Zealand, I believe the main thing that we must do is fix our dysfunctional markets in housing and in education. That is actually something that this Government is making a serious effort at doing, because there are no ideas on the other side of the House, particularly from New Zealand First.

I do want to quibble slightly with the President-Elect on one particular point, and that is that I know that many women in the US and many women in New Zealand are deeply disturbed by the comments made by a man who has now been elected the leader of the free world and one of the most powerful men on the planet. I certainly hope, on behalf of that sentiment and on behalf of those people whom he has disturbed, that he will back away from those comments and apologise. With that minor quibble, I join with other leaders in celebration of democracy and in congratulation of the 45th President-Elect of the United States, Donald Trump.

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

Ayes 106

New Zealand National 59; New Zealand Labour 31; New Zealand First 12; Māori Party 2; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.

Noes 14

Green Party 14.

Motion agreed to.

Oral Questions

Questions to Ministers

Economic Outlook—International Uncertainty and Resilience

1. Dr PARMJEET PARMAR (National) to the Minister of Finance: What factors show the New Zealand economy is well placed to withstand international uncertainty?

Hon STEVEN JOYCE (Associate Minister of Finance) on behalf of the Minister of Finance: As the Reserve Bank reported today in its Monetary Policy Statement, the outlook for growth in New Zealand is positive. This means we are well placed to deal with any uncertainties in the world economy. The bank is forecasting economic growth in excess of 3.5 percent in each of the next 2 years. In addition, the financial statements for the first 3 months of this year show that the Government recorded an operating surplus of $222 million, which was $725 million better than forecast, largely due to higher-than-forecast tax revenues. New Zealand is one of the few developed economies in the world that is growing at more than 3 percent a year, running a fiscal surplus, enjoying strong job growth, and has relatively low levels of public debt.

Dr Parmjeet Parmar: What other factors demonstrate that New Zealand is well placed to deal with uncertainty?

Hon STEVEN JOYCE: The Government’s responsible fiscal management means we are not burdened with excessive levels of debt and we have room to manoeuvre. Government debt presently sits at 25 percent of GDP and is forecast to fall to around 20 percent by 2020. In addition, of course, we have a floating exchange rate that adjusts quickly to changes in international trading conditions, an independent monetary policy, an open economy with diversified trade opportunities, and a sustainable current account, and we are starting to see the benefits of increased investment in public infrastructure and better-quality investment in our people.

Dr Parmjeet Parmar: What have been some of the immediate effects of the US election result?

Hon STEVEN JOYCE: In economic terms, there has been some movement in the value of the New Zealand dollar and on the stock exchange, but as of midday today the dollar was trading at levels similar to the beginning of the week. The NZX50 fell in yesterday’s afternoon trading by 3.5 percent but recovered 2.3 percent of that this morning. In the US the Dow Jones industrial average closed up 1.4 percent. The Reserve Bank reports that the probability of a US federal rate hike in December has decreased. As I said, New Zealand’s monetary policy flexibility, a floating exchange rate, and strong fiscal position mean New Zealand is well placed to manage through any uncertainty, from wherever it may come.

Dr David Clark: Is it correct that despite his target for exports as a percentage of GDP being 40 percent, they are now 30 percent and lower than when his Government took office?

Hon STEVEN JOYCE: That target, of course, is set for 2025, so perhaps the member might prefer to return, with his question, in 2025 and then he will get an answer.

Dr Parmjeet Parmar: What are the next steps for the Government following the US election result?

Hon STEVEN JOYCE: The Government will continue to focus on what it can achieve to build a stronger and more resilient economy. That means continuing to invest in better public services that work for New Zealanders, maintaining and building on our fiscal surpluses, staying on track to pay down debt, and working to further improve New Zealand’s already strong and, in fact, world-leading business environment. As a trading nation, New Zealand will continue to press its case for expanding trade connections, including with the United States, to open up more markets for our exporters and diversify our international connections to make New Zealand further strong.

Mr SPEAKER: Question No. 2—[Interruption] Order! [Interruption] Order! If the members want to have a discussion, go into the lobbies and do so.

Resource Legislation Amendment Bill—Iwi Participation and Reforms

2. MARAMA FOX (Co-Leader—Māori Party) to the Minister for the Environment: How do Mana Whakahono ā Rohe agreements strengthen iwi participation under the Resource Legislation Amendment Bill?

Hon Dr NICK SMITH (Minister for the Environment): They will enable iwi to be able to better participate in resource management processes and ensure their perspective is heard and understood. Some councils already have these agreements and they have proved to work well. These proposals have been approved as a consequence of input from the Māori Party and from the iwi leaders group, and they were widely supported by councils in their submissions on the bill. The Māori Party should rightly be proud of this achievement.

Marama Fox: Does he agree with the Green member Metiria Turei that the democratic rights of New Zealanders to have their say over the environment will be undermined; if not, why not?

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: No, I strongly disagree. We need resource management laws that do enable people to have a say, but it is also undemocratic to have outdated plans that result in environmental problems being ignored, housing developments stalled when communities need more homes, and opportunities for employment and development held back for years because of protracted bureaucracy. I also believe that reforms like the new collaborative planning processes in the bill actually provide for a more effective way for New Zealanders to have a say and be involved in resource decision-making without the divisive, litigious, and expensive processes of the current Act.

Meka Whaitiri: What mana-enhancing gains will iwi receive given the powers of the Minister to override plans and consents, to limit right of participation, and to curtail the appeal rights of adversely affected private parties, councils, communities, and the environment?

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: Members opposite may think that a bill that enables us to have a national rule to fence stock out of streams is somehow an overruling of councils, and all sorts of other extravagant claims. Actually, it is about making sure that we better manage our environment and have cleaner rivers and streams.

Marama Fox: How are the rights and interests of iwi and all of Aotearoa protected under the resource management proposals?

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: The Māori Party has made strong representations around some of the provisions in the bill, which were also raised by submitters, such as the regulation-making powers under section 360 of the Resource Management Act (RMA). These provisions have been refined down to just one area from the four that were proposed, and to where councils’ RMA rules duplicate or repeat regulations under other Acts. These regulations will also be subject to full public consultation and a section 32 analysis. We have also, in response to concerns from the Māori Party, restored appeal rights to the Environment Court in respect of those consents around water takes and water discharges that were of concern to the party.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: How can he possibly reconcile his dire warnings about being ”brownmailed” on the RMA in December 2004, with his divisive, separatist, and race-based bill, which stands before the House today and will do nothing for New Zealanders and, for that matter, 99 percent of Māori apart from Marama Fox’s elite mates?

Mr SPEAKER: Order!

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: The irony of that question is that the New Zealand First Party voted, under the last Government, for changes to the RMA that increased the obligations on councils to consult iwi. What we are doing with the amendments in this bill is actually making those processes more workable and practical so there are not the costs and the delays that have frustrated average New Zealanders.

Sarah Dowie: How will the new planning standards proposed under the reform bill help reduce the complexity and bureaucracy of the current Resource Management Act?

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: Current council planning documents stand taller than this Chamber, at 10 metres tall, and consist of 80,000 pages of policies and rules. We have got 50 different ways across New Zealand to measure the height of a building. We have got over 200 different definitions of what you can do in a commercial zone. Environment Court decisions have got limited precedent value because they actually apply to only a single council’s plan. The new planning standards will hugely shrink this excessive and costly bureaucracy. They will all require a common format, common definitions, and standard zonings while allowing councils to make the decision as to what areas those zonings will apply in their district.

Sarah Dowie: How will the reforms reduce the number of consents that are required, noting the OECD’s conclusions that New Zealand’s system of environmental regulation makes too little use of national standards and relies on too many discretionary consents?

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: The bill and the associated national policies and standards will significantly reduce the number of consents that are required. For example, our national environment standards in areas like telecommunications facilities, pest control, and forestry are expected to reduce the number of consents each year by thousands and save millions of dollars in compliance costs. The bill also introduces two mechanisms to reduce the need for consents: councils will now have the discretion to waive the need for a consent for a mining activity; nor will a consent be required to, for instance, build a deck that breaches infringement boundary rules, provided that the relevant neighbour has agreed. They are the sorts of pragmatic changes that I think New Zealanders are looking for.

Hon David Parker: If this bill is so wonderful, why is it that virtually every submitter, including Todd Property Group and Fulton Hogan Ltd, as well as councils and environmental NGOs say that rather than making the Resource Management Act (RMA) simpler, the bill is going to increase its complexity, increase costs, and have worse outcomes?

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: The member grossly misrepresents the submissions that have been made to the select committee. When you have got a bill that is over 200 pages long and makes more than 40 changes, of course there will be some submitters on some parts. How many submissions opposed planning standards? How many opposed national rules for getting stock out of streams? How many opposed councils having the discretion to be able to waive need for consents? The answer on all the substantive proposals in this bill is they have very wide support.

Hon David Parker: If the Minister is so confident—

Mr SPEAKER: Order! Is this a point of order or a supplementary question?

Hon David Parker: It is a question.

Mr SPEAKER: Then address it.

Hon David Parker: If this bill is so good and these things are so uncomplicated, why is it that his own department was unable to provide a report to the select committee, and why was the select committee unable to provide advice to the Parliamentary Counsel Office for 5 months after submissions closed?

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: This bill had 800 submissions that were heard through to June. The department provided its first 150-page report in August and another 500-page report last week because members on this side of the House are serious about getting resource management law right. Members opposite whinge about the RMA, but every time this Government comes to the House with a substantive reform bill to fix the problems, they oppose it.

Health Services—Ophthalmology Cases and Adverse Events

3. Hon ANNETTE KING (Deputy Leader—Labour) to the Minister of Health: Does he stand by his statement, “we are focused on results”?

Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN (Minister of Health): Yes. Across the hundreds of services that district health boards (DHBs) provide, it is inevitable that, from time to time, performance has to be raised in a specific service but the wider picture is that more and more New Zealanders are getting more and more access to these hundreds of services on an ongoing basis.

Hon Annette King: Is he proud of the result from the latest adverse events report released today, which sets out the effect on thousands of people waiting well beyond recommended waiting times for eye treatment that his commission said has led to deterioration of eye conditions?

Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: Well, that report released today very much reinforces my opening statement there. There are some services that need attention. Ophthalmology services in three DHBs have a recovery plan in place, but the broader picture of that report is actually that the number of adverse effects is absolutely flat. The whole point of the Health Quality and Safety Commission is to highlight areas of the system where improvement can be made. In tandem with that report, they have today released the open for results report, and that actually reveals a huge number of positive results, for instance: since January 2015, 52 fewer falls resulted in a broken hip; since July 2013 there was a reduction in surgical site infection rates, from 1.3 percent to 0.9 percent—so, much better for patients; fewer children and young people dying since 2010—547 fewer deaths in children; and, of course, since January 2013, 54,000 fewer bed days, saving $42 million across the system. So it is a system that is delivering better results and making better use—

Mr SPEAKER: Order!

Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: —of the money, focusing on results.

Mr SPEAKER: Order! The answer is long enough.

Hon Annette King: When he was told 18 months ago about the appalling waiting times for eye treatment appointments across New Zealand—not one or two DHBs—by the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Ophthalmologists, what was his first action in response?

Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: My first action was to go and look at the facts, and the facts are actually that appointments for eye specialists have increased by 25 percent over the last 8 years, ophthalmology operations have increased by 28 percent from 18,000 to 23,000 operations per year, and specialist Avastin injections for glaucoma have doubled from 4,000 to 8,000. So, actually, it just reinforces what I was saying at the start: we are doing more and more, people are getting more and more access to services, but, of course, there is always more to do.

Hon Annette King: How significant is it to have the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Ophthalmologists write to every member of Parliament this week including a comprehensive briefing stating they have limited resources to follow up on treatment, leading to increased health risk to patients with chronic eye disease—not first specialist assessment, but follow-up treatment that they are not getting?

Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: I think it is always good to hear from doctors and I appreciate the engagement. I will be meeting with the college of opthamalogists to discuss how we can continue to deliver this ongoing uplift of eye services for New Zealanders.

Hon Annette King: How can GPs, mental health workers, ambulance officers, medical specialists, public health experts, and NGOs all be so wrong when they tell the Minister there are not enough resources and the Government has got its priorities wrong?

Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: Well, as usual, the member is grossly exaggerating. There are many, many health workers in New Zealand—and I know because I actually go out and speak to them—who support the Government’s direction and actually appreciate that there is a far greater focus on results, unlike the times when Labour was running the health system when there was more and more money but people got fewer operations and people had to fly to Australia for cancer treatment.

Health Services—First Specialist Assessments

4. JOANNE HAYES (National) to the Minister of Health: Can he confirm that 10,376 extra orthopaedic First Specialist Assessments were carried out in 2015/16, compared with the 43,251 carried out in 2008/09, meaning a total 53,627 orthopaedic assessments were carried out?

Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN (Minister of Health): Yes, I can. Increasing access to specialist care remains a priority for this Government. As New Zealanders live longer lives, access to elective surgery becomes more important. There is always more to be done and the answer to increasing demand is to do more, which this Government is doing.

Joanne Hayes: How has doing more assessment resulted in an increase in surgical discharges or orthopaedic services?

Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: This uplift has been accompanied by a continuing increase in the number of people receiving elective orthopaedic surgery. In 2015-16 there were 24,737 orthopaedic operations, 6,500 more than were performed in 2007-08—an increase of 35,000—and that is very significant.

Hon Member: Here we go.

Hon Annette King: Yes, how about another one? Is doing more first specialist appointments the only result he is interested in, considering that 10 district health boards have done fewer orthopaedic operations in 2015-16 compared with the year before?

Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: Well, there is a wide range of results that we look at across the system, including the 6,000 extra doctors and nurses we have in the system. There is the uplift in elective surgery, the uplift in first specialist assessments, and there are more children getting access to primary care through the under-13s free policy—and, of course, that is taking pressure off our emergency departments, resulting in better health for children under 13 all round. So, yep, I welcome the question, because the member knows that, actually, we are delivering much better results than she was ever able to do and that is quite a legacy for her.

Emergency Housing—Community Housing Providers and Government Initiatives

5. PHIL TWYFORD (Labour—Te Atatū) to the Minister for Social Housing: Does she agree with Monte Cecilia Housing Trust chief executive Bernie Smith that the Government lacks a cohesive emergency housing plan, and Salvation Army social policy director Ian Hutson, who says permanent accommodation is still lacking?

Hon PAULA BENNETT (Minister for Social Housing): No, and because, actually, I think $300 million more going into emergency housing is a comprehensive and cohesive emergency housing plan. Also, my cup is half full. I see the quote from Bernie Smith that says: “I think it’s amazing—$300 million over the next 4½ years for emergency housing.” I hear the words of Ian Hutson from the Salvation Army: “$300 million to support people in severe housing need is very welcome.”

Phil Twyford: Why did she reject the invitation to join a cross-party round table to consider the recommendations of the homelessness inquiry, given that her policy will provide only 2,200 emergency housing places at any one time when there are 41,000 Kiwis homeless and in severe housing deprivation according to Otago University?

Hon PAULA BENNETT: I probably did not join because I was busy actually doing something about the problem and not just yet again reassessing it. I think it is really important to the House that it is cleared up that those 41,000 people that Otago University refers to are actually not homeless. Many of them actually do have a roof over their heads and do not require emergency housing. They may be requiring more permanent housing, of course, which we have got coming through in the pipeline, but it is not actually the emergency housing that they need.

Phil Twyford: How can she say that she is delivering already on the recommendations of the cross-party inquiry when she is delivering only half the emergency housing that is needed, she has reduced the number of State houses, there is no systemic fix to the housing crisis, no commitment to a national strategy to end homelessness, and she does not even accept the Government’s own definition of homelessness?

Hon PAULA BENNETT: If that was the case, then the member himself put out a policy in July that was actually for fewer beds than what the Government announced on Monday. So, in July, the member put out a policy saying that there would be 1,400 beds. National put out a policy on Monday, fully funded, for 1,400 places, which is very different—more than what his whole policy is about.

Phil Twyford: Why are thousands of emergency housing beds needed when the Prime Minister says there are not thousands of “real homeless people”, and, as he said, the homeless people do not want help?

Hon PAULA BENNETT: I think, as I clearly stated, of that big number of 41,000 that the member bandies around, those are people who may be living in some unsatisfactory conditions, but they are actually not truly homeless under the definition as most people would see it. This side of the House has a comprehensive housing plan, one that is actually fully funded—so $300 million for those 1,400 places, as opposed to the $15 million that included no services, no tenancy management, and no actual building of new supply, which that member tried to do.

Phil Twyford: Does she not see that it will be expensive and ultimately fruitless to just take a welfare approach, through the provision of emergency housing, to a market failure that has left 41,000 Kiwis homeless and in severe housing deprivation, and would it not make more sense to also massively increase the supply of affordable and State housing, as Labour promises to do?

Hon PAULA BENNETT: Well, I have another bit of good news for the member himself. As I have repeatedly said, social housing is increasing by more than 3,000 new houses over the next few years alone, we have put another $120 million into supporting community housing providers to build their supply, and we are now making sure that we have it in the emergency housing area as well. No one, not even that member, can argue that we do not have a comprehensive social housing programme all under way.

Roading—Projects

6. MATT DOOCEY (National—Waimakariri) to the Minister of Transport: What progress has the Government made with its Roads of National Significance Programme in Canterbury?

Hon SIMON BRIDGES (Minister of Transport): Fantastic progress. Last week, the Prime Minister and I marked the start of two final Christchurch motorway projects to be built under the Government’s roads of national significance programme. The first is the new $240 million Christchurch Northern Corridor project, which includes a new 8-kilometre, four-lane motorway, starting at the Waimakariri River and finishing on Cranford Street in the city. The second project is a $195 million extension to the Christchurch Southern Motorway, which will halve travel time between Rolleston and the city. All up, the construction of these two projects will see nearly half a billion dollars injected into Canterbury, providing hundreds of jobs directly and indirectly. They also reflect the Government’s commitment to seeing the South Island’s largest cities supported by a roading network that will support the cities’ future economic and social growth.

Maureen Pugh: What roading projects is the Government delivering to support an increase in economic growth on the West Coast?

Hon SIMON BRIDGES: This week I was really pleased to welcome the news that the New Zealand Transport Agency has awarded the construction contract for the new $25 million Taramakau Bridge between Greymouth and Kūmara Junction on the West Coast. Work is set to get under way before Christmas, and, once finished, this new two-lane bridge will mean local business operators and residents will no longer have to wait at each end on their daily commutes. The new bridge will also support the growing tourism opportunities developing in this region, like the West Coast Wilderness Trail for cyclists and walkers, by providing a safer and more reliable bridge. The new bridge is an important part of the Government’s Accelerated Regional Roading Package programme, so I am pleased we are delivering on this commitment to bring this road forward.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Speaking about roads of national significance—the Pūhoi to Warkworth one—after 8 years, how many metres, exactly, have been built?

Hon SIMON BRIDGES: Well, I am glad the member asks. He will well know that we have made fantastic—about $11 billion worth of progress on our roads of national—

Rt Hon Winston Peters: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. We have waited 8 years and, with exactitude, I just want to know—

Mr SPEAKER: Order! [Interruption] Order! The member has asked the question. Show some respect, and we will wait for the answer. We will deal with the answer afterwards if it is not satisfactory.

Hon SIMON BRIDGES: As I was about to say, the member, I am sure, will well know we have now procured for the project, Pūhoi to Warkworth, over $700 million, and very soon that member may well see spades in the ground.

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

Mr SPEAKER: Order! What I am going to do—[Interruption] Order! I am going to invite the member to ask the question again.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Thank you, Mr Speaker. Speaking about the roads of national significance—in this case, Pūhoi to Warkworth—after 8 long years, Minister, exactly how many metres have been built?

Hon SIMON BRIDGES: Well, as I made abundantly clear in my answer to the right honourable member, spades have not yet gone into the ground. But, if he waits, very soon that will be happening on this project—the last of the roads of national significance that we are starting.

Matt Doocey: What other roading projects is the Government delivering in the South Island to support and increase economic growth?

Hon SIMON BRIDGES: Well, in amongst the unprecedented investment all across the country in roading, last week I was in Queenstown to get work under way on the new $22 million eastern access road. Once completed, at the end of next year, the new road will allow traffic not needing to travel into central Queenstown to bypass the busy BP roundabout at the junction of State Highway 6 and State Highway 6A. The new road will be a key part of the growing arterial network in the area, and it will bring real relief for motorists by easing congestion in the area. The new road is just one in a range of high-quality transport projects the Government is delivering to support the very strong growth in the Queenstown Lakes District area.

Resource Legislation Amendment Bill—Ministerial Powers

7. EUGENIE SAGE (Green) to the Minister for the Environment: Does he agree with former Prime Minister Sir Geoffrey Palmer that the Resource Legislation Amendment Bill contains “at least three significant and dangerous trends” including “Greater Ministerial control and centralised decision-making” and “Reduced opportunities for public participation”?

Hon Dr NICK SMITH (Minister for the Environment): I agree that the reform is significant, but his criticisms reflect his defensive view of his original Resource Management Act (RMA) design, which has proved to be excessively bureaucratic—[Interruption]

Mr SPEAKER: Order! I want to hear the answer.

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: —litigious and costly. The fact that Parliament under both National and Labour Governments keeps having to pass special laws to address significant resource issues like water allocation in the Waitaki or a new unitary plan for Auckland reinforces the fact that the RMA is too slow and bureaucratic. There is a fundamental shift from Sir Geoffrey’s model in these reforms in having stronger national direction and consistency. This makes common sense because for a country of our size, having 86 different approaches and 80,000 pages of different rules and policies across New Zealand does not make sense.

Eugenie Sage: Did he consider not proceeding with the bill after so many submitters from Fonterra to Forest and Bird, and not just Sir Geoffrey, criticised the substantial increase in ministerial powers, the limits on public participation, and the bill’s emphasis on quick decision-making rather than quality decision-making?

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: Well, if I just take the submission from Fonterra—yes. Out of the 40 proposals in the bill, there were two areas that they wanted changed. Big deal! That is why we are making some adjustments, as all major bills get, through this Parliament. What I find remarkable is that every member of this House knows, after report after report, that if we are serious about addressing issues like housing we need to provide more land for that by reforming the RMA. But members opposite whine all the time and then oppose the very reforms that will make a material difference.

Nuk Korako: What substantive reports has he received that give a different view to that of Sir Geoffrey Palmer’s opposition to RMA reform?

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: The OECD report last year was very critical of the RMA, saying that its lack of responsiveness to growing housing demand has exacerbated house price increases and that New Zealand has very high environmental compliance costs as compared with other OECD countries. Secondly, the independent Productivity Commission has produced two substantive reports that recommend substantive change to the RMA, which is included in this bill. Thirdly, Local Government New Zealand’s 2015 report on public satisfaction with council services said that the RMA rated as the single greatest area of public concern in making councils more effective. It is these substantive reports that have influenced the Government’s determination to ensure that that Act is reformed.

Eugenie Sage: Can he guarantee that the bill will bring down house prices without limiting the rights of neighbours and local residents to have a say on developments and subdivisions affecting them and their neighbourhoods?

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: If you look at examples like Three Kings, if you look at the debate that has occurred over the Auckland Unitary Plan and new areas of greenfield development, the truth is that we do need to reduce the number of appeals and the years that it takes to bring new housing supply on stream if we are going to actually have more homes for Kiwi families. That is why this reform is actually at the root of actual long-term solutions to New Zealand housing affordability and supply.

Eugenie Sage: Can he guarantee that under his bill New Zealanders will have the same rights that they have now under the RMA to have a say on council plans that influence their neighbourhoods and the places that they love?

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: This bill unapologetically reduces some of the appeals that see a project like Three Kings, which would provide 1,400 homes in the Mt Roskill electorate at a time when there is high demand, take more than 5 years to build. Can we honestly say in this Parliament that we are serious about building houses when we allow that sort of delay in new home construction?

Eugenie Sage: Does he agree with the New Zealand Law Society that “There are potential costs in the lack of public participation, including loss of public confidence in the consent process and a reduction in the quality of decision-making.”; if not, why not?

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: It is true that lawyers will make less money out of the RMA as a consequence of the reform bill. New Zealanders want better environmental improvement, they want more houses being built, and they want our economy to be able to grow and provide jobs. They are the values that we on this side of the House stand for.

Eugenie Sage: Is it correct that ministerial regulation-making powers in the bill include him being able to stop communities like Northland and Hawke’s Bay from being able to decide for themselves whether genetically modified crops should be planted in their areas?

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: There is already a question in law that is being challenged around whether it makes sense for councils to be able to separately regulate GM. How many members of this House really believe that the Auckland Council should stop a GM liver treatment, approved by the Environmental Protection Authority, from being able to treat patients in Auckland? It is our view that genetic modification should be regulated on a national level through the Environmental Protection Authority and under the hazardous substances law.

Resource Legislation Amendment Bill—Referral to Select Committee and Reforms

8. Dr MEGAN WOODS (Labour—Wigram) to the Minister for the Environment: Why did he announce yesterday that he is going to seek the approval of Parliament to refer the Resource Legislation Amendment Bill back to select committee given that so many councils, environmental groups, the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, and the Law Society have criticised the bill?

Hon Dr NICK SMITH (Minister for the Environment): Because reform is pivotal to improving New Zealand’s environment, to being able to build more houses, and to supporting economic growth and jobs, which members on this side of the House support. I will give you a practical example. The bill will enable national regulations so that stock will not be in our rivers and lakes. The bill provides for more houses being built by requiring councils to release land. The bill will prevent billion-dollar stuff-ups, like what occurred at Bexley when natural hazards were not properly considered when that subdivision was approved. It is inevitable with a bill of this size that it will require refinement at select committee. The Local Government and Environment Committee only received the 500 page report last week, and I am at a loss why members opposite will not let the committee considered that report.

Dr Megan Woods: Does he agree with the Department of Conservation, which says that the bill will undermine its work and have significant adverse effects on important conservation values, such as impacts on threatened species?

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: No, I do not agree with that view. If we are serious about improving our planning processes, this reform is required. What I find so ironic about the Labour Party members is that they repeatedly accept that the Resource Management Act (RMA) as part of the housing problem and then every time we go to amend it they oppose it.

Paul Foster-Bell: When did his ministry provide departmental reports to the select committee, and what are the substantive issues addressed in those reports?

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: The bill attracted over 800 submissions that were heard through May and June, and on which the ministry carefully conceded in its departmental report. This was provided in two volumes: 150 pages in August, and a further 500-page report last week. This timetable is not unreasonable given the size, complexity, and number of submissions. It would be impossible for the select committee members to give proper consideration to those reports when they had only 1 day. That is why the committee sought a reasonable extension, and that is why this afternoon this Government will refer the bill back to the select committee to do the job properly.

Eugenie Sage: Why should New Zealanders believe that this Government cares about hearing their views on anything when National members of the select committee would not even allow the select committee to report back and would not allow the members of the Opposition to have their report-backs reported?

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: The idea that the select committee would be able to report back on a bill when it received a 500-page report and had only 1 day’s consideration—actually, it is members on this side of the House who are saying the bill should be referred back to the select committee so that it can do its job properly. It is our side of the House that is showing proper respect for those submissions.

Dr Megan Woods: Was the reason the department did not provide the departmental report for 5 months after the submissions were heard because it was awaiting his approval, or is the incompetent delay someone else’s fault?

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: The member is plain wrong. Submissions were finished in June. The first departmental report was provided in August. By my calculation that is 2 months.

Dr Megan Woods: Why is he ignoring the submission of councils, developers, and the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment that further changes to already complex notification rules and adding hundreds of extra clauses to the RMA will further complicate the RMA—the opposite of his stated aims?

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: That just shows the member has not bothered to read the departmental report, because one of the most significant areas of changes that is proposed in the departmental report is around the proposals of notification.

Dr Megan Woods: Why does he not just admit that the shambolic process and widespread opposition to the bill shows he has got it wrong yet again—another Nick Smith special?

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: This Government set out on a two-phase reform programme for the RMA and whether it be Transmission Gully in Wellington, or the Pūhoi-Tūhoe roading project, or whether it be the Waterview Connection—all of those projects were only able to be approved because of this Government’s RMA reform bill. It is rich for members opposite to make the connections—[Interruption]

Mr SPEAKER: Order!

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

Mr SPEAKER: Order! [Interruption] Order! A point of order has been called. It needs to be heard in silence.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: I was listening very acutely to that answer, and in the noise I thought I heard him talking about the Pūhoi-Tūhoe road, and I know he might have lost it.

Mr SPEAKER: That is not a point of order. [Interruption] Order! The level of interjection has been relatively loud throughout. I am now going to have to get tougher with one or two members if I do not get any cooperation, and I think those members know who I am talking about.

Tourism—Tourism Growth Partnership and Infrastructure Investment

9. SCOTT SIMPSON (National—Coromandel) to the Minister of Tourism: What announcements has the Government made about supporting tourism in regional New Zealand?

Ron Mark: Who cares?

Hon PAULA BENNETT (Associate Minister of Tourism) on behalf of the Minister of Tourism: Well, actually, the people in the regions care, Mr Mark. This week the Government announced even more support for tourism growth and infrastructure in regional New Zealand. The Prime Minister announced this week that two new exciting regional projects that will attract more international visitors are receiving funding from the Tourism Growth Partnership (TGP). They are a new international astronomy centre in Lake Tekapō, which is a partnership with Ngāi Tahu, and a suite of luxury glass cabins at remote locations throughout New Zealand. Since 2013 the TGP has awarded $21.2 million to 29 projects.

Tracey Martin: Got any toilets?

Hon PAULA BENNETT: There are toilets coming.

Scott Simpson: What kinds of infrastructure projects have received funding?

Hon PAULA BENNETT: Fourteen tourism infrastructure projects have also received funding in the first round of the new Regional Mid-sized Tourism Facilities Grant Fund, which is designed to help smaller communities respond to increasing visitor numbers. A range of projects has been funded, including a lot of new toilet facilities, the House will be pleased to know, and the member who asked the question will be particularly interested in innovative rubbish removal compactors that we are funding in the Coromandel. Many of the facilities will be up and running this summer.

David Clendon: How many applications to the regional mid-sized facilities fund did not receive any funding in this year’s round?

Hon PAULA BENNETT: Of those that were eligible, 11 did not.

David Clendon: What was the shortfall in this funding round between the total amount of financial assistance requested or asked for by regions and the amount of funding that the Government distributed?

Hon PAULA BENNETT: I am sorry; I do not have that number exactly to hand. If it helps the member, we are looking at doing a new round earlier next year, and looking at whether or not we can bring funding forward and what we can do.

Scott Simpson: How will this funding help the tourism sector grow in areas such as the beautiful Coromandel?

Hon PAULA BENNETT: International tourists spent $14.5 billion in New Zealand in the last year, and the industry employs more than 188,000 people. To maintain the growth, we need to ensure visitors have a high-quality experience and see as many regions of New Zealand, including the beautiful Coromandel, as possible. This Government is committed to providing funding to ensure we continue to provide new and innovative things to attract new international visitors and ensure that their experience is of a high quality.

David Clendon: Given the $97 million shortfall between what the industry estimates is required for tourism infrastructure and the amount that this Government appears willing to spend, will the Minister now adopt the Green Party’s proposal for a border levy, which would generate up to $20 million a year available for tourism infrastructure?

Hon PAULA BENNETT: I have made it clear that we are interested in looking at options. Certainly, at the moment we are expecting the McKinsey & Company report, I think before Christmas, where we have had businesses—including led by the chief executive of Air New Zealand, Christopher Luxon, and what some of those options might be around levies and funding. I do think that in the first round of this mid-size facilities grant, I actually expected more applications and more spend, so I think we do need to make sure that we are putting the infrastructure in to ensure those high-quality experiences. There is a range of options for how we might fund that in the future.

Saudi Agri-hub—Auditor-General’s Report

Hon DAVID PARKER (Labour): I seek leave to hold over my question to a day when the Minister of Foreign Affairs is in the House.

Mr SPEAKER: Leave is sought for that course of action. Is there any objection? There is objection.

10. Hon DAVID PARKER (Labour) to the Minister of Foreign Affairs: Does he agree with the Auditor-General’s finding regarding the Saudi sheep deal that his Cabinet paper had significant shortcomings and Cabinet was provided a “lack of robust analysis”; if so, does he accept responsibility for failing to provide Cabinet with a robust analysis and quality information?

Hon TODD McCLAY (Associate Minister of Foreign Affairs) on behalf of the Minister of Foreign Affairs: I agree with all the findings of the Auditor-General’s report, particularly the finding that “The arrangements entered into were a lawful use of public resources, and public money was spent with appropriate financial authorities in place.”

Hon David Parker: Did the Minister of Foreign Affairs seek advice from the Attorney-General on whether there was any realistic prospect of any legal claim by Al Ali Khalaf succeeding before paying him $4 million cash and paying $6 million for a farm in the desert?

Hon TODD McCLAY: The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade’s (MFAT’s) legal division provided advice on the issue relating to the Saudi Arabia Food Security Partnership. I cannot say more about the content of that advice; to do so would waive legal privilege, which is not the Government’s practice. However, what Ministers have said previously is that MFAT officials advised that Mr Al Ali Khalaf had received advice suggesting he could pursue a claim of between $20 million and $30 million. This advice was reflected in the February 2013 Cabinet paper. This is also acknowledged in the Auditor-General’s report, on page 8, where the Auditor-General found it was a matter of fact—

Hon David Parker: Answer the question. It was a very specific question.

Hon TODD McCLAY: —that the Al-Khalaf Group “indicated that it considered it should be paid compensation of $24 million.”

Hon David Parker: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker.

Mr SPEAKER: We have got two courses of action. I can just explain that the question was whether the Minister sought advice from the Attorney-General. The answer was very interesting, but it certainly has not in any way tackled the question.

Hon TODD McCLAY: Thank you. I do not have all of that information before me, but what may assist the member is that the Government did not fully scope the risk associated with litigation or a compensation negotiation because we had, from the outset, ruled out this option. The Cabinet paper did not analyse the consequences of a process that had been expressly ruled out.

Mr SPEAKER: Supplementary question?

Hon David Parker: There is just no point asking more supplementary questions without the Minister here.

Trans-Pacific Partnership—Prospects

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

Hon STEVEN JOYCE (Minister for Economic Development) on behalf of the Prime Minister: Yes; and, on this occasion, by asking the Minister for Economic Development to answer on his behalf.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: If the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement (TPPA) was, in his words, “definitely possible” less than 2 weeks ago, will he now admit how sad it is that so much that he has endorsed lately—from the flag referendum to the “Stay” campaign in the UK to the Clinton campaign—keeps turning to custard?

Hon STEVEN JOYCE: What was the question?

Mr SPEAKER: Yes, I could not gather the question either, so can we have a repeat, please. [Interruption] Order! I will give the member one more go at trying to get a question in.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: If the TPPA was, in his words, “definitely possible” less than 2 weeks ago, and close to zero this morning, will he now admit how sad it is that so much that he has endorsed lately—from the flag referendum to the “Stay” campaign in the UK to the Clinton campaign—keeps turning to custard?

Hon STEVEN JOYCE: The things the Prime Minister cares about are the fact that New Zealand is growing at 3.5 percent a year, the fact that we have added, as a country, 35,000 jobs in the last quarter alone, and 350,000 jobs since the height of the global financial crisis, and the fact that in the last year wages grew, on average, at 1.9 percent while inflation grew at only 0.4 percent. The member may like to revel in his ability as a prognosticator, but even a broken clock is right twice a day.

Hon David Parker: Does he stand by his statements that the TPP is critically important to the future of the New Zealand economy, and, given that that is not now proceeding, does he admit that there is a major hole in his economic plan for the country?

Hon STEVEN JOYCE: In terms of trade, generally, yes, this Government is in favour—it remains in favour—of TPP—

Dr David Clark: Answer the question.

Hon STEVEN JOYCE: I will answer the question for you, you clown—clown over there; “Mr Clown”. The reality of it is—[Interruption]

Mr SPEAKER: Order! We got that response because of the interjection, which in itself is not helpful to the order of the House. Now the answer is being given, so members should listen to the answer without the boorish behaviour.

Hon STEVEN JOYCE: As I was saying, yes, this Government remains in favour of free trade, because of the benefit it brings New Zealand exporters in giving them the opportunity to sell their goods to countries around the world.

Hon Member: Blah, blah, blah!

Hon STEVEN JOYCE: The Opposition members may say “Blah, blah, blah”, and every time they say that, their vote decreases in regional New Zealand.

Dr David Clark: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I do not believe that the Minister addressed the question, and that was what was causing the disturbance. It was a very specific—

Mr SPEAKER: Order! We do not need any more assistance. Go back and look at the Hansard, when it comes out later on. There is absolutely no doubt that the Minister addressed what he thought was critical to New Zealand’s trade opportunity. If the member took less time clapping and more time listening, he might have heard the answer.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Given that the Prime Minister said this morning that, in his words, the “$5 billion Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement”, referred to by Trump as a “horrible trade agreement”, was not going ahead in the short term, why did the Government spend well over $5 million of taxpayers’ money on the TPPA to achieve a metaphor for his Government—absolutely nothing?

Hon STEVEN JOYCE: I am intrigued as to why the member does not back New Zealand exporters. I am intrigued as to why he comes here, supposedly from the Northland electorate, and does not back Northland exporters. Actually, it is in New Zealand’s interest to develop trade deals, and, actually, not everybody agrees with us, internationally, all the time, but you would think that the member would actually be in favour of New Zealand exporters and in favour of hard-working Kiwi mums and dads, and not against them—but, then, he is a 40-year political insider. [Interruption]

Mr SPEAKER: Order! Does the member have further supplementary questions?

Rt Hon Winston Peters: I most certainly—

Mr SPEAKER: Then we will have them.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: When exports are down 12 percent—

Hon STEVEN JOYCE: No, they’re not—wrong.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: —yes, they are—and when manufacturing is down under 30 percent, heading towards 26 percent, under National, and New Zealand First said earlier this year that he was acting like a card shark, believing he has all the aces—

Mr SPEAKER: Order! I need a supplementary question—I need a question.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Mr Speaker, there is so much noise that I cannot hear myself talk.

Mr SPEAKER: Well, the problem might be that we have got a very long lead-in to a supplementary question. They must be more concise. So if the member stands and delivers a question—[Interruption] Order! The interjections coming from my right are not helpful. Can we have a supplementary question, please.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: With exports down and manufacturing down, and the TPP agreement having him acting like a card shark—thinking that he has got all the aces, and he does not, and that is what we said at the beginning of the year—

Mr SPEAKER: Order! I want the question.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: —can I ask him, seeing as you want the question, why did you not listen to us?

Hon STEVEN JOYCE: He is wrong about exports; they are up. He is wrong about manufacturing; that is up. The Prime Minister is more than willing to back exporters, so exports are up. Manufacturing is up. This Government backs exporters, and that is probably why we do not listen to the member.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: In light of the TPPA collapsing and Washington being more likely to seek a rapprochement with Russia now, when will his Government resume from its self-imposed exile and talk about the New Zealand - Russia free-trade agreement (FTA), which would really boost our dairy and meat exports—and Mr Bennett, being in love with the Russians, would love it as well?

Hon STEVEN JOYCE: This Government has shown, through trade agreements such as the World Trade Organization Agreement on Government Procurement, through the Korean FTA, and through the way that we have bedded in and ensured the benefits of the China FTA, that we have worked on trade agreements around the world. This Government is very much pro - free trade. It is the member opposite who has the approach of being the shark, of being the person who does not actually back trade agreements, and, of course, also the badger.

Hon David Parker: In respect of the free-trade agreements he says he wants to pursue in the place of the TPP, will he undertake to protect the right of future Governments to ban overseas buyers of our farmland and houses—a right that he sold down the drain, under the TPP?

Hon STEVEN JOYCE: I know that Mr Parker is angry, but, actually, his supposition in his question is wrong.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: If Ambassador Tim Groser, a Finlayson-like self-appointed expert, has been the leading architect of the disaster that is the TPPA and is to face a hostile White House, what on earth is he doing still parked up there?

Hon STEVEN JOYCE: I would say the biggest self-appointed expert in this Parliament is Mr Peters.

Pest Control—Wilding Conifers

12. STUART SMITH (National—Kaikōura) to the Minister of Conservation: What announcements has she made on tackling the problem of wilding conifers?

Hon MAGGIE BARRY (Minister of Conservation): Budget 2016 allocated an additional $16 million over 4 years to the Ministry for Primary Industries, the Department of Conservation (DOC), and Land Information New Zealand to aid efforts to control the spread of wilding conifers, which are the most challenging and destructive weed problem this country faces. Last week I announced a $730,000 boost for wilding control across half a million hectares in Marlborough and North Canterbury at Molesworth and Āmuri. This will enable a significant expansion of work, funded by the Crown and local and regional councils, to tackle this awful problem of containing the spread of new trees, removing those already established, and replanting where necessary.

Stuart Smith: What further funding will be announced?

Hon MAGGIE BARRY: My colleagues the Hon Nathan Guy, the Hon Louise Upston, and the Hon Nicky Wagner are all making separate announcements over the coming weeks. In total, more than $5 million of new funding will be put into wilding control this year in Canterbury, Marlborough, Central Otago, northern Southland, and Kaimanawa. Wildings are enemy No. 1 in the annual Dirty Dozen of DOC’s ongoing War on Weeds programme. That is to focus attention on the suffocation of our native forests or eco-invaders and garden escapees that do not belong here and are doing irreparable damage.

Stuart Smith: Why are wildings so damaging to New Zealand’s environment and primary industries?

Hon MAGGIE BARRY: Wildings grow rapidly and destroy habitat for native plants and animals. They take over entire landscapes and, if left unchecked, would cover 25 percent of our country by 2040. They also destroy farmland and take away large amounts of water from the catchments. Once established, they are extremely difficult and expensive to eradicate, with the cost rising dramatically. Removing young seedlings before they start producing seeds costs less than $10 per hectare, but removing mature trees can cost $10,000 per hectare—money spent at any good price to get rid of some of the Opposition wildings, which are also out of place in this landscape.

Hon Annette King: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. We were enjoying that so much. Could you give the member another question, please?

Mr SPEAKER: No, I cannot.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I assume that question time has expired.

Mr SPEAKER: I am about to announce that, but if the member has got a point of order, then I will hear it.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: No, it will have to follow your announcement.

Urgent Debates Declined

United States—Presidential Election 2016

Mr SPEAKER: I have received a letter from the Rt Hon Winston Peters seeking to debate under Standing Order 389 the United States presidential election. The urgent debate is a way of holding the Government accountable for an action for which it is responsible. It is not a way of raising topical matters for debate when there is no ministerial responsibility. The US presidential election, although a significant event, is not a matter for which the Government is responsible. The application is therefore declined.

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS (Leader—NZ First): I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. Nevertheless, I move that there be a debate on the full ramifications of that election. I seek the leave of the House to have a full debate on the ramifications of that election.

Mr SPEAKER: The member is now seeking leave to have an urgent debate, after I have just rejected it. Leave is sought for that course of action. Is there any objection? There is objection.

Bills

Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement Amendment Bill

Discharge

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS (Leader—NZ First): I move, That the order of the day for the third reading of the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement Amendment Bill be discharged. [Interruption]

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

Mr SPEAKER: Order! I am sorry to interrupt the Clerk. I gave a warning before that votes are conducted in silence, and I will take a very dim view of members not adhering to that. I will be asking people to leave. I am sorry to interrupt the vote, but it is a serious matter.

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

Ayes 59

New Zealand Labour 31; Green Party 14; New Zealand First 12; Māori Party 2.

Noes 61

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

Motion not agreed to.

Vote corrected after originally being announced as Ayes 57, Noes 63.

Bills

Resource Legislation Amendment Bill

Referral to Local Government and Environment Committee

Hon DAVID PARKER (Labour): I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. My point of order relates to the next Government notice of motion. I have a number of points to make in support of the proposition that this motion should, I think, be debatable, rather than be a non-debatable motion.

There is a very unusual situation. This bill has been reported back from the Local Government and Environment Committee for a second reading, and the proposal by the Government, according to the notice of motion, is to refer it back to the select committee rather than allow it to have a second reading. There is no provision in the Standing Orders covering this situation—I think everyone accepts that there is no provision in the Standing Orders—and, as a consequence, in order for the Government to not have the bill heard at second reading and hear the views of parliamentarians on it, and get it back to the select committee, it has got to get the agreement of this House for an abnormal process. My submission is that, particularly in the circumstances of this case, that should not happen without the House debating the circumstances of it and whether it should happen.

When this was put on the Order Paper earlier in the day, I went to see the Clerk, and the Clerk gave me two reasons as to why he thought that this could be done or should be done without debate. The first of those reasons was relying on Standing Order 204, which says that in respect of proceedings at select committees, they are to apply the rules of conduct of proceedings in a Committee of the whole House, unless subject to a Standing Order to the contrary. With respect to the Clerk, I do not think there is any help for the House in respect of Standing Order 204, because Standing Order 204 is talking about what happens at select committees, not about how things get to select committees. And so, Mr Speaker, I would submit to you that Standing Order 204 is of complete irrelevance to the decision as to whether there should be a debate on this motion.

The second point I would make is that at the moment, if this motion proceeds in this way, the House will have had absolutely no explanation as to what has happened over the last 11 months. The Opposition parties will have had no opportunity to talk to the merits of this issue at all. You will be aware from the records of the select committee—and I am not in any way at risk of contempt in this, because the minutes are out and the conduct of the proceedings last week is clear—that the select committee minority, the Opposition parties, was blocked from having any report back to Parliament as to what has happened. We were further blocked from providing a minority view. If there is no opportunity to debate this, we cannot put any of those points before the House, and we are placed in the invidious position, despite this very unusual process, of the House being none the wiser as to what has happened.

Two more points—in respect of the other two points that the Clerk made to me, he said that a precedent could be drawn from Standing Order 311, which deals with recommittal to the Committee of the whole House in a third reading. Of course, where that happens the House and the members immediately have the opportunity to address the House in that recommittal to the Committee—we have the opportunity to debate these issues. If this goes straight back to the select committee, we have absolutely no opportunity, so I do not think that Standing Order 311 is of any assistance either.

The reference that the Clerk made to the only precedent that he was aware of, the Food Bill—I was not even aware of that precedent until he raised it, and I thank him for raising it—is not at all comparable to this situation. That Food Bill had sat on the Order Paper—from my memory, it might even have been years—and then there was a new Supplementary Order Paper put to the select committee, for new submissions. Everyone in Parliament agreed that it should go back to the select committee, and so it was not a motion that was debated. That is not at all comparable. If agreement over a non-controversial issue such as that one is taken to be a precedent for how controversial issues are handled, then we will have poor order in this House.

The final point is that in the absence of a Standing Order setting out how these things ought to be dealt with—and there is no Standing Order—and in the absence of a Speaker’s ruling on the issue, the House should then be given the opportunity to debate the matter so that the House can decide how to proceed upon debate, rather than the executive being given an easy option.

I therefore ask you, Mr Speaker, to reconsider the issue as to whether, in this instance, this motion from the Government to recommit this bill to the select committee, 11 months after it first went there, should be debated.

Hon Dr NICK SMITH (Minister for the Environment): I wish to speak to the point of order that has been raised by Mr Parker, and make four points. First, there is absolutely nothing abnormal about the Government referring a bill back to the select committee. It is exactly what occurred in this Parliament in 2014 with the Food Bill. The reason in that case was that there was further work for the select committee to do on the bill, and the circumstances here are the same.

The second point is that the member makes the claim that it is unusual for a bill to be still in the select committee process after 11 months. I would draw your attention, Mr Speaker, to the Marine Reserves Bill, which was introduced into the Parliament by the previous Government in 2002, and had extensions all the way through 8 years of consideration by the select committee.

The third point is that I was part of the Standing Orders discussion when the Business Committee process was set up. I was a member of Parliament before we had the Business Committee and after. The decision that the Standing Orders Committee made at the time was that any single party would be able to object to an extension being granted by the Business Committee—that it was by consensus. At the time that decision was made, it was quite deliberate that in the event that there was not a consensus—in other words, any single party could object to a select committee extension—then it was for the House to make the decision by majority to refer a bill back to the select committee. To now require a debate on that would be a substantive change from the very intent of establishing a Business Committee.

The last point I would make is that in the political dialogue that occurred last week, members opposite asserted that it was the Government’s intention not to have a report from the Local Government and Environment Committee, to have a pro forma report back to the House this week, and for us to just use our parliamentary numbers to bung it through the Parliament. That is not the Government’s intent. The Government’s intent is that this bill does require the substantive, 500-page report, which was received by the department only last week, to be referred back to the select committee. When the select committee produces its report back to the House, all of the views—including the debate about why it has taken some time for the select committee to report the bill back to the House—can be dealt with at the time when the select committee delivers its proper consideration.

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS (Leader—NZ First): First of all, it is the timing of this referral back. We have seen bills referred back for third reading with the consent of the House, but after a discussion.

The second thing is that there is no Standing Order on this. In that event, when there is a request for a debate, one would surely think that in the absence of a Standing Order, it would be granted. Why? Well, the public has got a right to know what is going on. Out there in New Zealand, the people have got a right to know what is going on, which is why these parliamentary proceedings are broadcast right around the nation. If there is no debate in respect of this referral motion, first of all to the debating structure itself, then Parliament will not be informed and, worse still, the public will not be.

If this matter is critically important to the whole future of the whole nation, and National’s economic strategy is what it says it is, then the more the public knows about that and what is happening to it, the better. I suggest, therefore, that you should not err in favour of a debate, but, for the very reason we gave, favour the debate.

Dr DAVID CLARK (Labour—Dunedin North): The experience that I have of other Speakers and of you, Mr Speaker, is that you tend to exercise a ruling in favour of the House and the opportunity to debate, and that is with precedent, in the absence of Standing Orders and Speakers’ rulings. I think the House should be given the opportunity to debate the matter. It is not an opportunity to give the executive an easy out.

Hon SIMON BRIDGES (Deputy Leader of the House): In my very brief perusal of the Standing Orders, there has been comment made by other members—respected senior members of this House—that there is no Standing Order that applies. In my brief reading of this Standing Order 74(2), where we are dealing with the discharge or postponement of an order of the day, it makes it abundantly clear that there is no amendment or debate on the question to discharge or postpone an order of the day.

Mr SPEAKER: Which Standing Order is the member quoting?

Hon SIMON BRIDGES: Standing Order 74(2). My argument would be very clear: there is simply no getting around those plain words there in that Standing Order. There is simply no ability here to debate this matter.

Hon Members: Point of order.

Mr SPEAKER: I am not going to hear too many more. There have been a lot of members who have had an opportunity. I will hear from the Hon Trevor Mallard, who is a learned scholar of many years’ experience.

Hon TREVOR MALLARD (Labour—Hutt South): I am a person of some experience in these matters. The first point is that I think the Deputy Leader of the House had better have a look at the Standing Orders. I think he might be using an out-of-date set of Standing Orders when he was making that reference. I think he was probably referring to Standing Order 74 rather than Standing Order 70, but we will—

Mr SPEAKER: I thought the member referred to Standing Order 74.

Hon TREVOR MALLARD: Well, Standing Order 70(2) is certainly not the one that—

Mr SPEAKER: Order! Can I just clarify that the member Mr Bridges, when he referred to a Standing Order, referred to Standing Order 74(2)?

Hon Simon Bridges: Yes.

Hon TREVOR MALLARD: Thank you, that is fine. I apologise for mishearing.

I want to make about three points. The first is that in this House, motions are debatable unless it is clear that they are not, and that is quite a high test. I want to make it clear that we have changed the approach to the debate on bills over a period of time, at the point we amalgamated the debate on the report of the select committee and the debate on the second reading. I think that should be taken into account in any new ruling, because under the previous Standing Orders, and any sorts of precedents that might flow from way back, we would have already had a report-back debate before we come to this point.

I do want to accept that on the face, David McGee—when he deals with this matter on page 363 of the third edition of Parliamentary Practice in New Zealand—does indicate that this would be a non-debatable motion. But, in doing so, he appears to be referring to the absolute discharge—of a bill or the postponement of a bill, as opposed to a discharge for the purpose of referral back to a select committee. It is an awful thing to disagree with McGee, but my view is that he has his references incorrect on page 363.

EUGENIE SAGE (Green): I have just two additional points. The Minister for the Environment said that the select committee was considering a pro forma report. There were quite detailed and extensive minority views from Opposition parties—Labour and the Greens—so it would not have been simply a pro forma report. The other point is in relation to Standing Order 290(2), and the Minister yesterday, in his press release, said that select committee consideration “may be completed this year but may flow early into next year.” So if the select committee is going to be asked to consider the bill for less than 4 months, then that is normally debated by the House.

Mr SPEAKER: I thank all members for their comments. I have spent considerable time on this and intend to rule. The starting point for my ruling is, of course, Standing Order 74(2), which provides that motions to discharge an order of the day are not debatable. There is no specific provision in Standing Orders to govern the referral of a bill back to the select committee, so I have looked for the most similar applicable rule for guidance. Standing Order 311 provides for a referral of a bill back to the Committee of the whole House from the third reading, also without debate.

In determining how to proceed with the discharge and the referral of the bill, I have also looked at McGee and, as Mr Mallard has mentioned, it says on page 363: “When the order of the day for a bill’s second reading is reached it is possible for any member to move to discharge it and for the bill to be referred back to a select committee for further consideration. There is no amendment or debate on this question.”

[The word “no” in the previous sentence was originally omitted; text corrected.]

Finally, I considered how the House has dealt with motions to discharge the second reading and refer a bill back to a select committee in the past. I have searched back the last 14 years to 2002 and have found that in 2015 an identical motion was moved by Tracey Martin, in respect of the Harmful Digital Communications Bill, and that occurred without debate. In 2013 the same thing happened with the Telecommunications (Interception Capability and Security) Bill and also with the Food Bill, and the Minimum Wage (Abolition of Age Discrimination) Amendment Bill was referred back to a select committee without debate in 2006. In each of those four cases the motions to discharge the bill from second reading and refer them to the select committee were moved and there was no debate. Clearly, the same process should be followed in respect of the bill before the House today.

To avoid further doubt, I am now confirming that the motion to discharge and refer a bill back to select committee is not debatable or subject to amendment. I will not entertain further discussion now, but I will certainly allow further discussion to occur at the Standing Orders Committee, if its members so wish.

GRANT ROBERTSON (Labour—Wellington Central): I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I take the point that you have just made. I do want to draw to your attention—accepting your ruling—to the intervention made by Eugenie Sage, which is that the Minister is on public record as suggesting that the bill will be back well within the normal 4-month period, which otherwise would generate a debate. That is a very serious matter from our point of view, in that we will not get to debate that, even though the Minister has made clear in his public statements he has no intention of the bill being in the select committee for the normal length of time.

Mr SPEAKER: If the motion were then to refer it back from the select committee in less than 4 months, that then would be a debatable motion, but at this stage I have seen no evidence of that before this House. I think the easiest way forward is to go back and to call Government order of the day No. 1.

Debate interrupted.

Voting

Correction—Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement Amendment Bill

MARAMA FOX (Co-Leader—Māori Party): Apologies, Mr Speaker; this is not in regard to the point that is being debated at the moment but in regard to the earlier motion to discharge the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement Amendment Bill. We would like to correct our vote. It is a requirement of our agreement that in cases of procedural motions we must give notice to the Government that we are going to vote against it. We have now done that and so we would like to be able to correct our vote and support the motion to discharge the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement Amendment Bill.

Mr SPEAKER: The member will therefore need to seek leave for a correction to that vote.

MARAMA FOX: Thank you, Mr Speaker. I seek leave to correct the vote.

Mr SPEAKER: Is there any objection to that course of action? There is none. The vote will therefore be adjusted by two votes the other way.

Marama Fox: Thank you.

Bills

Resource Legislation Amendment Bill

Referral to Local Government and Environment Committee

Debate resumed.

Hon Dr NICK SMITH (Minister for the Environment): I move, That the order of the day for the second reading of the Resource Legislation Amendment Bill be discharged and the bill be referred to the Local Government and Environment Committee for consideration.

Mr SPEAKER: A party vote has been called—[Interruption] Order! I ask the Clerk to conduct a party vote, which will be conducted in silence.

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

Ayes 62

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

Noes 58

New Zealand Labour 31; Green Party 14; New Zealand First 12; ACT New Zealand 1.

Motion agreed to.

Bills

Civil Defence Emergency Management Amendment Bill

Third Reading

Debate resumed from 8 November.

CLARE CURRAN (Labour—Dunedin South): In my 7½ minutes that preceded today’s debate, I outlined Labour’s support for this bill and the reasons why. I also made some observations about some further concerns that we had. I had not quite finished with those observations and I will do that now in the time left.

Civil defence should be a multipartisan issue, and we all in this House have an absolute vested interest in keeping our communities safe in times of crisis, and being able to respond quickly and effectively. One of the issues that remains to be dealt with in this country is the lack of a national disaster warning system—a public disaster warning system—and the importance of that. There are 16 civil defence emergency management groups around the country. There has been more than half a million dollars spent in the last couple of years developing technology that can act as a national public alerting system, but we are now at a point where that appears to have been put to one side. The Government is now embarking on another system that may end up costing many, many, many more millions of dollars—perhaps up to $55 to $60 million—based on cell broadcast technology, which I have heard is fraught with problems.

Why is this important? This is important because we are not having fewer civil defence emergencies. The potential for a major earthquake off the shore of New Zealand creating a tsunami is there, and New Zealand at the moment has no national public alerting system. If this Government is serious about a joined-up approach to civil defence emergency management, it needs to get its act together on this and it needs to talk to the community. It needs to engage with other parties, and it needs to sort this out.

PAUL FOSTER-BELL (National): E Te Mana Whakawā Tuarua, tēnā koe. In this third reading debate on the Civil Defence Emergency Management Amendment Bill, I first want to congratulate both the sponsoring Minister, the Hon Gerry Brownlee, who is Acting Minister of Civil Defence, but also my colleague Nikki Kaye, who worked so hard on these measures. Of course, we miss Nikki here in the House today to see this piece of work going through, and we wish her all the best.

This bill amends the Civil Defence Emergency Management Act 2002, the CDEM Act, in a number of ways that will positively enhance our ability to recover from the most frequent kinds of emergencies that we sustain here in New Zealand—that is, those of a small to moderate scale. It does this in a number of main ways. Apart from some relatively minor and technical amendments that improve the Act, there are three main pieces that innovate to create a better framework. These are the establishment of a legislative framework for the recovery management systems, which provides a mandate for recovery managers and requires high-level preparatory work to be done so that we have recovery plans in place. It also supports the seamless transition from the initial response phase to the recovery phase. It establishes a transition notice mechanism, and that makes some additional emergency powers available to transition managers for a specified period of time and with what we, particularly on this side of the House, believe are appropriate controls and mechanisms in place to ensure accountability. It also establishes a permanent legislative authority—that is, a permanent appropriation of funds so that councils and local bodies will know that when they go and spend money on a recovery, the Government will back up that spending and will do what it takes to help them recover.

It should be noted that this is the first stage of a wider review of the legislative framework. We have taken learnings from Christchurch and elsewhere, but this deals with small- to moderate-scale emergencies and is a positive set of improvements—and it is certainly a tribute to the hard work that the Hon Nikki Kaye put in initially, and the current Acting Minister, the Hon Gerry Brownlee. I commend it to the House.

ADRIAN RURAWHE (Labour—Te Tai Hauāuru): Tēnā koe e Te Māngai o Te Whare. It is a pleasure to rise to take a call on this bill. I did not sit on the select committee—the Government Administration Committee—for this particular bill but I have a strong interest, and I have taken note of the submissions that were made. I want to first of all point out the submission from the Rangitīkei District Council, which is in my electorate so I have taken particular note of that one. The Rangitīkei District Council is one of those councils that have had to deal with a number of floods over the last 11 years. I live very near a river, within 50 metres of flood zone, and I am very lucky that I do not get flooded, but all of my neighbours have been—some of them four times over the last 11 years. So I have taken a real interest in this bill.

I want to congratulate the Hon Nikki Kaye on the work that she did on this bill. I think, and I agree with my colleague Clare Curran, that civil defence is an area that all parties ought to be cooperating on. I know that when the Minister was in charge of this bill she made certain that she was talking to all parties about this particular bill. So I want to acknowledge that.

We in Labour are supporting this bill, but there are a couple of things that we have had concerns about. My colleague Clare Curran has already outlined those, but I want to pay attention to them, as well. So we have got unease about the imbalance of power in the authority that is exercising ministerial powers, against consultation with local communities—particularly in the recovery phase of an emergency. This is of particular importance, I believe, for those communities that are affected by emergencies when they happen, and the transition from dealing with those emergencies into the recovery phase. I think it is important that we acknowledge the concerns that those submitters have. I do want to acknowledge that there were some changes made during the Committee stage to the bill that we have before us right now. I think that they have made the bill better and stronger, and so I support those changes around that area.

I want to also talk briefly about the emergency management of strategic recovery plans, and acknowledge the submissions of those submitters who had some concerns that it did not specifically require which details needed to be in those plans. I think that although the bill does not want to be too prescriptive, they raised some clear points around that part of the bill before us.

I think an overall comment on this bill is that we all want a better way forward. I think the next phase in the review of the civil defence area is going to be critically important. This bill deals with some of the issues, but—as has been pointed out already—there is still more to come, and we look forward to that. I do not have too much more to contribute on this, but those areas—particularly around moving from the initial phase of dealing with an emergency into the recovery phase—need to be as seamless as possible. What is raised within this bill actually will achieve that. I commend this bill to the House. Kia ora.

MARK MITCHELL (National—Rodney): I will just take a short call. It is my pleasure to take a call on the Civil Defence Emergency Management Amendment Bill. Can I basically take the short time that I have to acknowledge our civil defence personnel and management around the country. This is an important bill. It relates more to small to medium sized - type incidents, but my own experience is that there is always risk in moving from a contingency-type environment into sustainment, or from emergency into recovery. This bill goes a long way in terms of the legislative framework in making sure that there is a seamless transition between those two.

I have to say that there has definitely been a lot of work and a heightened response taken in terms of how local communities are educated and engaged with civil defence. If I can just say, in my own electorate of Rodney we have had a couple of recent exercises in preparation for a tsunami event. I just want to acknowledge civil defence emergency management and all our civil defence people around the country. I think we are definitely moving in the right direction. This piece of legislation continues to support that. Thank you very much.

JAN LOGIE (Green): I am pleased to rise and take a call for the Green Party in the third reading of the Civil Defence Emergency Management Amendment Bill. We are very pleased to be able to support this with the other parties in the House. As has already been stated by other members, it is really important in terms of responses to natural disasters and other emergencies that we are able to be in accordance with each other in this House, and that people in the communities know that we are listening and that we are putting their interests first. Having unanimity on this bill is really important. I would like to particularly acknowledge the Minister of Civil Defence, Nikki Kaye, who brought this bill to the House, and I wish her well at the moment.

I will also just restate how constructive this process has been. Being on the Government Administration Committee, there absolutely was a process. It felt as if everyone on the committee was actually listening and checking the implications of this legislation, to test it against the question “Would this help the local communities?”, rather than it being a battle between different parties’ interests. There were positive changes that were made through the select committee process and, indeed, in the Committee of the whole House stage, when the Labour member Clare Curran, I think, put forward the amendment to put in the requirement for strategic recovery plans to be in the legislation. That was, I think, a positive change. Although there was the feeling from some members on the committee that maybe that was not necessary, what we heard from different councils and other people with a stake in this was that the planning capacity in different communities varies significantly, so providing more direction in the legislation would be helpful to ensure a consistency in approach and, indeed, support for communities being able to respond.

At the heart of it, this legislation is put in place to help us, as a country, move on in natural disasters from the immediate response, which is not necessarily covered by this legislation, into recovery. At the heart of it, there is pressure from legislation to have extended civil emergency provisions going on longer than may actually be necessary. They give people the assurance that they can go and act in the way that they need to in specific situations, but carry on, probably, more interventionist limitations beyond that. This legislation actually gets more specific, so that we can have the interventions where they are actually needed, not the blanket interventions. I think that is really positive, because at the heart of our concern about this legislation was balancing the need for support from central government—for a community that may be in shock and in a state of dealing with something it has never confronted before—and supporting and enabling communities to be able to come together and respond.

We have seen this in Christchurch, we have seen it in Kāpiti, and we have seen it in Whanganui. We see it all around the country, actually—that communities often come together, provide support for each other, and know what is needed in a way that would never happen if a response was centralised. We needed to make sure that the legislation was enabling that community response, not getting in the way of it. We heard far too many stories from Christchurch, in particular, that the response we had there was at times of communities coming together, responding, looking after each other, and doing what was needed, but then central government systems came in—with the best intentions, absolutely the best intentions—and were getting in the way and actually shutting down those community responses. At the end of that, actually, the actions that happened were not necessarily what the communities needed, and people ended up feeling disconnected and disempowered by the process. That is not what we want in the recovery process because the recovery process, at the heart of it, is the environment and the people working together.

We are quietly confident that this legislation has got that balance right. But we did say, and I hope it is a sentiment shared by others in the House, that this is one of those things for which we need to test how it works and be really willing to bring legislation back to the House if it is not delivering in that way—if communities tell us that, actually, we did not get that balance right. We need to make sure that we are carefully listening.

I do need to put this in the context of how important climate change is, which I have done in every speech. We cannot talk about these small and medium sized disasters—which are, significantly, flooding disasters—in New Zealand without talking about climate change. Globally, in the 1970s there were on average 78 natural disasters each year—I think—recorded around the world. Now we have over 350 natural disasters recorded every year. This is something we cannot avoid. We need to be doing everything we can as a country to reduce our emissions and stop the runaway climate change that will make it just unimaginably bad.

But a significant amount of climate change is already locked in. We are feeling the effects of it already. We have to take steps to be able to respond to that and protect our communities, as the sea level rises and as storms and floods come more frequently. We know that in New Zealand we are already seeing between $1.2 billion and $2 billion spent every year on cleaning up after these small and medium sized natural disasters, so the thinking that says that we cannot afford to take significant action on reducing our emissions—that we need to put the economy first—is really just short-term thinking, which seems to be missing the reality of what we are facing right now. Climate change is already impacting on communities and families and our national Budget. We need to get serious about this and go beyond legislation that just helps us to pick up the pieces. We urgently need to move on preventing worse disasters in the future. Thank you.

CLAYTON MITCHELL (NZ First): It is great to be here on a Thursday afternoon, talking to the Civil Defence Emergency Management Amendment Bill. It is very nice, I have to say, to sit in this House—or to stand here, and sit here—and listen to this House fully supporting this bill and expediting it, because I think it needs to be expedited. New Zealand First has certainly been a very proactive supporter of this bill. We would also like to send our thanks to the Minister, the Hon Nikki Kaye, and her office, for the way she has conducted herself in putting this bill through this process. She has been very, very open and very, very helpful and has extended her offers to us to submit ideas and even amendments, as and when it has been required. So that just shows the collegiality of it.

We see the importance of it, and it is very refreshing to be standing here in the House, talking about something that will make the lives of New Zealanders affected by these incidents, if you like—weather incidents and earthquakes—a lot easier to go through the tidy up, as well as dealing with the actual disaster itself. It is about the six p’s, but we have dropped one of the p’s out because it is probably a little bit of a profanity and should not be spoken in the House, but it is about perfect preparation prevents poor performance—we dropped out that p in the middle there—because, of course, that leads on to the five r’s that it affects: the risk, reduction, readiness, response, and recovery.

This is a two-part review. This is the first part. It will be coming into effect, after today, in just a little bit over 6 months’ time. We would like to see that hurried through because, of course, as has already been lamented by Jan Logie, this is a time of change. The weather is very, very unpredictable and we are seeing far more weather incidents that are affecting a very, very wide range of communities right from the far North to the deep South. But the second part of this review is absolutely essential, that we actually speed this up to get that into this House to put some frameworks and legislation around major events—the catastrophes of the like that have seen many, many people lose their lives, their businesses, their homes, and have their families certainly jolted with the likes of the earthquake in Christchurch.

Even this week we had a shakeup here in Wellington. We have had them off the East Coast of the North Island up around Whakatāne and Gisborne, and we are always—I suppose by the nature of New Zealand’s land and where we are situated in the Pacific—going to be under that pressure of potential earthquakes and tsunamis. It is also very important to remind everybody that we really have not actually got—although it is on the front of our minds I suppose, and we have had earthquakes that have created tsunamis around the world—a tsunami warning system in the Bay of Plenty, in Papamoa and Mount Maunganui specifically. Those residents in the Bay of Plenty and Tauranga are crying out to actually have a warning system that will give residents plenty of time to evacuate the area safely. I think the civil defence emergency management groups and the planning from the civil defence emergency management groups will certainly go a long way towards establishing a recognised warning and sounding alarm that would help raise people and get them out of their beds and off to higher ground.

This bill does four things. I think they are very, very good things. In fact, the first thing it does is it mandates the roles and responsibilities for emergency service providers during an event. So it is about who does what. The second thing it does is it strengthens the recovery planning. It is about how we do it. Then it moves on to providing a framework to ensure a seamless transition from the response to the emergency, to the initial recovery period—and we are talking about transitional notices here. Those transitional notices, whether they be local or national transitional notices, are very important—particularly around an event where you have got the powers of conservation of fuel. You can get the police or, if it is required, the army or such to actually intervene, to block off areas, to strengthen buildings that might be unsafe, and the ability to remove people from those areas of high-risk where they might not be thinking, necessarily, quite rationally.

We can, now, under his legislation, enable those people to be mobilised, secure areas, ration fuel out, and do those sorts of things, which is very good. I think probably one of the most important things is it gives some framework around who pays for it and how that funding is going to be applied to these local areas that are affected in an emergency.

Looking around and looking into this bill, a few things have popped up and one thing that I thought is worth mentioning here is that some while ago they had a memorandum of understanding between Airbnb and the Auckland civil defence group, providing free accommodation through Airbnb for those people affected by a civil defence emergency, such as displaced families or even the workers and people who are coming into an area to actually help with the recovery and the clean up of an incident. These are the sorts of things that the civil defence emergency management groups can actually build into their planning stages and, certainly, taking a model out of what has happened in Auckland would be a great start. New Zealand First would be recommending that this is actually put on around the country, because it does absolutely make sense. New Zealand First does support this.

We would like to have a consideration around a ministry of emergency services. I think we are at a position in time where we could amalgamate these emergency services and bring them together under a single ministry. I think with the likes of the role that the civil defence plays in an overarching way, of fire as well as police and ambulance, that perhaps that framework would put it in underneath that ministry with special powers that fit within this bill, to actually put it into a position to direct in a moment of emergency. New Zealand First is doing work on that. It is in our policies that we have a ministry of emergency services and, of course, part of that would be the police, the fire, the ambulance, and potentially some other pillars that would come down underneath that.

To wrap things up, New Zealand First supports this. We would like see it run through nice and easy, as I am sure it will tonight. We look forward to after the Royal assent in 6 months’ time, having it implemented as I am sure New Zealanders all around the country would be happy to see.

BRETT HUDSON (National): I rise in support of the Civil Defence Emergency Management Amendment Bill in this its third reading. This bill will improve communities’ recovery from small to moderate incidents—those most commonly experienced in New Zealand. In fact, if we look back to June 2015 there was the event in Manawatū and Whanganui, which helped to inform not only the need for these changes but, indeed, the actual nature of the changes that are being enacted, hopefully, at the end of this debate.

There are three main features of this bill. Firstly, of course, we will put in place a legislative framework for recovery management: one that provides a mandate for recovery managers and also will require high-level preparatory recovery planning. Secondly, and very, very importantly, it is going to support a seamless transition from the response into the initial recovery phase. That definitely came from learning from the Manawatū and Whanganui event, one which was hampered very much in that phase of the recovery. Thirdly, it will establish a permanent legislative authority to give effect to some of the provisions in the bill. This is going to go a long way to helping us be better not only in our preparation but for the recovery phase of small- to moderate-scale emergencies—those that occur most frequently in New Zealand. As others have said, we will work on a separate phase that also deals with larger scale emergencies. This one is targeted at a specific area, with very, very good measures. I commend this bill to the House.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): The next call is a split call. I call Eugenie Sage—5 minutes.

EUGENIE SAGE (Green): Tēnā koe, Mr Assistant Speaker. I am pleased to take a short call on the Civil Defence Emergency Management Amendment Bill for the Green Party, and also to record my appreciation of the work done by the many volunteers in civil defence that was obvious in the large-scale event of the Christchurch earthquake. There was huge cooperation with the local volunteer fire brigade, and the volunteers were working really hard to provide for people’s immediate needs for water and some sense of reassurance in the immediate aftermath of that huge disaster.

It is true that this legislation helps move from the immediate response phase to the recovery. There was quite a lot of concern in submissions about the need to ensure that there were the right safeguards around the exercise of emergency powers. We were very pleased to see the changes made by the Government Administration Committee that require greater consultation with affected councils in terms of their mayors and with the relevant civil defence emergency management groups where there is a transition notice being put in place or being extended. It was certainly the experience of Christchurch, as Jan Logie has noted, where central Government responded in that recovery phase by saying that emergency powers were still needed. Those emergency powers continued for far too long. They were far too extensive. Then it undermined recovery, because people felt alienated. They did not feel that they were involved in key decisions about the city’s future.

Others have commented that this is the first stage of a significant and larger-scale review of the provisions around large-scale events. Well, there has been very little transparency around that. We had the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment at the Local Government and Environment Committee this morning, and we were questioning her about her report on sea-level rise and the recommendation in that report that a working party be established, of Government officials and stakeholders like the insurance industry, to look at how we respond to sea-level rise and how we are prepared for that. Treasury has only spent an hour talking with the parliamentary commissioner, even though she has done a substantive report about sea-level rise.

We need to be looking in a much more comprehensive way at how we respond to natural hazards and how we prevent some of the worst effects of the more intense storm events and the more frequent flood events that we will get with a changing climate. That is, of course, as well as doing so much more to actually reduce our greenhouse gas emissions. We have not seen the Government dealing with that issue of natural hazards. The Minister for the Environment, Nick Smith, seems to think that if you put natural hazards in the Resource Legislation Amendment Bill as a matter of national importance, that will deal with the issue.

But communities are really struggling with how to control development in areas that are at risk of flooding and that are at risk of coastal erosion. If councils do seek, as Kāpiti and Christchurch sought, to control that development through rules in their plans, property owners do not like the decline in property values. They push back. So there is a very limited ability to prevent development in areas that are prone to flooding.

It is avoiding effects that we are concerned about in the Green Party, rather than just responding to effects. There needs to be a much wider national conversation about how we adapt to climate change, and the Government is utterly failing to show any leadership there. We have not even had the Government being open about its plans to review the Earthquake Commission legislation and whether there is scope there for setting up an insurance scheme for the effects of other natural disasters that are related to climate change.

This bill is a good bill, as far as it goes, but it does not deal with the much greater severity of flood events or the impacts of sea-level rise and coastal erosion that we are going to get because the Government is failing to do our fair share in relation to reducing our greenhouse gas emissions and avoiding the worst effects of climate change.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): I call Poto Williams—5 minutes.

POTO WILLIAMS (Labour—Christchurch East): It is a pleasure to rise to take a short call on the Civil Defence Emergency Management Amendment Bill. I just want to make a few points, and they do come out of the Christchurch experience and ensuring that we do not miss the opportunity to ensure that we take the learnings out of that experience when we are preparing legislation. I know that this legislation is really not designed for the large-scale events that we saw, but there are a couple of things that we can learn from Christchurch.

I know that this bill looks specifically at the definition of “recovery”, but the important thing to note is that recovery is about more than just the provision of essential services. Those civil defence workers are required to have a range of knowledge and to support a range of experiences. As you may be aware, Mr Assistant Speaker, when you turn up to a particular event you are never quite sure what you are going to find. It is important to ensure that the workforce development is up to scratch. It is more than just ensuring shelter and that people are protected from immediate danger. There are some longer-term impacts that our civil defence emergency people are important in supporting.

One of the real lessons that has been learnt, that we have not really taken full cognisance of, is that around strategic recovery plans there are some things that we have really missed. One of those is around business continuity. What happened in Christchurch is that in the initial phase there were some plans put in place to ensure that businesses could continue in the short term, but we did not fully take into account what happens in the longer term for businesses. For example, every time in Christchurch a road is dug up or a walkway is cordoned off for some works, that impacts our local businesses. There are many businesses in the eastern suburbs of Christchurch that month after month after month have had to put up with disruption, particularly to traffic and foot traffic, that severely impacted their long-term viability as businesses.

Although that might not sound important it has been hugely important to them, because, as soon as you disrupt the ability for customers to get to a business—if you do that once, they are unlikely to return. It has been our local businesses in Christchurch East that have really suffered a huge impact, because the level of disruption has meant that their long-term business viability has really been impacted. So when we are looking at strategic recovery plans after an event or a disaster, we must look at business continuity not just in the early days and weeks but longer term—particularly when we are in the recovery phase—when we are looking at the disruption that might occur.

There was a submission made by the Christchurch City Council—it made three submissions—and this one in particular talks about local control and ensuring that we have adequate local control. That is one of the lessons that I think that we have not learnt in Canterbury. Local people know their environment. They certainly have the expertise. They should have the ability to be able to effect whatever plans they need to in terms of the recovery of the city and the community that they know so well. We were very disappointed when we were unable to effect local democracy back through Environment Canterbury. We are really hopeful that the Government will see sense and restore local democracy sooner rather than later, because our communities actually know what is best for them.

In the few seconds I have left I do want to make one final comment, and that is about ensuring that we have the ability to have an alarm system and the warning system for everybody in our community—and that includes the vision-impaired and the hearing-impaired. I want to acknowledge the petition that has recently come to the House to ensure that those of our community who are hearing-impaired have the opportunity to have the alarms, which they do not currently have, to warn them to get out of dangerous situations. Thank you.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): Just before I call the next member, could I just mention to the member who has been on his phone, if you want to use the phone that is for the lobbies—not for in the House.

IAN McKELVIE (National—Rangitīkei): It is a pleasure to take a very brief call on this bill. Suffice to say, I will be talking about the Rangitīkei electorate for a moment. We have a history in this area in that we were the first region to suffer a civil defence and emergency disaster under the first of the regional civil defence and emergency management plans that were designed for this. We then, some 10 years later—and Adrian Rurawhe touched on it—suffered the same problem with it, with a second disaster of a similar nature. For both of those, the recovery was a very important part. This bill goes a long way to improving those processes, and the experience of Christchurch obviously helps improve those processes as well. It is a continual improvement, in my view, and I have got a great deal of pleasure in commending this bill to the House.

Hon RUTH DYSON (Labour—Port Hills): I was really interested in the member Ian McKelvie’s contribution, and then it suddenly stopped. I would have thought, given his extensive experience in civil defence matters, that the House could really value his contribution, but perhaps he will have another go at another time. He will not be able to on this bill, because this is the third reading.

I am really pleased to continue Labour’s support for this bill, and also to acknowledge that, right up to the Committee of the whole House stage, Parliament seemed to be working collaboratively, to the point where Supplementary Order Paper 237 by my colleague Clare Curran, who is Labour’s spokesperson in this area, was accepted and adopted. That was really the final improvement to the bill. Our committee, the Government Administration Committee, I think worked really hard and thoughtfully.

We had some high-quality submissions. Poto Williams, my colleague from Christchurch East, acknowledged the submission from the Christchurch City Council, and that was an excellent submission, but it was, actually, one of many that really helped us think not about the theory of the bill but—of course, as is really important with civil defence—about how that theory was going to be turned into practice, and about what happens on the ground.

We learned a lot from the Canterbury situation, and that is why I was keen to hear from Ian McKelvie, because I have not heard quite so much about the Manawatū and Whanganui flooding issues, and I am sure that they learned a lot from that. One of the big issues that we learned in Canterbury was that people want to put their hands up to help. When they see other people in trouble, New Zealanders’ first instinct—and it was certainly the case in Canterbury—is to ask: “What can we do to help?”.

Admittedly, the February 2011 quake was so serious and severe that civil defence was really pushed to get it right, but it did not know what to do with volunteers—it had no idea of how to engage with volunteers. I remember Sam Johnson, who, at that time, was heading the Student Volunteer Army. I remember Sam being so frustrated because, as he said: “We have hundreds of students who can’t go to lectures during the day because our buildings need checking to make sure they are safe. We are young, fit, and able, and we want to help. We want to do something.” And civil defence said: “Go away. We do not know what to do with you.”

Sam, fortunately, did not take that as the last response. He said: “We know that people, particularly in the east, have silt up and down their driveway. They can’t get out. They can’t move around their streets. The streets are covered in silt.” And the silt was a metre high at that stage. They just got on and did it. The volunteer farming army—Farmy Army, as it is called—did the same. It did not wait to be organised and approached; it just got on and did it. It is a fantastic New Zealand attitude.

What we do have to ensure is that people who do put up their hand to help are connected with a proper civil defence response so that we get the best out of everyone and so that we never put any volunteers into a situation that would do more harm, either to themselves or to anyone else. Of course, they would not do that intentionally, but, if they did not know what was going on, they might do it. Communication between the formal civil defence organisation and volunteers is critical. I do not think that we have got it right yet. It involves a culture change. It involves ongoing communication between the various sectors that respond to an emergency situation.

Even through the last stages of the select committee, we were still waging a bit of a battle with the Hon Gerry Brownlee about how much engagement would be directed as part of the legislation. The select committee, in the end, was successful in its negotiations with the Minister. I want to acknowledge the fact that the Hon Gerry Brownlee has shepherded this bill through the last stages, but I also want to particularly acknowledge the Hon Nikki Kaye, who is on sick leave at the moment, and I really hope that she is back soon. She did an excellent job in preparing this bill, not just in working with the officials but also in working with people from other parties and territorial local authorities, which are critically involved in this. She listened to people on the ground, as well. Throughout this entire process, the Hon Nikki Kaye has really responded to the submissions that the select committee heard—the voices of people inside and outside Parliament—and worked in a very open way to give us the best bill possible, and I want to commend her for that.

I noted that the Government Administration Committee had worked hard on this, but I also want to particularly acknowledge the officials. They got a lot of hard questions. They were asked to do a lot of additional work: to contact people who had submitted to see what they would think of the committee’s initial response to their submissions. They did a fine job. They are a credit to the Public Service and this bill is better for their work, as well as for the way that the Minister and the select committee worked, and for the quality of the submissions. And so it should be.

I want to echo the words from my New Zealand First colleague Clayton Mitchell, who noted how good it was that all of Parliament had contributed to and felt part of this process, and that we have got a very good bill as a result. When you are talking about civil defence and emergency management responses, that is exactly the way that Parliament should respond. We should not have grenade throwing or cheap, petty comments as part of that; we should do the best job possible—

Hon Simon Bridges: That’s right.

Hon RUTH DYSON: The Hon Simon Bridges has just agreed with me; I might change my mind! He is the expert at cheeky, petty comments. The only time, actually, that the Minister Simon Bridges is praising is when he is looking in the mirror, and then he is highly praising. I said to him the other day in the corridor: “I’ve heard a rumour that you’re going to be the Minister of Education. Is that right?”. He said: “I haven’t heard that, but I’d make a very, very good job of it.”

Hon Simon Bridges: To be fair, that is what I said.

Hon RUTH DYSON: It is, too. It is exactly. That is word for word.

Hon Simon Bridges: Truth hurts.

Hon RUTH DYSON: No, no. I am sure you could not do worse, actually. That is what I would say, but that is not particularly high praise.

Just going back to some of the concerns that were raised and that I think have been mentioned in previous contributions to this bill—this bill is only part one of parts two and three. We were keen to hear about what might be comparable in this bill, in terms of the structure of civil defence and the way it liaises with local authorities. The way it liaises with volunteers is the next stage, which deals with much bigger events. It is going to be on a parallel path to this, in terms of the structure.

The officials could not really answer that, so I assumed from their response that the policy work has not yet been done or signed off by Cabinet. That was a bit frustrating, because we want to know that the work and effort that we put into this is passed on to the next stage, so that that structure is as robust as possible. We were not given a time frame for that next bit of work, either, and that was immensely frustrating to the committee. We felt that if this was going to be a path of quite significant change in the way we respond to civil defence emergencies, the least we could expect was to have a timetable from Minister Brownlee. But we were not able to get that, either.

I would also like—I do not usually praise these guys—to acknowledge the insurance companies.

Grant Robertson: What?

Hon RUTH DYSON: Oh, I acknowledge them, rather than praise them. They bear the financial brunt of these situations. Of course, in some of the more significant ones—the Manawatū and Whanganui floods that we discussed earlier, and the Canterbury series of quakes—we have had a lot of financial costs. The insurance companies, when speaking to mitigate the risks that they were exposed to—and so they should, as that is their role; that is their business—also, I think, made a very thoughtful contribution to a much broader range of policy issues than just the narrow business focus of mitigating their risks. I want to acknowledge and thank them for their contribution to that.

As I said, this is a really important bill. I think the way that Parliament responded to it is to our credit, and that is not always the case in the way we respond to legislation. The submitters and the thought that went on, right through to the Committee of the whole House, have made this a bill that I am really proud to support. Thank you.

ALFRED NGARO (National): I rise to take the last call on the Civil Defence Emergency Management Amendment Bill in its third reading. All the speeches throughout this third reading of the bill have been in support of the hard work that has been conducted. I suppose, as with anything, what one looks for in a civil defence emergency management plan is reliability and responsiveness, and that has been a critical part of the development of this bill.

In my brief contribution I want to talk about just one thing in particular that was not mentioned, and that is the transition notices. These will enable the civil defence emergency management plan officials to carry out critical work such as clearing roads and public places. Hopefully, those who are listening will see that those transition notices are critically important to the pragmatic logistics of support and responsiveness in the event of an emergency, as well. Also, the declaration of a state of emergency is not necessary for the issuing of a transition notice. The transition notices, in particular, are a critical component of this bill. I commend this bill. I think it is a bill that has wide support right across the House. We look forward to the Royal assent and its implementation in the future. I commend this bill to the House.

Bill read a third time.

Bills

Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement Amendment Bill

Third Reading

Hon TODD McCLAY (Minister of Trade): I move, That the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement Amendment Bill be now read a third time. New Zealand has shown leadership on the liberalisation of trade for the last 30 years. We do so because our livelihood as an exporter of goods and services depends on this. Trade is essential to the New Zealand way of life, our standard of living, and our potential to become a more prosperous country. Other countries do not owe New Zealand a living. Our success in the international market place, whether it is selling butter, financial and digital services, education services, or high-end manufactured goods, is not always recognised. However, we have achieved this only because New Zealand Governments have made the objective of liberalising international trade, providing access for innovative New Zealand companies to the international markets and overseas customers, at the very heart of our foreign and trade policies. Now, more than ever before, New Zealand needs to continue to work towards bringing down barriers to international trade. New Zealand needs to trade. We will not become prosperous by selling to ourselves. The rest of the world needs to hold up New Zealand as an example of the benefits of an open and liberal approach.

Improving access to international markets is part of the Government’s wider plan to create a stronger economy with more jobs and higher incomes for New Zealanders. We can be proud of the achievements of successive Governments to date to achieve this through trade. New Zealand’s future lies in being an open, confident country on the world stage. We need others to be open and confident too. The OECD suggested that a 10 percentage point increase in trade openness lifts GDP per capita by 4 percent, and this is important to underline. It must be a doctrine that is widely adopted for global growth and economic welfare.

New Zealand knows this lesson well. Trade is driving our economy. It is no coincidence that New Zealand has the fourth-strongest economic growth in the OECD. For these reasons, New Zealand has been at the forefront of trade liberalisation, and successive New Zealand Governments have pursued free-trade agreements (FTAs) where they can. As I travel the world, people continue to remind me that New Zealand’s first FTA, our groundbreaking Closer Economic Relations with Australia to establish the single economic market, remains an aspiration to many.

New Zealand was China’s first FTA with a developed country. This new opportunity for our businesses and innovators has been phenomenal, lifting sectors in regions across the country. Before the New Zealand - China free-trade agreement, New Zealand exports to China were estimated to grow to reach NZ$5.6 billion by 2015. New Zealand exports to China were $3 billion larger than estimated—$8.6 billion. We now trade with China in 5 hours what we did in 1 year in 1972. This is a result of a high-quality free-trade agreement—no other reason.

There is our bilateral FTA with Singapore, which expanded into the P4 agreement, the Trans-Pacific Strategic Economic Partnership Agreement, to include Chile and Brunei, and formed the basis for Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) negotiations. We have a number of FTAs with ASEAN members that sit alongside our FTA with ASEAN as a whole. In turn, this is being developed into the ASEAN Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, which would include over half the world’s population. This job is not complete. New Zealand’s active FTA agenda continues to lock in opportunities for our exporters, wherever they may find them.

We have also seen a deepening of issues that we need to address to ensure that our exporters get decent treatment in markets. As tariffs come down, non-tariff barriers (NTBs) often emerge as presenting unfair obstacles to New Zealand exporters competing on a level playing field. The Government tackles these NTBs in a number of areas, through FTAs, in the World Trade Organization, and on a case by case basis. The passage of this bill today will be a signal of the continued commitment that New Zealand has to the continued liberalisation of international trade. At times when there is uncertainty in the rest of the world, New Zealand’s consistent and trusted voice of negotiating trade outcomes that are good for our economy and good for the world’s economy needs to be heard. Our role is as a champion of trade liberalisation.

In this role today this Parliament must too show leadership. Our vision for a mechanism to enhance trade between four countries grew into the largest trade agreement to date, which places us in the middle of a region encompassing nearly 40 percent of the global GDP. We can be proud of that. We must continue to push for new trading opportunities and to continue to push for trade liberalisation wherever we can. Other countries want to trade with us. They regard New Zealand internationally as easy to deal with. We are upfront with our objectives, we produce high-quality products and services, and we are governed by our rule of law and respect of our obligations. In turn, New Zealand companies are respected by their customers. But that reputation means little when we are trying to access markets where we are not permitted to sell our goods and services. It is only through continued improved market access and boldly confronting barriers to trade that our exporters can continue to thrive. We must continue to be outward-looking and to show leadership.

I want to touch briefly on global events overnight. I want to congratulate President-Elect Trump. It is important that we give the new President a chance to put his team in place and consider his trade agenda. I think this will, obviously, take some time. But we will be able to work with America on trade. The passage of this bill will put New Zealand, as a TPP depository and the first to have passed implementing legislation, in a stronger position. Now more than ever we need to be championing the cause of openness and inclusiveness. This remains the only way to secure prosperity for our economy and for generations to come.

Dr DAVID CLARK (Labour—Dunedin North): That motion was moved by the new patron saint of lost causes, the Hon Todd McClay. He made an earnest plea to this House to support an agreement that will not be ratified, that will not enter into force. This is a bill that his own Prime Minister, his own leader, has pretty much said is dead in the water. Yet poor old Mr McClay was sent here to the House today to try to defend the indefensible. I think there are a number of us around the House who actually felt a little sorry for him.

Hon Members: No.

Dr DAVID CLARK: I am hearing protests. Maybe I have gone too far. But Mr McClay is over there now, defending a bill that his own Prime Minister says has no future. The real question then becomes: what is the Government’s plan? This bill, it has repetitively said, is critical to New Zealand’s economic future. I look forward to the research coming out of the Parliamentary Library and elsewhere around the country, and to the journalists going back and looking to see how many times members of that Government have said that the passage of this bill is critical to New Zealand’s economic future.

When this bill does not succeed—when this Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement (TPPA) is not enacted—the Government is left without a plan. It was asked today what its plan is. There was no answer. We heard nothing. We heard absolutely nothing from Mr McClay there. “Does it leave a hole?”, the Prime Minister was asked in the House today—does this bill not going through, does the TPP agreement not going through, leave a hole—and the Prime Minister, or Steven Joyce as his surrogate, could not answer that question. He could not do anything but bluff and bluster. That is what we have come to expect from them across there. They are arrogant and out of touch.

The Government would not listen to the people. The people said: “We do not want the TPPA. We do not think the TPPA is a good agreement for New Zealand.” It is more than just a trade deal. There is too much in this. The benefits are not being shared from trade deals, and certainly not in this one. The people have been left out in the cold by this out-of-touch, arrogant Government. But it has no other plan. It has no other plan, and it has not yet even focus-grouped what this means for it. The Government members did not know how to answer the questions in the House today. They do not know how to speak on it in the House. I will listen to the rest of the speeches, because I think they will be entertaining, at the very least, as the members go off in different directions before they have got their marching orders as to how they are going to defend the indefensible.

Labour did listen. We listened to what the people were saying about the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). We laid out a principled position that said: “We cannot support the TPP because it does some terrible things to our housing market.” It allows non-resident foreign speculators into our housing market, which is causing a huge distortion, and future Governments cannot block this from happening under this agreement if it goes through. Other countries—Vietnam, Australia, Singapore, the Philippines—sought an exemption so that they could stop non-resident foreign speculators in their housing market, because they knew it was causing a distortion. Tim Groser did not even ask for it in the negotiations. Tim Groser did not even ask for it, and I have heard no member opposite defend him on that score, I have to say.

Then they slipped in a little tax thing. They said: “Well, let’s just charge people who want to speculate in our housing market extra tax.” Then, subsequently, Ernst & Young pointed out that they cannot do that—that would negate the double tax agreements that we already have. Those members have been trying to defend the indefensible in this House for some time, and they will go on, I have no doubt, trying to defend it. But I do look forward to the barrage of questions that ask: “If this was so critical to the Government’s economic plan, what is plan B?”. Government members do not have one. They have said they want to grow exports as a percentage of GDP up to 40 percent. That has been their war cry as a Government—up to 40 percent. We know that exports, as a percentage of GDP, have dropped under this Government. They are now down below 30 percent and dropping. They are failing by their own measures to grow our economy, to grow exports, and here again they are failing.

Whilst they were busy defending this deal, they were not out negotiating other deals. They put all their resources into this deal rather than going out and doing deals that were really in New Zealand’s interest. We have seen the dairy aspect of this deal equate to about nine extra jobs by 2030—that is what it amounts to—or three large dairy farms. Three large dairy farms—not the profit from three large dairy farms; the output from three large dairy farms—is all the access they got on dairy. Their modelling said a whole lot more than that. Their modelling was terrible. One of the factors in the modelling was out by 300 percent, for goodness’ sake.

Hon Todd McClay: Sounds like one of your polls.

Dr DAVID CLARK: That is Mr McClay interjecting again—the patron saint of lost causes, across the House there. You have got to give him a little bit of credit for trying, but this is not his day, I am afraid. The people are speaking and the people have spoken, and they have said that this Government here—the National Government—is increasingly arrogant and out of touch. It is not listening to where the public are, and the public want nothing more to do with it. The public do like trade, the public do like coffee, the public do like bananas, and the public do like other things like iPhones and so on, but we have deals in place that get us those things already. When we sign new deals, they have to bring new benefits to the whole citizenry, not just to the mega-rich, not just to the corporate interests that negotiate behind closed doors for a 6,000-page agreement, Mr McClay.

Mr McClay, I think, knows that this deal was not in the interests of New Zealanders. That is why he is quiet, and that is why it is not his day—because the deal is falling over as people around the world say this is not just a trade deal. There are too many fishhooks in this deal. It is not good for our country. Of course, we know it interfered with the Pharmac model. There were going to be increased costs imposed on New Zealand if it succeeded. We know that, in fact, small businesses were not really in support of the deal, ironically. We also know that the time frames were rushed as the Government tried to ram it through the House.

This legislation is going through the House now because the Government members curtailed the examination of the treaty in the first part of the year up to May. They curtailed the examination process to cut off the public feedback, because they did not like the public feedback they were getting. They did not like the public feedback, so they shortened the feedback process for the treaty examination, and it was all to get this deal through by Christmas because they wanted it out of the way. They did not want to be facing this deal in an election year. They know that it signals to the public that they are out of touch, but they were arrogant enough to think they could get it through this House without the public noticing. Well, they will notice. They are waking up and saying today that they can see that this bill will not be enacted, that the TPPA will not happen, and that the people of the world will not face the fishhooks of this deal because too many of them oppose it around the world.

The Labour Party has always been the party of free trade. It was the Labour Party that pushed for increased access to Britain for our exports. It was the first Labour Government that built State houses, made public education affordable, made public secondary education free, brought in free public healthcare, and gave New Zealand State housing. That first Labour Government pushed for market access, and Labour on this side of the House has supported every single free-trade agreement that has gone through because we believe in trade. But we do not believe in this kind of deal, which is more than a trade deal. This is a deal with fishhooks that harm New Zealand and so it is rejected by the public, and yet the Government still arrogantly pushes ahead—it still arrogantly pushes ahead.

I bet several Government members will try to defend it today—I bet they will still try to defend what they are doing today. Even though they have seen Mr McClay attempt to defend the indefensible, they will still try. We will not support the ratification of the Trans-Pacific Partnership. We have said it before. It is not a good deal as it stands, it does not benefit our exporters as it should, and it introduces big distortions into our housing market and locks them in. It locks in distortions in our housing market.

If we want our exporters to get ahead, we have got to make sure the incentives are right for money to flow to the productive sector so that we grow our complex manufacturing, which has been dropping under this Government, so that we grow our exports as a proportion of GDP, which have been dropping under this Government, and so that we put our energies into trade deals that actually bring growth for New Zealand and mean that we can continue to afford the social services that we all rely on and come to expect as New Zealand citizens—in the healthcare sector, the education sector, the roads, and so on.

We do believe that we need good-quality trade deals to afford those social services. In fact, that is what New Zealand is all about—making sure everybody has equal and affordable access to those basic services. They will not be afforded by this deal, which was not a good trade deal for New Zealand, and that Government still will try to defend it. That Government is so arrogant and out of touch that it will keep trying to defend it until it fails completely.

MARK MITCHELL (National—Rodney): It is this Government’s role to make sure that, as a small trading nation, we continue to investigate and deliver high-quality free-trade agreements. Along with a lot of other very good economic initiatives, that is what is driving the growth and the opportunities that exist in New Zealand, a small trading nation.

I find it actually quite disturbing to stand in this House and see the smiles and the gloats coming from across the other side of the House because they feel like they have had a cheap political win. I do find that disturbing, and I will tell you why. I sat there and I chaired the committee that heard the submissions, and the submissions that we heard from the small businesses, from the medium business owners, and from our big industries and our primary industries were that this was a good agreement for them—that they supported it.

I am telling you right now, Mr Clark, you do not have any employees. You are not exporting anything overseas. You are not creating any wealth in this country. The people who are, the people who every day worry about their cash flow, the people who every day worry about making payroll at the end of the month, the people who are every day working hard to be innovative and growing their businesses and growing the opportunities for New Zealand, are the people whom we should be thinking about, the people whom we should be governing for, and the people whom we should be opening opportunities for. That is what this Government will remain focused on and that is what this Government will continue to do.

We will continue to be outward-looking and we will actually advance this free-trade agreement through the House and we will wait and see what happens in America. They have a new President, and the Republicans have got the Senate, and they have got the Congress. They are a party that historically has recognised the value of free trade, so I feel that we are being a bit presumptive in assuming that, actually, this Trans-Pacific Partnership will not advance. Let us wait and see. I remain an eternal optimist and hope that we can continue to advance this agreement. It is an important one. If it does not work out, I can assure you of this: the Government is working under a new trade Minister, and Todd McClay is working constantly to identify and develop other trading opportunities for New Zealand as a small trading nation. Thank you.

GRANT ROBERTSON (Labour—Wellington Central): I can see the National Government’s problem today, which is that—

Hon Member: Really?

GRANT ROBERTSON: Yes, for today the problem is this: there is no plan B. That is the problem. So plan A was sign the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement (TPPA); plan B, refer to plan A. That was as good as it got for the National Party when it came to something approximating an economic plan or an economic strategy. So what I have been hoping that I would hear from National Party members today when they got up and spoke on this bill was to say: “Plan A has failed.”—and their leader, John Key, went on the radio this morning and said “It’s over. It’s dead.” So I was hoping what we would hear today is the National Party members get up and say: “Well, the Trans-Pacific Partnership is not going to happen, so here’s what we are going to do to support those small businesses and those exporters that Mr Mitchell just talked about.”

But, instead, the National Party continues to live in a state of denial. So, once and for all, for the National Party’s benefit, it is over, it is finished, move on, find something new. That is the truth. It is not a matter of political cynicism, Mr Mitchell, it is the reality. What New Zealanders need is a Government that actually gets alongside them and does not put its faith in one single thing—does not put its eggs or its cows, or whatever it is, into one basket—because that is what, unfortunately, the National Government has done when it comes to the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement.

In earlier stages of this bill we raised time and again with the Government members the futility of what they were doing—the fact that we even have a bill that has got a commencement date for something that will now never happen. So this legislation will pass and then it will sit there in suspended animation for ever. That is some kind of legacy of the National Party’s trade policy of the last couple of years.

I said in earlier readings that I do want to give Mr McClay this piece of credit: once he became the trade Minister he worked out that he actually needed to go and engage with New Zealanders about trade. If that is one thing that I would have liked to hear a bit more about from the National Party members today it is that they will now take the opportunity of the collapse of the TPPA to get back to the basics of what New Zealanders are looking for when it comes to trade policy. I think what New Zealanders are looking for when it comes to trade policy is a Government that is out there looking for opportunities for our businesses and our exporters to sell their goods and services to the world. That is what we have done historically as New Zealanders from the very beginning—from the very first peoples who came here who were trading people, all the way through to the Governments of the last century or so, particularly the fifth Labour Government that made such great strides with things like the China free-trade deal. That is what we have been—a trading nation.

But we do it on the basis of principles. We do it on the basis of fairness. We do it on the basis that this Parliament has a sovereign right to decide how we make regulations in this country, how we decide who it is who gets the privilege of being able to buy a house in this country. It is this Parliament’s job to do that. Let us set those principles. Let us make sure we sign trade agreements that are good for the environment, that have good labour standards, and that protect the Treaty of Waitangi. Let us go right back to the beginning and go back to New Zealanders and engage in getting a social contract and a social mandate around trade.

That is what we now need to do because trade matters. Trade agreements matter—but not where we get sucked into an agreement like the TPPA, which ended up being one that actually perpetuates all of the things that are wrong with the economic model in the world today. We actually need an economic model that values building wealth from the ground up, that actually says that all those small businesses—and bear in mind that only about one-third of small businesses in the Mind Your Own Business survey actually supported the TPPA, because they could see the risks. So let us get alongside those small businesses and build an economic model that is about decent work and decent jobs. It is about jobs that are going to be sustainable into the future, that are not reliant upon these kinds of agreements that go so much further than what an ordinary trade agreement is.

This was not just a trade agreement, and New Zealanders saw through the Government’s rhetoric in that regard. What New Zealanders saw was an agreement where they felt like they did not matter, that the interests of corporations in other countries were somehow more important than the interests of the citizens inside New Zealand. That is what New Zealanders felt when they saw the TPPA. That is why they rejected it in such big numbers, but the Government did not want to listen.

Obviously, we have seen across the world in terms of the results of the US election what happens when the feelings of anxiety and dispossession in the economy get exploited. I have no interest in that; what I want us to do as a House is recognise the people who have not benefited from globalisation, recognise the people who feel that there is not a future for them in these kinds of agreements, and work with those people to say: “There’s a better way. We can build up trading relationships. We can build up agreements that do not exploit people, that don’t take away rights from Parliament, but actually empower countries to trade with one another.”

I read during the US election a passage from somebody who was talking about what was wrong with the approach that Mr Trump was taking to these issues. That person said that there was an exploitation, or an imposition, of the belief that if I put out my neighbour’s candle, somehow mine will burn brighter. That is the exploitation here. The feeling of anxiety and dispossession is not solved by saying to somebody else “I don’t want you to succeed.”; it is solved by us working together to say: “There is a different economic model. There is a different way of doing this.”

Hon Judith Collins: Oh yeah, he’ll defend us.

GRANT ROBERTSON: And there is Judith Collins—there is Judith Collins, a person who consistently in this House comes in here to tell us all the things that we on this side of the House are doing wrong. Well, I challenge Judith Collins to get up on her hind legs and tell this House what the new plan is—no, nothing! There is no plan on that side of the House. There is no plan on that side of the House for what we do next—

Hon Judith Collins: Oh, you stupid man.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): Order! The member will resume his seat. The Hon Judith Collins has been a member of this House for some time, and she knows that she must not address the Speaker in that manner.

Hon Judith Collins: I apologise, but I would say to that member that he should not talk about me as though I am a dog on hind legs—he should apologise.

Hon David Parker: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): No, I have not finished dealing with the member yet. The member will now withdraw without any reservation the comment that she made.

Hon Judith Collins: I withdraw.

GRANT ROBERTSON: Judith Collins and the National Government need to finally front up to New Zealanders and say what the economic plan is that is actually going to lift the incomes and the spirits and opportunities of all New Zealanders—not just the very few at the top, not just those that the National Government cares about, but all New Zealanders.

That is what a good quality agreement would do. A good quality trade agreement would not be about scaring New Zealanders, it would not be about telling New Zealanders that their dream of owning a home is expendable to the National Government, it would not be about telling New Zealanders that the Government does not even know what the costs of medicines might be in the future, and it would not be about extending out copyright provisions that will actually prevent innovation inside New Zealand. Those are not the things that would be in a trade agreement being brought to this House that was about lifting the incomes of ordinary working New Zealanders.

The Government has completely failed over the last 2 years to actually bring New Zealanders with them on this agreement. A lot of the fault for that falls at the feet of the previous trade Minister, Tim Groser, who decided that he knew everything. His approach was symptomatic of an out-of-touch and arrogant Government that did not believe that it needed to listen to New Zealanders’ concerns and did not believe it needed to listen to small businesses’ concerns.

Now Minister Todd McClay has an opportunity. He has an opportunity to reset the clock on trade, to reset the bipartisan approach to trade, which we would welcome if it is based on those core principles and values of New Zealanders: that we will have agreements that allow us to trade fairly, that protect the environment, that support labour rights, that support the Treaty of Waitangi, and are based on a new economy where everybody gets a fair go. If the Government brings those kinds of agreements to this House that protect our sovereignty, that make sure that as New Zealanders we can make the laws that we want, then we can have a bipartisan agreement on trade. That is the opportunity that the Government currently has, and I hope it takes that up.

We have not heard that from it today. We have heard the cynical, nasty comments from people like Judith Collins. Let us hear from the National Party members the actual plan for the economy of the future where the whole of Parliament can support it. Today is a tragic, tragic day for the National Government because it has missed the beat. It has missed the point of the last 24 hours. It has not come up with a new plan. It is flat-footed, it is lost, it has missed an opportunity, and, unfortunately, that is the legacy of its economic policy.

Hon SIMON BRIDGES (Minister of Energy and Resources): I asked to speak on this bill, and I did not do that because I am some sort of a trade expert—I am not. In that regard I am a lot like the speakers we have heard from on the Labour Party benches. And I do not know the future of the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement (TPPA). I do not know what the short and medium terms hold, but I do have high hopes for it over the future. But what I do know is this: free trade works for New Zealand and has made New Zealand a fundamentally much more prosperous nation than it ever would have been otherwise, and in the TPPA we have a massive opportunity in this country and we are much more prosperous as a result of the free-trade agreements we have done and those that are coming.

Grant Robertson says: “What is the plan? What is the strategy?”. Well, it is the same strategy we have had for the entire life of this Government. It is the same one we saw under, actually, the Governments of Douglas and Caygill—and, actually, under the Governments of Clark and Goff for that matter—and that is to maximise our international free-trade opportunities. It is not complicated, as a strategy. Let me state the blindingly obvious in relation to this issue: we are not China, we are not the United States, we are not a big country with massive domestic markets that can sustain our economies; we are like a cork bobbing on the ocean and we need to trade. We need to be in these multilateral trade agreements to maximise the benefits for our country and to make us a freer and a more prosperous country.

Here is the thing about all of that that the others do not get. You heard it in David Clark’s speech, where he, effectively, said that there was nothing in this for anyone. This is not about the bankers, this is not about the fat cats whom Dr Clark likes to caricature, those who somehow stand to gain so much from all of this; this is about regional New Zealand. Regional New Zealand wants the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). I know that. The member opposite said: “They don’t want this. They don’t—no, no.” But I know that it does, with all the people whom I have talked to in Tauranga, in the Bay of Plenty. Todd McClay, the Minister of Trade and the MP for Rotorua, knows that. Todd Muller knows that, because we get out and talk to our constituents. We know that in regional New Zealand, across the value chains, whether it is in kiwifruit, avocados, services, or high-tech manufacturing, there are jobs, and higher-paying jobs, created as a result of free trade, and would certainly be created as a result of the TPP.

We have seen it in the other trade agreements that we have done. We have seen in the Korean free-trade agreement, where every kiwifruit grower in the Bay of Plenty is, on average, $14,000 wealthier, and the people under them in the chain are wealthier, with more job security as a result of that. Something like over $40 million per annum goes into the Bay of Plenty economy that we would not have had, just from the Korean free-trade agreement. We know that the opportunities with this free-trade agreement that we are here talking about in Parliament would be much, much more.

Although the other parties on the opposite side of the House have consistently voted against this bill, and have shown their opposition, on this side of the House we know that free trade works for New Zealand. It has made us a much more prosperous nation and will continue to do so. The real beneficiaries of this are in regional New Zealand, which is where the real benefits of bills like this, and free-trade agreements like this, come.

BARRY COATES (Green): Tēnā koe, Mr Assistant Speaker. I rise to talk on the third reading of the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement Amendment Bill, and I have to say, this is the story of a farce. The Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement (TPPA) has been a betrayal of us all—of exporters, of consumers, and of New Zealand citizens. It has been a waste of time and money, including this parliamentary session, where we are apparently doing the third reading of a bill for a treaty that will never come into force. It is abundantly clear after the US election that the TPPA is dead. We are not here to dance on its grave and celebrate. Actually, what I want to talk about is the lessons that we should be learning from this debacle. I want to get away from the free-trade blah-blah, actually, to look at the myths and the reality of the TPPA.

Firstly, it has been a shockingly bad process. There were 7 years of secret negotiations, when we were told: “Oh yes, it’s all in your interests. I’m not going to show you the agreement, but trust me, I am the Minister.” In fact, what we saw was a story of secrecy, arrogance, and patronising behaviour. There was a pretence of consultation. There was no parliamentary scrutiny. What we have seen through this process is the fact that the people of New Zealand have not bought the arguments for the TPPA. We saw in November 2015, in the most credible poll, the TV3 Reid Research poll, that 60 percent of people who had an opinion were against the TPPA. That is 60 percent of New Zealanders who did not buy the Government’s arguments for the TPPA.

Darroch Ball: The Government’s not listening.

BARRY COATES: And the Government was not listening. Apparently, at that stage, the Minister said “Oh well, anyone who’s against the TPPA is just rabble who knows nothing.”, and that is 60 percent of the public.

So, what do we know about the TPPA? Well, we know that there are myths here. We know that there is a myth that it is an agreement about free trade and it is going to be good for us all. Actually, if you look at it, it is what we call a Trojan Horse treaty. The Trojan Horse is the apparently attractive outside, and the attractive outside is that it is going to reduce tariffs by $274 million by 2030. Actually, that is not a very big number in the context of the whole New Zealand economy, and the modelling that was done by the New Zealand Government was absolutely shoddy. It was criticised even by the US Government in the International Trade Commission report in the US, which directly refuted the assumptions that underlay the New Zealand economic model. So even the tiny benefits that New Zealand said were going to come from the TPPA, of less than 1 percent increase in gross national product by 2030, were illusory. That 1 percent, by the way, from the TPPA would compare with a 47 percent increase without the TPPA. So either you would get 47.9 percent or you would get 47 percent by 2030. What kind of benefit is that from an agreement, let alone the fact that even those benefits were illusory?

There was also the myth that the investor-State dispute settlement (ISDS) mechanism will not happen to us because we have got a few of these agreements and we have not been sued yet. Well, the countries that we have agreements with under the ISDS have taken, so far, 11 cases, of the 698 cases so far taken. But as soon as we sign up to the TPPA, we sign up to potentially being taken to court—to a shonky international tribunal—by the multinationals from countries that have accounted for 161 cases, including the most litigious corporations in the world. We would be opening ourselves up to very real risks under the investor-State dispute settlement mechanism. We are told, as a myth, that legitimate Government policy will not be undermined, but, in fact, what the phrase in the agreement says is that Governments have the right to regulate unless it is against the terms of this agreement. So what kind of exception is that? What kind of protection is that for a Government’s right to regulate? It is entirely an illusion.

We have been told that foreign investment is a path that we are going to benefit from and we are going to get rich. So the TPPA would have opened up foreign investment, and this bill would have actually taken the regulation of foreign investment out of the hands of Parliament and given it to an Order in Council—taken it out of the democratic mandate of this Parliament. So what the New Zealand people know is that our iconic places are being bought up. They know that our farmland is being bought up. They know that our value chains are being bought up. They know that we are being locked into a commodity economy that is unable to add value in our own land. We are told that the TPPA would actually be good for the environment and, lo and behold, if you look through the 6,000 pages of the TPPA, there is not a single mention of climate change—not one single mention in 6,000 pages. This agreement would have been a major block in the way of countries taking action on climate change as well as countries trying to protect their environment.

We are told that there is market access for agriculture, and then it turns out that we did not get the gold standard agreement after all. What we got was something that accounted for about 3 percent of US agricultural markets—the equivalent of three large dairy farms—and what the TPPA would have done is lock in that bad deal through this agreement in ways that would have made it even harder in the future, and it would not have touched the agricultural subsidies that our farmers most struggle to compete with internationally.

So is this a good deal for New Zealand business? No. Most New Zealand businesses, including small companies, know that what is happening under the TPPA is that rights are being given to foreign companies. Those foreign companies include companies that do not pay tax around the world. They benefit from tax havens. What is happening under the TPPA is they would be given even more rights, and they are the ones that are competing with New Zealand business. So New Zealand business is in fact potentially losing out under agreements like the TPPA. Finally, we are told that without the TPPA we will actually be really badly off, but when the Australian Productivity Commission looked at the Australia - US free-trade agreement it found that Australia had derived no benefit from it.

So what we need is to applaud the people of New Zealand. Sixty percent of those people who were against the TPPA—they were right. This is a bad deal. It is not good for New Zealand and, thankfully, it looks like this agreement is now dead for ever. But the tide has turned against these agreements. Also, these agreements are not only dead in the United States, they are dead in Europe as well. So what we are seeing is that instead the Government is going around desperately seeking free-trade agreements anywhere in the world, even paying dodgy deals with Saudi businessmen in order to try to get a free-trade agreement in the Middle East. This desperate searching for free-trade agreements has taken over from all of our other foreign policy priorities.

It is time that we had a new kind of agreement—an agreement that is good for the local economy and good for local business, an agreement that respects democracy, that is about sustainability for our country, that is fair and equitable and respects human rights and the Treaty of Waitangi. Those are the kinds of agreements we need. We can have those agreements. Instead, we have been wasting our time with this TPPA.

This third reading is a complete farce. We need to stop chasing these deals that are pretending to be about trade, but are actually about the rights of foreign corporations. We, as the Green Party, have been fighting this agreement for 7 years. We will not support the TPPA. We will not support the ASEAN Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, which is the parallel agreement, with China, we will not support the Trade in Services Agreement, and we do not support this bill. Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker.

FLETCHER TABUTEAU (NZ First): It is my pleasure to stand up in opposition to this enabling legislation and to take this opportunity to tell the Minister of Trade to tell the Minister of Transport, who for some reason wanted to make some comment here this afternoon, to wake up—just wake up. You guys have brought us to this debate today knowing that you are wasting the House’s time. You are wasting the money of the people of New Zealand bringing this debate to the House today.

Minister, you asked what the future of the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement (TPPA) was. I tell you that the future of the TPPA is nothing about what it looks like right now. What you sold the country as a trade deal will not be brought back to New Zealand resembling anything like it does now. Years from now, years from now, when the US gets around to creating some kind of trade deal—it might be called the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP); I doubt that very much—it would look nothing like it does now. So the enabling legislation that is being debated this afternoon will contribute nothing to the enabling of whatever that trade agreement might look like in the future.

So it was earlier today that the leader of New Zealand First, the Rt Hon Winston Peters, stood up in this House and asked for the House to discard this bill from the Order Paper. It was a genuine request, because we know how valuable our time is and how much the public pay for us to be here to debate legislation and to debate enabling legislation like we have here today. What happened? National voted against it. ACT voted against it. United Future voted against it.

So here we are with the patron saint of failed causes pitching trade to New Zealand, not the TPP. The purpose of the briefing notes to the members on that side of the House seemed to be to tell us how wonderful trade is. I could not agree more with that argument. New Zealand First agrees wholeheartedly that trade is vital to the future of this country. In opposition to the TPP, at every step we offered up solutions and we offered up alternatives so that we could move forward as a country and actually trade with countries overseas. But at every step we were blocked. Government members did not want to hear. They were selling us their spin on how wonderful the TPP was. It is not even called a trade deal; it is enabling legislation that locks in corporate power. It locks in corporate privilege at the cost of democracy.

As the previous speaker noted, in observing the language of the trade deal itself, the country has the right to make legislation for its benefit, basically unless it contravenes the terms of the TPP, which were onerous and went well beyond trade itself. In fact, the trade deal was sold to the New Zealand public as a golden deal that would increase our GDP by less than 1 percent. That was the National Party’s own analysis—0.8 percent. When it gave that number—and I cannot remember how ridiculous it was, the actual number; it was tiny and in 20 years from now—what it failed to tell the public was that the gains that were formulated for that number were only a third to do with the reduction of actual trade tariffs. Two-thirds of that number were supposedly gained from non-tariff barriers, or the removal of them.

For example, one of those supposed non-tariff barriers is our banking system. I do not know how that can be calculated as a non-tariff barrier, because it is already predominantly foreign owned and is already expert at raking billions of dollars out of the New Zealand economy. One of the other non-tariff barriers that the National Government failed to mention in its pitch to sell the supposed trade agreement to New Zealanders was around the reduction of customs and border legislation. It said: “That will save millions of dollars in lowering our customs’ standard.”

That is genuinely part of that TPPA that was supposedly going to make everyone millions of dollars. Never mind the issues that we have had with seeds sprouting across the country that are compromising our agriculture. Never mind the issues that we have had with moths and pests coming into this country in a customs programme that is already compromised. That was an advantage sold to New Zealand and given a dollar value.

It is absolutely unacceptable, which is why it is a privilege to stand up in opposition to this enabling legislation today. The National Government members over there I do not think realise the irony of their situation. Today they put a motion to the House to congratulate Donald Trump on becoming the new President-Elect of the United States, yet here they are now trying to fast track legislation that would enable a supposed trade agreement with a man and a country who have said that they do not want it—the arrogance of it. Fifty million - plus people voted for President-Elect Trump, like that or not. The main reason for their voting was opposition to the elitist agreements that have enabled corporate privilege over the last 35 years, and the TPP is one of those agreements, on steroids.

That is the reality of the situation and that is the arrogance of the National Government in congratulating Trump this afternoon, and then in the very next hour doing everything it can to say “We don’t care what you think. We don’t care what 50 million Americans think. We’re gonna push this enabling legislation through.”, even though, as I pointed out to Mr Bridges earlier, it will have no bearing on future trade negotiations with the United States at any time in the future. Mr Bridges asked and questioned whether, moving forward, it could possibly happen. Mr Bridges, here is a quote: “In the US, the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, said the TPP had no chance of going through under President Obama before Mr Trump takes office in January.”

Hon Simon Bridges: No chance. No chance.

FLETCHER TABUTEAU: Absolutely no chance. Thank you for your serious demeanour, Mr Bridges.

I want to wrap up by saying that this was not a trade deal; this was an attempt to bypass democracy. Even the 0.8 percent gain on GDP was not a true figure for those supposed tariff reductions. I have said it before and I will say it again, even when New Zealand First presented legislation to the House on, for example, removing the investor-State dispute settlement provisions, we presented to the House at the same time what an alternative mechanism might look like, on how the House and the Parliament itself could have a more meaningful engagement in the conversation around trade and trade deals, rather than leaving it to the executive. There is legislation in the ballot box right now under my name aiming to achieve that.

Trump’s victory arose from the Establishment treating ordinary Americans as disposable units. That is exactly what the National Government is doing to New Zealanders now with the House’s time today—disposable units. It does not care about middle New Zealand, about the hard-working businesses. More than 60 percent of the public opposed the agreement. More than two-thirds—more than two-thirds—of small business opposed it. I went to many of the same places that Mr Bridges did when he talked about Tauranga and Rotorua and talking to small business. It was hard to find anyone who supported it. They were sold a line about trade, and this deal is not a trade agreement.

I conclude by saying that this is a waste of the House’s time. The public deserve better from that Government. New Zealand First will support any efforts to engage with countries in real trade deals, meaningful trade deals that benefit all New Zealanders.

DAVID BENNETT (National—Hamilton East): It gives me great pleasure to speak on the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement Amendment Bill. I first want to talk about the Labour Party and the absence of its trade spokesperson here today. Where is Mr Shearer—the one who sat through the committee hearings, who was part of this committee, and does not even come into this House—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): Order! There is a convention in the House, it is not a Standing Order or a formal Speaker’s ruling, that the absence of members is not mentioned. It is actually for very good reasons and protects the Government much more than the Opposition. I suggest, unless the member wants the convention to break down, that he not breach it so blatantly.

Grant Robertson: He is a new member. He’s only just arrived.

DAVID BENNETT: Mr Robertson is over there. Mr Robertson—the member of the union elite, who now thinks he can tell ordinary New Zealanders what to do. That is Mr Grant Robertson: the Grant Robertson who is the Hillary Clinton of New Zealand politics—the union elite. The true free traders in the Labour Party are not being represented here today in this debate. I disagree with Mr Robertson’s comments because he has been parachuted into this debate on behalf of the union movement and by the request of the leader.

Then we come to New Zealand First—the New Zealand First Party, which suddenly does not want free trade with America, does not want free trade with Canada, does not want free trade with Mexico, and does not want free trade with the ASEAN countries, but is quite happy to have free trade with Russia. It is not available to support a free-trade agreement with South Korea with this Parliament, it is not available to support a free-trade agreement with Taiwan in this Parliament, it is not able to support free trade—but suddenly, in those members’ supplementary questions today, they ask for a free-trade agreement with Russia. I say to New Zealand First: be consistent in your argument; be consistent in what you say in this House.

Darroch Ball: What are you doing next year, David?

DAVID BENNETT: What is this member saying, this member whose name nobody knows, apart from being the angry version of the leader of the New Zealand First Party? But there is help coming. There is help coming for New Zealand First—and that is Gareth Morgan. He is the real Donald Trump of New Zealand, not Winston Peters. Mr Gareth Morgan will take your votes away. Mr Gareth Morgan is a true Donald Trump representative, not the pretender that is the New Zealand First leader, who wishes he was Donald Trump but has never made any money in business, who has spent 40 years as part of that political elite, and who will never be able to represent ordinary people because he represents the epitome of what is being talked about.

Then we go to the Green Party. When we look at the Green Party, it does not want any trade agreements—no trade agreements in the Green Party. At least those members are being honest about that. At least they do not want any trade agreements. What I say to this House is we have got potential to go to Mexico. We can go to Russia. We can go to England. We can go to India. We can go to the Gulf States. All those free-trade agreements are available for New Zealand going forward. That is what we need to work on—not listening to the Labour elite and the left, which think they know better than the public out there.

GARETH HUGHES (Green): Kia ora, Mr Assistant Speaker. Ngā mihi nui ki a koutou, kia ora. Sometimes words just cannot convey the situation. All you can do is facepalm. Surely this is the definition of futility. The day after Trump is elected, National is passing the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement Amendment Bill. You could not write this stuff. It encapsulates what a failure and a farce this entire 7-year process has been. The Government never carried the public. It never carried Māoridom. It never got the significant tariff reductions it was promising. It never got the copyright balance, only the cost. It never got a guarantee on Pharmac. It never got a good deal on investor-State dispute settlement (ISDS). Then it did not get a President who could ratify the treaty.

What we did get, though, is a movement—a movement opposed to putting corporate rights above citizens’ rights, a movement standing up for the environment, a movement that said: “Yes, we must keep trading, but not at any cost and not in any deal that benefits corporate rights over citizens’ rights.” What we got was an alternative vision—a vision that rejects letting kids go hungry but buying Saudi sheep farms in the desert; a vision that rejects letting tens of thousands of people sleep rough on the streets and in cars and in garages but spends on expanding a casino; a movement that rejects letting people shiver in their homes, afraid to turn on the heating, so we can subsidise Rio Tinto, an oil company. It was a movement—a vision—a growing sense of hope. It was an affirmation that we can have a fair society—a country that gives everyone a fair go—and we can have a clean environment and a richer New Zealand.

This Government has spent 7 years invested in this trade deal and the secrecy of the process. It does not have any eggs in other baskets. We need to learn some lessons. Firstly, we need to tell our officials who negotiate these deals, and the politicians who try to negotiate them, that in 2016 we cannot do secrecy as a way to negotiate these global deals. We cannot put corporate rights above citizens’ rights. You cannot ignore things like climate change, which, as Barry Coates pointed out, was not mentioned once in the 6,000 pages.

If we are going to have these so-called modern trade deals, we cannot do them in secrecy, we cannot keep the people down, and we cannot ignore the environment—because what happens is the second lesson, which is what you see when you look at Trump and when you look at Brexit. Trump is an odious, hateful figure, but he is also a real vehicle for the real disaffection, the alienation, and the marginalisation that result from an economic system that has thrown people on the scrap heap, burdened a whole generation with debt, and locked them out of homeownership. These people are crying out for solutions, and, sadly, they are looking in some of the strangest places to find them. Surely this must be the lesson. We cannot keep running systems, of which the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement (TPPA) was perhaps the most symbolic vehicle for this neo-liberal revolution, which has not worked. It has not worked for the people, and it has been roundly rejected.

I hope that the Government can be a little introspective and look at what the failure was. The solutions are staring it in the face. We can house our people, we can feed our people, we can clean up our rivers, we can reduce pollution, and we can grow jobs, but it is going to happen by working together, not by putting the corporate rights above the rights of the citizens, and not by allowing corporations to sue Governments if they try to regulate to protect the environment. It is not going to happen that way. It is going to happen through working together, and that is what we saw on the streets.

The Green Party has been working for 7 years, since before it was popular—for 7 years we have had a clear position against this type of trade deal. We have set out an alternative process for what fair trade deals could look like. We know that New Zealand, as a country, cannot trade with just ourselves—as one of our Prime Ministers once said—but we have to do it fairly. We have to do it in the national interest. We have to do it in the public interest. That is what we will be articulating, because what we see in this farce of passing the TPPA law the day after Trump was elected is that we are crying out for a new way. We need to change the Government.

RINO TIRIKATENE (Labour—Te Tai Tonga): I am pleased to be able to continue my opposition to this bill at this third reading. We know that this is a “dead rubber” debate. This is a waste of time. We are wasting the House’s time.

I do not know where the National Government has been for the past 24 hours, but there has been an election in the United States and there is a new President-Elect, Trump, and he has outlined that in his first 100 days he is withdrawing the US from the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement (TPPA)—a complete withdrawal. I do not know why we are here in some sort of deluded sense that by passing this legislation, the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is miraculously going to come into force, because it will not. It is dead—over. Finito. Turn off the lights and go home. It is not coming into force. So why are we wasting the House’s time here? This is a dead rubber—this is a dead rubber.

I must give credit to the Minister of Trade. He has tried earnestly to consult—albeit in a rushed state—to get this bill to where it is at, but the people of the world have spoken. Fifty million US citizens have voted for a new direction for their country, and that means the end of the road for the TPP. It is over and it is done with. For those who want to know, this bill is now destined, upon its passage, to become a latent Act. It will be doing nothing. It will never, ever come to life. It will just sit there on the books, of no consequence whatsoever.

Why the rush from the Government? Why the rush, when it should have been coming up with a plan B? What have we heard? We have heard nothing. I think I have got a good idea. The Government should send Mr Bennett to Russia—send him to Russia. Give him one of those ushanka hats. Give him one of those Russian hats, and get him to try to do something. Send him via that new “Pūhoi to Tūhoe” highway.

This is farcical, this debate. It really is farcical, because the TPP is a dead duck. It is all over. As we all know, it is not going anywhere. The Government is really so patronising. It thinks it knows everything about business. It thinks it knows what drives small business and the primary sector, as if they know all. In fact, the sun will come up tomorrow and hard-working Kiwis will be out there, working hard, selling their goods and trading their goods to the world. They have been doing that—Māori have been doing that, right from the very beginning. Trade will continue. The world of commerce carries on. There is no TPP—accept that. But the world of commerce will carry on. Our goods will be sold. Our goods and our services will be sold, and we want to command a premium. Hey, look—the fridges are empty. Our fish is all sold. It gets sold all over the world. It is not like, oh, we are not going to be able to sell our goods any more—of course not.

The Government is so simplistic in the way it thinks. We know that our exporters are very sophisticated. They are world leaders in what they do. So do not patronise them by thinking that this dead-duck deal is going to be the be-all and end-all. We know it was a shonky deal. It had more holes in it than a West Coast whitebait net. It was giving more to transnational corporations. It was giving more to them than it would in terms of meaningful benefits to Kiwis.

It was going to stifle innovation for Kiwi companies, but add more protections to the big multinational corporations with copyright, biological patents, and the like. It was not really intended to break down the barriers for our dairy industry. Sure, there might have been paltry positives for other sectors, but in the great scheme of things it was a bad deal, an incredibly bad deal, and that is evidenced today by us passing a piece of legislation that will mean absolutely nothing—absolutely nothing. It is a dead deal, dead rubber, a dead duck, thanks to, I guess, the Don, the great Don, who has come in over in the US. They have been trumped, literally. They have been trumped on this. The TPP is dead, it is over; finito. Kia ora tātou.

TODD MULLER (National—Bay of Plenty): It is a great to be able to take a very short call in support of the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement Amendment Bill and, particularly, to help out Grant Robertson. He was doing his best Chicken Little impersonation by running round in circles, going “What’s the plan? What’s the plan?”. Well, Grant, it is called this Government in action. It is delivering 3.6 percent GDP growth, 35,000 jobs in the last quarter, 144,000 jobs in the last year, the highest employment rate in the OECD, and an absolute commitment on this side to keep that going through enabling opportunities for our exporters to connect with the world. That is what the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement is. It is $2.7 billion worth of benefits that on this side we are proud to support.

When people stand up on the other side and say that this is just a waste of time—well, it is never a waste of time to argue for our exporters on the world stage. It is never a waste of time to say we want more market access. It is never a waste of time to be there for our small businesses. And that defines this party. Next year when we are having the debate around the country, as I am sure we will do, I will be proud to be part of a John Key - led Government that is committed to trade, and that completely understands the value of the Trans-Pacific Partnership. We will always hold to the value of this agreement. It is a shame that members on the other side are too myopic in their anti-establishment views—it is going to bite them in the end. This is a great piece of legislation, and I am delighted to support it. I commend it to the House.

Dr MEGAN WOODS (Labour—Wigram): It is my pleasure to take a call on the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement Amendment Bill. It feels a bit like we are taking part in a joint therapy session for the members opposite. Denial is the first stage of grief—I get that—but something happened yesterday and the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is over. It is not going to happen, yet we are using this House’s time to go through and put legislation in place. What I have heard from members opposite is that they are proud to have fought for it and that it is not a waste of time. But what is this legislation going to do? The agreement is not going to be in place, so what exactly are we using the House’s time to do? I think it is about time that we had some acceptance from members opposite that this was going to happen.

Some of my colleagues have talked about what they would have liked to see this debate time used for today, which was to hear what it is that the Government has in place as a plan. All we have heard from the National Government for the last years and months is that the sky would fall in if we did not pass the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement—if this did not happen. Well, what is the economic plan now? What is going to happen? What is going to be in its place? What we have heard—[Interruption] So now we have Government members saying that it will all be OK and we never needed the TPP. I am loath to say this, Mr Bishop, but listen to Mr Bennett. He will tell you the internal logical—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): I apologise for interrupting the member. This debate is interrupted and set down for resumption next sitting day.

Debate interrupted.

The House adjourned at 6 p.m.