Wednesday, 30 November 2016

WEDNESDAY, 30 NOVEMBER 2016

WEDNESDAY, 30 NOVEMBER 2016

Mr Speaker took the Chair at 2 p.m.

Prayers.

Oral Questions

Questions to Ministers

State and Social Housing—Social Housing Reform Programme and State House Sales

1. MATT DOOCEY (National—Waimakariri) to the Minister of Finance: What recent announcements has the Government made regarding its Social Housing Reform Programme?

Hon PAULA BENNETT (Associate Minister of Finance) on behalf of the Minister of Finance: Last week the Government announced that Treasury will begin the market sounding phase for a potential transfer of up to 2,500 Housing New Zealand properties in Christchurch. The Government’s Social Housing Reform Programme is aimed squarely at improving the lives of tenants by transferring properties to registered community housing providers that are better equipped to deal with some very vulnerable people who sometimes have very complex lives. Through this process we are looking at four providers who can demonstrate strong community links and the ability to upscale and improve the quality of the houses our tenants are living in.

Matt Doocey: What guarantees of home security can you give to existing Housing New Zealand tenants?

Hon PAULA BENNETT: One of the primary objectives of the Social Housing Reform Programme is that tenants’ rights will remain the same and the community housing provider will have the same responsibilities as Housing New Zealand has now. Tenants will continue to be housed for the duration of their need. Any successful bidder will enter a 25-year contract with the Ministry of Social Development to provide housing places. These houses cannot be sold and must remain in use as social housing unless the Government agrees otherwise. The Government believes an increased role for community housing providers, alongside Housing New Zealand, will bring innovation and performance benefits that will mean we can better meet the needs of those vulnerable New Zealanders.

Matt Doocey: Does the Government stand by its commitment to achieve fair and reasonable value for taxpayers in social housing transactions?

Hon PAULA BENNETT: Yes. Recently the IHC New Zealand - owned Accessible Properties was named as the preferred bidder for a transaction of 1,124 properties in Tauranga. The houses that have been offered for sale in Tauranga have been offered with conditions. They must remain as social houses unless the Government agrees otherwise and only community housing providers or consortiums, including a community provider, can participate in transactions. Although the final sale price may be below capital value, the price will reflect the obligations and conditions the new owner will have.

Grant Robertson: Is the Minister comfortable that Treasury has spent nearly $10 million on the State housing transfer programme in the last 2 financial years and no actual houses have been transferred?

Hon PAULA BENNETT: Yes, particularly as it was a new system that had to be set up. We are talking about a more than $21 billion asset in the houses that are with Housing New Zealand alone. I think we will see that the houses in Tauranga are worth over hundreds of millions of dollars, and, as such, spending some to make sure that we are getting the process right—and the interests of the tenants—is the right thing to do.

Grant Robertson: Given that $5 million of that $10 million has been spent on consultants, does she not think that it would be better, for those vulnerable New Zealanders who need housing, to spend that money on actually building and acquiring more State houses for New Zealanders, rather than having 2,600 fewer State houses now than when she came into office?

Hon PAULA BENNETT: The member will be pleased to know that the rebuilding programme that is going on just within Housing New Zealand is meaning that there are thousands more new Housing New Zealand houses to come on board in just the next 2 to 3 years. Every single week, we are opening new Housing New Zealand homes. This does mean, of course, that through these sales we can put more capital into that rebuilding programme. It is making a huge difference.

Matt Doocey: What reports has she seen about the support for the proposal?

Hon PAULA BENNETT: I have seen comments welcoming the transfer. A commentator went on to say that “it makes complete sense that such housing should be transferred to a local provider, focused on building sustainable communities and ensuring the needs of tenants remain first and foremost”. Of course, those comments were from the Christchurch mayor and former Labour MP Lianne Dalziel.

Immigration Policy—Parent Category Immigration

2. RON MARK (Deputy Leader—NZ First) to the Minister of Immigration: Does he stand by his statement that “commitments that are made around sponsorship that haven’t been met” regarding his review of the parent category immigration rules?

Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (Minister of Immigration): Yes, in the context in which those comments were made.

Ron Mark: Why are newly arrived migrants with New Zealand residency not paying for their parents to live here after they brought them into the country, at a cost to New Zealand taxpayers of tens of millions of dollars, as he stated?

Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: Broadly, because the sponsorship requirements do not require them to pay for their parents to be here. That is not part of the residence programme. But there are a number of sponsorship obligations that anecdotal and older statistical information suggest are not being complied with by the sponsors, and that is why we are going to conduct a review.

Ron Mark: Can he explain how Immigration New Zealand will enforce the new 10-year sponsorship period for migrant parents, given that Immigration New Zealand failed to enforce the current 5-year sponsorship period for parents?

Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: I do not necessarily agree with or disagree with, actually, the second part of that question. But I would say that Immigration New Zealand will continue to monitor the sponsorship arrangements as they currently are, regardless of the extension of time on them, which, incidentally, was a decision made some time ago. The review will then inform whether or not a better response is required by Immigration New Zealand in the future.

Ron Mark: Why did he not cap the parent category sooner, when he knew that almost half of the parent migrants coming here had received welfare benefits after 5 years, at the expense of the New Zealand taxpayer?

Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: Largely because there was a legacy cohort of applicants who needed to be considered and then processed. That process was completed in about the middle of this year, which was an opportune time to actually review and make small reductions in the category.

Ron Mark: Why is the Minister not insisting, when migrants leave New Zealand to live elsewhere, that they take their parents with them, rather than abandoning them to the care of the New Zealand taxpayer?

Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: Well, because that would be neither necessary nor appropriate, and I would be surprised if, in fact, Kiwis—New Zealand - born New Zealand citizens—were leaving New Zealand in greater numbers than non - New Zealand - born New Zealand residents were, and I do not expect them to take their parents with them either.

Ron Mark: Why did the Government disregard the concerns of New Zealand taxpayers and vote against New Zealand First’s affordable healthcare bill last year, which required parent migrants to buy healthcare insurance for the first 10 years of their residency? Why did you vote against it?

Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: I have no ministerial responsibility for that decision.

Superannuation Fund—Government Contributions

3. GRANT ROBERTSON (Labour—Wellington Central) to the Minister of Finance: Does he stand by his statement in relation to the New Zealand Super Fund, “when surpluses return we will resume contributions”; if not, why not?

Hon PAULA BENNETT (Associate Minister of Finance) on behalf of the Minister of Finance: I shall try to channel the Minister of Finance: yes, I do stand by the statement at the time it was made and as I said in Budget 2013, Budget 2014, Budget 2015, Budget 2016, and in reply to the member’s question on 18 October, and the member’s question yesterday, and as was made clear in the National Party’s 2014 election policy, contributions will resume when net debt falls to 20 percent of GDP.

Grant Robertson: Why has the position changed on restoring contributions to the Superannuation Fund from what it was in 2009 to what it is today?

Hon PAULA BENNETT: To be fair, because we were probably a year in to the global financial crisis, we did not know how deep it was going to be and how long it was going to go for, and then made our position very clear in 2013, and have made it very clear every year since then and repeatedly.

Grant Robertson: Why is he prepared to make tax cuts a higher priority than restarting contributions to the New Zealand Superannuation Fund?

Hon PAULA BENNETT: Those are complete hypotheticals that the member is putting out there as to what this Government’s priorities are. He might just have to wait and see.

Grant Robertson: Why has the Prime Minister continually said that tax cuts are a higher priority than restarting contributions to the Superannuation Fund? As Minister of Finance does he have any concerns about that priority?

Hon PAULA BENNETT: As the Minister of Finance, I have repeatedly said for some time that when the Government returns a sufficient Budget surplus and can contribute genuine savings rather than borrowing, then National will resume contributions to the Superannuation Fund. If the member would like to ask the Prime Minister where his comments come from, he is sitting right here, but I notice that no one has got a question for him today. He is feeling quite missed out today.

Grant Robertson: I seek leave of the House to be able to ask the Prime Minister the question that the Associate Minister of Finance has just invited me to ask.

Mr SPEAKER: No. There are 12 questions submitted and accepted for the day. I am not allowing an extra question.

Chris Hipkins: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. There is precedent in the House for a member to seek leave to ask an additional question. In fact, Phil Goff was asked a question by leave of the House, despite being Leader of the Opposition.

Mr SPEAKER: I am prepared, if the member wishes to seek leave again, to put the leave and the House will decide.

Grant Robertson: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I seek leave of the House to be able to ask a question to the Prime Minister, as invited by the—

Mr SPEAKER: Leave is sought for that course of action. Is there any objection? [Interruption] Order! I do appreciate the comments, but I did say “Is there any objection?”. There is objection. I appreciate the member tidying that up for me.

Grant Robertson: Are tax cuts a higher priority for him than restarting contributions to the New Zealand Superannuation Fund?

Hon PAULA BENNETT: The member is just going to have to wait and see what the Government’s policy is going into next year for Budget 2017.

Grant Robertson: In light of the cost of superannuation outstripping the amount of money the Government intends to invest in education, why will the Minister of Finance not take his head out of the sand and restart contributions to the New Zealand Superannuation Fund so New Zealanders can have security in their retirement?

Hon PAULA BENNETT: Because I have made it really clear that a key focus is to get debt below 20 percent, and that is what we are focused on. When that happens, then we will be recontributing.

Hon Simon Bridges: You’re going around in circles, Grant.

Grant Robertson: No, it is all going well, Simon. Can the Minister of Finance tell the House whether the New Zealand Superannuation Fund’s estimate that it would have a fund of $50 billion today had the Government kept up its contributions is correct, and why is she so proud of having denied future generations more than $10 billion?

Mr SPEAKER: There are two questions there. The Hon Paula Bennett can answer either.

Hon PAULA BENNETT: No, because those are based on hypotheticals and—

Grant Robertson: No it’s not. It’s on your website.

Hon PAULA BENNETT: —not what the policy was and actually—yes, well that is their opinion. But, actually, there is this thing called Government policy and for Government policies, that is where we are and that is where we will remain.

Women, Employment—Gender Pay Gap

4. JACQUI DEAN (National—Waitaki) to the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety: What recent announcements has the Government made in relation to pay equity?

Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety): The Government recently announced that it has accepted all of the recommendations of the Joint Working Group on Pay Equity Principles. That group was made up of union, employer, and Government representatives. The recommendations set out principles for raising and resolving pay equity claims through bargaining, including a process for employers and employees to follow to address pay equity—including a bargaining process based on the Employment Relations Act framework—and principles to guide employers and employees in identifying, assessing, and resolving pay equity claims.

Jacqui Dean: What prompted the Government to establish the joint working group?

Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: Following the considered judgment of the Court of Appeal in the case known as the Terranova case, the Government became concerned that the only way to establish a case for pay equity was to file a claim in the Employment Court, and the Equal Pay Act had little to guide the courts and parties on the establishment of a remedy. The Government believes bargaining should not generally require the courts or the Government to be involved, so it set up the joint working group to advise on both the process and a set of principles to guide bargaining. I think it has done an excellent job, and I want to thank the members of that working group for their efforts.

Jacqui Dean: What else is the Government doing to close the gender pay gap?

Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: Good question. Well, the joint working group recognised that although pay equity is very important, it is not the sole contributing factor to the gender pay gap. It acknowledged that issues such as equal opportunity in employment and advancement, transparency of the remuneration process, and the effect of caring responsibilities all contribute to the gender pay gap. So I want to commend the very hard-working Minister for Women, who has the responsibility for doing all of those other things, and I note the work and progress being made to provide a flexible workplace and provide better information and transparency, strengthen the leadership pipeline, lead a diversity and inclusion network, and, only today, in her press release “Breaking down barriers for working women”, identify the very good progress being made by the National Advisory Council on the Employment of Women to strengthen its focus on breaking down those barriers.

Housing, Rental—Tenancy Rules

5. METIRIA TUREI (Co-Leader—Green) to the Minister for Building and Housing: Ka tautoko ia ia taku Pire e hoatu nōhanga wā roa ana, ngita ana, tū roa ana i runga i tana tohutohu ki te hunga hoko whare tuatahi, ko nāianei, “probably not a good time for a young family to buy”; i tētahi whare i Akarana?

[Will he support my bill to provide more secure and stable long-term tenancies, given his recent advice to first-home buyers that now is “probably not a good time for a young family to buy” a house in Auckland?]

Hon PAULA BENNETT (Minister for Social Housing) on behalf of the Minister for Building and Housing: Although we certainly respect what the member is trying to do as far as tenants’ rights are concerned, we will not be supporting the bill, with the reason being that we are genuinely concerned that it might drive up compliance costs and actually end up harming tenants more than it ends up actually helping. The Government, however, is open to reforms that would encourage longer-term tenancies, and work is under way on setting up a stakeholder group on these very issues.

Metiria Turei: If the Minister is telling first-home buyers now not to buy a house, because homes are too expensive, will he at least support better tenancy rules that will create transparency around rent rises, given that rents are increasing at twice the rate of wages and families cannot afford that level of increase?

Hon PAULA BENNETT: The first part of the member’s statement, I believe, is taken a bit out of context, and we are certainly not telling first-home buyers not to buy. In fact, we are seeing the opposite happen, and even in my own electorate of Hobsonville Point you can see many new homeowners buying there. However, in relation to the transparency and to some of the clauses in the bill, as I say, I think they need careful consideration. We have concerns on this side of the House about unintended consequences and those not being positive for the tenant.

Metiria Turei: If the Minister is encouraging people to stay renting because housing is so expensive to buy, will he give renters more security in their homes by removing the 42-day eviction notice, which is leading to increased levels of homelessness?

Hon PAULA BENNETT: I do not support the first statement by the member, but in relation to the second statement, 90 days is actually the norm and there are exceptions that can be the 42 days. The exceptions to the 90 days are where the landlord’s family or themselves want to move in, or an employee, and then in the cases of where they might have sold. Where it is sold, it is when there is an unconditional agreement actually signed and the new owner wants a vacant property. It is 42 days from then, not from when it goes on the market or anything else, so, actually, 90 days is the norm.

Metiria Turei: Is the Minister arguing that a landlord’s family has more rights to that home than the tenant’s family, who may well have been living in that home for many years, built their lives around the schools and working community there—that those tenants have fewer rights than those other families?

Hon PAULA BENNETT: Well, we believe in property rights. The landlord owns the property, and if they wish it for themselves or their family then they have to give only 42 days’ notice, so yes.

Metiria Turei: Has the Minister talked to the Minister of Education about the effect on children from having to move schools every year because their parents cannot afford stable long-term tenancies in homes because of rent increases and 42-day notices?

Hon PAULA BENNETT: Yes, I have, and actually we agree with, and share, her concerns around those who are moving a lot and not actually getting settled in their communities. That is why we have a number of things that are in place that are leading towards that—whether it is around social housing, whether it is around the work that is going on via schools and social workers in schools and other sorts of programmes. What we are concerned about is that some of the policies that the member is trying to put through, in her bill, potentially could have landlords withdrawing houses for tenants and, as a consequence of that, we think that that of course will mean fewer homes and actually lead to more disadvantage for those very people whom she is trying to help.

Metiria Turei: Does the Minister not understand how irrational it is for the Minister of housing to be telling families not to buy a house because housing is too expensive and yet to stay in rental accommodation when renting is, as she has said, insecure, unstable, and expensive?

Hon PAULA BENNETT: I know it is hard for the member to appreciate, but actually I think that there is probably agreement across the House on what we want to see as the outcomes for these people. What we disagree on is actually the venue and the vehicle for doing that, and the member’s bill, at the very worst, is actually careless and could lead to more actual vulnerability for those very families whom she is trying to help. We have said that we are looking at setting up a stakeholders’ advisory group where it can be carefully considered and we can make sure that we have got the interests of the tenants foremost in those views. We already made changes to the Residential Tenancies Act earlier this year, which I think go some way towards protecting some of the tenants’ rights—

Metiria Turei: No, it doesn’t.

Hon PAULA BENNETT: —well, they do, actually—and that is what we will continue to do, but it will be in a careful and thoughtful manner that actually leads to better outcomes.

Students at Risk—Funding

6. CHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka) to the Minister of Education: Does she stand by her statement that funding for at-risk students announced in Budget 2016 “is a clear example of how our funding system could be changed to get more support to those students who need it most”; if so, is she concerned that a recent survey found over a third of principals are considering reducing support staff hours in 2017?

Hon HEKIA PARATA (Minister of Education): I stand by my statement. In regard to the second part of the question I am more concerned that the member either does not know or misunderstands that the survey had a response from just 307 out of approximately 2,380 principals, which is 7.8 percent, not a third. Of those 119, 10 from the Post Primary Teachers’ Association and 109 from the New Zealand Educational Institute said that they were considering changing their staff support hours. I would be concerned if principals were not considering what staffing they require for the next year. I think that is highly appropriate. I also think it is highly misleading to use a teacher trade union survey to conclude that all of our schooling sector is making a change based on the views of just 5 percent.

Chris Hipkins: What does she say to the Wellington principal from a decile 1 school, who said: “As a decile 1 community, there is no option of raising the money through parent donations and fund-raising. Therefore, we can only reduce our expenditure as much as possible, which then disadvantages our students further.”?

Hon HEKIA PARATA: I would say that if he or she needs assistance in thinking about how his budget, or her budget, is to be used, the Ministry of Education is available to do that. Under this Government, funding for primary schooling has gone up by over 30 percent, and for secondary schools by over 24 percent. In terms of operational grants, next year there will be a distribution of $1.35 billion. On top of that, that school, being decile 1, will receive a proportion of the targeted $12.3 million that we will be making available next year.

Chris Hipkins: How can she be sure that that new funding for at-risk students will actually target those most in need, given that a briefing to her on 16 August identified that 20,000 students identified as at risk were “missing”? How can she target funding to their needs if she does not know where they are?

Hon HEKIA PARATA: Because I rely on the anonymised data that we are now using to identify which young people come from homes where they have been on long-term benefit dependence. How can I trust that that funding will get to them? Well, I trust the very principals that you are arguing are incapable of running their schools.

Chris Hipkins: How would $2.30 per week for each at-risk student help improve the well-being and achievement of those students, when the Government will not tell schools which students they are, and 20,000 of them, by her own admission, have already gone missing?

Hon HEKIA PARATA: Irony upon irony. We are not going to stigmatise these particular children—

Grant Robertson: Hang on! You already have.

Hon HEKIA PARATA: —in the same way as decile funding. No, no. Perhaps the member does not understand what anonymise means. We will not be naming the children. What I do trust is that principals do know who the kids at their school are who are at risk and do know who the kids are at their school who are most challenged. It has been traditional that the Government provides funding to schools—an operational grant, by the way, is a bulk fund that goes to schools—and they use their discretion as to how they will cause learning to happen for every child there, and that is what I expect to occur.

Chris Hipkins: I seek leave to table the advice given to Hekia Parata dated 18 August, in which she wrote in her handwriting that she would like to see how she can—

Mr SPEAKER: Order! I do not need that part. I need the source of—[Interruption] Order!

Chris Hipkins: Sorry. It is the Ministry of Education.

Mr SPEAKER: So it is sought under the Official Information Act?

Chris Hipkins: The Official Information Act, and that is the Minister’s handwriting on it.

Mr SPEAKER: That part is not important. Leave is sought to table information from the Ministry of Education, sourced under the Official Information Act. Is there any objection? There is no objection to its being tabled.

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

Chris Hipkins: Did she receive other advice in April that alternative education providers have up to 60 percent of students at risk, but would not necessarily receive any additional funding under the new at-risk model; if so, how will she ensure that the funding actually reaches those students?

Hon HEKIA PARATA: I will have to rely on the member that that is my April paper. I am pretty sure that is the case; I am well advised. I am happy for the member to have that. The point about the targeted funding is that it is for the schools to use for the students. It is not a voucher. It is not to the specific child. It is to the provider institution. Alternative education providers, therefore, have a relationship to their provider school. The funding will go to their provider school, and their provider school will work out with the alternative education provider how to support the students they have.

Chris Hipkins: Is she saying that alternative education providers that deal with at-risk students from a number of different schools are not guaranteed that they will receive any of the additional funding that those schools will be receiving for the supposedly at-risk students?

Hon HEKIA PARATA: I am not saying that, because, again, I must reiterate my trust in the principals who are in charge of these schools—the very principals the member sought in his primary question to assert were not capable people. I am saying they are. I trust them to do that.

Building and Construction Industry—Plumbing Materials, Standards

7. FLETCHER TABUTEAU (NZ First) to the Minister for Building and Housing: What reports has he received on substandard building products being imported into New Zealand?

Hon AMY ADAMS (Minister of Justice) on behalf of the Minister for Building and Housing: There have been some reports of problems with products, but they relate to both locally manufactured and imported products. The Government has tightened and is tightening the standards and acceptable solutions in key areas like steel mesh, insulation, and glass balustrading to improve quality and performance. The advice from the building consent authorities is that although the scale of building activities is booming, the proportion of quality problems is no greater than historical norms.

Fletcher Tabuteau: What have those reports specifically said about leaky pipes or leaky plumbing being used in the construction of New Zealand homes?

Hon AMY ADAMS: My understanding is that the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) did conduct an inquiry in response to complaints that had been made and found no systemic issues with the plumbing fixtures that were investigated.

Fletcher Tabuteau: Will the Minister acknowledge that given the warning from Master Plumbers, Gasfitters and Drainlayers, action must be taken now in order to prevent another leaky homes scenario?

Hon AMY ADAMS: We are certainly aware that there have been a number of local manufacturers who are concerned about the fact that we have removed the tariffs on imported products, because we do want to see the cost of building coming down. That is part of the reason why the building sector is booming, but of course it is important that the quality of the products remains high, and we are confident that we have a comprehensive system from the suppliers, to the retailers, to the building code, to MBIE certification, to the Commerce Commission to ensure that that remains the case.

Fletcher Tabuteau: Does the Minister think a comprehensive system might actually include a watermark standard for plumbing products similar to that of Australia’s in order to help protect Kiwi homeowners from another leaky homes disaster?

Hon AMY ADAMS: There are a number of product certification schemes that are available or in place, but our system relies on the fact that the Building Act requires that before any product can be used on site it has to meet the standards set out in the Building Act. Suppliers have to ensure that all products are properly labelled as being fit for purpose, and there is a comprehensive regime to ensure that that occurs.

Earthquake, Kaikōura—Schools

8. Dr JIAN YANG (National) to the Minister of Education: What update can she provide on the earthquake-affected schools in Kaikōura?

Hon HEKIA PARATA (Minister of Education): I was pleased to have the opportunity to visit Kaikōura Primary School, Kaikōura High School, and Little Tamariki Montessori Preschool yesterday to see how they are holding up, and to reassure them of the support that we have available for them. The local schools and the entire community have been incredibly resilient, and have been doing everything they can to reopen the schools and the early childhood providers. They have been supported by the Ministry of Education and all the agencies on the ground, and are working hard to return a sense of normality to this part of the country. I am delighted to report that, with Kaikōura High School opening tomorrow, all six of the Kaikōura schools will have reopened, and the nearby Hurunui district has reopened all of its 13 schools, and playgroups have been established at some of the early childhood providers.

Dr Jian Yang: What support is being provided to the schools of Kaikōura to help them reopen?

Hon HEKIA PARATA: Yesterday the acting Secretary for Education travelled with me to Kaikōura to hear firsthand from the schools what specific kind of support they wish for, and notes have been taken of that. In general, the ministry has provided well-being resources to the schools and has offered to co-facilitate well-being sessions for parents, alongside Save the Children, which is doing a lot of work down there as well. The New Zealand Qualifications Authority has been working with those schools and students on support, such as derived grades, to recognise the impact and disruption. Scholarship exams have been rescheduled and provided at the schools that were able to reopen earlier, with scholarship history and scholarship chemistry exams taking place this week. Two very experienced principals are on the ground to provide support to those schools that wish to have it, and, lastly, I am very pleased to say that Kaikōura Primary School’s recently constructed new modular buildings performed incredibly well, with no structural damage, and the resilience of the bulk of school buildings has helped all the schools to reopen quickly for their 487 students, the parents, and the community.

Immigration Policy—Skilled Migrant Category

9. IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY (Labour—Palmerston North) to the Minister of Immigration: Is the immigration system working in the best interests of New Zealand and migrants?

Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (Minister of Immigration): Overall, yes. Sound immigration policy results in improvements to New Zealand—economically, socially, and culturally. For migrants the immigration system supports a great visitor or tourist experience, work or business start-up, and, for those staying longer or permanently, our settlement support framework is recognised as world leading.

Iain Lees-Galloway: How can the immigration system be working in the best interests of skilled migrants, given that their earnings have fallen by 10 percent between 2003 and 2013?

Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: This country has many skilled migrants. I presume the member refers to recent residency visa holders who were approved residency under the skilled migrant category. I do not have that data. What I do know is that, after a long period of reasonably flat demand for residencies, including in the skilled migrant category, there was a sharp spike upward, which was why the Government made the moderate changes that it did in September. That will result, I am sure, in a net increase in the overall skills of those residency holders.

Iain Lees-Galloway: I seek leave to table advice to the Minister that we received under the Official Information Act, dated 25 May 2016, which demonstrates that earnings for skilled migrant category migrants have declined by 10 percent over that 10-year period.

Mr SPEAKER: Leave is sought to table that particular advice. Is there any objection? [Interruption] Is there any objection? There is none.

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

Iain Lees-Galloway: Why is the immigration system being used to undercut wages in New Zealand, as confirmed by his department’s research, which shows that skilled migrants’ earnings can be up to $18,000 a year less than other skilled workers in the same industry?

Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: I do not have that research with me, but I do understand, from recollection, that, in fact, those skilled migrants who were in qualifications of level 7 and above were actually very close to the average of all skilled migrants in those categories. Those who had lower qualifications would naturally start on a lower salary but build up over time. I am satisfied that the policy settings are right and that wages are not being suppressed by that policy.

Iain Lees-Galloway: I seek leave to table advice to the Minister, acquired by us under the Official Information Act, dated 25 May 2016, which demonstrates that in a variety of categories, skilled migrant category migrants earn less, and in particular in the—

Mr SPEAKER: Order! The document has been well and truly described. I will put the leave. Leave is sought to table that particular advice to the Minister, dated May 2016. Is there any objection? There is none. It can be tabled.

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

Iain Lees-Galloway: If wages for skilled workers are being suppressed this much by migration, will it not be even worse for unskilled migrants, given that his Government has approved 1.2 million work visas since 2009?

Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: The category of work visa includes other issues like the working holiday scheme, which has been very positive. I note for the House’s benefit that the essential skills work visa category has seen a marked reduction since this Government came to office, particularly in things like labouring. Despite the Canterbury rebuild and the very strong growth in demand for construction workers in Auckland, the number of visas overall—essential skills visas and labourer visas—has gone down materially.

Iain Lees-Galloway: Why is his Government continuing with high levels of migration and issuing millions of work visas, when the evidence from the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment and Treasury, provided to him as Minister, demonstrates that it is suppressing wages in New Zealand?

Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: If that were true, and Treasury is equivocal on that point, then we would not be seeing very high growth in the median wage. We would not be seeing unemployment dropping materially and job participation at its very highest. I challenge the thesis that the economy is strong because immigration is strong. Because the economy is growing, labour demand is high, and for the foreseeable future we will need to go to the international labour market. I reject the assertion that it is suppressing wages.

Dog Attacks—Central and Local Government Measures to Address

10. SCOTT SIMPSON (National—Coromandel) to the Associate Minister of Local Government: What recent announcements has she made on reducing the risk and harm of dog attacks?

Hon LOUISE UPSTON (Associate Minister of Local Government): In September I announced a national action plan to reduce the risk and harm of dog attacks in New Zealand. Our action plan responds to the clear concerns in our communities about the increasing incidence of dog attacks and the particular vulnerability of children being severely injured and traumatised by menacing dogs. Under our action plan, high-risk dogs and their owners will be subjected to stricter controls and will have a renewed focus on education, as well as partnership with local government. Dog attacks are increasing, and our national action plan aims to stop this by making homes and communities safer for all.

Scott Simpson: What further measures has she announced to encourage better and more responsible dog ownership?

Hon LOUISE UPSTON: We are doing more to prevent dog attacks. On 23 November I announced a second round of initiatives to further protect New Zealanders from the risk and harm of dog attacks and to ensure that dog owners understand their responsibilities. Our action plan introduces a range of new requirements for owners of high-risk dogs, and includes the development between central and local government of best practice for dog control and a public education campaign. Government funding will help central and local government work together to provide for the neutering of menacing dogs, as well as increasing the number of dogs both registered and microchipped. This scheme is now under way in Rotorua and Ōpōtiki and will be rolled out nationwide.

Scott Simpson: What are the new requirements for owners of high-risk dogs and how will these help to keep New Zealanders safe?

Hon LOUISE UPSTON: Some of the new measures include making sure owners of high-risk dogs are up to the responsibility of dog ownership and introducing harsher penalties for owners of dogs that cause serious injury. Owners of high-risk dogs will be required to keep their dogs in a separately fenced area at home, display signs at the front of their property, ensure their dogs wear collars identifying them as such, and have an ownership licence from the council. To obtain a licence, owners will have to have their dog’s temperament tested, have the property where the dog resides inspected, demonstrate an ability to keep their dog under control, and demonstrate their understanding of the responsibilities under the local council laws. This side of the House takes the responsibility of keeping our communities safe seriously.

Drugs, Illegal—Methamphetamine

11. STUART NASH (Labour—Napier) to the Minister of Police: Does she believe that the Prime Minister’s current strategy regarding his so called “war on P” is failing, given that the percentage of police detainees who in the past year have used P increased from 28 percent in 2012 to 36 percent in 2015?

Hon JUDITH COLLINS (Minister of Police): No, and I would like to take this opportunity to trumpet yet more excellent work by New Zealand Police in hunting down and arresting methamphetamine dealers. In fact, just today Police have announced the results of a month-long operation targeting a Wellington City - based methamphetamine dealing syndicate. Operation Oak saw warrants executed at 13 addresses across the district and resulted in the arrest of seven people right here in Wellington.

Stuart Nash: Congratulations to the police, but to the Minister of Police: considering that an amount 10,000 times as large—i.e., 500 kilograms—confiscated 6 months ago has had no impact whatsoever on availability or price, does she not think that we need more police directly involved with stopping drugs rather than cutting numbers of police involved in investigating drugs by around 10 percent since 2012?

Hon JUDITH COLLINS: The member knows that the Prime Minister and I have made numerous statements to him and to others around the resourcing of police, and I suggest that he just wait, because he is going to be very, very much surprised.

Stuart Nash: Does she think that it is fair that the Tauranga Women’s Refuge just has to wait when it says that P is now a factor in 60 percent of all cases?

Hon JUDITH COLLINS: I have a great deal of sympathy and, also, a great deal of respect for the Tauranga Women’s Refuge, and I believe that it is simply stating what it is seeing.

Stuart Nash: Does she believe John Key’s so-called warning to P dealers in 2008 that “National will not put up with your criminal activity.” was an empty threat given the number of detainees who now report being on P when they are arrested has increased by nearly 160 percent since June 2010?

Hon JUDITH COLLINS: The member has just answered his own question. The police are arresting more P dealers; that is why there are more detainees who happen to have been on P. I would have thought that was pretty evident, and he just needs to use a little bit of logic next time he asks a question.

Stuart Nash: In light of that, Minister, was the Commissioner of Police wrong when he stated “I’m very concerned about the availability of methamphetamine right throughout New Zealand.”; and, if she agrees with the commissioner, when is she going to give him the resources to address his concerns?

Hon JUDITH COLLINS: Of course I agree with the commissioner. He is absolutely right. The other issue around resourcing—as I have told him on numerous occasions, he needs to just wait. But I would also say that police are doing an excellent job with what they have got now. The fact is that when we had surveys recently on public satisfaction with police and the service that people have got, we had 85 percent of people in that member’s area saying how satisfied they are with the police, which is completely contrary to that member and his comments about the local police.

Stuart Nash: Supplementary question?

Mr SPEAKER: Order! No, I think that on this occasion all supplementary questions have been used by the Labour member.

Stuart Nash: Well, that was lucky, wasn’t it?

Mr SPEAKER: The member may say that.

Children in State Care—Historic Complaint Resolution

12. JAN LOGIE (Green) to the Minister for Social Development: Why will she not implement a crucial recommendation of the confidential listening service that an independent body is needed to resolve historic and current complaints of abuse and neglect in State care?

Hon ANNE TOLLEY (Minister for Social Development): The Ministry of Social Development’s historic claims resolution team is impartial and operates independently of Child, Youth and Family. It is important to note that the Ministry of Social Development did not exist in the 1950s and 1960s, when most of this abuse occurred. The recommendations from the final report of the Confidential Listening and Assistance Service have informed the work on the overhaul of Child, Youth and Family, and this Cabinet has agreed that the new Ministry for Vulnerable Children, Oranga Tamariki will consider an independent complaints service that will ensure robust monitoring and accountability. But I do note that we have made good progress in resolving these historic claims. Last year I introduced a fast-track process that gives claimants an option to have their claims resolved faster while still receiving an apology and, if they want, a financial settlement. Around 900 payments have been made to date, totalling more than $17 million.

Jan Logie: Will the Minister admit it is possible that some people who were abused in State care may not trust the State to properly investigate their claims of abuse?

Hon ANNE TOLLEY: That is always possible. However, the Confidential Listening and Assistance Service, which was set up under the previous Labour Government and was in place for 7 years, heard from 1,100 people who came forward with their stories and not only had the opportunity to tell their stories and have them taken seriously but received various types of assistance. It is interesting that only half of those went on to make a claim, which indicates that the member is right—some people do not want to go further with the claims process.

Jan Logie: Will the Minister admit it is possible that some people who were told they could have an apology only if they gave up any legal claim against the State might feel that the process did not have their best interests at heart?

Hon ANNE TOLLEY: That is a hypothetical question. What I do know is that in the claims process, which, as I said, has paid out compensation and given an apology both from the chief executive and, in any case where it is requested, from me as Minister, we do everything we can to ensure that, and the fast-track process means it is only fact-checked. There is no investigation. We only make sure that the person was in the place that they said, at the time that they said—we make that process as simple as possible. I have heard from complainants that what they want is recognition that they were abused—which we all find appalling—and they want the State to take responsibility for that, and they want an apology. In some cases, they want some form of financial compensation. But we all know in this House that no money can ever, ever make up for the abuse and the trauma that those people have suffered.

Jan Logie: Why does she think Judge Henwood said there is not a shred of empathy or remorse in the Minister’s response to this report? [Interruption]

Mr SPEAKER: Order!

Hon ANNE TOLLEY: There is a constitutional process whereby the judiciary respects this Parliament and Parliament respects the judiciary. I am not going to step over that.

Jan Logie: Considering the Minister’s apparent lack of empathy or remorse, how can we trust her to truly keep the best interests of children at the heart of the Child, Youth and Family reforms?

Hon ANNE TOLLEY: I have always been of the opinion that you judge a person by their actions, not their words. I think the legislation that I have brought to this House, and will bring to this House, will show that I am determined that the new system will keep children at the heart of it and that their voices will be heard. It is disappointing that the Green Party and the Labour Party do not support children having the right to have a say about their futures in the legislation that is before the House at the moment.

Points of Order

Urgent Debates—Speaker’s Announcement of Construction of New Parliamentary Building

DENIS O’ROURKE (NZ First): I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. In relation to your decision yesterday to decline an urgent debate under Standing Order 389 in relation to your recent announcement of a new parliamentary building, can you confirm for members that you have received formal Cabinet approval to fund it?

Mr SPEAKER: That is not a matter for the order of the House at all. If the member wants to come see me later on that matter, I am happy to discuss it. I ruled on the urgent debate yesterday, and that matter is now closed.

RON MARK (Deputy Leader—NZ First): I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. [Interruption]

Mr SPEAKER: Order! A fresh point of order will be asked. I just need to warn the member that if he is in any way attempting to relitigate either the decision I made yesterday or my comment to Mr O’Rourke, I will take that very seriously.

RON MARK: Thank you, and this is a serious point of order. I just seek, for our edification, how appropriations are not a matter for the business—

Mr SPEAKER: Order! The member is now trifling with the Chair and with the House. I invite the member, if he needs a lesson on how the financial procedures of this Parliament work, to come and see me immediately after—

Ron Mark: Sarcasm doesn’t become you, sir.

Mr SPEAKER: Order!

Ron Mark: Sarcasm doesn’t work.

Mr SPEAKER: Mr Ron Mark will leave the House immediately.

Ron Mark withdrew from the Chamber.

General Debate

General Debate

Hon ANNETTE KING (Deputy Leader—Labour): I move, That the House take note of miscellaneous business. A former United States Vice-President once said: “The moral test of government is how that government treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the elderly; and those who are in the shadows of life, the sick, the needy, and the [disabled].” So let us put aside this Government’s bluster, bravado, and bull and look at how this Government is treating those who are in the dawn, the twilight, and the shadow of their life. I want to put to this House that this Government will fail that moral test. That moral test is just as relevant today as it was many years ago, and I say that this Government is failing that moral test in the provision of affordable, accessible, and timely health services. It is failing children and young people, the elderly, and the sick and disabled.

A measure of that moral failure is Trixie Cottingham. Trixie Cottingham, who is 96 years old, is living at home, like many of our old folks do. She is surviving on 1½ hours of home help a week to keep her in her home. She cannot bend over like she used to be able to, and so she finds vacuuming and hanging out the washing a little harder. So, with 1½ hours of home help a week, she is staying in her own home. But she received a letter from a district health board (DHB) that told her—it was a very callous, heartless letter, and it was sent out to hundreds of other people—that she was going to lose her 1½ hours of home help a week unless she also needed to have personal health services.

Personal health services are for being showered or bathed. She does not need to be showered or bathed. She still has her dignity. She still has her independence. She does not need someone coming in to wash her bottom—she can do it herself. And you have now got older people labelling it the stripping policy because they have to get home help by stripping off, because that is the only way that they are now eligible.

I have to say that is deplorable. That is moral failure to our older New Zealanders.

It is 1½ hours a week. Do you know what that costs at the minimum wage? It costs $22.80 a week to keep Trixie Cottingham in her own home, and the DHBs want to cut that because they are going to save money. Why are they doing it? Ask the question: why are they doing it? It is because the same DHBs that are doing it are running deficits. They are running deficits. Whanganui District Health Board, MidCentral District Health Board—we are looking at this happening around New Zealand in many DHBs. They save money on our poor, old, vulnerable New Zealanders.

Grant Robertson: Shameful.

Hon ANNETTE KING: It is shameful.

Another measure of this Government’s moral failure is a letter I got 2 days ago from a 31-year-old woman with a young baby. She has a very rare cataract—most unusual in someone so young. She was told she does not qualify for elective surgery in the public health system. She is losing her sight. Her husband wrote to me and said: “I was told: ‘Pay $4,000 and you can have it done in the private system, but you’re not going to get it done in the public system.’ ”

Do you know what? We now know that 30 New Zealanders are threatened with blindness because they did not get any follow-up treatment. They got the first specialist assessment—that is measured; the Minister crows about that—but they got no follow-up service for the treatment that they needed.

A third measure of this Government’s moral failure is Isla Forbes, who ended up with very severe bronchitis because she could not afford to go to her GP, because the cost has gone from $29 under Labour, to over $40 under this Government because it has not put the funding in. That is a measure of the failure—the moral failure—of this Government to provide health services to New Zealanders when they need it. There is $250 million missing out of the primary health budget because the Government has not adjusted it to ensure New Zealanders can afford to go to their GP.

A measure of this Government’s failure has been access to mental health services, and it has been access to disability services. I need much longer, Mr Speaker, to go through the moral failure of this Government when it comes to health for those who are needy, those who are disabled, those who are young, and those who are old.

Hon PAULA BENNETT (Minister for Climate Change Issues): Like I have discovered many times over the last 8 years, and certainly while I have been a Minister of this Government, I expect something from the Labour Party members that might be interesting, that might actually be to the point, and that might lead a general debate in this House, and yet again I am disappointed—like most in New Zealand actually are. I will put our record of what we are producing for and doing with New Zealanders—this Government of 8 years—against the record of the former Labour Government of 9 years, head-to-head on a moral compass, any single day of the week. I am just absolutely relishing the opportunity to do it right now.

This is a country where we can see economic growth that we had not seen in a very long time. We have the fourth-fastest economic growth rate in the OECD. That means people have genuine security in jobs. It means that, for people like those in my electorate of Upper Harbour—which is actually the electorate with the most homeownership with mortgages—their jobs matter. Actually having a job, being able to pay off that mortgage, and spending some time with the kids—those matter to them a lot. So how we look after this economy, how we actually play our part in good stewardship is absolutely vital to them, and they can see the direct results of that.

There have been 144,000 jobs created in just the last year alone. That is real New Zealanders being able to go into real work, which gives them an income and means that they are able to provide for themselves. The list is long. The average annual wage growth that we are seeing is up $1,200 since 2008. Actually, there is the money that we are able to put into weekly superannuation for our superannuitants who desperately need that universal benefit, which I think is absolutely justified, and which they should be getting. But, actually, what it really means when we get down to it is that the Government now has public services at 30 percent of GDP, as opposed to Labour’s 35 percent—damn good at spending money, damn good at putting more public servants in.

Hon David Cunliffe: Rubbish! Make it up.

Hon PAULA BENNETT: It is absolutely a fact and, as I say, I hope you get a call, Mr Cunliffe, so that you can try to argue that one, but that is absolutely true.

We saw a Public Service that blew out, we saw money getting scattered around everything. What we saw, actually—and I see the Minister for Social Development here—was an increase of those who were sick on benefits. We saw an increase of those who were labelled as unable to work or not willing to—or not wanting to. What we have seen and what matters most, I reckon, when it comes to the kind of management that you are seeing under this Government, is that we are able to spend money where it is desperately needed and see genuine results for real people for it. So we are investing in those people early and over a longer period of time.

It is all fine to have the Government books in great shape like we do, and it is all good that new jobs are coming on, but unless we are actually investing and targeting in the right areas for the right people, so that they have a level of resilience and independence of Government and are not dependent—quite frankly, like Labour members would like them to be. You love it when they are a bit dependent, love it when they need the Government so badly and cannot survive without them. They kind of like that because it makes them feel worthwhile and they can sort of patronisingly go out there and say: “We know what is best for you and we will provide because you are unable to be providing for yourselves.” This is opposed to actually building that kind of independence and resilience and the numbers going forward, which you can see.

It means we can put in things like—and actually take responsibility for—emergency housing, which has never ever happened from a central government before. This is the Government that has put more than $350 million just into emergency housing in the last 12 months alone, because we are able to take responsibility in a social area that we see needs our assistance and needs us working alongside community housing organisations and helping.

Hon David Cunliffe: What a fantasy!

Hon PAULA BENNETT: Well, actually, in all of those years that you were there, Mr Cunliffe, we never saw a penny going into emergency housing, or any responsibility from central government in actually giving back to those who are really at the hard end and the bottom end of this.

The member can talk about all sorts of numbers that are out there and that sort of thing. We count operations. There are more operations under this Government than ever before. We see results in NCEA, and we see our children and young people achieving more, so that they can go on and lead independent, good lives that really make the biggest difference for them. I see the Minister for Disability Issues here who just yesterday put out an amazing strategy that involves really working alongside those with disabilities so that they can determine their outcomes and how they do with the assistance of this Government, which will continue to work hard every single day on behalf of New Zealanders.

JAN LOGIE (Green): On a rather different note, I want to talk about the abuse of children in State care. We know that in New Zealand between the 1950s and the 1980s, more than 100,000 children were taken from their families, and not only because they were not safe with their families but because, at times, their families were poor, or their mother was a solo mother, or blatant racism.

These children were put into residences. Over half of these children were Māori, and that has had a profound impact on the future, the collective future, of iwi across this country because so many of those children—we hear—were abused. They were emotionally abused. They were deprived. They were beaten. They had the people who were supposedly taking care of them telling the other children to beat them, and were beaten in front of the people who were given the authority to care for them. These children were sexually abused, and I have heard from some people horrific stories of electricity being used to abuse these babies—who were in our collective care, as a country.

The impact of that on us as a society is not understood. This is 100,000 children, potentially, who were either directly impacted or who saw that happening around them. We have had no process as a country for those stories to be told for us to hear and for us to understand. We have heard from our Children’s Commissioner that, I think, 83 percent of people in our prisons at the moment have at some time been in care. The impact of this is so deeply profound, and we are not talking about it.

I am not sheeting this home, in this speech, solely to this National Government. That would be ridiculous. I do want to say that this first started to be talked about when people went to lawyers to try to get their cases addressed—that is my understanding—in the 2000s, and that that process was fraught. In fact, when the first cases went to court in 2006, it was the full weight of the Ministry of Social Development (MSD) and the Ministry of Health and the range of ministries against these people who had been abused in care. I just want to take a minute for people to think about that—that the weight of our State stood against these people trying to get recognition for what harm had been done to them.

Then, in 2008, the main law firm that was supporting these people had its legal aid withdrawn from it. How extraordinary is that—to try to shut down the process? It was only when the Human Rights Commission and then international attention came on to this—this absolute shame—that we got this Confidential Listening and Assistance Service, which is not independent.

Hon Anne Tolley: What?

JAN LOGIE: It is impartial—we hear from the Minister for Social Development—but it is not independent. It is still run by the State across—

Hon Anne Tolley: It wasn’t. It was run by a judge—an independent panel.

JAN LOGIE: It was run by a judge, but you went through MSD.

Hon Anne Tolley: No.

JAN LOGIE: The system is—

Hon Anne Tolley: No it didn’t—DIA.

JAN LOGIE: The judge herself has said she wants an independent system, that this is not independent, and that—

Hon Anne Tolley: Just check your facts. Go to the website and download it.

JAN LOGIE: —we do need an independent—well, you can say it is impartial, but we do not have independence. People have not come forward—I have spoken to many people who have not come to the system because they do not want to go to the State. They perceive it as the State. The Minister can sit there and shake her head, but if you are not referencing your experience to theirs, then you are part of the problem.

Hon Anne Tolley: Me, or you?

JAN LOGIE: Minister—Minister—this should be grounded in their experience. And the Minister has been seen to be protecting the institution of the State, rather than addressing the needs of these people who have been so, so unfairly harmed by this State. When Judge Henwood has said that the Minister—

Mr SPEAKER: Order! The member’s time has expired.

Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH (Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs): It is a great pleasure to speak here in the general debate. We are in our last session in Parliament before New Zealanders go out to enjoy the great summer that we have in New Zealand.

It is a very strange environment in the House today. This is the first time I can remember coming along to question time and the Prime Minister is sitting there in his chair, and nobody is asking him a question. The Opposition is too scared to ask him a question. It is a bit like watching the cricket. It is like the Pakistan cricketers, who have worked out that there is no point in bowling your deliveries at the best batsman because you are just going to get knocked over the fence for six, and so those members have stopped asking the Prime Minister the questions any more. What an admission of defeat. Perhaps the Leader of the Opposition has decided that it is better to use his time trying to persuade Nick Leggett not to stand for the National Party, rather than reflect the decline that we are seeing these days in the Labour Party in New Zealand.

So, anyway, New Zealanders will be going off to their Christmases reflecting on the world as they see it, and they see uncertainty all about, whether it is in the United States or whether it is in Europe or Korea. And who knows what is going to happen with the massive expansion of credit that we see in China? There is much uncertainty around there, and in New Zealand we have also been reminded over the last couple of weeks of our geological vulnerabilities. My thoughts are with the people of Kaikōura and the northern parts of the South Island as they have been through a difficult time, and it has reminded us of our vulnerabilities as a small country. We have also been reminded, by the US election, of the tendency around the world to think about trade protectionism as a way forward against our vulnerabilities as a small trading nation.

So there is a little bit to worry about in New Zealand, but then, when you look at the performance of this economy and this country, you cannot help but be filled with optimism. The country is growing at the fourth-fastest rate in the OECD, at 3.6 percent GDP growth. We have had 300,000 jobs developed in this economy since the global financial crisis. That is a jobs boom that is unprecedented in New Zealand’s history—an incredible jobs boom—and it is the result of the hard work and enterprise and vigour of New Zealanders setting up companies, developing their businesses, exporting around the world, and delivering incomes for their fellow New Zealanders.

The Government can play a role in that—particularly in providing a stable, predictable, and financially sustainable environment, which we have done for these past 8 years. We are one of the very, very few countries in the world that is delivering a surplus. When people look and ask whether they are going to invest in a new business or take on a new job or buy a new plant, they can look and know that the Government is sustainable in what it is doing. It is not going to have to veer off in a wildly new direction.

We are also concentrating on building the competitiveness of the New Zealand economy, and Aucklanders, such as me, can look and see the massive investment that we have been making in infrastructure to get the economy moving. Not just in transport; we are all looking forward to the Waterview tunnel opening in the next few months. We see the ultra-fast broadband going into our streets—massive investment in infrastructure in order to get the economy growing stronger. We are also concentrating on delivering better public services.

That is not just what Government is about. Government is also about preserving what is special in New Zealand. We know about the enormous investment we are making in the environment to improve the environment and marine parks and the many great bits of work that my colleague Maggie Barry is doing on that score. This morning we also celebrated another Treaty settlement, and that is another thing that is special about New Zealand. It is that we get along pretty well in a very multicultural environment. When you look around the world, there are so many areas where people within countries struggle to get along as well as we do in New Zealand. It is not perfect, but that is something we can celebrate.

The other thing I do want to mention is that we have that strong tradition of high trust and low corruption and a strong rule of law. That is one of our greatest inheritances. We, as a Government, want to keep on chipping away to raise the bar. I was pleased to announce today, in my ministerial capacity, some changes that we are making in the insolvency space, which is one little area where we have had, frankly, fairly loose arrangements around insolvency. Anybody could stand up, even if they have got a very chequered past, and act as an insolvency practitioner, which is a job that involves millions of dollars and requires high trust. And so we are bringing in a licensing regime there to clean up that area. We are looking forward to that and we have got a great story to tell. I wish New Zealanders the very best.

CHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka): My message to New Zealanders is quite clear: this is not as good as it gets. New Zealand is a better country than this and it can continue to be a better country, and things can be a lot better than they are. We live in a fantastic country, but it can be better. And I tell you what, I want to quote Oliver Wendell Holmes Jnr who made that very famous quote that “our taxes are the price we pay for civilisation”. In order to live in a civilised society, we pay taxes.

The question that every New Zealander should be asking themself is: can we afford tax cuts now, when we had so many pressing needs that need to be funded and that the Government needs to fund? Can we afford those tax cuts now, particularly given that those tax cuts—if National’s past track record is anything to go by—will be rigged in favour of the people who are already doing all right? The first lot of tax cuts that National delivered when it first came into Government was paid for by working families–who found that GST went up. They paid more on their day-to-day bills and their day-to-day groceries so that National could give tax cuts that were weighted in favour of the people who were already doing well. In other words, the hard workers paid more so that the privileged could pay less. That is not right and yet we will see more of that.

I think of the education system, and I think of the pressing needs that we have in the education system when I consider whether we can afford to have tax cuts. I think about the families who were in tears at the Education and Science Committee when they were talking about the desperate need for their kids to get the support that they needed for their special needs. They were in tears; they had to fight; they felt like they had to beg in order to get their kids the support that they need. That is not good enough—we are a better country than that. Those kids deserve their fair shot at education. I think about the kids who are having to move school all the time because their parents cannot find stable housing—we are a better country than that. We can do better for those kids and those families than that.

I think about the parents who are working two jobs—or more—working every waking hour that they have because they do not want their kids to miss out on the same educational opportunities that other parents are able to pay for, despite the fact that our education system is supposed to be free. It is not. And increasingly we are seeing in our school system that the kids whose parents can afford to pay get a better deal than the kids whose parents cannot. That is not right. That is not the Kiwi way, and we should actually fund schools properly so that every Kiwi kid gets the opportunity that they deserve.

I think about the teacher-aides, who are barely earning a minimum wage. Despite the fact that they are working with some of the most vulnerable kids in the country and some of the kids with the highest needs, they barely earn the minimum wage. They have got no job security. They do not know, from term to term, whether they are going to be back. This Government will not do anything for them and says that tax cuts are affordable. All of these things need to be weighed up against the Government’s desire to deliver tax cuts that the country at this point simply cannot afford.

I think about housing. I think about the number of people whom we have living in transient situations because there is a pressing need for State houses, and Government members have their heads buried in the sand. Here is a classic example: in my own electorate the Government has demolished State houses and sold them off because it said that there is no need—and now it is scrambling to find more houses for families who need them. It sold them off and it demolished them and yet we have got a huge waiting list of people. Of course, the waiting list is much larger than the official waiting list for houses because the Government will not let a whole lot of people with genuine and real need even on to the waiting list in the first place; that is simply wrong.

I think about the police, and I think about the fact that they do an amazing job in our communities—and yet there are not enough of them. They simply are not being given the resources that they need to do the jobs that they have of keeping our communities safe. I have got a lot of sympathy for the situation that the police find themselves in: they are working extra time, they are working incredibly hard, and they are not being backed by this Government. There are not enough of them and they are not getting the support they need.

Most importantly, I think about the future generations of New Zealand—something that I have thought about a lot more, just recently—and I think, what kind of country are we going to be leaving them? Frankly, I want to leave them a much better country than the one they are likely to inherit at the moment. I want to leave them a country where superannuation is secured for all New Zealanders—not just the current generation while we kick in to touch debates about how we pay for future generations. We should be restarting contributions to the New Zealand Superannuation Fund because that is one of the ways that we can make sure that superannuation is there for all New Zealanders and they get that promise—that Kiwi promise—of a secure retirement. We can be a better country than this, but tax cuts will set us backward not forward.

KANWALJIT SINGH BAKSHI (National): Thank you, Mr Speaker, for the opportunity to participate in the general debate today. I think this will be my last contribution this year in the general debate, so I want to wish all members a merry Christmas and a happy New Year.

Chris Hipkins: You know there’s still 2 weeks to go.

KANWALJIT SINGH BAKSHI: Yes, yes, I do. But I know that I will not be speaking in the general debate, but on a number of other occasions, so you will have to listen for it. Ha, ha!

The previous speaker, Chris Hipkins, raised two points. On one point I agree with him, and on the other point I disagree with him. The first point he said is that we can do much better. Definitely there is always the opportunity for improvement. The second point he said is that we want to make sure that the future for our kids is brighter. But I do not agree that the policies he is advocating will write a brighter future for us. The Labour Party’s policies will make sure that we are writing a disaster for our future generations.

The National-led Government is ambitious and confident for the New Zealand economy. We are working hard, and we are trying to ensure that the future is brighter for this country, not only for us but for the generations to come. One thing I would like to clarify over here is that it is not just us who are claiming that the New Zealand economy is doing better. If you look at the international endorsements we have been getting over the last few weeks, they all say that New Zealand is one of the best places to do business. For the small and medium sized businesses it is the best place to grow. The second thing is that for safety and security, again we are placed very well—in the top five.

As you know, on 14 November mother Nature again struck with power, and residents of the North Island and South Island were woken up due to the 7.8 magnitude earthquake. These are the things that have been hindering us in growing at a faster rate, but still we are growing at a rate of 3.6 percent. As I mentioned, it is the ease of business for small to medium sized enterprises. I would like to thank the Hon Craig Foss for organising the roadshow in South Auckland last week where the ease of doing business was told to the small and medium sized businesses that were not aware of the many tools that are given to them online, which they can use for the ease of doing business. This is very important. We need to understand that we have to support our small and medium sized businesses because they are the backbone of our economy.

I would also like to congratulate the Hon Chris Finlayson, who has been working hard to do the Treaty settlements. Even today, we saw during the extended sitting that some more Treaty settlements were settled. If you look at the statistics, out of the total Treaty settlements, 19 percent were settled by the Labour Government and the rest have been settled by the National Government. This gives confidence to every New Zealander that we are standing by the commitment made before 2008 by National. We are ensuring that all the Treaty settlements are done as soon as possible, so that the grievances from those issues can be addressed.

I would also like to mention the $15 million that has been allocated to tackling drug abuse. This money has been allocated from the recovery being made by the Police and Customs from anti-drug initiatives. This is one of the main issues that create more crime in our society. We want to ensure that the people who are living in New Zealand feel safe in their homes, in their communities, and at their workplaces. It is important for us to ensure the safety of the people, so that we can live a peaceful life. With these words, I commend this motion to the House.

STUART NASH (Labour—Napier): I do not share that member, Kanwaljit Singh Bakshi’s, optimism. I am going to push really hard to be part of the general debate yet again before the end of the year. Ha! I am going to go hard. But on that, I do agree with the member on one thing: when he said that we should be allowed to live in our communities and feel safe and secure. We believe this. I think it is absolutely vital for the health and well-being of our various communities up and down the country that we can feel safe and secure in our homes, in our businesses, and on our streets. In fact, we have come a long way. My kids just cannot believe that when I was young and we used to go out, we would leave the door open, the car would be unlocked, there would be bikes on the front lawn, and there were no worries whatsoever. Those were the good old days, and there is no reason why we should not, or we cannot, go back there.

At the end of May this year the police Minister, Judith Collins, signed off on the Police 4-year plan. On page 51 of that plan there was a little table and it highlighted the number of police from 2016 through to 2020. The surprising thing was there was no increase whatsoever in sworn or non-sworn staff over those 4 years. Let us move forward 6 months to question time today. The Minister said to me—one thing that I agree with her about—“Mr Nash, I’ve been telling you and the Prime Minister has been telling you for months there is something coming.”, and that was it. She has been telling me for months: “We’ve got a plan. We’re gonna do something about this.” Then, surprisingly, Minister Tolley stood up and she said something that I completely agree with as well. What she said was: “I judge a person on their actions, not their words.” Well, I think Mrs Tolley should have talk with Judith Collins, because Judith Collins has been saying for 6 months: “New Zealand, something is coming.” In the meantime, the Tauranga Women’s Refuge said that in 60 percent of their cases they have problems with P. In the meantime, burglaries go up, sexual violence assaults go up, violence in our communities goes up, and resolutions drop. The Minister has a lot of good words, but no actions.

What we are talking about here is a group of men and women who are absolutely committed to the New Zealand Police and the communities they serve. In fact, their workplace survey showed that over 85 percent of police officers are absolutely committed to the community and to New Zealand Police. That is fantastic. But what that survey also showed is that 55 percent of respondents said that they had far too much undue work stress, and 60 percent of the respondents actually said that the police are not meeting the promises they make to the public. It is quite a dichotomy, is it not? We have got a highly committed force here, but down here they are quite dissatisfied, because they know they are not meeting the promises.

Then, in the paper on Sunday, we see that the police has closed down the Panmure, Ellerslie, and Epsom stations. When the Minister was asked about this on Tuesday she seemed as surprised as the rest of us. Maybe, because they are closing down the Epsom station, there might be some action, because I expect the people in Epsom will not be particularly happy about this, but we never know. Then, in Mount Roskill, what do we find out? The Mount Roskill police station is not even open during the day.

Phil Twyford: What?

STUART NASH: It is not open during the day in Mount Roskill. This is not unique to Mount Roskill. This is up and down our country. The Napier police station is not open during the day—no, sorry, that is not true; it is not open after hours. There is a phone there. If you have got a problem after hours, you pick up the phone outside the police station. If you are lucky someone might turn up.

I am not blaming the police for this. I am not blaming the police at all, because I have immense respect for the work that our police do in our community. In fact, they are out there working day and night doing a job that I could not do. In fact, what they are doing is they are making sure that all of our families can sleep safely in our beds. I have immense respect for them. But I actually think at this point in time they are being let down by the Minister.

The Police Association is saying “We need a thousand more police.”, and there is only one party that is listening. Well, no, that is not fair; New Zealand First has said it wants more police as well, but Labour is the only party that has come out with a costed policy that says: “You know, communities of New Zealand, we have listened. We are going to give you 1,000 more police.” It is a fully funded, fully backed initiative that will deliver to our communities, because we believe it is imperative. If our communities are not only to survive but to thrive, do well, and feel safe, we need more police on the streets. That is why we are saying to the National Party, to the people of New Zealand, and to everyone: 1,000 more police under Labour.

IAN McKELVIE (National—Rangitīkei): It is a pleasure to follow the mildly tanned member for Napier, Stuart Nash, in this afternoon’s debate. I would have to say that I got 3 minutes of sun on Sunday—the only 3 we have had in the Rangitīkei this month—and I got sunburnt. Anyway, I want to get on to a couple of other issues. This afternoon I had 47 very senior members of my electorate in Parliament, and you can imagine their disappointment when they arrived here and found the Prime Minister sitting here for a whole hour and not being asked one question. It was the first time, I think, in my time in this House that that has happened. They were disappointed.

I just want to move on to a couple of other issues that I think are critically important, and they are the earthquake and the problems that that earthquake has caused in Canterbury, particularly around Kaikōura and up into the Marlborough area. This country, under the leadership of this Government and our finance Minister, Bill English, is very well prepared to deal with these kinds of problems. This is a different problem from the one that the Christchurch earthquakes created, to some extent, because it has had a significant effect on a large piece of isolated rural New Zealand. There are a lot of challenges that that creates that perhaps are not created when those earthquakes happen in more populated areas. Of course, there are some significant problems when they do happen there, as well.

I want to get on to the legislation that went through the House yesterday, the Civil Defence Emergency Management Amendment Act 2016 Amendment Act, and some of the legislation that is being passed in the next week or so in respect of this disaster, because I think the House is to be commended and I think the Opposition parties are to be commended for the way they have worked to make this legislation possible and to get it moving as quickly as we can. One of the things we have learnt, through a series, I guess, of floods, earthquakes, and other things in our country throughout the years, is that the quicker we can move on these things the quicker the repairs happen and the quicker people feel better about their lives. These disasters are real and very testing, but almost inevitably the affected businesses and communities eventually come out of them in a much stronger state than they were in when they went into them. I think it is really important that this House works together, as it has done, to continue to support those. I think it is to be commended and I think it is a great effort on behalf of everyone.

This Government’s prudence under finance Minister, Bill English, has allowed our country to show its resilience and given it the capacity to deal with whatever nature throws at us. Of course, in New Zealand we have one of the largest coastlines. In New Zealand we are one of the most exposed countries. We have geothermal fields underneath us. We have major fault lines that run through just about three-quarters of New Zealand, so we are always going to be at high risk from one sort of disaster or another, whether it is a flood or an earthquake or whatever type of storm. It is really important that Governments have the opportunity and the ability to deal with those issues.

The recent dairy downturn pointed out how important it is to look after people in our industry. I think when you look at the effect of the earthquake on places like Kaikōura, which is obviously a significant tourist destination for New Zealand, it is very important that we create the opportunity for them to look after the people who work for them, because once you lose people out of an industry it is very difficult to replace them. They go off, they get another job somewhere else—they even move out of areas. It is most important, particularly when you have got a place as specific as Kaikōura, which deals with thousands and thousands of tourists every year, that we retain those people in that community. So the Government, I think, has moved very quickly to help with that, and it is to be commended for that.

The other thing I want to talk briefly about is what I would say is the unpredicted growth that has happened in New Zealand in the last few years. Clearly, in 2008 when work was done on our future projections they were very different to what is going on now. The massive growth in jobs, the large growth in population in New Zealand, and, consequently, the large growth in our economy have meant the future looks very different to what it did in those early days. Although we might criticise some things that go on, we might criticise the people we need, this country has changed dramatically, and I think it is really important that we recognise that as we go along.

The next thing I want to talk briefly about is our international relationships. The Prime Minister, the former trade Minister, the current trade Minister, Minister McCully, and a number of other senior Cabinet Ministers, who are all very well respected around the world, enable us to punch well above our weight. I think that is very special. It is most important for New Zealand, given that we are a trading nation, that we have great relationships around the world and that we enable our industries to work very closely with those countries. I think our political leadership in New Zealand—and I think it covers the Parliament, to some extent, as well—is hugely positive for us, and our relationships around the world are most important to us.

The Government has increased the health spend to record levels. It has worked through Minister Tolley to deal with some of the challenges of Child, Youth and Family. We are doing very well. Thank you.

TRACEY MARTIN (NZ First): Kia ora, Mr Speaker. Thank you very much. If we ever needed a real-life example that the National Government is confused and out of touch, then the announcement of the “Parliamentary Palace”, part 2, is it. If we ever needed a real-life example that you cannot believe everything that falls out of the mouth of John Key, then yesterday’s question time and his answers to Ron Mark are the examples that should be held up.

Let us be clear. Yesterday, in question time, when Ron Mark queried the ownership of Bowen House and how it came to be sold out of the public hands, the Prime Minister suggested that it was done by the National Government from the 1996 to 1999 period, of which the Rt Hon Winston Peters was part. Let us just make sure we record history correctly, shall we? In some ways I do not blame Mr Key, because Mr Key was not around. He was too busy making money off the sharemarket, trading on the Kiwi dollar, at the time. So he had his head down and he might not have known what the facts actually are, but let us be clear.

Barbara Kuriger: He knows how to run a business and the country.

TRACEY MARTIN: In 1997—listen up, National Party backbenchers, because this is real history; this is the history according to Hansard, not according to your speech-writers—the Rt Hon Winston Peters blocked an attempt to build the “Parliamentary Palace”. As the Treasurer, and due to the Asian economic crisis, he rejected a new building because taxpayers already owned Bowen House. The very fact that he did that is why the National Party caucus, or part of it, under the leadership of Jenny Shipley, threw over Jim Bolger and broke their word in a 1996 coalition agreement with New Zealand First not to sell any more public assets. Because they were dedicated to making sure that they followed this ideology, they destroyed their own caucus to actually create this ability to sell.

In 1998—so here we are, Mr Prime Minister; have a listen—Winston Peters was no longer part of that National-led Government. There had been a coup—Jim Bolger was gone and Jenny Shipley was in place. In 1998 the following buildings were sold: Bowen House, Bowen State Building, Charles Fergusson Building, St Pauls Square building, Defence House, Freyberg Building, State Services Commission building, Vogel building, and William Clayton Building. How much do you think the taxpayer got—how much do you think the taxpayer got—for the package? It was $59.7 million—$59.7 million. In 2013 how much was Bowen House sold for by the private owners of that building? It was $62 million alone—close to $63 million.

The Prime Minister seems to have had some sort of epiphany now. It says here that the Prime Minister is being quoted as saying: “It just makes sense long term for us to own these premises.” Oh, my goodness! It is like Groundhog Day. You could take the Rt Hon Winston Peters’ speeches from back then, in 1997, saying that it makes no sense whatsoever to sell into private hands a building that is owned by the New Zealand taxpayer, and which has a guaranteed tenant—a guaranteed tenant. But, no, no, no, no. Jenny Shipley, and the National Government—and they do not appear to have learnt very much—had no problem with it. The Rt Hon Winston Peters and New Zealand First were wrong, did not understand business, and did not understand the economy! Off they went and sold all those buildings.

What is even weirder is if we tie that into the KiwiBank adverts at the moment. Who has seen the new KiwiBank adverts at the moment? We have got some New Zealanders’ faces projected on buildings, saying: “Hey, are you banking with KiwiBank? Because we’re not a foreign-owned bank, and our profits don’t go offshore.” Oh, my giddy aunt! It is, like, straight out of the New Zealand First manifesto. Who was it who stood up, on the privatisation of the Bank of New Zealand and other banks into offshore hands, and said: “Now all the profits are going to go offshore.”? Do you know who is the appointed chair of KiwiBank? It is Jim Bolger. Crikey dick! The guy who said we should not own our own banks is now part of the campaign to try to get New Zealanders to recognise that when they bank with a foreign-owned bank their profits go offshore.

New Zealand First—I guarantee you—is the only political party where all of their accounts are held with KiwiBank, to make sure that we support the only New Zealand - owned bank—oh, Government-owned bank; TSB Bank, I take your point—here on these shores. It is like Groundhog Day over here. If this Government would only listen to New Zealand First in the first instance, you could stop repeating stuff.

CATHERINE DELAHUNTY (Green): Tēnā koe, Mr Speaker, tēnā koutou e Te Whare. I also want to speak about a dark secret in this country, but it is a sadder one, in many ways, for our kids. I do want to challenge the Government on seclusion rooms; banning them is not enough. Seclusion rooms are a symptom of a broken system, whereby some of the most marginalised children and the most stressed teacher-aides and teachers are struggling to deal with some complex issues. The Government needs to do a whole lot more than just putting out a Supplementary Order Paper—which we think we may support—banning this practice. We need to fix a broken system and support schools across the country, because these children are hurt and have been hurt.

For a minute I would like to think about the perspective of these kids themselves. Children who experience a range of learning differences and disabilities often do not find school easy and often have triggers that can result in behaviours that other people find difficult or confusing. There is no initial teacher training on this to make sure that these kids are taken care of. There are, maybe, a couple of hours. There is no professional development that is mandatory for teachers—they have to opt in to understand how to cope with the situation.

What we have seen with seclusion rooms is that 17 schools are not coping and are using this strategy because they do not know what else to do—they do not know. Without resources, training, and a culture of inclusion, this will continue to happen even if seclusion rooms are banned. These children will continue to be excluded from their rights in terms of safety and opportunity unless the Government seriously invests in the need for a programme of education around inclusion. Our society remains disabling and exclusive, so I am not blaming the Government alone; we are all part of it. However, it is the job of the Government to lead more than a piecemeal ban of an individual strategy that we all find frightening—and the children who have experienced it are traumatised.

We have to do a comprehensive change. That is why I initiated the inquiry, which we have just reported back on. That inquiry found a broken system. It found that there is no more money. The Government is not prepared to put more money in, and it is not prepared to enshrine children’s rights in law. So families have experienced things like seclusion rooms, or like having only 1 hour of school a day, and their child is seen as having a behavioural problem and they are asked to remove that child—which is exclusion, as opposed to seclusion, but amounts to the same thing. That needs to be addressed properly, and that has not been addressed properly.

The Education and Science Committee continues to hear, on all kinds of legislation around education, these families telling us story after story, and piecemeal responses will not work. I am not attacking individual schools. I know that there are individual schools that are going through hard times over this, as well as families that are going through hell, and, actually, it is not their fault.

We have not, in the history of this country—and particularly in the term of this Government—invested sufficiently in building a culture of inclusion. Mainstreaming of children has become “main-dumping”, and that has led to some strategies that are less than perfect by people who have less than optimum training and support. There are schools doing a fantastic job—they know exactly how to avoid triggering meltdowns for children with high needs, such as autism. There are many ways in which we can avoid seclusion or exclusion, but those magnet schools tell us that they are using best practice without the Government’s support, without the funding, and without the training, because they have made a cultural commitment to do it.

It is time that this Government and all of us step up. No more kids in dark rooms. No more excluding our children and leaving them at home because the school cannot cope. We must resource, learn about, respect, and uphold the rights of our children—all of them, no matter who they are—to a genuine experience of education and inclusion. We must teach every child that every other child has a right to be there. If that child is different, then that is OK. We must support all teachers and teacher-aides to be able to cope with diversity in the classroom, instead of doing piecemeal actions and an inquiry that disappointed me, despite all the work I put into it and all the progress. It is not good enough. The system is still broken. Kia ora koutou katoa.

POTO WILLIAMS (Labour—Christchurch East): Tēnā koe, Mr Speaker, and thank you very much. Recently, I have had a change of staff in my electorate office in New Brighton, and I have welcomed back a staff member into the role of just kind of looking after the issues in the electorate; she has been with me for about 6 weeks. We have a practice in my office of keeping some pretty good statistics of what is going on in the electorate, and what kinds of concerns our local people are raising.

In the last 6 weeks, I have had 28 inquiries from people who are concerned about their inability either to be able to afford the rent in their home or to be able to afford bonds to get into properties. That is quite a lot of people, when you think about it. It is the MP’s office; we are not Work and Income, and we are not a social housing provider—it is the MP’s office. In 6 weeks we have had 28 inquiries, all from low-income people who are all beneficiaries, so all should qualify for Housing New Zealand homes. All of these people are in the private rental market. We would ask why they are not in Housing New Zealand homes. It is simply because there are not enough Housing New Zealand houses to house our people. Why would that be? It is because the Government has been on this mission to sell off what is actually its core responsibility to people, and that is to house them.

Recently, we have had an announcement that there are going to be another 2,500 Housing New Zealand homes sold in Christchurch. That represents 39 percent of the stock in Christchurch, and it is over three suburbs: Shirley, Riccarton, and Bryndwr. All of the Housing New Zealand properties in those three suburbs are going to be sold. They are going to be sold to social housing providers, according to the Government.

Chris Bishop: To social housing providers?

POTO WILLIAMS: They are going to be sold to social housing providers by the Government. When we have a look at why this is happening—why is this happening? Is there support within the social housing providers for this? Let us have a look at what the Government has tried to do in Invercargill and Horowhenua. A similar scheme failed to sell 348 homes in Invercargill and, I think, about 150 in Horowhenua—because we just cannot make this work. It cannot work. Where is the money coming from? Where is the capital going to come from for these 2,500 homes that we are going to sell in Christchurch?

We have got respected social housing providers, like the Christchurch Methodist Mission and the Salvation Army, that are saying clearly that they do not want a bar of this. There is a level of mistrust amongst those very reputable social housing providers: that they are not going to be able to afford to purchase these homes, and that once they get them they are not going to be in a state that is habitable for people and there is going to be a lot of rework required; or that the burden that they are going to have, long term, to continue the upkeep and the maintenance on these is going to be outside their ability to deliver. And they want to deliver. They want to deliver good quality housing for the people of Canterbury.

Will this increase the number of social housing homes in Canterbury? It certainly will not. Will it improve the quality of that housing? I do not think so. Let us have a look at what the Minister said. The Minister, Bill English, said: “In Christchurch, Housing New Zealand has done an excellent job of repairing and rebuilding its earthquake-damaged stock, but one in five of these properties is underutilised.” He then goes on to say: “There is now an opportunity for a private provider to renew, reconfigure, and develop these properties to much better match demand, and finish earthquake remediation work.”

“Finish earthquake remediation work”—the Government is going to sell off Housing New Zealand homes that have not had their earthquake remediation work completed. There is the answer to the question “Will it improve the quality of housing?”. So what is the impact of this—the impact of the Government pushing the sale of Housing New Zealand homes when we clearly have a housing crisis in this country? I go back to my first point: it is those 28 people who have come into my electorate office over the last 6 weeks, looking for support to get into housing. That is the impact.

BARBARA KURIGER (National—Taranaki - King Country): We have had quite a substantial history lesson this afternoon from Ms Martin about the Rt Hon Winston Peters’ prolonged history in Parliament. But we are a party that actually looks forward. I also want to respond to the conversation that we had with Mr Hipkins. Mr Hipkins, this glass, in my eyes, is half full. It may be half empty in your eyes. You did say it can get better, and, yes, it is getting better. Every day it is getting better and better.

Today I want to make special mention of our Taranaki and Te Atiawa iwi. We have had some momentous claims settled here today. It has been a long time coming, a long time in history, and the celebration is only in the beginning. It is not the end of the process; it is actually the beginning of a whole new process. So we have got things around Parihaka to look forward to. We have got things around the Taranaki maunga to look forward to. It is just the start of the project. So, yes, it can get better.

Exports are up, about $8.4 billion or about 13.4 percent, from 3 years ago. That is despite the fact that dairy has been in a hollow. Thankfully, the predicted milk forecast payout is now back up to $6 and it is starting to come out of that trough. So despite all the crisis calls on the other side of the House, actually, we have come through this OK because this Government has provided a very strong basis for our export industries.

It is really important to see all of the good stuff that is going out there at the moment. We have got Minister Todd McClay, who is just looking at recent reports on reviewing non-tariff trade barriers and working out how we can get some of that red tape and some of that stuff out of the road, because we are not here to sit and trade carrots and milk with each other. We are a trading nation and we have got a lot of work to do. The barriers are starting to get out of the road.

New Zealand has been ranked first in the world, in the 2016 Legatum Institute’s report. That is a global prosperity index. So despite the things that can get better, Mr Hipkins, actually, a lot of stuff is getting better and the world is looking to us because our Prime Minister and our Minister of Finance are examples to the rest of the world. We hear that every day. They have got a great team backing them up.

The other point to make is that 90 percent of people in paid employment are in permanent jobs. We have just had an adjournment week. I was out there every day. I think there is hardly a spot in the electorate that I did not cover. The thing that I heard every day from our businesses was: “Please bring us more skilled people.” Anyone who does not know that there are jobs out there, in provincial New Zealand, had better wake up fast because the jobs are there and our employers are calling out for employees every day.

Yes, it is getting better and things are happening. We have a consultation about to start next week, in Taranaki through to the King Country, on the Mount Messenger and Awakino bypass roads. Our communities cannot get a hold of those maps and put their consultation in quick enough. That conversation started in 1918, and it is this Government and this Prime Minister and this Minister of Transport who are bringing that to fruition. The people have been asking for that for a very long time. I do want to acknowledge again people like former MP for Taranaki, Roger Maxwell, and Tom Cloke, and those people who have put 30 years of their life into advocating for that road. Well, actually, that road is going to happen, and the people of Taranaki - King Country are extremely excited about that.

The other consultation I have been to just recently is the consultation around Waikeria Prison. Interestingly enough, everybody is coming along with positive comments because—guess what—we are rehabilitating people. We are getting them to work for the Department of Conservation. They are making wooden seats for schools. When they start picking the tangelos out of the orchards in Waikeria Prison they take them to the food banks. They are helping to feed the people in the community, and that is very welcome. I also saw a great video yesterday from Minister Judith Collins about some of the toys for children that are being made in some of the other prisons. There is some fantastic work going on. Yes, Mr Hipkins, it can be better but every day it is getting better, under this National Government.

The debate having concluded, the motion lapsed.

Bills

Compensation for Live Organ Donors Bill

Third Reading

CHRIS BISHOP (National): I move, That the Compensation for Live Organ Donors Bill be now read a third time. Let me start my speech by explaining how I became interested in issues around organ donation in New Zealand. In July 2014 I was the new National Party candidate for Hutt South—very excited about life—and I held a public meeting at Boulcott’s Farm Heritage Golf Club with the then Minister of Education, the Hon Hekia Parata, and the then Minister of Health as well, the Hon Tony Ryall. I remember the evening quite distinctly, because one of the very first questions was from a woman—who is here, watching, this afternoon—called Sharon van der Gulik. Sharon was 68. She had been living with renal failure for more than 2 years. She could barely walk, and she needed 15 hours of dialysis a week. In fact, she could barely make it up the stairs at the golf club. She was, at one point, given just 2 weeks to live, and the dialysis had become so awful that she said she could not think of continuing with treatment past the age of 70.

By far, her best option was a live kidney transplant, and she explained to the meeting that only a few weeks earlier her brave 27-year-old grandson Matt had donated a kidney to her. But Sharon told us all at the meeting about how tough it was for Matt. He was getting only $206.21 per week from Work and Income, which did not cover half of his mortgage, and it had been difficult convincing Work and Income that Matt was entitled to the money. In fact, Sharon herself had to help keep Matt financially afloat. Sharon said to the meeting “Surely there has got to be a better way.”, and it was very hard to argue with that.

I remember sitting there at the meeting and remembering that Michael Woodhouse had had a member’s bill about this exact issue kicking around for a while. I went and talked to Sharon at the end of the meeting and I said to her “Look, if I’m privileged enough to be elected to Parliament at the 2014 election, I would be very interested in taking this issue on.”, and, of course, I was elected—very privileged to be elected—as a list MP based in the Hutt Valley. I was fortunate enough to inherit the bill from Dr Cam Calder, one of our former colleagues, who had taken it over from Michael Woodhouse when he became a Minister. Then I was very fortunate, of course, to have the bill drawn from the parliamentary member’s bill biscuit tin quite soon after being elected.

So I want to say thank you to Michael and to Cam for their custodianship of this bill in the past. I know they are both very pleased that it will pass its third reading this afternoon.

I also want to say thank you to the people whom I have talked to over the last 18 months in our hospitals, in our health agencies, and in our communities about this bill. There are many people out there in New Zealand who are passionate about increasing our organ donation rates, and I know that this is a big day for them.

There are two main purposes to this bill. The first is to more fairly compensate altruistic New Zealanders who, through the goodness of their hearts, choose to donate an organ to a friend, a loved one, or even a stranger. It needs to be said clearly for the House that live organ donors are national heroes. The current compensation regime amounts to the equivalent of the sickness benefit, and it inadequately recognises and supports the hardship that these individuals face when they make the choice to give up an organ in order to save a life.

The second purpose of the bill is to reduce the financial barriers to becoming a live organ donor. We know that one significant barrier to people becoming a live organ donor is the financial hardship that donors suffer through lost wages and other associated costs of recovery.

More than 500 New Zealanders are waiting for an organ transplant, and approximately 450 of these people are waiting for a kidney transplant. People waiting for a heart, lung, or liver may die without a successful transplant, while those waiting for a kidney transplant lead lives restricted by long-term dialysis treatment. So what this bill does is establish a legislative architecture around a compensation regime for live organ donors.

The House will be aware that in its original form the bill set compensation for lost earnings at 80 percent of forgone income during recuperation. This is in line with ACC. The Health Committee recommended that compensation should instead be set at 100 percent of lost income, and the House has adopted that recommendation, which I am very pleased to see. The bill adopts a principle of cost neutrality for live organ donors. So, in other words, organ donors should be neither financially advantaged nor financially disadvantaged from their decision to donate. This is exactly the situation in the United Kingdom. The amount of compensation payable is uncapped in a monetary sense, but it is available only for up to 12 weeks. Discretion will also exist for compensation to be paid to a donor before surgery in some circumstances, not just after surgery.

The bill has been significantly strengthened by the Health Committee, and I want to thank its members for their hard work on the bill, led by my colleague and friend Simon O’Connor. I also want to say thank you to Scott Simpson on the Health Committee as well, for swapping out with me when the Finance and Expenditure Committee was meeting so that I could attend many of the meetings and make a contribution to the passage of the bill through the committee.

The Health Committee heard many stories about the difficulties that claimants have when obtaining financial support through the Ministry of Social Development—in fact, I was in my office talking to Matt about this just now. There are currently very few claims for live organ donor assistance through the Ministry of Social Development, and the front-line staff are often unaware that the provision even exists. The bill, therefore, shifts responsibility from the Ministry of Social Development to the Director-General of Health, and I know that this change will be welcomed by many people who have either donated in the past or who are thinking about donating in the future.

It is also worth noting that the bill is futureproofed. There is a provision in the bill that will allow, by Order in Council, a regulation declaring a type of human organ to be a qualifying organ. This means that other types of potentially suitable live donor transplants that are medically possible and that are carried out in other countries, such as small bowel, pancreas, and lobular lung transplants, could be eligible in the future.

In conclusion, I believe this bill will make a difference. At the moment, live organ donors are, effectively, penalised for their altruism. This bill ends that unfairness.

The bill removes a large barrier to organ donation, thus making it more likely that people will donate. As Agnes van Diepen submitted to the committee: “A 100% contribution … will go a long way towards tipping the balance between donating and not donating.” That is what this bill is all about—tipping that balance in favour of donating rather than in favour of not donating. Or, to put it in the words of Elsie Howarth, who donated a kidney to her father: “[At the moment] you’re being penalised for working and then doing this for someone. If you want people to step up and donate, make it worth their while. Don’t make it so hard to do something for somebody else.”

Although this is not the main aim of the bill, the bill will save taxpayers money. Research at the University of Canterbury clearly shows that there are large fiscal gains for taxpayers from increased support for organ donors.

In conclusion, let me say that a caring society recognises sacrifice. A compassionate society supports those in need. This bill does both those things, and I therefore commend it to the House.

Hon ANNETTE KING (Deputy Leader—Labour): Can I begin by congratulating the member Chris Bishop who has promoted this bill—the third promoter of this bill—because it is not often that a member gets to have a bill supported by all members in the House and for it to go through all stages and become the law of the land. It is such a shame that we do not have more of this sort of an approach. So often there are very good members’ bills on the Opposition side of the House but we struggle to get the same sort of cooperation, because politics come in the way. But in the case of the Compensation for Live Organ Donors Bill, which was taken over by Chris Bishop from Cam Calder, and before that, from Michael Woodhouse, it is having its third reading today.

I noted that the member was very lavish in his praise of his parliamentary colleagues, but can I say to him that this bill would not have been improved if it had not been for the entire Health Committee. Unfortunately, it was not just Mr Simpson and others who improved it. In fact, it was improved by National, Labour, and the Greens. In its original version it was not a very good bill, and I am sorry to say that, but that is the case.

Chris Bishop: So churlish.

Hon ANNETTE KING: No, I am not churlish; it is the truth. I sat on the committee, I heard the evidence, and the bill was not in a very good space. I think the member would have to admit that, because what the select committee did do, under the very good chairmanship of Simon O’Connor, was improve this bill and make this bill work for New Zealanders. I now believe that we have a bill that is fit for purpose. It is a bill for live organ donors. I agree with Mr Bishop, that those who donate live organs, those who are living human beings who give up part of their body to help another person, are heroes. They are selfless; they are there to give help to somebody—often people who are near and dear to them. You cannot be more selfless than that. Also, you can be selfless in death, when organs that are available on death can also be used.

This bill deals with those who are living. What it has done is enable people to be able to give an organ and still have income assistance while they are recuperating and recovering from that surgery. That did not exist for them, so for many people it was a financial burden to give up work, to give up income, to provide an organ to a loved one. They were going to be penalised financially. So we now enable them. We recommended the changes to provide for the cost neutrality to donors—instead of 80 percent of lost earnings based on the ACC compensation model, we have enabled them to be able to get 100 percent of their earnings. This, I think, is a good move. It also moves it away from people having to go and beg to the Ministry of Social Development, moving it to the Ministry of Health to ensure that there is no obstacle to them getting that financial assistance.

So we have ended up, I think, and landed in a very good spot. There is one part of organ donation that still does need to be addressed—and I hope it will be addressed in the near future—and that is the issue of organ donation from people who have passed on. I want to acknowledge today the work that has been done for many, many years by Andy Tookey from Christchurch. As a Minister of Health I dealt with Andy. He was relentless in raising this issue. I think that we have not finished this process until we address the issue of organs from people who are deceased. There is a huge number of organs available but very few New Zealanders who are prepared to donate—and for a number of reasons.

You may find that a person themself has said they would like to donate on their death. They are willing and able to donate. They say: “Please use my organs for the good of someone else.” But at the time of death that person is no longer considered a person. They are now the property of their family, and so often it is the family members who decide that they do not wish the organs of their loved one to be donated. I can understand that—at the time there is a lot of emotion. Your loved one has passed on and here is somebody saying: “By the way, can we have their organs?”.

I know it is not done like that, but you know what I mean. It is a very emotional time for people. So we do need to have a better way of going about this. If we could also get increased organ donation from deceased people, we could considerably increase organ donations in New Zealand. One of the issues that has been raised as helping this is having an organ donation register. It would be a register of those who are prepared to donate. I believe we would probably have to change the law to ensure that the person’s wishes are carried out—like in a will—after their death and cannot be overridden by a family.

It is interesting that Mr Bishop said that this, for him, came about when he was out with the Minister of Health at a meeting in the Hutt Valley. I have to say to Mr Bishop that this really should have been a Government bill. This is a bill that is about health issues. It has not become one—the member has picked it up and got it to where it is, and good on him. But the next part of it does require Government intervention, and that is donation from deceased people. That does require a Government measure. I believe it does require a register, and I noticed that when the Minister put out an announcement about this bill he said he did not support a register. In fact, he said it before we even heard the submissions. He did not support a register. But, unfortunately, that was a change from the position he held when he was in Opposition. In Opposition he said: “The Ministry of Health has said there is no evidence of a register improving donor rates. Well, we have heard that several jurisdictions around the world are already instituting this type of donor register. If it is good enough for the Canadians, for places in America, for the states in Australia, then one would wonder why we are not doing this in New Zealand.”

This was said by the member opposite—the Minister of Health—when in Opposition. He was in favour of it then. He said—and I agree with him on all of this—that “The problem we have at the moment is that if we register on our driver’s licence as an organ donor, there is no absolute guarantee that someone will not overrule that wish once we have passed on.” He said this: “The National Party position is that if one makes a decision about what happens to one’s body after one dies, then that should be absolutely binding and no one else should be able to overrule that decision.” There are two issues: first, the issue of a person’s decision about what happens when they die and no one overruling it, and, second, the register.

So I say to the Government that I offer congratulations to Chris Bishop on getting live organ donation through, and I hope we see a big increase in organ donation, because we do feature low down in the world. But I would like us, as a Parliament, led by a Government, to put in place measures to increase organ donation of organs from deceased people. That would finish the work that needs to be done in this area, and there is a huge saving for New Zealanders—for taxpayers and others—if they can access organs to enable them to live fuller and healthier lives.

We support this bill. It has ended up being a positive measure. It is a measure that I think the whole House supports because it is sensible, and it needs to happen. We also commend the bill to the House.

SIMON O’CONNOR (National—Tāmaki): I am delighted to be taking a call on this bill, now known as the Compensation for Live Organ Donors Bill, and, because we do have, I believe—with a bit of prescience—support across the House, it is soon to be an Act of Parliament after it receives the Royal assent. I begin by acknowledging the member who has sponsored this bill, Chris Bishop, who has done a tremendous job shepherding it through the House. As many members have noted, on any of these members’ days it is a very rare chance that the biscuit tin is in your favour. When it is—in fact, how many bills have you had out now? Is it two or—

Chris Bishop: Two.

SIMON O’CONNOR: Two, right. So this man is incredibly lucky. But to actually shepherd it all the way through is quite unique. So here we are at the third reading. In acknowledging Chris I do want to acknowledge the other MPs who have been involved in the past. We have heard Dr Cam Calder’s name mentioned and, before that, the initiator of this particular bill, the Hon Michael Woodhouse.

I do also want to mention—not directly with this bill—Dr Jackie Blue, who in her time spent quite a bit of effort; and in that space—and it is a sort of a linkage of names, Andy Tookey. I had the pleasure of meeting Andy many, many years ago. He will not remember but it was through Jackie Blue and he was, as the previous speaker was indicating, a very passionate advocate and was speaking with Jackie. So a number of people have been involved. But I think, really importantly, it is Chris who has brought it to the House and shepherded it through. In that regard, too, I am very grateful for the work of the select committee. It is a marvellous committee to chair, even during annual reviews sometimes. Actually, the committee has worked quite cooperatively—first and foremost with the member but also within to try to improve the bill even further.

The bill came to the committee in good shape and, in terms of the discussions we had, we were able to make some improvements. One of them—and Chris was very keen on this—was as simple as the title change. Initially the title mentioned “financial assistance” and we then moved it to “compensation”, and anyone who has followed any of the speeches in the House knows I am a great believer in words and the importance of words, and it was quite critical that we signalled that this bill is based around the altruism of those who are donating.

Again, we are talking about live transplants, live donations, and it is a compensation. In fact, you could almost go as far as to say it is still only a partial compensation, even though I will get to the whole point of 100 percent remuneration around income, there is a lot greater, well, altruism going on here, and this bill is an attempt to compensate some of that rather than sort of being some generous action of the State alone to financially assist someone.

So the committee moved that change, but the committee has also been very conscious that we have—as speakers have mentioned, and I am sure we are going to hear it from the remaining speakers—very low donation rates. I think it is about 300 over the last 3 or so years—very low. It is primarily for kidneys but there are other organs that can be live-donated—partial lungs, livers, and pancreas. Importantly, something I was quite keen on—and I am really pleased that Chris Bishop was open to it, as well—is making sure that there is a provision in this bill to add in further organs. Of course, those who are clinically minded know that there is a limit to just how much can be introduced in before we move from live to, well, not live, but there is an opportunity, if developments are such, that by an Order in Council extra organs can be added into this bill. In other words, we do not have to go through the rigmarole, if you will, of the House process of introducing a further piece of legislation.

As we said, we have low donation rates, but we also know that about, I think, 1,100 people are actually on Ministry of Social Development benefits related to kidney failure or health issues related to kidneys or other organs. And what this bill represents is actually an opportunity, and again I had better be clear before articulating this further that I am not trying to put out a purely utilitarian argument.

There are people out there in New Zealand who will obviously benefit from a donation. But from a purely governmental, let us say, accounting standpoint, the fact that there are people currently on the benefit who could actually benefit from live organ donation is not only good for them in their health but also good for the Crown’s accounts. That has been, I suppose, one of the reasons, amongst others, that we as a committee decided to move the recompense of this bill from 80 percent to 100 percent. I suppose there are lots of nuances in this debate, but, again, although we do not think that simply reimbursing a person 100 percent of their income represents the entire cost associated with the donation, we saw this as a really important step. Importantly too, we decided not to go beyond 100 percent. There was some conversation about whether we should make this 120 percent or 150 percent. Do you go even as far as 200 percent? It became a tipping point, as it were, between actively trying to support and encourage donation, but not trying to make it too much of an incentive, if I can articulate it that way. We feel we have landed in the right space.

Importantly, too, this bill recognises people who are, obviously, earning an income in some shape or form, be it as a sole trader, being salaried, right through to people on benefits, including those on ACC. I talked about this in the second reading. We had a little bit of work to do around the ACC recompense, in that we did not want someone to lose their entitlement if they were already on ACC and donating an organ. Under the current structures in legislation, someone who is on ACC, for whatever reason, who then chooses to give an organ would have had to be retested for their eligibility for ACC once they had recovered. With a bit of creativity through the committee and, certainly, with the advice of the officials, we decided that what we would do instead is, if someone is getting ACC entitlements, they would not actually be taken off but would have their entitlement reduced to zero dollars. In other words, it continues but they are just not receiving that particular income. The long and short message there is that regardless of how someone has an income or gains their income, this bill covers that.

Chris Bishop also acknowledged that we have moved the management for live organ donation from the Ministry of Social Development (MSD) to the Ministry of Health. There was pretty clear feedback, pretty early on, that it was felt that it was more appropriate, first and foremost, within the Ministry of Health. Secondly, there was some sort of confusion or misunderstanding, perhaps, with people even knowing to approach MSD. Having worked within the Ministry of Social Development many years ago, I would have to say that someone coming in to test their full and correct entitlement for organ donation does not happen all that often, and you could perceive it leading to confusion.

Jumping back, also, to the area of income—whatever someone’s income is, that is what is going to be recompensed. There is no limit. There were lots of discussion in the committee on that. Should we be actually capping the total remuneration? The answer there was no.

The other element that I just want to quickly touch on is not particularly on the live organ donation front, but the wider discussion around deceased organ donation. New Zealand certainly has a long way to catch up, and it was certainly my intention and that of the committee’s that we would have those discussions somewhat during this bill’s progression. I think it was important, naturally, that we talked about live donorship, but we also tried to touch a little bit on deceased donorship. I have talked about it before, but I think the Israeli model has some real value, particularly around those who choose to donate—that they are put, effectively, at the top of the list themselves, if they in turn require a donation. The other side—and it is not punitive; I think it is just actually realistic—is that if someone chooses to not donate an organ, then they in turn are not to be a recipient of one, in the first instance.

I do too want to just pick up on something that Annette King was talking about at the end of her speech, around how, obviously once someone has deceased, the family relationships work. This is primarily because although there are some great ideas out there of how we might manage this—and in some ways it sounds really easy—if someone who is deceased had articulated their wishes previously, they should be honoured. I think there is real merit to that. It is a difficult area. Having spent a lot of time in hospitals, it is a very traumatic moment for families when a loved one dies, particularly if they are brain dead, which is—being somewhat clinical—an ideal time for a donorship to happen. It is a very traumatic time for families.

Having been beside them, often when those conversations were being had, I suppose I am just wanting to acknowledge that, and that, obviously, this Parliament—I think it probably will be governmental. It is an awkward conversation, but it is primarily one that has to be had. It is not a simple issue, but I think and I am hoping that through this bill, further conversations will be had and more organ donations will happen. Thank you to those who are already engaging on the live organ side.

POTO WILLIAMS (Labour—Christchurch East): I just want to add a bit of a contribution to this discussion on financial assistance for live organ donors. I want to congratulate the member Chris Bishop on having this bill pulled from the ballot and on the bill now actually having traversed through all stages of the House. It is an important aspect of a parliamentarian’s life, I guess, to have a bill in your name actually pass through the House. Congratulations to him on that.

In my past contributions on this bill, I have referenced a friend of mine, Kathleen Jacob, who was actually on a waiting list for a kidney several years ago. Unfortunately, she was not able to take advantage of having a transplant, and she passed away some years ago. We had many conversations about why it was that our donor rates in this country are so low. One of the things that she told me about, and I thought it was a really interesting aspect, was that as the safety of our vehicles improves—as we are more compliant around wearing seatbelts, not driving drunk, and keeping to the speed limit, and as we have better-quality roads and such—when we have accidents, of course, we are not dying. Our death rates on the roads have reduced. That is one of the reasons why there are not a lot of donations from people who are deceased. It is perverse, I guess, in one way, but it is an aspect of our increasing safety on our roads—it has partly contributed to the need to have live organ donors as opposed to those who are deceased.

The other thing is that on the driver’s licence that you get, there is an indication of your availability to be an organ donor. Many of us have indicated that that is what we want, but it does not guarantee that when you do pass away your family will actually live up to those wishes and do that. I know that that happened within my own family. When my grandfather passed away, there had been a conversation at that time about him being able to provide for someone on a waiting list, and his daughter—my mum—actually overrode that decision. The family does have to actually live with that decision, and mine could not continue with it. That was sad for the person who might have received that organ, but decisions definitely happen once you are deceased that you have no control over.

As has already been suggested, this legislation, when it came to the Health Committee, was vastly different from the piece of legislation that is now going to pass its third reading. Although some members have been a little critical, it was actually a great exercise in being able to look at all the aspects of this particular scenario and make sure that we covered off as many of them as we could. We did not want to place any barriers in the way of this proceeding—for people to actually be encouraged to be donors. Given the low numbers of donations anyway, we knew that in terms of financial implications to the Government, it was not going to be huge. It gave us an opportunity to really craft a piece of legislation that covered off many things. It has already been touched on, but I want to reiterate some of them.

This legislation will often apply to people who are on low and medium incomes—not people with a lot of money—for whom the loss of income over 2 or 3 months actually has a huge impact. So that was one of the things we looked at—the recovery period for somebody who donates an organ. We set that at about 12 weeks. We felt that most people, I think, recover in about 6 to 10 weeks, but there are some times when you might need a little bit more time to help yourself recover, and there also has been built in a certain amount of discretion should the recovery not go as well as you expect. There is a certain amount of discretion within that.

The other thing that we looked at was that we took a lot of our references from what happens within the ACC legislation, because that is a good model to start from. But we also looked at those people who may be on benefits and their ability to transition from having a benefit back on to ACC or on to other benefits, so that they would not be disadvantaged by this and they would not have to go through the process of having to reapply, because that often has implications with regard to stand-down or with regard to having to reconnect with Work and Income, for example, with documentation or certificates, or the like.

The other think we looked at was ensuring that anything that happened before the donation took place, such as tests, such as appointments with doctors—anything that needed to happen beforehand that took time and therefore possibly cost the donor some money—was actually also able to be compensated for, and that discretionary earnings that that donor might then forfeit might, by application to the director-general, be able to be compensated for as well.

We looked at things like who is actually a qualifying donor. Strangely enough, we did have to include that in the legislation because this actually applies in the New Zealand health system. If you are entitled to a service in the New Zealand health system, then you qualify as being someone who can receive a donation as well as someone who can provide a donation. We looked at, as I said, recuperation periods. We looked at entitlements under the job seeker benefits and made sure there was no impact for the loss of earnings. We also made sure that there was a process within the legislation to challenge any decisions, particularly around revocation or revision.

This is a good bill. I think it warranted the amount of time and effort that the Health Committee took to make sure we got all those aspects in there. I am pleased for Mr Bishop to have this bill passed, and I am sure he will enjoy putting his name to that and will celebrate this afternoon. On that note, I commend the bill to the House.

DAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): It is nice to be back, speaking in this honourable House on a bill that I think everybody agrees on. It is a great tribute to the member behind it, Chris Bishop. I think one of the most extraordinary things about living in 2016 is that it is possible for one living person to have an organ collected from their body, and have that organ transplanted into another person in greater need and actually function within that person, allowing them to live either a better life, or in some cases, to live at all beyond a certain point. I think that is one of the most extraordinary things—to live in a time when people are willing, first of all, to be prepared to gift an organ, and, second of all, when it is medically possible to actually make such a gift work and make that organ function within another person’s body from the one it originally grew in.

Another thing about 2016 is that our Government collects taxes and does a lot of things that could be described as running a series of insurance schemes. We run insurance against accidents, for example. We have insurance against bad health. Even the State funding of education might be conceived of as insurance against having parents who, for one reason or another, will not fund you an education—a kind of insurance policy that unborn children would be smart to take out. So if we are committed to a State that insures people against different risks that they face, then why would the State’s insurance not include insuring people against the need for an organ, and, in the case of this bill, against the need for a person to gift that organ but who may be encumbered by the lack of income during the time it takes for the organ to be collected and for them to recover from that collection.

So there is really not a huge amount more to say, other than that this bill brings together one of the most beautiful things that people can do for another person. It includes the technology that we are lucky enough to have at this particular time in history, which makes it possible to do any of this—and is that not fantastic as well? It brings together the public policy of a State that is there to insure people against genuine unanticipated misfortune, and it is all brought together by a very excellent member, who I think has a very large future in politics, and who had the nous and the initiative to bring a member’s bill to the House that would genuinely assist and help with the lives of a great many New Zealanders. So without further ado, on behalf of the ACT Party I commend this bill to the House. Thank you.

JULIE ANNE GENTER (Green): Tēnā koe, Mr Assistant Speaker. Tēnā koutou e Te Whare. The Green Party will be supporting this bill as it does take a good step in the direction of making Aotearoa the sort of country that we are working for it to be, which is a place where we look after our precious natural environment, but, most importantly, where we empower and protect our people to live good lives. I think this bill, interestingly, as it has the support of so many different parties across the House, really is a perfect example of the principle that Government is there to support people when they are doing something to help others in our society, because we are all in this together, we often rely on help from others, and in the case of needing an organ that is incredibly true. It is fantastic that the Government can be there to help support people who are willing to make that sacrifice of giving a kidney—most likely, although who knows, with advances in medical technology—to someone else to enable them to live a healthier and longer life.

The Compensation for Live Organ Donors Bill, as it is now called, went through the select committee process some time ago. I was not there to hear the submissions, but there were 125 submissions to the Health Committee, all generally in favour of the principle of providing financial assistance or compensation to live organ donors. There were a variety of improvements that were mentioned at the select committee, some of which were incorporated in the final bill. The most common suggestion was to change it from 80 percent of one’s income to 100 percent, so that it was full compensation for the time during which someone might be undergoing the surgical procedure and recovering from that procedure.

There are of course other issues related to organ donation that are not addressed by this bill. The Green Party would like to see it possible for there to be greater encouragement for people to sign up to be organ donors when they have encountered an accident—a very unfortunate crash, say, or something like that, which would mean they would not be live organ donors. I myself renewed my driver’s licence this week, for the first time in 10 years, and ticked the box again to be an organ donor, should I be in that unfortunate circumstance. That is something that has always been championed in my family personally, coming from a medical family. My parents impressed upon me the importance of being an organ donor if you are in that unfortunate circumstance because we want, above all, to use resources as well as we can while we are on this planet and to enable others to do the same.

We congratulate the member who was lucky enough to have his bill drawn from the ballot, Chris Bishop—an excellent initiative. It is great to see such a constructive piece of legislation from the members’ ballot coming from Government members, which is not always the case. It is fantastic that this bill has achieved such great support across all parties in this House. It is something that we are, unfortunately, probably going to need even more in the future because we have the rising problem of type 2 diabetes, which is going to put pressure on and increase the demand, particularly for kidneys. There are other ways that the Government could be addressing the risk presented by the rise in chronic disease—in particular, type 2 diabetes. I think I read the astonishing figure that one out of three New Zealanders is either diabetic or pre-diabetic, which is a ticking time bomb and is something that we are going to have to take urgent action on if we want to avoid the long-term costs to the health system, and want to avoid a degraded quality of life for so many New Zealanders.

As I was saying before about this particular bill, which offers financial assistance and compensation to people who are willing to make that sacrifice of donating an organ, it recognises the principle and role of Government to support people who are spending their time doing something for others. I think there is also the recognition that we are all in this together, and there is an important role for Government to play in empowering and protecting citizens, particularly young people, in the face of increasing pressure and advertising around things like sugary drinks.

It is a perfect example of where the whole community is worse off because of the prevalence of sugary drinks, and there is an important role for the Government to play by, for example, taxing sugary drinks and using that revenue to fund health promotion. There is an important role for Government to play, as it designs our transport systems and our towns and cities, to make it safer and easier for kids to walk and cycle to school. All of that will go a long way in reducing the burden and the cost of diabetes in New Zealand.

I think this Government wants to do the right thing. It wants to reduce obesity and chronic diseases related to childhood obesity like type 2 diabetes, but if we look at its actual Childhood Obesity Plan there is nothing in it that is going to substantially change the trajectory. It is relying on identifying kids who are at risk and giving them some nutritional advice, but how is that going to help if they have got sugary drinks and junk food in the tuck shop at school? How is that going to help if their parents have to drive them 2 kilometres to school because it is not safe to walk and cycle?

So there are all these ways in which the Government could be taking proactive action to protect and empower citizens, to ensure that we all look after each other and we all do well. That is what the Green Party would like to see in Aotearoa.

RIA BOND (NZ First): I am pleased to rise on behalf of New Zealand First and my colleague Barbara Stewart to take the call on the third reading of the Compensation for Live Organ Donors Bill. New Zealand First has supported the member Chris Bishop’s bill through all stages in its passage through this House. This is a bill that had great intentions. It was drafted by one member, adopted by Minister Michael Woodhouse, and then adopted by Mr Bishop. New Zealand First is pleased that this bill did go through to the select committee, and we were really pleased that the Health Committee could actually scrutinise this bill and listen to the submitters and take the advice of the expert advisers. What has come back to the House—I think we have all said it today—is a bill that is more fit for purpose and that can actually, as a member’s bill, be to the betterment of citizens here in New Zealand, and also there is not a penalisation ability within the bill itself.

We have heard this afternoon that this bill seeks to address some of the problems of the low rate of organ donors here in New Zealand compared with international standards. One barrier that has become a burden on donors has been the financial burden donors have had to suffer with. To be eligible to receive only the sickness benefit, and also some childcare assistance—I was actually quite shocked when I first learnt about this. I personally know people who have donated a kidney and I do know that their recovery rate was quite different to other people who have donated a kidney. So I think that the issues with the current system have been addressed and worked really hard on by the Health Committee and its advisers. It is something that I am absolutely proud about, as I deliver our call in the House today.

As I have just said, we in this House know that recovery times for patients are not a one-size-fits-all—they all react differently. These selfless, amazing, and life-saving individuals have not only given a stranger a donation but have also given that person the ability to improve their life. I absolutely echo what the Hon Annette King said earlier, which is that these people are actually heroes. They are hidden heroes, and they have done such a good job in helping out people here in New Zealand.

New Zealand First knows that we have approximately 200,000 people who have been diagnosed with chronic kidney disease. Of these, about 2,600 are currently on dialysis, and of those 2,600, there is a waiting list of around 700 citizens desperately seeking and waiting for a kidney transplant. New Zealand does have one of the worst live organ donation rates in the world. The level has remained the same now for 5 years. Sadly, last year there were fewer than 150 kidney transplants here in New Zealand. The Ministry of Health advised the select committee that donations from both live and deceased donors are not enough, and this is where this bill can help elevate the number and encourage live donors to come forward and help a stranger to improve their life.

In the Committee of the whole House stage, New Zealand First supported the recommendations from the Health Committee to change the title of this bill from the “Financial Assistance for Live Organ Donors Bill” to “Compensation for Live Organ Donors Bill”. This was justified, because the bill will provide donors with appropriate compensation for lost income for doing such a selfless act that will have a significant effect not only on the donor recipient but also on the donors for making a life-changing decision to help improve a person’s life, rather than merely provide a perceived financial assistance payment to donors, which would play down the significance of this bill.

New Zealand First feels that newly inserted clause 3, which says “The purpose of this Act is to remove a financial deterrent to the donation of organs by live donors.”, is absolutely vital. It is vital that live donors should be neither financially disadvantaged nor financially advantaged from donating organs.

The concerns raised by the Attorney-General with regard to the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act have been taken on board by the select committee, which accepted there are beneficiaries who have income and would be entitled to compensation, or people who may have part-time work or those receiving New Zealand superannuation or a veterans pension. This clarifies the original concerns raised by the Attorney-General regarding the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act.

New Zealand First does support the cost neutrality of donors by increasing the original compensation rate from 80 percent of forgone income to 100 percent of lost income. New Zealand First recognises that there are additional issues that can be quite complex in organ donation, and this will no longer put undue pressure on donors who can donate and who want to donate to be left out of pocket financially, or to face the risk of losing employment because of pre-transplant needs and post-transplant recovery rates. This will help significantly those citizens who choose to make the selfless and life-changing choice to donate an organ.

It is great we now also have a definition of what a “qualifying organ” is. This was good to see. We in New Zealand First think that it is important not only to define that the donor is the person who donates to a person funded by the public health services in New Zealand but that the definition further sets out the “qualifying organ” as being “the whole or a part of any … human organ:” such as a kidney, liver, or “any other human organ declared by regulations to be a qualifying organ.” We do feel that newly inserted clause 29 is the regulatory tool in this bill. It states: (1) “The Governor-General may, by Order in Council made on the recommendations of the Minister of Health, make regulations declaring a type of human organ to be a qualifying organ …”. It is good to see that this bill has also been futureproofed for further live donated transplants carried out in other countries but not yet here in New Zealand. These include small bowel, pancreas, and lobular lung transplants.

We are pleased to see the Health Committee has allowed for new entitlements to be backdated for eligible donors to the date this bill receives the Royal assent. This further takes away the deterrent for people who want to donate but who hold back on donating an organ. We are also pleased to see the shift in responsibility in this bill from the Ministry of Social Development to the Ministry of Health. This actually made common sense.

So, in summary, New Zealand First supports the member Chris Bishop’s bill. This will not, however, deal with the problem of low donor rates here in New Zealand. We believe that common-sense changes have been added for the better. However, there is still so much more that we could be doing in New Zealand.

I would like to touch on what other members in the House have also said, so I do apologise that you are hearing this again. The current system here in New Zealand is difficult because the only way that we can register to be a donor is through our drivers’ licences. We believe that this could have been looked at, and maybe Mr Bishop may wish to put another member’s bill forward in the near future to look at this issue, which is a resounding issue in New Zealand. We do know that, as other members have said, when you tick that box and you become a donor on your driver’s licence, your family can actually stop that and the legal issues surrounding that cannot be enforced. That causes a lot of grief, as Poto Williams alluded to earlier. We do believe that this should be addressed in the future.

So, finally, New Zealand First supports this bill because it will enable more organ donations for people who really need help: members of our community, our family, and our friends. Thank you.

BARBARA KURIGER (National—Taranaki - King Country): It is a pleasure to again speak on the Compensation for Live Organ Donors Bill in the third reading. As others have pointed out, it is compensation rather than the financial assistance that it was originally introduced as. It is a much better concept because people do this for love or for the willingness to help another human being, not for the financial implications of it. But it is also important that they are not out of pocket.

It has been a pleasure to be working on the Health Committee again. The Health Committee generally is working through our programmes, and it is quite common that we come in here and we are all united in one cause, which we are, behind this piece of legislation. But nothing is ever as simple as it seems. It is a no-brainer—everybody was for it—but there were obviously some pieces in the legislation that we just needed to tidy up as we worked our way through. They were mainly around the levels of compensation and some of the other details that needed to fit in with the other Acts that it affects. I would like to acknowledge the member Chris Bishop again for bringing this forward, and the Hon Michael Woodhouse, and Cam Calder before them.

A lot of people have mentioned today that live organ donors are heroes and that organ donors offer the gift of life, and this is pretty special. What better gift could you give somebody than an organ? I think it takes real courage for a person to be able to do that. To do it for a loved one is one thing, but for somebody who is outside of their family relationship I think it is an even bigger sacrifice. I really want to commend all those people who have done that.

It is important—as we know, our road toll is going down, on what it has been. Our roads are getting safer. Unfortunately, we are still having a few tragic accidents, and that is really sad, but we are trying to limit those and bring the number down. For those people who need organ donations, we have got to find a new way. I have also been listening to the conversation as we have worked our way through this bill, in terms of future discussions that we will have around organ donors on drivers’ licences and in wills, and the difficulty that family members have with honouring that donation when the time actually comes. Despite the good intentions it is not actually that easy for people to give away the organs of a family member, often after they have passed away.

It is really important to remember that these donors are not sick. I looked it up on the New Zealand donor site. If you are fit and healthy you can actually give an organ donation up to the age of 80 years of age. Although that actually seems quite a length of time, my grandmother has just turned 100 and I remember her having a hip operation well into her 80s. She was up and about a couple of days later, going: “You can’t kill weeds.” She is 100, and some 80-year-olds are in very, very good health.

We have talked about cost neutrality, and that is really important. We talked a lot about ACC and the 80 percent, but, actually, these people are giving up an income to go away and do this, and it is important that they be fully compensated.

When you end up speaking on the third reading of a bill, particularly where everybody is on the same page and you have heard all the discussions up until now, and there are a few more to come, sometimes you look in a few different places for research. I happened to be with our esteemed chair of the Primary Production Committee today, Mr Ian McKelvie, who spoke about his taxi driver who desperately needed an organ transplant. He said it was amazing. He went off to Auckland. He had the transplant. He was out of hospital within a week and he was back at work, driving Mr McKelvie around, within 3 weeks. So we can be grateful for the taxi driver, for the organ donor, and also for the fact that Mr McKelvie’s transport has not been put in danger.

We have talked about the 100 percent. We have talked about wills and drivers’ licences. We have talked about so many things through this process. It really is a no-brainer. It is just about time to move through and get on with it. One of the things that we did decide we needed to do through this process was to put it under the guidance of the Director-General of Health. It was previously under the chief executive of the Ministry of Social Development, but because of the Ministry of Health’s primary interest in organ donation it meant that that was just a much more sensible place for it to be.

Others have talked about futureproofing as well. There may be other types of organs that we are able to donate in the future. I know that a conversation happened along the way, several times, about 3-D printing. Who knows what the future might bring. We all know how slow legislation can be at times, so it is great that this is futureproofed so that we do not have to go through the whole process at any time in the future. We can just make sensible changes.

Thank you again to all of those donors. Thank you to Mr Bishop. As a member of the Health Committee it is a pleasure to be recommending this piece of legislation to the House. Thank you.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): The next call is a split call. Catherine Delahunty—5 minutes.

CATHERINE DELAHUNTY (Green): Tēnā koe, Mr Assistant Speaker. Kia ora anō ki Te Whare. I am delighted to have 5 minutes on this bill. It is not often that Mr Bishop and I agree on things—not often. However, today we are in beautiful accord because I think he has put forward a constructive bill that will be genuinely useful to a lot of people and will send out the right signals about how our society and our Parliament value this kind of effort.

It is interesting, though, because it is not very free market, is it? Because, really, the market should decide. So if your organ is failing, well, you should be able to go out and get one on the market. Hey, why would Government step in—according to the pure market ideology, which I often hear spouted in this House? However, Mr Bishop’s bill is actually a lot more constructive than the market. He has done something positive that will allow people to be incentivised to do this, because they will have their income protected, and that is part of the role of the State. And good on him for standing up for the full role of the State in protecting the interests of all of its citizens. So we are very pleased to support this bill.

I also congratulated him on getting the bill selected. I have had five bills selected but for some really peculiar reason—I do not know why—mine have not gone through in the same way, with the same consensus around the House. I do not understand this. Mine are equally constructive, passionately argued, beautifully designed bills, but for some reason numbers are the only thing that count around here, which is a tiny bit depressing. However, I will not give up, and I am sure I will have more bills selected. But I just want to wish him all the best for having got this far, with this level of consensus.

This issue was debated at length in the Committee stage of the House—for some reason it was exhaustively debated in the Committee stage—but I think that it has brought everybody to a very positive place. It is really good to hear, for those of us who were not on the select committee, how the select committee operated constructively to improve the bill, and how much good work those members all did to make this bill better. And that is what is supposed to happen; it is not always what happens. Someone comes up with a good idea. It might be a bit rough around the edges. The select committee listens to the people, hears good submissions and makes good changes, the Government listens, and you get a better result for everybody. I wish that happened every day at my select committee. Sometimes I wonder exactly what is going on, when we continue to listen to people who tell us things and then they get ignored because the Government will not listen to them. But not in this case. We have a bill that everybody is happy to support.

The bill contains really useful provisions. I am delighted that the Health Committee persuaded the Government—not the Government, but the owner of the bill—that we should go from 80 to 100 percent compensation because there are hidden costs. There are huge stresses and there is huge courage involved with people who donate organs. So I think that that is excellent.

The wider issue of organ donation is obviously concerning when we look at the statistics. I agree with my colleague Julie Anne Genter that the statistics for a thing like diabetes are appalling. But it is complex, culturally. I have met people who are reluctant to see their family members hand over their organs, for reasons that cannot be characterised just as selfish or even as disrespecting the wishes of their loved one, because their loved one is one of them. The idea of individual rights—the individual right to dispose of your organs is all very well for people who see the world entirely as individuals, but it is not so simple when you have a more culturally interconnected view of whanaungatanga, for example. So it is not simple, and I think that we should be respectful of that.

The other parallel I would like to make with this bill is that I hope that the next bill Chris Bishop puts up is for supporting more paid parental leave because it is the same principle. Here we have people at a time in their life when they are vulnerable and when they are contributing something wonderful—a baby, or a kidney, or a liver. They are all wonderful things. Yet the Government does not seem to see the reason to support paid parental leave to the extent that it really should, for the benefit of families, yet it is a similar thing. It is about saying that at certain times there needs to be financial remuneration because the person is automatically not able to work. They really need time off work. They are doing something very positive. It is a really critical time in their recovery if they have donated organ. It is a critical time in their life if they have had a baby. I do not see the difference. I think it is the role of the State to provide these things. I look forward to Chris Bishop supporting extending paid parental leave for the same reasons that he put up this excellent bill. Thank you.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): I call Rino Tirikatene—5 minutes.

RINO TIRIKATENE (Labour—Te Tai Tonga): Tēnā koe, Mr Assistant Speaker. I am pleased to speak in the final reading of this bill, the Compensation for Live Organ Donors Bill. This is a very worthy bill. I would add my congratulations to the member Chris Bishop on bringing this to the House, to all the parties, to the Health Committee—everyone, actually, because this is a unanimously supported bill, and it is a very worthy cause. I represent a Māori electorate, and there is a high incidence of Māori awaiting transplants and having renal issues. I have encountered many who have to travel large distances to get the dialysis treatment that they need. It is a very debilitating disease. This measure that we are implementing through this bill is very welcome. It provides for those who are very selfless to be able to get some fair compensation for their selfless act of donating their live organs. This is a very, very worthy bill, which we wholeheartedly support.

I do note the amendments that were made. Likewise, at Committee stage a lot of issues were canvassed quite extensively. But one issue that has come to my attention—and I am not a medical expert to any degree—is that there is a discretion that the director-general has to provide support for donors who forgo earnings in preparation for surgery, whereas once surgery has been carried out the assistance applies in the recovery.

I would hope that the director-general would be quite liberal with the discretion in terms of providing that support because I would imagine preparation for surgery is the most important step that a person contemplating donating their organs would have to go through, in terms of all of that preparatory work and the suitability—and I guess the purpose of this bill is to encourage people, those who want to, to be able to take that step.

I would hope that the fact that there is discretion there to provide that support would not be a stumbling block to those who would be denied financial support for going through that preparatory phase. But be that as it may, this is a really great piece of legislation. It is going to be great. It is going to make a huge difference to the lives of many New Zealanders.

Just as a case in point, I would like to pay my respects and good wishes to Kīngi Tuheitia. He is undergoing a kidney transplant operation today. His son Korotangi has generously donated his kidney to his father. I know that there is a special karakia that will be taking place tonight at Te Puea Marae. Te Kāhui Wairua interdenominational group will be there to have a special karakia for Kīngi Tuheitia. I wish him well. I wish him a speedy recovery.

Ā, kia piki te ora, te kaha, te māramatanga ki a Kīngi Tuheita, ā, me tana tama a Korotangi i tēnei wā.

[So let wellness, strength, and enlightenment be upon Kīngi Tuheitia and his son Korotangi at this point in time.]

As I say, this is a very worthy and great piece of legislation. I am looking forward to actually seeing the increase in the transplant operations that will be taking place, the lessening of waiting times, the availability of donors increasing, and the healthy lives of many New Zealanders being able to benefit through the passage of this legislation. I commend it to the House. Kia ora tātou.

JACQUI DEAN (National—Waitaki): I will add my congratulations to the member in charge of this bill, Chris Bishop, who introduced this bill. He was not the first member attached to this bill, but it has to be said that in the time of the consideration of this bill in the Health Committee, Chris Bishop made an impact on the very shape of the bill, including the name of the bill. So he does deserve a good deal of credit for the work that he did on the bill once it came to us at the select committee.

We considered this bill in the committee for over 12 months and gave it a lot of consideration and significant improvement on the way through. We did receive a number of submissions on this bill, and a number of New Zealanders came to submit in person to the Health Committee on this bill. What was notable around that was that it could not be ignored that those New Zealanders who have been in receipt of an organ donation—it is not only a life-changing event for them in terms of their health and their life expectancy but also a life-changing event for their families and friends. It is a large event in each and every one of those persons’ lives, so that comes to the very heart of why this bill, I believe, is being so enthusiastically supported across the House and across wider New Zealand.

What is seemingly a small legislative measure—although, I am sure Chris Bishop would argue otherwise—here in the Parliament has such a disproportionate and beneficial impact on those individual New Zealanders who are in receipt of an organ, and it will increasingly be so in New Zealand as a result of this legislation. We are, I believe, as parliamentarians—and the member in charge, Chris Bishop, certainly has raised the issue publicly, so now, I guess, we would all like to think that the issue of live organ donation and the opportunities that that brings for recipients and also donors has been much enhanced by this parliamentary process.

Also at the heart of this bill is the notion that the live donation of an organ is a very altruistic move, either promoted by love or promoted by some feeling of making a contribution to a person. Deservedly, they should expect compensation while they recover from that donation, because it is a big medical event, donating a live organ for that person, and there will be a time of recovery and adjustment. So this bill seeks to, and does very adequately, I believe, compensate those New Zealanders who big-heartedly make a donation. That was almost a joke, but not quite, because, of course, live organ donation now is restricted to kidney and liver donations, but also in this bill there is the ability to widen the scope of live organ donation as medical advances occur.

We do have in New Zealand a low organ donor donation rate. Again, I think that through the offices of this bill that is another barrier that will be removed. There are a number of strategies across Government committed to increasing organ donation, including a wider Government review of deceased organ donations. So there are many implications and ramifications of this bill. Currently there are not enough donations to meet demand. It is hoped that with Government policy enhancing the increase of organ donation rates—and in Budgets in both 2012 and 2014 there were financial increases to work towards this purpose of increasing organ donation.

I just want to close my contribution by once again thanking those submitters who took the time to submit to the Health Committee—in writing, by teleconferencing with us, or by coming in and sharing their personal stories. Those personal stories of New Zealanders giving their take on the issue based on their experience of the issue have been most effective in our consideration, so to those of them out there, I give a pretty heartfelt thankyou from the committee. With those comments I conclude my contribution, and my congratulations to the member in charge on getting this quite significant piece of legislation through the House. Thank you.

LOUISA WALL (Labour—Manurewa): Tēnā koe e Te Māngai o Te Whare. I would like to start by just reminding the House of the title of this bill when it was first introduced. It was called the Financial Assistance for Live Organ Donors Bill, and now it is called the Compensation for Live Organ Donors Bill. What I would like to do is to congratulate Chris Bishop, because I know he sat on all the Health Committee hearings. I know that there were others involved in the Financial Assistance for Live Organ Donors Bill but, actually, Chris is responsible for the Compensation for Live Organ Donors Bill. That is actually a significant point, and I want to acknowledge his leadership in working with the Health Committee. I think it is really important, because other people have said that this has come from others, but, actually, the bill that we have before us did not come from anyone else. It came from a lot of hard work and focus by the member in charge of the bill.

I would like to reference a Stuff article I have just seen. It is dated 5 July 2014, and it had a lot of comments from a 27-year-old called Matt Heal, who donated to his 68-year-old grandmother Sharon. Sharon was receiving dialysis and had been told that if she could not find a donor she was going to pass away. Matt put up his hand, and he said—this is what was quoted in the article—that it was his good deed. He did not have any kids and this was an opportunity to pay back to his grandparents, who had given him so much. But he noted that he was being paid $206.21 per week by Work and Income, and that did not cover half of his mortgage. His grandparents assisted him through that process, and that instigated Sharon writing to Minister Ryall, who, actually, referenced a bill that Cam Calder had in the ballot. That was the Financial Assistance for Live Organ Donors Bill. It noted that the proposition of that bill was to pay 80 percent of a person’s wage. So, essentially, it was about treating donors as having had an accident and going through our ACC system. As you can see from the iteration of the beginnings of that bill in the House today, we have moved so far away from the proposition that this is an accidental relationship between a donor and the person who receives the donation.

I actually want to talk about the relevance of this piece of legislation to different parts of our society and our community. I found some statistics from a discussion paper titled “Ethnic, cultural and religious differences in relation to deceased organ donation”. In 2015 there were 442 people who needed an organ donation—who needed a kidney, actually. Of those, 170 were European. Europeans are 64.4 percent of our population, and 38.5 percent of those needing a kidney. Māori—93 needed a kidney; 16.6 percent of the population and 21 percent of the people needing a kidney. Pacific—108 needed a kidney; 7.3 percent of the population and 24.4 percent of those needing a kidney. Asians—63 needed a kidney; 9 percent of the population or 14.3 percent of people needing a kidney. The “other” group was three people. They are 2.3 percent of the population and 0.7 percent needing a kidney.

Corresponding to that were those who had actually donated. Of the 273 donations that were noted in that particular document, Europeans were 218, 80 percent of donors; Māori were 29, 11 percent of donors; Pacific were 9, 3 percent of donors; Asians were 10, 3.5 percent of donors; and “other” were 7, or 2.5 percent. So the relevance of this piece of legislation to Māori and Pacific communities actually cannot be underestimated. I do not think we have really focused on that, that this is a piece of legislation that is going to disproportionately provide, I think, better opportunities for our Māori and Pacific members of society.

What is the relevance of that? Well, kidney organ donation—in 2014 there were 139 kidney donations. Of those, 72 were live donors, or 52 percent. The reason I highlight these statistics is that I think they are really important now in engaging with our Māori and Pacific communities, who disproportionately need these live kidney donations. I think by removing the financial barrier and the financial burden, it is going to provide more opportunity for live donations from our Māori and Pacific communities. I think we are going to see a significant increase, because a lot of the barrier has been financial. In fact, the American Society of Transplantation and the American Society of Transplant Surgeons created an incentives workshop group in 2015, and that was their biggest finding: that the financial burden of organ donation was the biggest disincentive. So congratulations to the House; we have addressed that issue.

The other thing that they highlighted, though, was that careful consideration and testing of potential financial incentives for organ donation should also have been considered. They estimated that out-of-pocket expenses averaged about $5,000. That is for transportation, lodging, childcare, and lost wages. We have not gone that far. I think that, ethically, compensating people is seen as the line in the sand, but potentially that is something we should be keeping an eye out for, in terms of its relevance.

I am part of Diabetes Action Month, so for the last 3 weeks I have been “stepping” every day, to try—initially—to be part of a fitness challenge. I have managed to do that—that has become part of the finals week challenge. I am part of a group called the Diabetes NZ FitBit MoveMeant Challenge, and I have got my Fitbit. At the moment I am averaging over 25,000 steps a day. The reason that I put my hand up—actually, with Minister Coleman, Minister Lotu-Iiga, and my colleague Jacinda Ardern—and said “Yes, I want to be part of this issue.”, is that over 260,000 New Zealanders have diabetes. That is a heck of a lot of New Zealanders—59 percent European and “other”, 16 percent Māori, 12 percent Pacific, non-Indian Asian is 7 percent, and then Indian is 6 percent. The relevance of those statistics actually replicates, in some ways, the relevance of this piece of legislation.

What we have been trying to do is to highlight how we can address the issue of diabetes in New Zealand, and the best way to mitigate diabetes is actually to get moving. It is to do your steps and do some exercise. What I have read just recently is an article in the British Medical Journal that says that after you eat, you should walk for between 5 and 15 minutes. I think, culturally, some of our natural inclination is to eat and have a moe. Some people eat and have a cigarette, but, actually, what we should be doing is eating and walking. If you eat and then walk for 5 to 15 minutes, what it does—and maybe Mr Shane Reti can explain the biology. We have got to decrease the blood sugar level, and the best way to do that is to get the body moving and processing the food that we have just eaten. I have actually changed my habits, through doing this Fitbit challenge. Now, after I eat, I will walk for between 5 and 15 minutes. That is one of the things that I have now integrated into my routine.

The other part of it is about making healthy choices. I would not normally do a commercial for a business, but Pita Pit has joined Diabetes New Zealand, and it is all about making healthy choices. Pita Pit now has a range of diabetic products, so that when people go into their shop and want to eat better, they actually have some guidance that says: “If you’re a diabetic, these are the best diabetic options for you.”

What I am hoping is that through pieces of legislation like this, it is actually going to create a space for a lot more conversation about how we prevent needing donors in the first place. We want a healthy society, we want a well society, and we want people who have got information so they can make informed decisions about how they live their lives. My final mihi to the Diabetes New Zealand whānau is: thank you for all the work that you do. I really appreciate it, because by involving me you have provided an opportunity for me to get some information and to actually change my life. Nō reira, tēnā koutou katoa.

Dr SHANE RETI (National—Whangarei): It is a pleasure to take the final call on this bill. I too would like to acknowledge the sponsor, my colleague Chris Bishop, for his tenacity and hard work on this bill. I would also like to acknowledge the Health Committee for its excellent guidance, which gets it here today through to its third reading. For this contribution, I want to specifically acknowledge the pioneers in the transplant space, who gave us the ability to undertake the functions that this bill seeks to encourage.

Prior to 1954, and through the 1900s, live organ transplants were being explored. They were usually kidney transplants. However, recipients only lived for a day, or maybe several weeks, because we did not understand the immune system. We did not understand graft-host rejection. We have to remember that it was 1953 that Watson and Crick discovered the double helix, so it was all very new. On 23 December 1954, at Peter Bent Brigham Hospital in Boston, the first successful live organ donor operation occurred. Peter Bent Brigham Hospital was established in 1913, and through various mergers and amalgamations with Harvard-affiliated hospitals, it became what it is today: Brigham and Women’s Hospital. For 7 years my clinical appointment was just across the road at a place called Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Centre. Many, many times, I have had the privilege of being in Brigham and Women’s Hospital.

On 22 December 1954, 23-year-old Richard Herrick was lying in his hospital bed at Peter Bent Brigham Hospital, and he was dying. He was dying of kidney failure; he needed a kidney. In the room next door was his brother, Ronald Herrick. Ronald was going to donate his kidney the next day. Ronald was not just an ordinary brother—if you could have just an ordinary brother; Ronald was his identical twin. What they figured at that stage was that there was something about sameness, something about being similar, and something about similar immune systems that seemed to make a difference. They had actually tested this hypothesis. They fingerprinted both Richard and Ronald, to make sure they were identical twins, and then prior to the procedure—several months before—they had actually taken skin grafts off both of the brothers, swapped them around, and the skin grafts took. So they had every indication that maybe the surgery would take as well.

On 23 December 1954 in operation room No. 2 at Peter Bent Brigham Hospital a kidney from Ronald Herrick was given to his failing brother Richard Herrick. Remember I said that at that point in time people with kidney transplants were living for maybe days—days to weeks—because of graft-host rejection. Well, Richard got 8 more years of life, and his brother Ronald lived through to age 89. Dr Joseph Murray, who undertook the procedure that day, got a Nobel Prize for his work. As well as acknowledging my colleagues here today, I also want to say thank you. Thank you to the pioneers of history who gave us this opportunity to bring forward this bill, which gives life to others. I commend this action to New Zealanders, and it is a pleasure to commend this bill to the House.

Bill read a third time.

Bills

Our Work Our Future Bill

First Reading

ANDREW LITTLE (Leader of the Opposition): I move, That the Our Work Our Future Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Government Administration Committee to consider the bill. This is a landmark occasion: it is the first time that I can find, in the history of this Parliament, that a leader of the Opposition has not only had two bills drawn from the member’s bill process but has had both bills before the House at the same time. This House has been very generous in supporting—so far, by majority—my Healthy Homes Guarantee Bill (No 2), and I am sure that the same spirit of cooperation and collaboration will apply in relation to this bill as well.

This bill continues the golden thread of all Labour members’ bills, and that is a thread of fairness and opportunity. Not for us the complex, technical kind of law reform measures that are properly the province of the executive—but sometimes members get prevailed upon, obviously, to introduce that type of legislation through this process. I know there will be some members hanging out for the Private International Law (Choice of Law in Tort) Bill debate—well, I am. Personally, I am looking forward to that debate, because it is a very important area of law.

This bill is simple in form and deed. It amends a document called the Principles of Government Procurement, and the Government’s Rules of Sourcing. It amends these principles by adding two more considerations. First, choosing a winning bid for a Government contract on its ability to create jobs in New Zealand—and what could be more important in a small, very important, nurturing country and economy like ours? The Government should take a lead in ensuring that its decisions, particularly its procurement decisions, are there to promote job creation in New Zealand. The second consideration that must now be taken account of is that Government organisations develop procurement processes so that companies focused on creating jobs in New Zealand have a fair chance of winning contracts.

This bill is about New Zealand. This is about supporting the great country that we are. This is a bill for New Zealand. It is about making sure that our Government supports talented, skilled, and creative New Zealanders and the businesses they own and run when the Government gets to make procurement decisions. That is what it is about. It is very fair; it is not arduous, and it is not onerous on the Government, or on any other process.

Here is the thing: the Government spends roughly $40 billion a year on goods and services. But the reality is that too many New Zealand businesses and companies are missing out on the opportunity to be part of that Government contracting. We saw, just a few years ago, the tragedy that was KiwiRail, under its then management, going overseas to source rolling stock that for decades had been fabricated here in New Zealand. The price we paid for that was the loss of skilled, talented engineering workers at the Hillside railway workshops in Dunedin. When the rolling stock landed here in New Zealand from its offshore source it then required considerable remedial work—funnily enough, done by New Zealand workers—before it could actually be used. All of that could have been short-circuited, and we would have retained well-paid jobs and good, talented New Zealanders in those jobs, if the tender had gone to the Hillside railway workshops in the first place.

There is another example, and it is the IRD computer system—a project now running, as I understand it, at roughly $1.9 billion. The IRD went out and put together its tender process and insisted, as a condition, that it had to go to a large company with massive conglomerate-style approaches to its work. But the truth is that we have the IT talent and expertise here in New Zealand, which, with a little bit of creative effort and energy on the part of those in charge of the procurement process, could have put together an appropriate joint venture—a cohesive bunch of New Zealand suppliers and companies that could have done the job. But that did not happen.

And so this bill is about this Parliament saying to those who run the procurement processes and those who set up its rules that we want the Government to make sure that front and centre of those procurement decisions and those procurement processes is the ability for talented New Zealand companies to participate in this—not setting up processes and not having principles and elaborate documents that have the effect of excluding New Zealand businesses and companies.

This, as I said before, is about New Zealand. It is about New Zealand in a world that is more competitive and getting harder to get by in. It is a bill for a country that has a track record of creating and developing incredibly skilled and talented people who are in demand around the world. Well, if only they were in demand here, by their own Government—what a difference that could make.

This is about New Zealand’s economy and our ability, through the very simple mechanism and device of the Government, when it spends its money, giving priority to New Zealanders—the people who pay their taxes to the Government to provide them with security and certainty and prosperity. We have seen examples around the world. When good quality, solid government procurement processes work well, the Governments that do it create amazing companies that then become world players. That is the origin of the big defence contractors in the US: without a Government that was focused on what was right for that country and its businesses and its people, we would not have Boeing supplying aircraft—757s, for example—that can take politicians around the world.

This is an opportunity for the members opposite, actually, and this Government to say to New Zealanders and to New Zealand companies: “We back you and we’re going to support you. We take New Zealand business seriously, so that when we come to spend our $40 billion we are going to give you a chance to show us the excellence and the talent and the skills of the New Zealanders whom you employ, and to do good things for the New Zealand Government too.” Ultimately, when great New Zealand companies—excellent New Zealand companies—get the chance to tender and get work for the Government and display their talents and skills, it is not just good for the Government; it is good for every New Zealander.

This is about supporting New Zealand, supporting our economic base, and supporting our people. It is about making sure that New Zealand companies—the entrepreneurs who set them up, who are trying to do the best for New Zealand, who want to create the job opportunities for New Zealanders, and who want to pay decent wages because it is skilled work that they are offering—get a chance to get the work that the Government needs, that requires that skilled and talented labour. This is a great opportunity. This is a great opportunity for New Zealand, but, most importantly, it is a great opportunity for the members opposite to do what every member of Parliament is morally obliged to do, and that is to act in the best interests of all New Zealanders.

If they have been instructed by their research unit and their Ministers to knock this over, I just prevail upon those members and their good conscience to do the right thing for all New Zealanders—the businesses in this country, the companies, and the talented workforce that they have got. Think about those who are struggling to get work; think about those businesses that are struggling to get the opportunity; think about the talent that sits behind them. Think about the opportunity that this provides to create that springboard that can create the next Microsoft, the next great New Zealand - oriented company, the next Weta Workshop—the next whatever it is—the next Fisher & Paykel Healthcare.

This is the opportunity, here today, in this House, to do the right thing, to generate great jobs and to generate great wealth for all New Zealand, so that every New Zealander can look at their Government and say: “At last, a Government with a set of rules and a set of guidelines that gives us all a chance and gives this country a chance to be prosperous but, most importantly, to give Kiwis a fair go.”

PAUL FOSTER-BELL (National): I certainly will not be agreeing with that motion. This Our Work Our Future Bill should be called the “No Work No Future Bill”. I can only assume that Mr Little has been set up by people in the Opposition research unit, given that he has just cited the example of Boeing, which is a notorious company that has accepted bribes and has recently breached World Trade Organisation (WTO) rules. That is perhaps the worst possible example of Government procurement that Mr Little could have come up with. I really do wonder whether he is being set up internally by his own party there.

I will be speaking against this bill because I care very deeply about jobs. I care very deeply about good quality, well-paying jobs in Wellington Central, the electorate that I live in and am working very hard in. Over the 8 years of this National Government, we have been focused on creating jobs. That is one of the reasons that the unemployment rate here in Wellington Central, where we are currently standing, fell 1.6 percent last year, down to 4.6 percent.

Jobs are not going to be created by trying to sell more things to ourselves, which is, effectively, what Mr Little’s bill does. We are a trading nation, and we have to look beyond the confines of our own shores. Looking at good companies that are based here in Wellington—such as Xero, a world-leading cloud-accounting-system provider, I think—they should have loftier goals than selling an accounting system just to the New Zealand public, although I would note that if you go into the school system, over 600 New Zealand schools do use their system because over the last few years we have made it easier for the Government to procure locally. But I think companies should have much higher objects in sight, such as selling to the United States of America.

This is an ironic piece of legislation, given that only this year we have had the Labour Party vote against the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which would have done exactly that. It would have allowed our competitive IT companies here in New Zealand to play on the world stage, not to have their sights set just on what is here in New Zealand.

This is a Government that takes some pride in having reduced the overall proportion of our national wealth, the GDP, that goes into the State sector. There has not been a wholesale reduction in public servants to achieve this. In fact, there has been an expansion of provision in a number of areas. But because we have managed to grow the economy at an OECD-leading rate—we are actually near the very top of the OECD, whereas back in the days of the previous Labour Government it was an aspiration to get out of the bottom half. We are now near the very, very top. By growing the economy, we have actually managed to shrink the size of the State as a proportion of the overall economy.

This is a positive thing. It gives our businesses room to operate. It stops sucking the life out of those innovators who were, under the previous Government, massively overtaxed and under-supported, except for the make-work schemes and the preferential treatment that certain businesses got with grants. This piece of legislation does nothing to advance the interests of our IT companies, of those innovators, or of the creative people here in Wellington, and citing Weta Workshop as an example—again, I cannot think of a scenario where the Government might be out commissioning films to be produced with Government production values.

Andrew Little: I’ve got a bunch of them.

PAUL FOSTER-BELL: In history there have been a few examples, Mr Little—Stalin was a great one for producing films through the State film production company. I think there are a number of Third World dictators we could look at who believed in producing propaganda pieces to peddle their ideology. I think Fidel Castro was a good example of a person who liked to produce pictures to promote his own views, to promote his own interests, and to promote his own political ideology. So I do not know why Mr Little cited Weta Workshop as an example of somewhere where we would go and do Government procurement, because, to my knowledge, they are operating in a place that is very different from that.

I am grateful to have attracted such a good audience here in the House and such a wide level of support for this speech from members opposite, but to come back to the bill in question, this is an unnecessary piece of legislation. As I said, the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment has now got world-leading Government procurement processes in place. Over 8 years we have done much to streamline and improve the Government procurement system. This includes creating clusters of excellence within the Public Service. When it comes to, for instance, procuring vehicles for Government departments, when it comes to procuring technology for Government departments, and when it comes to looking for office space and accommodation, which is a highly topical issue at the moment, following the Kaikōura earthquakes, this Government has done much to make that as efficient for the tax-paying public as possible. This is so that we can be sure that when we are spending that precious taxpayers’ money—which we all work very hard for—to contribute to that pool, we are getting the best possible value for the taxpayer, unlike the case in the previous Government, where we had huge wastage, huge overspends, huge cost overruns, and a disgraceful waste of taxpayers’ money.

This bill is also contrary to a number of our free-trade agreements, those commitments we have signed up to internationally—not only the WTO Government procurement agreement, which we signed up to last year and which would enable Kiwi businesses guaranteed access to a $2.3 trillion international overseas Government contract market. Let us just put that into perspective. A NZ$2.3 trillion international market that we would have access to, when we are talking about figures at home of a much more modest nature because of the size of our economy and of our Government—I think they have got their priorities completely wrong on the other side of this House. Let us give our companies access to a $2.3 trillion market. Think of the jobs and the economic opportunities that would create in New Zealand, rather than focusing once again on closing ourselves off to the rest of the world and selling things only to ourselves rather than to those who have the money to pay for them and the need for our excellent services.

There is another area I want to touch on. I had the benefit, in my career with foreign affairs and trade, of seeing a number of companies that were operating in partnership with Government to sell New Zealand Government intellectual property (IP) offshore. For instance, take an example in the Middle East, where there was an education system that did not have a good qualifications framework and did not have a good curriculum in place. There was a partnership between the Ministry of Education, the New Zealand Qualifications Authority, Auckland University, and a number of private sector consultancies to package up that IP that we have developed over time, to gain a benefit not only for the students who wanted to study in that country but also for the New Zealand taxpayer, who has invested much in that intellectual property.

We must set our sights far higher than the dark days of protectionism. We must look at the opportunities that are available in the rest of the world, and I am proud to be in a Government that has made it so much easier for small businesses, especially. I look at, for instance, the difference we have made to small businesses in the tax year, and I want to congratulate the Minister for Small Business, Craig Foss, and the Minister of Revenue, who have actually really made a difference for the small businesses of the sort that maybe Mr Little, in his heart of hearts, wants to help. For instance, we have the local stationery company that might be looking to provide stationery to a Government department. It now has a provisional tax regime coming into place very soon, which is so much better for it. It is going to be paying tax as it goes, and it is going to have the doubt and its potential penalties—as long as it acts in good faith and complies with the rules—taken away. Labour sat in office for 9 years and did nothing for that. It is happy for small businesses to be punished by a punitive provisional tax system. This is a Government that has actually done something about it, and it is one that I am very proud to be a part of.

The new user-friendly framework that we have put in place for companies is actually transparent and in line with our international trade deals and best practice internationally, and the new guidelines replaced 44 different pieces of legislation, so it seems to me that Mr Little is simply aiming to muddy the waters with this bill. This is a political ploy, and it is a rather cheap political ploy because it will do nothing to create jobs, it will do nothing to create economic growth, it will do nothing to help people in the regions of New Zealand, and, I believe, it will do nothing to help the hard-working Wellingtonians who are in both those small businesses and those large enterprises like Xero, like our airport, and like the Weta Workshop, which, for some reason, Mr Little thinks will be getting his taxpayer-funded propaganda films when he gets in.

I think this is an extraordinarily bad, but perhaps well-intentioned, piece of legislation, and for all of those reasons I have cited, I oppose it and I do not commend it to the House.

GRANT ROBERTSON (Labour—Wellington Central): That was Todd Muller leading the applause for Paul Foster-Bell’s valedictory speech there. I was fortunate enough to grow up in the working-class community of South Dunedin, and that is bounded on one side by the very rugged, robust coastline where St Kilda and St Clair Beach are. I went to primary school and intermediate school and secondary school on the flat land there. The other boundary of South Dunedin was my beloved Carisbrook, where I would go and see the Otago rugby team have some huge wins, and the odd loss here and there, as well. Right next door to Carisbrook was the Hillside workshop, and when you would go down to Carisbrook you would see the mainly men, but some women, of the Hillside workshops coming down to get their afternoon tea from the shops in that area. They were a core part of that community as I grew up in it in the 1970s and 1980s, a community where people looked after each other, where people had decent work and decent wages and participated in their community. That was what South Dunedin was like.

Over time the Hillside workshop built itself up from being a mainly hard industrial base to being a technology company. There were still those people there on the factory lines building up those railway wagons, but the designers were there as well. It was a sophisticated engineering company, and it kept helping to build that South Dunedin community. Then this Government came along—this Government came along—and said: “We’ll take the cheap option. We’ll take the cheap option on the railway wagons. We’re not going to back New Zealand workers. We’re not going to back strong communities like South Dunedin; we’re going to take the cheap road.” And do you know what happened? Hillside went down the gurgler, and the railway wagons—the wheels literally fell off them. They fell off them and they had to be fixed again. That is what you get when you take the cheap road, when you do not invest in New Zealanders.

This piece of legislation gives us the chance to say we back New Zealand workers, but, even more than that, it gives us the chance to say that we back strong communities. We back strong communities right around New Zealand to say we will help put decent jobs in place. We on this side of the House know that creating jobs is something that happens right across the community. Fantastic private-sector companies create jobs every day. But do you know what? The Government can do its bit. We contract $40 billion worth of goods and services every year as a Government, everything from IT products through to railway wagons. The Government does that, and Governments all around world say: “How can we make use of that process to back our people, to create decent jobs?”. What this piece of legislation says is that when the Government is thinking about how to do that, it thinks about Kiwis. It thinks about communities like South Dunedin, and it says: “How can we do our best by them?”. This lot over here might not care about that. They might not care about those communities like South Dunedin and the regions of New Zealand, but we on this side of the House do. We are going to back them with the goods and services that this Government buys.

Paul Foster-Bell wanted to give us a lecture about Wellington. Well, those IT companies in Wellington should be getting a share of the IRD computer system upgrade.

Brett Hudson: They are.

GRANT ROBERTSON: They are not. There are people who can do coding, there are people who can do programming, and they are not getting to do it, Mr Hudson, because Accenture is doing that through the Philippines. We are not doing that coding work in New Zealand. It is time to get creative with those contracts: break them up, put them into chunks—it is actually better procurement practice to break a big contract like that up into chunks and give New Zealand firms a fair go. There are companies in Wellington like Boost and STQRY Inc that got their start doing contracts for the public service, and have gone on to be major exporters of services. This will enable more companies to get that kind of role.

This is an important piece of legislation because what it symbolises is that we in the Labour Party are prepared to put our money where our mouths are when it comes to supporting decent work, strong communities, and a fair go for everyone in New Zealand. It is time in New Zealand that we back our people, we back our companies, and we put decent work for New Zealanders at the top of our agenda. That is what the next Labour Government will do. This kind of legislation will pass when we come into Government next year.

BRETT HUDSON (National): I rise in opposition to this bill. I would like to find something good to say about it, but, quite frankly, I cannot—it is completely unnecessary. I will traverse two main areas. One is that this bill is not required. The measures you take—its overarching one—of improving the well-being of New Zealand and success of New Zealand businesses are already covered by the work this Government has done. The second point is it actually puts New Zealand in harm’s way in respect of our treaties and obligations to the likes of the World Trade Organization (WTO). So let us deal with those.

Firstly, this Government has reformed the rules for Government procurement. They permit and require that New Zealand Government agencies, when making procurement decisions, look at the total cost across the lifespan of the product or service that they are purchasing. So let us just look at a New Zealand business and the natural advantage it will have against a foreign business—particularly, a foreign services business. New Zealanders who live in New Zealand are coming to do work. Any foreign-domiciled workers who are coming in will have travel and accommodation expenses—that is just one simple area. The idea of taking a total lifespan approach to cost makes sure that New Zealand businesses are given a fair shot at that work, and, more importantly, it does it without breaching any international treaty obligations.

Mr Robertson tried to say that New Zealanders are being excluded from opportunities such as the Inland Revenue Department’s Business Transformation programme. That is 100 percent false. There are many employees of the Inland Revenue Department who have been brought on for that work. There are contractors that the Inland Revenue Department has brought on for that job. There are New Zealand contractors that Accenture has brought on for that programme, and there are New Zealand contractors that the vendor of the new system has brought on—in New Zealand—to work on that programme. The member would be better to allow the facts to weave their way into his grandiose story, because he is 100 percent wrong.

Let us look to the second part then, which is about how doing what this bill proposes might affect our international treaties—international treaties and agreements that, for instance, give New Zealand companies a right of access to a market worth $2.3 trillion. With the World Trade Organization procurement model that we were able to get access to last year, our businesses have the right to access up to $2.3 trillion worth of opportunities—so many more orders of magnitude than they could possibly hope to achieve if they were only doing business in New Zealand.

Let us look at what happens when we start to favour New Zealand businesses in a way that threatens those treaties. The Opposition has this ridiculous proposition that if we do not buy from our foreign trading partners and instead we place rules to lessen the likelihood that we will buy from them, they will still buy from us. In the very connected supply chain that the modern world is, that is absolutely ludicrous. If we are going to put barriers up to our trading partners doing business in New Zealand, there is no way we can hope, let alone expect, that they will be seeking to buy goods or services from our companies. It is, quite frankly, just astounding that people might think it is possible.

But it gets worse—hard to believe, but it does. Mr Little, as he introduced this bill, gave the example of Boeing as some shining light as to how a country and a company can ensure that business and jobs are retained in that country. He held it up as some sort of a paragon that we could emulate. Well, it just so happens that this week it was announced that the World Trading Organization has found against—

Hon Annette King: “Trading” Organization?

BRETT HUDSON: The World Trade Organization has found against Boeing for illegal subsidies. So Mr Little is proposing that New Zealand emulate Boeing, presumably with illegal subsidies, putting ourselves at risk of breaching our WTO obligations. Mr Little: you are absolutely reckless. You would be a disaster for this country. It is absolutely ludicrous. This is an atrocious bill. It should be thrown out. I do not commend it to the House. [Interruption]

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): Order! [Interruption] Order! [Interruption] Order! [Interruption] Order! That will do. I want to call the next speaker—James Shaw.

JAMES SHAW (Co-Leader—Green): It is a real pleasure for me to stand up to support this bill, the Our Work Our Future Bill, in the House. I just would like to start by correcting a few of the statements that I have heard previously. When Mr Hudson said that it was incorrect that the new Inland Revenue Department project was outsourcing work to the Philippines, the reason why we know that it is, is that officials from Inland Revenue Department told us at select committee that they were doing that. So it is actually incorrect to say that work on that project is not happening in the Philippines. It would be much better if that work was happening here in New Zealand. The other thing that is incorrect is the idea that this would somehow violate our international treaties. If that were true, then the United Kingdom and Australia would both also be violating international treaties that we have with them, because both Australia and the United Kingdom actually have versions of this legislation in place at the moment.

In Australia, particularly in Western Australia, the Government has actually used its vast purchasing power to create whole supply chains built around Aboriginal communities that were previously displaced from the economy in its entirety. So the Government deliberately went out and used Government procurement to set up long-term supply chains, and got Aboriginal communities to start to put together businesses that would then supply the Government of Western Australia. That has led to a huge uptake—I hope you are listening, Mr Hudson; no, he is not, he is tweeting—in money going into those communities, in work, in skills, in livelihoods, and in breaking the poverty cycle. So the state Governments in Australia have actually used their purchasing power in very much the way that this bill proposes to do.

The other case is in the United Kingdom, which, by the way, is ruled by a Conservative Government. That Conservative Government has introduced a similar programme, and it is built around enabling exactly these kinds of supply-chain decisions to be made to ensure that skills and training requirements get built into contracts: the recruitment of non-employed people from within target communities, the provision of training that will increase the value that they add through their work, and promoting local businesses—those are all part of decision making in purchasing decisions of Government departments and of local authorities in the United Kingdom. So, Mr Hudson, please find those two countries somehow breaking the law in their international agreements.

One of the reasons why I am so interested in this bill is that it is actually completely innocuous. It is simply importing an idea that has been well used by our major trading partners. Australia, with which we still have the largest trading relationship—it is doing it. The United Kingdom, with which we still have a very important trading relationship—it is doing it. There is no particular reason why we would not also be using the vast purchasing power of our Government to support local communities, to bring people who are excluded into work, and to ensure that New Zealand’s small businesses have a go.

One of the other things that I wanted to raise, in relation to what Mr Hudson was saying, is about access to international markets through the international treaties that we have signed, where our companies have access to, for example, massive supply deals with the United States or Australia, or China, or whoever. Of course, the thing that we fail to remember here is that the vast majority, 95 percent of—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): I am sorry to interrupt the honourable member. The time has come for me to leave the Chair for the dinner break. This debate is interrupted, and I shall resume the Chair at 7.30 p.m.

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

JAMES SHAW: —our businesses, are small businesses that have fewer than 10 employees each. So, to recap what I was saying previously, the point that was being made was that, theoretically, New Zealand businesses have access to this vast global market place of Government procurement in other countries with our major trading partners. But the problem with that is that the vast majority of our businesses—95 percent of our businesses—are so small they actually cannot, in reality, access those Government tenders in those other countries.

I used to work in the United Kingdom; I was there for about 12 years. I had a small consultancy operation over there, which, at its largest, got up to 22 people, and there was no way that we could win Government tenders. So the idea that, somehow, the loss of New Zealand Government business somehow makes up for international opportunities is completely incorrect. I commend this bill to the House.

JONATHAN YOUNG (National—New Plymouth): I am pleased to stand and speak this evening. I acknowledge the member opposite whose bill it is. It would be obvious by now that we are not supporting the progress of this bill, the Our Work Our Future Bill, even though the sentiment of this bill is something that I believe New Zealanders would obviously understand and aspire to.

People will purchase products for themselves, for their businesses, and for others from that which is offered that also offers the very best value for money. It is important for us to understand the principle of competition. Competition is the process of rivalry between firms. Firms compete on the basis of price and quality to sell products to customers. The process of competition between firms drives firms to lower costs, improve quality, or develop better products. In a competitive market these benefits are passed on to consumers.

Although this bill proposes mechanisms that would enable New Zealand companies to have a stronger advantage in this process of procurement, we cannot move away from the principles of competition. We are living in a global economy where we believe that free trade is important, especially as we are in a country where we export 85 percent of that which we produce. So when we have competition, when we have open doors of trade, and because we are New Zealanders living so far from markets that we need to ensure that our products and our processes are of the very best in order to compete to overcome that tyranny of distance, what we need are open markets that we can engage with and transact with.

We have heard this evening, in different speeches, that New Zealand has joined the World Trade Organization Agreement on Government Procurement, guaranteeing New Zealand businesses access to bid for an estimated $2.3 trillion in annual overseas Government contracts. So if we seek to put non-tariff barriers in place as many other countries do, and we start to live in that world, increasingly what we will find is that the opportunities and the access that we have as New Zealand businesses—New Zealand manufacturers, which are full of New Zealand workers, will not have the same opportunity that this bill aspires to. So I believe that what we should do—and the Labour Party has said in the past that it is a party that does believe in free trade—is we must continue to develop those relationships with nations around the world, in order to see those opportunities come before us.

The New Zealand economy is doing far better than most other economies around the world, and that is a good thing to see.

Andrew Little: Tell the people who can’t get a pay rise.

JONATHAN YOUNG: Well, the reality is that the OECD has said that New Zealand has the fourth-highest increase in the world around real wages. The OECD makes that comment; it makes that analysis. So things are better in this country than some would have us believe. We have interest rates that are at their lowest since the 1960s, we have a net external debt position at its lowest level since 2003, and exports are up $8.4 billion or 13.4 percent from 3 years ago. Our economy is doing very, very well. As I come to a conclusion in my next 9 seconds, I would say that trying to create mechanisms to change that in the way that is proposed will not serve us well. Thank you.

CLAYTON MITCHELL (NZ First): I rise on behalf of New Zealand First to speak to the Our Work Our Future Bill. I have been sitting here in a bit of a quandary really. The bit of a dilemma that I have is how I am best to start my contribution for today’s speech. With all due respect and, of course, with admiration for the person who has proposed this new bill, I cannot help but draw the attention of the House to the remarks by the member whose bill this is—of course, that is the honourable member Andrew Little. He starts off by saying that this is a landmark occasion: this is the first time a Leader of the Opposition has brought two bills down, drawn from the ballot, in Opposition, to this House. But I have to say, in actual fact, one of those bills is a New Zealand First bill, so it is not actually two bills that he has brought to the House. I have to say that the reality is, if at the very—

David Bennett: That’s true. It’s New Zealand First’s.

CLAYTON MITCHELL: Mr Bennett, I will get to you in a moment. When you open your mouth, you make stupid look intelligent.

When you raised the question of this bill in the House, we, as New Zealand First, had been speaking about procurement—making sure that we procure in New Zealand and put New Zealanders first—but the member himself has come out and said that this is a policy that the Labour Party has come up with. He says it is about New Zealand, but he forgets a little point: to say it is about putting New Zealanders first. He goes on to say “It is putting New Zealanders”, and we would like to finish that sentence off by saying: “putting New Zealanders first.” The Our Work Our Future Bill is, at the very best, plagiarism, and, at the worst, an absolute rip-off—or a cheap imitation, if you like, of what New Zealand First has put through this House on numerous occasions in the past.

This is a situation where we have, over the past number of years, seen—time after time—opportunities where both sides of the House have taken New Zealand First policy and used it as their own. We have seen it with regard to our community wage, which was put in and taken out by the Labour Party and then just been recently brought back in to the House, trying to label it as its own policy.

Our immigration policy: this party over here that is now proposing that we need to tighten up on immigration—of course, that is something that we have been proudly saying for 23 years. Of course, we were called xenophobic and all sorts of racist connotations. And now, take our position on being nationalistic and having a pride for our country. Foreign ownership: now this party is against foreign ownership of our land and it is talking about stopping speculative buyers buying up more property—that is another New Zealand First policy. Our youth employment and training initiative—again, it is something that New Zealand First established, got up and running, and has a bill in the ballot box on specifically. The universal allowance has been in our manifesto since 1993.

In fact, perhaps, Mr Assistant Speaker, you could enlighten me as to the best way moving forward from here. At the end of my speech, would it be appropriate for me to make a point of order and table our New Zealand First manifesto just so the member could take a copy and have quick reference to the polices that the party regularly takes as its own? No—not appropriate?

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): You can seek leave at the end and I will judge whether the material is relevant or not. But I do ask the member to come back to what this debate is about and not talk about a wide range of other policies.

CLAYTON MITCHELL: Thank you. It is just as relevant. This gentleman truly is the salt of the earth and a true gentleman, and I feel that he would feel far more comfortable putting his name to a bill that was truly his if, in fact, he was part of New Zealand First. In fact, I was at a meeting just recently and after my speech I was asked a question by a member from the floor. They said: “Is it true that New Zealand First is looking to put candidates in every electorate?”. I said: “Yes, we are.” Then they said: “Is it true that Andrew Little is running for New Zealand First?”. I said: “What are you talking about? How is that relevant?”. He said: “Well, he is taking so many of your policies, I thought he might be becoming a member, so I thought it might be appropriate if we gave him membership so he could actually join New Zealand First. He would feel better about taking our policies if he was part of the team, if you know what I mean.”

This is a pragmatic bill, as far as looking after the benefits of New Zealanders is concerned, and I shake my head in disbelief when I hear absolute nonsense coming out of Brett Hudson’s mouth, saying that this is going to damage “New Zealand Inc.” I mean, Brett Hudson, to be fair, is the most disliked member of his own caucus by his own caucus members. But, to be fair, that just shows you the disconnect of that party when it comes to looking after the best interests of New Zealand and making sure that “New Zealand Inc.” and New Zealanders have got the jobs that they need. Thank you.

DAVID BENNETT (National—Hamilton East): I am going to do something in this Parliament that I never thought I would do—and that is agree with New Zealand First that this is New Zealand First policy that the Labour Party has taken off it. This is the Labour Party members taking Winston’s home baking and trying to make it into their own. This is the Labour Party just going for electorate votes, not looking after the true principles that made that party the Labour Party it used to be.

Hon Annette King: Oh well, you’ll enjoy Nick then.

DAVID BENNETT: People like Nick Leggett understand that the Labour Party has moved away from what it should be. This bill shows that the Labour Party members—just like their New Zealand First Party colleagues—are against trade, they are against immigration, and they are against an open and free New Zealand. They want to create more boundaries around New Zealand, they want to restrict Government and what it can do in its procurement, they want to stop New Zealand business trading, and they want to stop New Zealanders embracing the wide range of cultures that will come and make this country the strong place it will be in the future.

This is just another example of the anti - free-trade agenda that New Zealand First and Labour espouse in this House day after day. This is just another example of where the Labour Party does not want to engage with the rest of the world and believes that it knows best—that it can govern and it can decide and it can sell and it can buy and it can do everything to make a hunky-dory place for New Zealanders. It is New Zealand First and Labour thinking that they know better than New Zealanders. It is New Zealand First and Labour in their elite political establishments thinking that they are the ones who determine the future of the country.

That is not the way that New Zealand is determined. It is determined by the businesses and people out there going out and competing against other businesses and delivering the best products. Why should the New Zealand Government not get the best products available for it? Why should we not trust New Zealand companies to go out there and beat foreign countries to it in selling to ourselves? Why should we not trust New Zealand companies to go out there and beat other countries’ companies to sell to their Governments?

Labour does not trust New Zealand businesses, does not believe in New Zealand businesses, and does not want to give them that opportunity to compete on a level playing field. Labour believes that New Zealand businesses need to be in an environment that is controlled by 20 or 30 people over there, and by one person over there. That is what the New Zealand First - Labour vision of trade is all about. That is against the principles of what New Zealanders want.

What is going to be the next limit? Just say you have two New Zealand companies competing to deliver a product for the New Zealand Government. Is it going to be the one that has more union membership that would get the contract? Is that how Labour is going to do it next? What is the next stage of their test for New Zealanders?

Hon Annette King: Why don’t you talk about the bill and stop talking nonsense?

DAVID BENNETT: You get Annette King being very angry over there beside her leader, because she is very defensive of him trying to take a New Zealand First Party policy and put it in a Labour wrapping and sell it to the community today.

I wish the Labour Party would actually support New Zealanders and support New Zealand businesses rather than to say that New Zealand businesses are not good enough to compete and not good enough to succeed. That is what they are saying in this bill here tonight. It is partly New Zealand First policy—which we always expect and we know that it is going to come from them; we know that they are against trade, we know that they are against migration, we know that they want to go back to the 1950s, and we know that they are just not for the future of this country—but the Labour Party has stooped to that level. The Labour Party has given up its traditions of a free and open New Zealand. The Labour Party has joined with the New Zealand First Party at the hip. And I say to the New Zealand First Party that in your agreements—or whatever you are doing with the New Zealand Labour Party during the election—make sure you get some copyright clauses in there, because they are taking your policies, they are taking them off you—

Hon Member: Plagiarism.

DAVID BENNETT: —and it is plagiarism of the highest degree, as that member says over there. That is a disgrace from the Labour Party members in this Parliament.

Hon Members: Eight, seven, six, five—

DAVID BENNETT: Yes, they are counting down. We do not want a Fortress New Zealand; we want a New Zealand that is open, free, and innovative, and we do not need Labour Party and New Zealand First politicians to tell us how to run our country.

Hon Members: Sit down!

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): That is not necessary—he can see the screens, and I am standing. [Interruption] Order! I am going to call Barry Coates.

BARRY COATES (Green): I would like to speak to this bill—the Our Work Our Future Bill. It would be nice to get beyond petty political point-scoring, because a lot of companies out there really care about these issues, and I commend Labour for introducing this bill. I think it is an important bill, and we support it. The aim for procurement policy should not just be to get the cheapest product. We all know that in our own procurement, when we buy stuff from a shop, we do not necessarily go for the cheapest price—we do not even necessarily go for the cheapest cost on a long-run basis. We go for the best value, and that is what this bill is about. It is about getting the best value from procurement for the New Zealand economy. I think, to that extent, it is exactly the direction that our procurement policy should be going.

We would as a Green Party go a bit further. There are different dimensions to this procurement policy. The first is a kind of strategic procurement approach, and that helps small New Zealand businesses to get a foothold. Contracts can be structured in ways that will enable New Zealand businesses to compete for them—or not. That is one of the things that this bill aims to do. It aims to break contracts down to the level that allows New Zealand businesses to be able to compete on a fair footing for a procurement contract. From that perspective, it is sensible policy.

Secondly, a procurement policy based on value allows the incorporation of the value to the local economy and the local jobs and all of the spin-off benefits that come from local value added in the economy.

Thirdly, it allows for the consideration of issues of sustainability, and, of course, that is important for the Green Party, because we should not be undertaking procurement contracts that do not respect the environment and do not respect social issues for workers and for communities.

Finally, procurement should be fair—it should be fair to all parties. This is where, I think, the current policy has got severely offside. As Oscar Wilde said, where we are going down a track with procurement under this Government is to know “the price of everything and the value of nothing”. That is exactly the policy that is being followed at the moment by this Government.

This bill would help us to understand the value of procurement in a deeper way. It is within the longer term and wider context. It is within the context of the manufacturing sector in New Zealand being torn apart. It was torn apart previously, but increasingly it is also being torn apart under this Government. The Green Party recently released its policy for a ministry of manufacturing. We showed that 17,500 manufacturing jobs have been lost under the National Government. That is a tragedy for this country because they are good jobs, they are well-paying jobs, and they are vital jobs for the future of our manufacturing and our exports.

So what are we talking about with this bill? We are talking about contracts that allow New Zealand companies to compete on a fair basis. Is this agreement in accordance with current trade obligations? The other side of the House, the National members, would say: “No, this bill runs afoul of our existing trade commitments.”

There are two issues here. Firstly, that our Government has been lightly entering into trade commitments that it should not have been entering into, because they will constrain sensible policies that are for the benefit of the New Zealand economy and in the New Zealand interest. It is a good thing that the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement is not going ahead. Secondly, there are already flexibilities within these agreements that would allow us to be able to do what this bill proposes: to be able to structure contracts, not so that we are paying inflated prices to uncompetitive New Zealand firms but to give New Zealand firms a fair chance to get a foothold, to get a start in manufacturing and services, and to be able to establish a base so that they can then go and compete with imports and compete internationally. Thank you. We commend this bill.

DAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): I rise on behalf of the ACT Party in opposition to this bill. I never thought when I came to Parliament that we would debate such basic economic fallacies that I read about years and years and years ago and thought that this Parliament would have left behind. But today and tonight we are debating them—brought to this House by no less than the Leader of the Opposition.

You have to ask yourself what is so wrong with giving a bit more money to New Zealand companies. Well, the beginning of the problem is that, actually, money that the New Zealand Government spends on overseas procurement is not lost to New Zealand. The way it works, in the case of the trains that were bought, for example—which sparked this bill and, apparently, the interest of the member in charge, Andrew Little—is that the New Zealand dollars disbursed by the New Zealand Government to purchase equipment from a foreign provider end up being somewhere offshore. The thing about New Zealand dollars being offshore is that there is only one place in the world that they can return to where they can have any value. So the money that the New Zealand Government spends, whether it spends it here or whether it spends it offshore, eventually becomes an opportunity for some other New Zealand business, be it domestic or be it an exporter, to sell more goods and services.

We know that the money spent on those trains was eventually returned to New Zealand and spent by foreigners on New Zealand exports. So the choice that the Government makes—or would not be able to make under this particular bill—to spend the money on a New Zealand provider is really money that is taken away from competing New Zealand exporters. And why would this bill be necessary? Well, it could only possibly be necessary because the New Zealand provider in question was less productive than the competing companies offshore. So, first of all, we lose the opportunity for a New Zealand exporter to reclaim those New Zealand dollars circulating in the international economy; second of all, we choose a less-productive New Zealand firm to produce the goods. Where that ends is that, eventually, you end up with a New Zealand fortress economy filled with businesses that are not productive and that cannot compete on the global stage, and they find themselves sheltered, uncompetitive, and unproductive—and eventually New Zealand goes broke.

We see Annette King and Ruth Dyson here in the House tonight. They remember disassembling precisely the sort of protectionism that led New Zealand to lose hundreds of thousands of people offshore as Kiwis fled to Australia and further afield because the fortress economy simply did not work. You can actually understand the problem by looking at the wording of this bill: it does not say that the Government’s procurers have to choose a New Zealand company, it says that they have to consider the number of jobs that are created by procuring a certain contract. The only result of that is that we end up procuring things not because they are the best deal, not because they are produced as productively as possible—

Clayton Mitchell: We’re not talking about buying tanks from Russia, apricots from Indonesia, or pencils from China.

DAVID SEYMOUR: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. Look, I am hearing a very incoherent rant from New Zealand First, and it is against the Standing Orders to offer a running commentary.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): I am the judge of that. David Seymour, continue.

DAVID SEYMOUR: The fact of the matter is that if you have a policy that deliberately chooses a higher level of employment over productivity, the long-term outcome is that New Zealand becomes a less productive place. So when we hear the Opposition members complaining about declining productivity in New Zealand, they have only themselves to blame when they put about policies that purposely choose the least productive supplier for a particular procurement contract.

The bill is really an attempt to take us back to the 1950s and the 1970s, the times gone by, when, in actual fact, New Zealand was not an open, vibrant, and competitive country—it was quite the opposite. It was a country that lost hundreds of thousands of people as the Government protected unproductive businesses at the expense of the productive ones. And the ACT Party says: “We ain’t never going back there.” Thank you.

ANDREW LITTLE (Leader of the Opposition): The enjoyable thing about hearing from members on the other side, particularly Mr Seymour and particularly Mr Bennett, is that if anybody is confused about how Brexit happened and how Trump happened, those members illustrate it. They illustrate it. You see, they still live the life of 1980s voodoo economics, where productivity is not about the skilled labour we can create and is not about the value we can create; it is about being cheap. They live in the world of cheap.

You see, those members think—they still think—that people believe wealth trickles down. You just have the rich and the wealthy. They will pick and choose the cheapest, and they will go wherever they like. You do not have to worry about communities in New Zealand. You do not have to worry about skilled, clever, talented people in New Zealand. You just trickle down—and we have been waiting 30 years.

They waited 30 years in the UK, they waited 30 years in the US, and now we are seeing the result: people have had enough. They want Governments and politicians and leaders who are committed to the country they live in and committed to the people who pay their taxes to that Government. They want Governments and leaders who want a decent country, with decent jobs and decent incomes.

Here is the problem with Mr Seymour’s B-grade economics degree: he does not understand productivity. Productivity is not about being cheap; it is about the multiplier value. You see, a dollar spent in New Zealand has a multiplier value. In the manufacturing sector, the multiplier effect is about five—four and a half to five. If that work on the KiwiRail carriages had been done in New Zealand, that money would have been filtered through the community several times over. If you spend it overseas, that is it—it is gone, and you have got to support the people whose jobs are being lost.

Those members on the other side never got that. ACT never got that. David Seymour does not get that. David Bennett does not get that—he does not even care that the Waikato Expressway went overseas to get cheap steel, and now the good people of the Waikato are going to be driving on unsafe roads. They are going to be driving on unsafe roads because David Bennett did not have the gumption to say: “Look, when you are putting in my expressway, which is going to get me re-elected, can you at least make sure we have good quality New Zealand steel?”. New Zealand steel means that you can drive safely and that we will keep jobs here.

The truth about the National Party is this: it has become absolutely crystal clear—absolutely crystal clear—that it does not care about New Zealanders being in work. That is why parties like Labour have to come and champion the cause. I am very flattered by the honourable member Clayton Mitchell, who laid out all the common ground between Labour and New Zealand First, and I look forward to those coalition negotiations because we clearly now have plenty to talk about. The one difference between us, of course—there is a difference between us—and the one thing we in Labour absolutely stand for, is changing the Government. When New Zealand First comes out and says that that is what it is committed to, we will have even more fertile ground for those coalition negotiations.

This is a bill that is about New Zealand. It is about supporting New Zealanders and their businesses. It is about supporting the talent, the intelligence, the smarts, and the creativity of high quality, highly talented New Zealanders. That is all it is about. It is a chance for a Government that understands what leadership is about in the economic sphere to give Kiwi businesses a chance.

We gave the examples here. You look at companies like Fletcher Building. It started off contracting to the Government. It happened to be a Labour Government at the time, admittedly, because Labour Governments through the history of New Zealand have supported New Zealand businesses creating jobs here in New Zealand. Fletcher Building was one of them, and look: it is now an exporter around the world. It is an exemplar—one of the best companies in New Zealand.

What about Hills Hats? Oh yes, Hills Hats. It made all the army gear they had on their heads, and now it exports around the world. You see, that is what having the opportunity to contract to the Government and supplying the Government does for a good quality, talented New Zealand business and New Zealand business people.

That is what this bill is about, and I urge those members opposite, who now have seen the light, who have realised that their trickle-down economics of the 1980s does not work and is a failed experiment—they have the chance in a few seconds to support New Zealand and to support New Zealand businesses by voting in favour of this bill.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the Our Work Our Future Bill be now read a first time.

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.

Bills

Residential Tenancies (Safe and Secure Rentals) Amendment Bill

First Reading

METIRIA TUREI (Co-Leader—Green): I move, That the Residential Tenancies (Safe and Secure Rentals) Amendment Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Social Services Committee to consider the bill. I urge members tonight to vote for this Residential Tenancies (Safe and Secure Rentals) Amendment Bill, which will make sure that renting will give families the same security and the same quality of life as if they owned their own home. I urge members to consider the nearly 1.5 million New Zealanders—1.5 million New Zealanders—who live in rental accommodation in this country. That consideration includes over 400,000 children who live in rental accommodation in this country and their need, their right, for a safe and secure home in which they can grow and thrive.

Renting should not be a second-class option, but it is. Renting should not be a driver of respiratory illness in children, but it is. Renting should be a secure, stable, and affordable housing option for families—if only it was. We all know—all of us here in this House—from the constituents, the family members, and the communities that we work with that renting in New Zealand is increasingly expensive, unstable, and, for children, quite dangerous, actually.

We also know that the vast majority of landlords care for their properties well and they want their tenants to live well and healthily in the homes that they own. Landlords want to make sure that their homes are safe for their tenants and especially for the children in those homes. So this bill works with the desires of landlords to have good homes, long-term tenancies, and stability for their tenants, and with the desires of tenants to be able to have stability and security in their homes so that they can take care of their children over the long term. This bill will bring those two desires together and improve the quality of renting and tenancies in New Zealand.

The tenancy law we have in this country, in terms of the respective rights and responsibilities between landlords and tenants, is very old. There have been some changes around the edges but, in large part, the legislation has remained the same for quite a few decades now. It is now time for us to modernise the law to make sure it meets the needs of 21st century New Zealand families who are increasingly having to rent for longer and in more expensive and difficult circumstances. So let us make sure that the law balances better the rights and responsibilities of landlords and tenants. This bill will benefit over 450,000 households in this country, so it will have a huge impact on thousands and thousands of New Zealand families and make sure that they have better, safer, and more secure housing.

I just want to go through the changes that are set out in the bill. The bill makes six changes to the law. The first allows a tenant the first right of refusal when their lease expires. The point of this is to allow tenants to continue to live and reside in the community where they have put down roots, the community that they love. This is critical for tenants: to have the choice to stay in their homes if they want to. This would mean that a landlord cannot use the ending of a tenancy to evict a tenant who has otherwise been a perfectly good tenant. There are some bad landlords who will do that; who will use the tenancy to evict a tenant because they want to put the rent up to an extraordinary degree, or for other reasons. But what we are talking about here is families who have put down roots in their community and have treated this house like their home. They should have the right to be able to stay in the home that they have built there for themselves and for their children.

The second change to the law that this bill makes is it requires landlords to write into the tenancy agreement the calculation that the landlords will use to increase the rent. The bill does not prescribe what that calculation is; it simply requires the calculation to be in the tenancy agreement. And the reason for this is to make sure that everyone—tenants and landlords—knows exactly how much the rent is going to go up by. So, particularly for tenants, this is critical—that they can plan for future expenses. At the moment, tenants can go into a tenancy with absolutely no idea of how much their home is going to cost them in the next 6 months, in the next 12 months. That is simply unfeasible for families who are increasingly living on tighter and tighter budgets and struggling to be able to pay the basic bills. So, at least, with this law change, tenants are able to calculate future rent rises and to financially plan for those future rent rises.

The third change is that this bill will restrict rent increases to no more often than once every 12 months for periodic and fixed-term tenancies. Again, this is to enable tenants to have more certainty and security in the rents that they will have to pay so that they know they can financially plan and keep that tenancy. A great deal of the driver for homelessness is rents going up too fast, too quickly for tenants. They are moving from place to place as they try to find tenancy that they can afford; it is particularly critical, again, for low income families on tight budgets.

The fourth change is the bill will restore the minimum 90-day notice period required from landlords. The bill will remove the right of landlords to evict tenants under the 42-day notice rules. There is absolutely no justification for giving families who have built a home in that house, who have lived here sometimes for a year or 2 years or even more, who have roots in that house, to have only 42 days to have to leave it. I do not agree that just because a landlord says that he or she wants their family to live in that house that that is a justification for evicting a family who has used that house as their home, where their children have used that house as their home. That family who lives in the house, who pays their rent, is entitled to much better decency than this law allows. We must get rid of the 42-day eviction notice period.

I have also had significant feedback from tenants’ organisations about this. They say that Housing New Zealand is one of the worst when it comes to using even the 90-day notice provisions, actually, for evicting tenants for no good reason. So if this bill gets through to select committee tonight, we would want to look at means by which tenants can appeal the decision to use a 90-day notice to evict. These are people’s homes where they have their children; they need to have more stability and security than even this bill provides.

The fifth change that this bill will make is that it removes the obligation on tenants to have to pay leasing fees to rental agencies. Leasing fees are just a rort. There is no justification for why tenants should have to pay these companies any money. These companies are performing a service for the landlord. It is a significant increase in the cost of moving into a new home, particularly for those families who are struggling to be able to maintain tenancies. Leasing fees are a major barrier to families who are trying to get into a home. It is an unjust barrier. It is unfair. It needs to be gone. There is absolutely no justification for charging tenants those fees.

The sixth change that this bill would make is a fairly simple one, actually: to create a default lease term of 3 years for longer-term tenancies. This can, of course, be changed in the agreement. So it does not hold landlords or tenants to a 3-year term, but it does start to set the framework in law and in the culture of tenancies in this country to encourage longer-term tenancies and to allow for tenants to have greater control over the home that they build in the house that they rent.

I urge members to allow this bill to go to select committee. There will be things that others do not agree with, and I am open to making changes. But we cannot—when homeownership is at the lowest it has been in 60 years—allow tenants to continue to suffer the full burden of that. Under the existing law, they do; under my law there is a chance of fairness for ordinary tenant families and their children. Thank you.

ALFRED NGARO (National): I rise to take a call on this Residential Tenancies (Safe and Secure Rentals) Amendment Bill in its first reading. Can I just put on the record immediately from the start that National will not support this bill. I would like to spend the rest of my time explaining the reasons why. I do acknowledge the member, Metiria Turei, like all members who put themselves forward in a member’s bill with the right intent. I understand the intent of what she is wanting to do through this bill, which is around a safe and secure home, and ensuring that security of tenure is an important issue for lots of our families and lots of our communities as well. However, we cannot support some of that intent.

I have to say that we have already had the Residential Tenancies Amendment Bill that came through the Social Services Committee. There was quite an exhaustive process to be able to find a balance through that process to address some of those issues. One of those issues that I think that we have been talking about out in the communities, and that the member has been talking about, is the security of tenure, but also the types of homes—are they healthy? Are they well? Are they fit for purpose to ensure that our communities, our families in particular, and our whānau, have a place of lodgings that will allow them to be able to thrive and grow as well? I know the Greens have often talked about this, but the whole aspect of the HomeStart programme is about healthy homes and ensuring that we now have over 300,000 homes that are fit for purpose in regard to being healthier and warmer.

We have to talk about the things that we have done, because the member has talked about wanting to do more, but she does not often talk about some of the other things that currently exist as well. So those are elements in which, under this Government, we have ensured that our homes are healthy; that is right across the board. We know that at least 85 percent of our State houses are now warm, dry, and healthier. The very people that the member talks about in those vulnerable situations actually exist in those homes. This is some of the work that has already been done. The member talks about, I suppose, the areas of need and of concern—as a Government we have already been addressing those issues as well. So we believe that of the rhetoric around the great concerns, this Government has already been meeting those concerns.

Let us take the key element of the member’s speech when she talked about the rights of the tenant over the rights of the owners, of the landlords, in respect of their properties. This is a significant principle of issue that needs to be debated, because this is what we are talking about. The member is saying that the rights of the tenant in some cases should almost be—and in some cases override—the rights of the owner and of the landlord. Why should they not have the rights to be able to demand the first right of refusal? Why should they not have the right to demand the fact that they do not have to pay the letting fees and so forth? These things are pragmatic and practical and have existed for some time.

I can remember that through the submissions what was quite clear was that—and it is not often highlighted—almost 70 percent of the homeownership rentals that exist are actually mum and dad renters who are out there. There was a time when, as a country, we encouraged the LAQCs (loss attributing qualifying companies) as a way for people to save for their retirement in which they could have a rental property. In fact, in most cases it was one or two—right? Under this Government, as you will know, we have actually changed that legislative framework. We have removed some of the benefits that have existed under that. But that still exists. At least 70 percent of those who have rentals are actually mum and dad investors who do the best to ensure that their homes are cared for, that they are healthy, that they are warm, and that they best suit their tenants as best possible. We know that exists.

But we also know that there are landlords that do not provide these properties, as well. So I just want to go on record that the member is now challenging a key principle—not only of the law, but a key principle of being part of a democratic society—whereby homeowner landlords are challenged by this bill, which says that the rights of a tenant should in some cases supersede the rights of the owner. I want to make that clear to those who are listening, because that is part of this bill being proposed here tonight by this member, as well.

As the member said, there are six parts. Let us go through them. There are six points to this bill that the member is proposing giving the tenants the right of renewal when a fixed-term tenancy expires, and requiring landlords to state the criteria of future rent rises in tenancy agreements.

Let us take that first point and let us debate that. This currently exists already: section 60B of the current Residential Tenancies Act sets out that a tenant who wishes to exercise a right under the tenancy agreement to renew or extend the fixed term of tenancy must provide the landlord with written notice no later than 21 days before its expiry. As the member herself has said, where there is a good relationship, where the house has been looked after, where we know that there are 6-monthly, maybe a yearly, reviews—where the landlord will come and will check the facilities and make sure that everything is fine and there are no problems and will deal with any repairs and maintenance—there has not been an issue. There has not been a problem.

I am not sure about the dilemma—the member’s proposal wants to require, in fact, that now the tenant should have the right to dictate to and determine for the owner. That is the key principle that is being challenged here. I would like to remind other members of the House to remember that by supporting this bill, that is actually what we are doing: we are removing the rights. Security of tenure—we would all agree that is important. It happens by goodwill. It happens by caring for the property. It happens because there is a relationship of trust that exists.

Metiria Turei: No, it doesn’t.

ALFRED NGARO: That exists, and we know that is there. That is currently there. I just want to say that the member has turned around to try to use this as a way of challenging that.

Let us look at some of the other areas that the member is wanting to address in her bill’s six points. Ensuring tenants may no longer be charged a letting fee—she has called this an injustice. She has called it an injustice, when the reality is the administration cost—whether it be that people have a property manager or have a real estate agent that would do that for them—the letting fee is an administration fee that is used to administer that proportion of that rental agreement.

What is the harm that we are doing here? The member is now not only wanting to remove the rights of the homeowner but also wanting to put on them the extra burden of the letting fee—the administration costs. She laughs, but she probably knows—I do not know—she could be a rental owner herself. The reality is that we are putting the burden back again on the homeowner. I just have a feeling that there are a lot of New Zealanders out there who will not like hearing what this member is wanting to propose because it is a real challenge to the democratic right of any homeowner in this country. It is a really interesting debate that we are having. I will be interested to what the other members have to say, as well.

Let us also talk about the fourth point: creating a default minimum of 3 years for fixed-term leases, prohibiting rent increases more often than once every 12 months, and repealing the 42 days’ notice. It just gets a bit concerning when the member wants to propose this. The reality is that we have heard from, for instance, community housing providers who have taken on rental properties—who now, through the devolution of that stock into their care, know some of the challenges that they have when they have tenants in their properties who do not care for, and look after, them. This bill is weighted so far on to the tenant that you have to say it has removed any rights or any responsibilities that come to the landowner—I keep saying “landowner”; it is a homeowner, as well. Such a change would risk unintended consequences and, we believe, would create higher rents as well.

Section 13A(1)(m) of the Residential Tenancies Act, which this bill would repeal, states that the tenancy agreement must include “a statement (if applicable) that the tenant shall pay any fee or other charge for services rendered by any solicitor or letting agent relating to the grant … of the tenancy;”. Again, what I get concerned about is that this member is proposing—remember that we said that 70 percent of those rentals are actually owned by mum and dad investors, who may have one or maybe two properties but on average they have one; they are people who are wanting to use this for an ability to be able to care for themselves when they go into retirement—to take away their owners’ ability to be able to make their decisions around how they rent the property and whom they rent the property to, and is putting all the security on tenants.

Metiria Turei: Oh, Alfred.

ALFRED NGARO: They may moan and groan, but here is the reality that exists out there. You can talk to all the advocates around tenancy, but I guarantee you will not be talking to those who are the homeowners.

Metiria Turei: Yeah, I did.

ALFRED NGARO: I would be interested to hear that, because that is not what we are hearing on the ground. That is not the chatter we are hearing from all those out there who say that this bill is ridiculous.

Hon Ruth Dyson: Name one of them.

ALFRED NGARO: We have already this year, through the Residential Tenancies Amendment Act 2016, passed an ability to make a difference that we know is quite critically important. We talk about the member over there who is talking about that. What has made a difference? We are now ensuring that we are forcing the insulation of homes and the mandatory ability to have smoke alarms in there. There is a balance that exists to ensure that landlords take care to make sure that the home is warm and dry, it is healthier, and it is fit for purpose to meet the needs of their tenants. We look at this bill and, again, we hear the intent of the member, but I cannot applaud. I cannot support this bill and the issues that the member is trying to raise.

I have to say we have already had quite an exhaustive examination. Members on the opposite side know—they have been through it. We have heard the submissions. We have heard them talk about the fact that the burden of costs will eventually go back on to the tenant. That is the burden of costs. The member has not considered that. In fact, there is a fairy-tale world where everything should be well. But that member should know that landlords have talked about those tenants who have ransacked the house and they have had to pay the costs, and yet the member still wants to believe that everything is bright and rosy. We do not commend this bill. We do not support this bill to the House.

PHIL TWYFORD (Labour—Te Atatū): I like the member Alfred Ngaro on a personal level—I really do; I really do. But it is really sad to see him wheeled out yet again to be an apologist for the most appalling policy positions that the National Government takes. He is the community-friendly face that is wheeled out to justify and to run interference against any bill, any policy, that might benefit the lives of working people in this country. His sole political function in the National Government is to run interference against anything that might improve the lives of working people, that might give them more secure employment, better quality housing, higher wages, more rights at work—you name it. Whatever the issue, Alfred Ngaro will stand up and pretend to be concerned about the people whom he pretends to represent. I think that is really, really sad, if that is the political role that you play in this Parliament.

Renters are now half the population of New Zealand—half the population. In Auckland it is even more than that. They are stuck between a rock and a hard place, under this National Government’s negligent, reckless mismanagement of the housing crisis. They are facing Hobson’s choice. They cannot afford to buy their own properties. They are locked out of the real estate market. Is it any wonder, when today we read that in the last 3 years the number of homes that are valued at more than a million dollars has gone up fourfold, from 59,000 homes to 235,000? Is it any wonder that we have the lowest rate of homeownership in 65 years? That is why renters are locked out of the housing market. They do not have a show, under this National Government.

But what is the alternative? It is a case of “Can’t live with it; can’t live without it.” They face a miserable, insecure existence. They have very little security of tenure. Half the population of this country faces the prospect of being kicked out of their homes, with 90 days’ notice, for no reason at all. The average tenancy—the average tenancy—is between 6 and 12 months. How can you raise a family or live a decent life, with that level of insecurity? I cannot believe Alfred Ngaro can stand up in this House and, with a straight face, defend the existing laws and policies in this country. They are unworkable. They expose half the population of this country to a level of insecurity that is unconscionable. I applaud Metiria Turei for bringing this bill to this House.

New Zealand is an outlier. We give fewer rights to renters than any other country in the OECD. New Zealand renters have such little security of tenure. They do not have the rights to make the most basic alterations to their properties. They can be faced with repeated severe rent rises. And people are really, really hurting in the current rental market. In Auckland in the last 5 years the average rent went up by $5,000—$5,000 in 5 years. How can people survive?

Metiria Turei’s bill makes all the sense in the world. It is humane. It is decent. There are ideas in this bill—the idea of tenants having the first right of renewal when a tenancy expires; the idea of standard tenancy forms that will include a commitment to a certain formula for future rent rises; the idea of a default term of 3 years.

Alfred Ngaro would try to reduce this debate to one of property rights of landlords to the rights of tenants. That is not how the world works. There are dozens of jurisdictions around the world that give rights to renters, and that give them security of tenure. Has Alfred Ngaro spoken to the Property Investors Federation? He has not. He clearly has not, because if he had he would know it is very interested in this bill and it is very supportive. Alfred Ngaro is to the right of the Property Investors Federation. That is how out of touch that member is.

MATT DOOCEY (National—Waimakariri): I rise to speak to the Residential Tenancies (Safe and Secure Rentals) Amendment Bill. Just to follow on from my colleague Alfred Ngaro, it is a bill that we will not be supporting. Hearing some of the points of the Opposition, it is fair to say that I think they are making some very valid points about where we should be ending up around providing an element of safety and security for tenants. I suppose the argument is going to be about how we get to that point. Some of the clauses in this proposed bill, I fundamentally disagree with. Just to start off, in the explanatory note under the general policy statement, there is a very, sort of, pejorative claim that “there has been comparatively little done to address issues faced by renters.”

I think, as my colleague Alfred Ngaro mentioned, when you look at the residential tenancies amendment that we touched on this year, bringing in more insulation for rental properties, bringing in mandatory smoke alarms for rental properties—I have got six volunteer fire brigades in my electorate, all reporting back about the positive changes and impacts those amendments are already making in residential properties. Also, when you look at an area like Canterbury, I think it is a good lesson that can be rolled out to the rest of the country. Post-earthquake, there were large tracts of land freed up that increased supply, which equals demand.

What has happened in the rental market there is that rent has dropped considerably—about 10 percent in the last year. What that has allowed is for tenants to have the pick of some of the properties that they would like. I think where this is going to land, as a fundamental principle, is can we legislate to get to this end point? I would say that we cannot because basically what this should be built on is the contract between the landlord and the tenant. The premise that a landlord does not want to sustain a good tenant is incorrect. In fact, I think it is the complete opposite. Any good landlord knows the value of a good tenant, and many good landlords would keep a good tenant in, even at below market price, because they know there is no value in having an investment property that might sit vacant for 4, 6, or 8 weeks while they are bringing in new tenants. That allows for a good working relationship between good tenants and good landlords. I think that is what we should be focusing on.

The member in charge of the bill, Metiria Turei, also raises the issue around covering the cost of fees for leasing the property. I can appreciate some of that. I was in London last week for the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association Westminster trip with Jenny Salesa from Labour. In Philip Hammond’s first Autumn Statement, they have brought in a law outlawing leasing fees—exactly what this is prescribing. However, it is already shown that that is passed on to the price of the rent, so I do not agree with this. However, maybe something around transparency of fees, I believe, would be the right way forward for people who are choosing to rent a property to understand more about how these leasing fees are calculated, and whether they choose to take that property and pay those leasing fees.

I think that the clause about only allowing rent reviews every 12 months—I think that is slightly illogical. If the principle behind that is that it will reduce rent increases to only once every 12 months—say it was going to be that every 6 months the landlord would put it up $10; well, at 12 months they would just put it up $20. I do not think the frequency of rent review is really the issue here. It is about having the ability for the landlord and the tenant to work together to understand what a good contract is and what is right for them.

When we look at the issue around the 90-day notice, it is reduced for landlords who are selling their house, but bear in mind that tenants will know this. The house will be advertised and, at the end of the day, if the landlord needs to sell their house, they need to sell their house. That is why I do not support this bill. Thank you.

PITA PARAONE (NZ First): Tēnā koe, Mr Assistant Speaker. I am taking a call for New Zealand First on behalf of our spokesperson on this matter, Denis O’Rourke. It is surprising that the Government itself has not done a lot more to make tenancies more secure, and to try to limit the rate of rent increases. It is fundamental to improving the ability of people in this country to find a home. If they cannot actually afford to buy one—and more and more people will never be able to afford one, as a result of this Government’s policies—you will have to be able to afford to rent one. The quality of rentals becomes more important if it has to be a lifetime issue. Rents must be affordable, rather than simply market-based.

My colleague read a book by Shamubeel Eaqub, called Generation Rent, and it describes the differences between New Zealand’s rental market and legislation, and those of other countries with much better-developed rental markets, and much better legislation. It identifies that there are three main differences. One is fair rents. The Government needs to regulate rents, especially where landlords have been profiteering, and especially in Auckland, because of the severe housing crisis there. There, the market has failed, rents have exploded, people were hurt, they are living in cars, and the Government has done little more than make some inadequate provisions for emergency housing.

Secondly, New Zealand does not have secure tenancies, in comparison with what you see in other countries. New Zealand’s tenancies tend to be short term, and tenants have very little protection against eviction. It is too easy to get rid of tenants in this country so that they do not have another home to go to. More long-term tenancies are going to be needed because people will not be able to afford to buy their own home. The Government needs to do a lot more to encourage that, but, again, nothing is being done.

Thirdly, there is the question of the quality of rental properties. Much more must be done to improve the quality of rental properties, so that people have a genuine alternative to owning their own homes, and we are not seeing that. We are not seeing improvements in heating standards. We are also not seeing improvements in weatherproofing. Damp homes and draughty homes are killers, leading to a range of health issues, which can be avoided by having simple and basic requirements for leakproofing, adequate ventilation, and draught-proofing. The purpose and the aim of this bill is to strengthen tenants’ rights and promote secure long-term tenancies. This, in itself, is not enough, but it is the right thing to do. New Zealand First will support the bill to select committee.

Looking through the main provisions, the removal of tenants’ responsibilities for letting fees, etc.—the principal Act provides that every tenancy agreement shall show minimum information. Then there are the statements in tenancy agreements. The bill provides that when the tenancy terminates, the agreement must give the existing tenant the right to renew the tenancy. We also regard this as being appropriate. It is a way in which longer-term and more secure tenancies can be supported. But probably the most important provision in the agreement that the bill requires is a statement of the criteria that the landlord must use to calculate any future rent increase. The bill also says that the rent may be increased, provided that it shall not be increased within 180 days after the date on which the last increase took effect.

Lastly, there is the issue of termination by notice. The principal Act sets out the various periods of notice to be given by a landlord to tenants in order to end a tenancy. Overall, New Zealand First is happy to see the bill go to select committee, and to hear what submitters have to say on this bill. Kia ora.

JONO NAYLOR (National): I have got to say that, actually, where Metiria Turei, perhaps, has got some things right is in actually trying to look out for the rights of other people. I have got no issue at all when people are looking out for the rights of others, and making sure that people get a fair go. However, I have got to say that this bill is not the right way to go about it. We always want people to have a fair go. We want to recognise that people have rights, but I will tell you something that is not talked about enough around New Zealand, and that is actually about responsibilities.

I want to start my contribution by reading an excerpt from an email that I received in the last week or so. This is from a local landlord who said: “We want you to view a house”—I haven’t had a chance to see the house—“left for the landlords to repair and clean up. The tenants have finally left the house, owing 7 weeks’ rent. We need to repair damaged kitchen cabinets, oven, dishwasher, light fittings, handrails, broken windows, carpets and sailcloth. We need to dispose of many bags of rubbish and boxes of clothing left lying on the deck and out on the lawn. Over the last 3 months we’ve tried to get the tenants out of our house, but as landlords we have no power, because of the legal requirements under the Residential Tenancies Act.”

There are two sides to a coin, and the particular things that this bill is talking about actually go no way to help any of the people who are being talked about. We talk, for a start, about the default setting being 3 years for an agreement. Most landlords I know would love to sign somebody up for 3 years. That would be great. That would give them 3 years’ certainty of rent. The people I have spoken to usually have trouble finding tenants who want to sign up for 3 years.

But the default does not need to be there at all because there is provision already for a landlord and a tenant, by mutual agreement, to set a term, either as a periodic term, or for 12 months, or for 18 months, or for 2 years, or for 3 years, or for 10 years if they want to. That is the benefit of a default. Therefore, it sounds nice, it sounds rosy, but it does not deliver anything in particular.

There is talk in this bill of trying to abolish letting fees.

Hon Member: What’s wrong with that?

JONO NAYLOR: You could do that. There is nothing wrong with it, necessarily, per se, except that of course a landlord is going to recoup the cost through the rent anyway. Landlords probably will not pay for the letting costs, and so people will have choices around that. It is only then going to hide the cost of the letting fees inside the rent, and it will achieve nothing other than, of course, for the promoters of this bill to make themselves feel good, in that they can look like they have saved people some money, when they are still going to pay it anyway, through their rent.

Landlords are generally good people. There are some rogue landlords out there, and we do need to make sure that there are protections in place for tenants. But we cannot just put all of the expectations on landlords to carry all of the risk all of the time. From time to time somebody will need to sell their property. If we are going to do away with the 42 days’ notice—at the point of sale, I might add. It is only at the point that the sale goes unconditional that somebody is going to get 42 days’ notice. It is ample time. It is an appropriate time. Generally, landlords are not buying and selling all of the time.

Mr Twyford talked about the inappropriateness or the insecurity that people have, because of the 90-day warning that somebody can give, that they have it hanging over their head that they may be booted out of their house at any time. The landlords I speak to do not want high turnover in their rental properties. They want good tenants who will pay their rent, good tenants who will look after the property like it is their own, and if you are looking after a property, if you are paying your rent, the chances of your landlord booting you out for no good reason, on a 90-day notice, are very, very low.

Again, as I say, I applaud attempts by people to make people’s lives better. But, as I said, this bill will not do that. This bill is misguided. This bill will not deliver any benefits to New Zealand, and therefore I cannot support it.

POTO WILLIAMS (Labour—Christchurch East): Firstly, I want to commend the member Metiria Turei for such an awesome bill. It is long overdue, and I thank her for bringing it to the House.

I would not have thought that twice in one evening I would be speaking about housing and how it impacts the people in my electorate of Christchurch East. In my earlier contribution I talked about how, in the last 6 weeks, 28 people have come to my office—28 people have come to my office—because they are finding it difficult to find bonds and to pay rent. They are coming into an electorate office. My heart goes out to these people because many of them have children, and they are scared and they are stressed. That is the answer to that member Jono Naylor’s speech that he just made, about how there are rogue tenants and they do terrible things to houses. There are dozens and dozens—thousands—of people out there who are scared that any day they are going to lose the roof over their head.

The Christchurch experience is a cautionary tale that we must all listen to, because we had the experience of rack-renters for years. When the insurance money washed into Christchurch for people to rebuild and repair their homes, there was money for people to go out and rent properties, and the landlords took advantage of that. There were people who were paying $1,000 a week for a substandard house. When there is an opportunity to make money, unfortunately, there are some people who will do that, and they will exploit other people to do it.

This bill attempts to put a stop to that. All it wants to do is bring fairness back into the housing market. Not only did we have the experience of rack-renters—not for 1 year, not for 2 years, but for several years—but we had, and we continue to have, the condition of “as-is, where-is” homes. People actually took their money, they left their damaged homes, they rented them out, and they went and bought somewhere nice and dry and warm, somewhere else. They left these properties unrepaired, or not repaired to a fit standard. We have got thousands of them across Christchurch. We have got many of them in my electorate. People have not repaired their homes, and they are making money. They are exploiting people.

I am incensed that the National Government members can stand there and defend these practices. Sure, we have got some great landlords in this country, but I can tell you that we have many, many landlords who are just in it to exploit, to make money, and, actually, to cause misery to people. The whole idea of letting fees—we have got people who turn over their leases every 6 months, and they charge hundreds of dollars just to renew a lease. That is exploitation, and it should not happen. I am really angry about this—I am really angry.

I just want to challenge Alfred Ngaro and his view—his take—about this. Mr Ngaro, I want to say something to you. I have Cook Islands people from Auckland getting in touch with me in Christchurch, to try to help them find rentals. I have Cook Islands people trying to find rentals in Auckland. They are ringing me in Christchurch.

Alfred Ngaro: Why are you using the Cook Islands thing?

POTO WILLIAMS: Because they cannot afford to find rentals in Auckland. They are facing eviction. They have huge costs.

Alfred Ngaro: What’s your point, Poto?

POTO WILLIAMS: My point, Mr Ngaro, is that Cook Islanders have the lowest homeownership rates of any Pacific Islanders—the lowest homeownership rates. They are our people. They are our people, Mr Ngaro, and that is a shame. You should be ashamed of supporting a Government that does not promote homeownership for our people. Homeownership is the only way that we are going to be able to put down roots and develop a strong community, not being transient—

Alfred Ngaro: What have you done for our people?

POTO WILLIAMS: What have you done for our people? Stand up. Stand up right now, Mr Ngaro, and tell me what you have done for the Cook Islands people in this country.

Alfred Ngaro: You stand up.

POTO WILLIAMS: You stand up and tell me that, Mr Ngaro, because I know—

Alfred Ngaro: You’re ashamed to say that.

POTO WILLIAMS: Excuse me. [Interruption]

DAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): If nobody is seeking a point of order—oh, someone is.

Mr SPEAKER: Order! I now have a point of order.

Metiria Turei: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I just want to clarify whether or not you gave the call to Mr Seymour because Poto Williams’ time had finished or because of the errant point of order that was called out but not stood for.

Mr SPEAKER: I did hear someone call for a point of order, but nobody stood to progress the point of order. At that stage Poto Williams, who was close to her time being completed, resumed her seat. At that stage Mr Seymour sought a call, and I have given the call to him.

Kris Faafoi: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. My understanding of the situation is that Poto Williams was still on her feet and still speaking, and a member called “point of order” and was not intending to take a point of order, which caused Poto Williams to sit down, interrupting her speech. If he has got a genuine point of order, he can stand up and take one, but he used that tactic to try to stop—

Mr SPEAKER: Order! The member is now—as I said, I heard “point of order” called, I looked for whether a point of order was going to be taken by anybody—it was not. I noted that Poto Williams resumed her seat—and the member would perhaps not have seen, because Poto Williams is directly behind Mr Faafoi, and, anyway, the time was very close to expiring. I have now called Mr Seymour.

Kris Faafoi: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker.

Mr SPEAKER: Can I just, before I address this matter, make sure the member understands that I have ruled on this matter. If it is a fresh point of order, I am delighted to hear it, but if in any way it is an attempt to relitigate—

Kris Faafoi: I understand your ruling. My concern is that a point of order was called, regardless of whether it was at the end of Poto Williams’ time, and it was not a genuine call for a point of order.

Mr SPEAKER: I accept that a point of order was indicated from someone within the Chamber. No one then sought to progress a point of order. As I have already told the member, I think twice now, at that stage Poto Williams’ time had expired. She resumed her seat. Mr Seymour took the call, and I have given the call to Mr Seymour. I hope that is clear to Mr Faafoi.

DAVID SEYMOUR: I rise on behalf of the ACT Party in opposition to the Residential Tenancies (Safe and Secure Rentals) Amendment Bill. But I have to say I have considerable sympathy for the intentions of the member who brought the bill, Metiria Turei, and the problem that she is attacking, because the fact of the matter is that we have people in New Zealand who are finding themselves tenants in a landlord’s market. People are trying to rent property in a market place where there is just not enough property to rent, and that leads to increasing rents and insufficient choice of stock for those tenants to rent. It changes the bargaining power between landlords and tenants in such a way that tenants do not have the kind of security of tenure that they would like to have.

If you delve a little bit deeper into why that might be, the fact of the matter is that there is a shortage of housing in New Zealand, and it is not difficult to understand why that is. It is extraordinary, and well-rehearsed in this House, that New Zealand still has not beaten the 1974 record of 39,000 residential dwelling consents. There were actually more homes consented in 1974, when the population of New Zealand was 3 million, than in any year since. In the 1970s, New Zealanders produced 13 new dwellings for every thousand in the population; today, only six or seven are produced. If the output of dwellings halves, then do not be surprised if there is a shortage of housing in which people may live, and do not be surprised if the competition for quality dwellings becomes very intense and people who have lower incomes find themselves squeezed out. That is the reality, and I have got a lot of sympathy for the member trying to address it.

The difficulty is that good policies should be judged not by their intentions—and Metiria Turei always professes good intentions—but actually by their outcomes, and just about every policy she brings to the House would have catastrophic outcomes if the Green Party was ever in any kind of political power. The fact of the matter is that you actually could do any of the things this bill proposes already. There is nothing to stop a landlord and a tenant signing a contract that says there will be no rent increases more frequently than every 12 months and that the calculation of that rent increase will be on some pre-agreed formula. There is nothing to stop tenants and landlords contracting out of the 42-day allowance for vacation of a house if that is what they want to do. There is nothing, in the Residential Tenancies Act or elsewhere, to stop landlords absorbing any finder’s fees into the rent that they pay going forward. This bill does not allow anyone to do anything that they could not already do if they wanted to. The only way that you are going to get those sorts of provisions is to actually build more homes so that there are more landlords looking for tenants than tenants looking for landlords and it becomes a tenant’s market.

If this bill was to pass and those restrictions were to become law, then, I guarantee you, all of the new costs, all of the new compliance, and all of the new bureaucracy will actually be passed on from landlords to tenants. The cost of presenting a formula for calculating rent, and all the litigation around that, the cost of finder’s fees—all of the costs created and passed on to landlords will be passed on to tenants, and you just have to ask yourself: who else but tenants are landlords going to pass new costs on to?

So the Green Party produces a bill that fails to address the real problem—which is a real problem in New Zealand—which is a shortage of housing and a low output of new homes under our current regulatory and infrastructure funding policies, and then produces a policy that does not allow anything new to happen but forces tenants and landlords to do things that they would not otherwise choose to do, creating additional expense, which will be passed on to tenants, hurting precisely the people the Green Party sought to help. What a shame. Thank you.

KRIS FAAFOI (Labour—Mana): I grew up in a State house. It is something that I am very proud of, and the fact that a number of Labour Governments sought to ensure that a family like mine could have an affordable home is something that I want to make sure I protect as a right for low-income Kiwi families. That is one of the fundamental reasons why I am here. The beauty of having that State home, for me and my family, was having an anchor in our community. It meant we were not moving around from school to school, and it meant we got to know the neighbours well. We ended up becoming very close friends with neighbours, and we had a sense of community. These kinds of things allegedly mean nothing to the National Government because not only is it speaking against security of tenure with private rentals, we have seen its actions with State homes.

That is why I commend this piece of legislation because it looks to give some of those simple things to families who are looking to rent homes. Whether the Government likes it or not, there are a hell of a lot more people facing the reality of being lifetime renters. They cannot get themselves on the property ladder because house prices have gone up so much, or it is so difficult for them to get a deposit that they face never being able to buy a home. I met someone in my community last week who admitted to me that although he and his wife were trying as hard as they could—and I do not want to say too much because I do not want to identify him, because I visited him last week—they had given up to the fact that they were going to be lifetime renters.

The National Government has spent tonight painting a picture of tenants as the worst possible kind of person that you could have: the people who leave rubbish behind and do not fulfil their obligations as good tenants. But there are a hell of a lot of people out there who are good tenants. There are a hell of a lot more people, and that will grow. Unfortunately, as long as this Government keeps the policy settings as they are, good hard-working New Zealanders face the reality that they cannot buy a home. So, in that respect, more and more people need some protection. For that reason, this is a great piece of legislation, to make sure there is some security of tenure for those people who feel like perhaps—and yes, most landlords are good, but despite what their residential tenancy agreement says, if a year after they get into it the market is so flooded with people wanting to get into homes, they could find themselves in a situation where the landlord says: “Actually, out you get. I’ve got somebody else that can go in that home.” That is what we need to make sure does not happen. It has to be enshrined in legislation to give some of those basic protections to tenants who are looking to sign up for a tenancy.

Again, I go back to my first point: a home is an anchor for a family. If they are not moving from community to community, their kids are going to the same school. They are in the same class, following their mates. They have got a local doctor. They have got a local sports club. They are feeling part of the community. Maybe their parents work in that community. That is the kind of thing that is the absolute building block of a good New Zealand family. If you do not have that—if you are moving around; if your child is going from class to class, school to school, which could happen if you do not have security of tenure, then it is going to be harder for that child. It is going to be harder for that family to make, what I think, is a good start out in life.

I think it is time for this Government to start looking after people who are struggling to make ends meet. It is not always people at the bottom of the heap, on the lowest income; it is people on good incomes who are struggling to get a deposit together and, therefore, cannot buy a house. Like the person whom I met last week, who was saying “Hey, we’re on good incomes, but we’ve got family commitments to make and we can’t rub a deposit together.” So how about the Government thinks about those people, and, unfortunately, there are more of them who need some protection to make sure that their families can be anchors in their communities so their families can have the start in life that I got and, hopefully, be successful. Why can the Government not do that?

ANDREW BAYLY (National—Hunua): It is a pleasure to be talking on the Residential Tenancies (Safe and Secure Rentals) Amendment Bill. Gee, we have listened to a bit of drivel tonight. Comments like “National’s not interested in seeing people living in homes.”, “National doesn’t recognise that a home is an anchor for a family.”—all that tripe. This Government has done a lot around trying to get people into homes—into their own homes. That is what we have been doing. That is what National is about. All these allegations that we are not interested and we are not protecting tenants are just drivel.

The worst thing about this bill—I think the member who has prepared this bill simply has not done their homework. I just want to touch on a couple of points. The first thing is the “right of renewal”. I note the term “right of renewal”, which means that the existing tenant will have the first right of renewal once the fixed term expires. This is because—in the words of the legislation—that will reward good tenants and encourage good relationships. Well, if there are good relationships and there are good tenants and good landlords, then that will automatically happen. The thing I find most intriguing is that if you refer to section 60B of the existing Act, it already provides for that. It provides that there must be notice given by the tenant. If the tenant gives it within 21 working days, then there is a roll-over of the provisions. So the provisions are already in the Act.

The second thing is requiring landlords to state the criteria of future rent rises. I suggest that the member who proposed this bill has probably never entered into a commercial relationship, in terms of rental of industrial or commercial property, because commercial rental agreements are always of this nature. They always cover this issue, and they are the most contentious part of any tenancy agreement. They normally provide for things like CPI adjustment or market-based rentals. Even if you wrote “market-based rentals” it would not make any difference; they would still be contentious when they were required to have a rental review. I also note that under section 25 of the existing Act it gives the Tenancy Tribunal the right to reduce rents if they are excessive.

The third one, about ensuring that tenants may no longer be charged letting fees—well, sorry, section 13A of the existing Act already states that the landlord must state whether tenants are going to pay any of these fees. It has already covered it.

The fourth one: create a minimum period of 3 years for a fixed-term rental. People want flexibility. I rent a property; I want flexibility. You could see the perverse case where it would be in the interests of tenants not to actually enter, in specified cases. So they could keep their options open, knowing that the minimum would be 3 years, but that may not necessarily be in the best interests of the landlord. And where there are poor tenants, landlords do need to have their appropriate rights to look after and uphold their property.

The bill also talks about prohibiting rent rises more than once every 12 months. This is a difficult one, this one, given the type of tenancy we are talking about here; I am not so sure about that. The repeal of the 42-day notice—I think the member does not understand the current provisions, because the current Act requires that 42 days’ notice can apply only after an unconditional offer has been agreed and the purchaser requires vacant possession. There are two tests to it, so that puts a much longer period on that.

I wish this bill had actually focused on more important things, such as those relating to methamphetamine in rental properties. I think this is a very important part that could have been in this bill, and, unfortunately, it has not initially—[Interruption]

Mr SPEAKER: Order!

ANDREW BAYLY: It could be included in this bill. I would like to see those provisions actually covered, because those are the types of things that would protect our tenants, particularly around where landlords are required to tell tenants if they are aware of methamphetamine contamination, and to make sure that they do not allow people to live in contaminated premises. So I cannot support this bill. I think most of these provisions are already covered in the Act.

METIRIA TUREI (Co-Leader—Green): New Zealand, take note: if you want decent, fair tenancy laws in this country, you must change the Government in 2017. There is no doubt that the only way that thousands of New Zealand families—450,000 households in this country—will get a fair deal for their rental agreements, their tenancies, is if you change the Government. These National members have proven, themselves, tonight that they think that a home for New Zealand families—the right to a home, for New Zealand families—is “tripe”. That is what they have said tonight: that the right to a home, for New Zealand families who have to rent, is “tripe”. This is what National believes. It is a shocking admission from the National Government tonight that it does not believe that families who rent are entitled to a decent home. National thinks it is fine for families who rent, who are struggling every day to pay the rent and the power bills, and to put food on the table, to have fewer rights, so that some wealthy people can get away with having all the power. That is what the National Government has told New Zealand tonight. New Zealand: if you want fair tenancy laws, we must change the Government in 2017.

In the few minutes that I have left I do want to say some thankyous. First of all, of course, to my Labour colleagues, my New Zealand First colleagues, and my Māori Party colleagues, who have not spoken tonight, who—as I understand it—will be supporting this legislation. It is very clear that this is the side of the House that believes that New Zealand families—all New Zealand families—deserve a fair go with their housing, with their right to build a home.

I also want to thank Andrew King and Terry le Grove from the New Zealand Property Investors Federation. I have had numerous meetings with them over the last 6 months to talk about the provisions of this bill, to work through the issues that they have as landlords. We have built a really good relationship over this last little period of time. We have been sharing information about what tenants need, what landlords need, and what is happening on the ground. I have really appreciated their input and their support for the provisions in this bill. They were committed to this bill going to a select committee. They had no problem with that, because it gave them also a chance to talk about the kinds of issues that landlords face in New Zealand.

Landlords have issues too—good landlords have issues too, which we could have resolved. But the National Government has stopped that conversation from happening. National has stopped landlords from being able to come to the select committee and talk to us about the kinds of issues that they are dealing with. Like the issue of methamphetamine—I offered the member Andrew Bayly the opportunity to bring that issue to this bill, in the select committee. Like the issue with the Osaki case, which has raised serious concerns for landlords. I detected that we needed to talk about that as well, alongside improving the rights of tenants to be able to make the house that they pay huge amounts of money for—

Marama Davidson: Huge.

METIRIA TUREI: —huge amounts of money for—to make that house their home. Why is it that National has decided that only some families are entitled to a home? Why is it that National has said that only a select few families are entitled to build a home in their communities, when we know that a stable home means stable employment for the grownups in that household; when we know that a stable home means stable education for the children in those households; and when we know that a stable home means good health and well-being for all of the people in that household? Why is it that National says that that is only the entitlement of the wealthy few? Because that is what National has said tonight.

New Zealand, I urge you. We have families who are in dire crisis in housing. There are thousands who are homeless and moving from place to place, desperately trying to find a decent place to live that they can afford, where they can put down some roots and take care of their children. The Green Party has put forward a bill, which is supported by Labour, by New Zealand First, and by the Māori Party, that would help deliver that stable housing for you. The block, the barrier, the hammer that has stopped that from happening has been the National Party. We cannot continue to allow National to lock our families out from the decent, fair treatment that they deserve. So, New Zealand, I am asking you, when you get the opportunity next year, in 2017, vote to change the Government. Thank you.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the Residential Tenancies (Safe and Secure Rentals) Amendment Bill be now read a first time.

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.

Bills

Private International Law (Choice of Law in Tort) Bill

First Reading

DAVID BENNETT (National—Hamilton East): I move, That the Private International Law (Choice of Law in Tort) Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Justice and Electoral Committee to consider the bill.

It is great to see you here, Mr Speaker, for this very important piece of legislation. I know that you have made time in your busy schedule to be here, and we respect that you have come along to be part of this bill.

Many members of this House will take some time to digest this bill and to look at the complexities of it, but those members who do take that time will actually enjoy understanding more about this bill and what it adds to the New Zealand legal system. I would like to pay tribute, initially, to Minister Chris Finlayson, who has had an important role in making this bill come through the House. I also want to pay tribute to Chapman Tripp as well, which has written an excellent article on this bill. If anybody wishes to get a very brief summary that is easy to understand, that is probably your best avenue at this time, apart from, of course, the speeches here tonight, which may be brief, by some members of the House, but should be understandable as well to those who are listening.

Basically, this bill clarifies a very important part of tort law. The law of tort is one of the most exciting areas of law. I remember when I studied it at university, at law school at Victoria University here, I enjoyed the law of tort as one of my favourite subjects. We actually had a French professor, who taught us the French law of tort, which was very interesting as well. One of the issues in tort law—

Kris Faafoi: What did you learn?

DAVID BENNETT: I learnt a lot. The law of tort covers many areas, from defamation to other forms of loss that may be incurred. It is a very important part of our legal system and something that has a very strong common law basis.

There are some issues, though, in the law of tort. One of those issues is which jurisdiction would actually apply to a situation that may arise. If there is a certain set of facts that has multiple jurisdictions involved, then the question is which jurisdiction would actually apply. This bill seeks to clarify this in a way that will provide a mechanism so that the New Zealand legal system will be up to date with other common law legal systems that have made similar changes but also will give some clarity to those in this field of practice.

The bill, essentially, does a couple of things, and the first is to abolish a rule called the double actionability rule.

Paul Foster-Bell: What rule?

DAVID BENNETT: The double actionability rule. It is very old, in the sense that it comes from our common law heritage in the UK. Basically, under that rule, when a tort claim is brought in New Zealand for an action committed in another jurisdiction, the New Zealand court can hear the claim only if the tort is actionable in both jurisdictions, and then it must apply the New Zealand law, unless the other country has the more significant relationship with the occurrence and the parties. That is clause 6 of the bill. If members go to clause 6, they will see “Abolition of certain common law rules”. Well, that is abolishing that double actionability rule.

We have abolished that rule, so now, in clause 7, we create the general rule, which will be the rule that should apply in those circumstances. Basically, clause 7(1) establishes the place-of-wrong rule, in which “the applicable law is the law of the jurisdiction in which the events constituting the tort in question occur.” Under clause 7(1): “The general rule is that the applicable law is the law of the jurisdiction in which the events constituting the tort in question occur.” That is sensible and reflects what people would naturally expect.

Clause 7(2) provides certain rules to determine where a tort can be said to have occurred when the events occurred in more than one jurisdiction. I will go through some examples of how that could actually happen, but, basically, the rule in clause 7(2) says that “Where elements for those events occur in different jurisdictions, the applicable law under the general rule is taken as being—(a) for a cause of action in respect of damage to property,”—so this is in regard to property damage—“the law of the jurisdiction where the property was when it was damaged;”. The second part of that is: “(b) in any other case, the law of the jurisdiction in which the most significant element or elements of those events occurred.” Basically, the applicable rule where there are different jurisdictions has two limbs to the test. One is in respect to damaged property and the other is for other cases, and the rule gives some clarity around which jurisdiction would apply in the case.

So, first of all, we have started off with abolishing that common law rule, and then we have created the new general rule. That has two tests, and the second test has two limbs to it, one being around damages to property and the other one being for other cases.

Now we come to the next part of the legislation, which provides an exemption to the place-of-wrong rule, allowing a court to apply the law of another jurisdiction where it is substantially more appropriate to do so. Effectively, that gives the court the ability to look at those circumstances that we have got in the general rule and determine that another jurisdiction may be more appropriate in that case.

That exemption is in clause 8, and if we go to clause 8(1) it has, basically, got two factors there. The first is “(a) the significance of the factors that connect a tort with the jurisdiction whose law would be the applicable law under the general rule;”, and the second part is “(b) the significance of any factors connecting the tort with another jurisdiction—”. Once both are satisfied, if it is “substantially more appropriate for the applicable law for determining the issues arising in the case, or any of those issues, to be the law of the other jurisdiction, the general rule is displaced …”. This is because as you go back to the general rule, we say that it is the jurisdiction in which the events occur, and so it can be displaced under that exemption and “the applicable law for determining those issues or that issue … is the law of that other jurisdiction.” Basically, we have got the ability now to displace that first general rule in circumstances where clause 8 is met.

There are four really big elements to this legislation. The first is to abolish the common law rule; the second is to establish the place of wrong, which is the jurisdiction where it occurs; the third is to provide rules around when it can be said to have occurred; and the fourth is to give an exemption from the general rule in certain circumstances. That provides a lot of clarity in the New Zealand law, and it is something that you have seen happen in recent years in Australia, Canada, and England, where they have brought into effect this place-of-wrong rule.

For those members who wish to delve a little bit further into this area of law, I would suggest they have a look at a couple of cases. There is some really interesting law around this area. One case is the Red Sea Insurance Co. case. That is a case that, basically, shows where in one jurisdiction there may not have been the ability to have the satisfaction of a tortious result, and so the parties were looking at the area of jurisdiction because in one area where the actual event or the parties may have been based, they did not have that support. The other case that is really good to look at is Boys v Chaplin. That also had a similar circumstance, in the sense that something had happened in Malta, which did not have this approach.

This legislation clarifies the law in this area. It is a great piece of legislation. It is something that I think the legal fraternity will find of much benefit, and it is our pleasure to propose it to this House.

Hon DAVID PARKER (Labour): Labour is supporting this bill at its first reading and referral to select committee. I have got to say that the area of conflict of laws between different jurisdictions is an area where I feel more ignorant than virtually any other area of law, so I hope I do not make a fool of myself in this contribution. If I do, I am sure that Mr Finlayson, the Attorney-General, will correct me in my errors. Can I thank David Bennett, the member who brought this bill to the House, for his contribution. I thought that was helpful.

I have got a number of questions that the Attorney-General might be able to answer if he is going to take a call. The first is that this applies for the purposes of private international law. One of my preliminary questions—and it might seem pretty obvious, but it is not to me—is whether that means international law to do with private dealings as opposed to public law involving States. Is that what it means? The Attorney-General nods. My alternative proposition was that it was somehow to do with private contractual relationships or disputes arising that might have a tortious element where none the less there is some underlying private agreement that in the event of a dispute, that dispute is resolved in a particular jurisdiction that is nominated in an arbitration agreement, or something like that. I suspect it is the former—that it is private rather than as between States—but it is one of the things the Attorney-General might clarify and will be checked at the select committee.

The second question I have is this. Where there is a choice of forum, I am less than perfect in my knowledge as to how it is that in New Zealand someone can sue in respect of a tortious action causing loss that arose in another country. I would have thought that normally the action would actually have to be brought in that other country rather than in New Zealand, and that if you were to issue proceedings in New Zealand, no matter which law you applied, I would have thought that the other country where the tort applied would not enforce the judgment because it would say: “Hey, that should have been determined in our courts rather than yours.” So perhaps the Attorney-General can elucidate that issue as well.

In terms of the cases that the member David Bennett referred to, I have not read either. Thank you for bringing them to our attention. You could even shoot me a copy, because I would be quite interested to read them so that I understand this area of law a bit better, because if this bill is going to proceed into law after subsequent readings, I would hope that Parliament has a better level of understanding than I have got at first reading, and those cases may assist.

I do take cognisance of the article that the member referred to that Chapman Tripp prepared. I have read that. It is very brief and it does not really take me much further into the underlying principles, although I do take solace from the fact that, as the member David Bennett said, similar changes have already been made in Australia, Canada, and England, and I presume that the drafting of this particular bill is based on those provisions that are in that amending legislation in Australia, Canada, and England. I would expect that the provisions in each of those amending Acts in Australia, Canada, and England are similar, because I would have thought that the same principles apply in those Commonwealth jurisdictions as apply in New Zealand, and if they have been trying to cure an ambiguity in their law, then presumably they have got to—I would hope that they have got to—the same place as is being proposed here. If they have not, then we are going to have to look very carefully as to whether we have got it right or wrong, if we are different from them.

I do not propose to expose my ignorance by pretending to properly understand the complexity of the existing double actionability rule. I have never studied it. I understand that the basic principle is that presently New Zealand can hear the claim only if the tort is actionable in both jurisdictions and that that is being changed in the way that David Bennett has described, which is set out in clause 7 of the bill. I understand that in deciding which law to apply in the dispute that is being determined in the New Zealand law, if it is a tort in respect of a cause of action for the damage of property, then the laws to be applied by the New Zealand court are the laws of the jurisdiction where the property was damaged. I understand that; I just do not understand how it comes to be litigated in the New Zealand courts. I also understand the logic that if it is another cause of action, then it is the law of the jurisdiction in which the most significant element or elements of those events occurred.

I can understand the possibility that there are torts that cross jurisdictions and, therefore, part of the cause of action may arise in one country and part may arise in another country. My analysis of that might be wrong. There might be two separate torts—one in each country. I understand that with the displacement rule we are again conferring upon the court a discretion to say that the general rule, which has been changed—so the old general rule is being repealed and we are putting in place a new general rule, which I have described—can be displaced if in all the circumstances the court thinks that it is substantially more appropriate for the applicable law for determining the issues to be the law of the other jurisdiction, notwithstanding that the general law rule that is set out in clause 7 would have had a different effect.

I would be interested to understand from the Attorney-General, who I think may have had a hand in this bill—as Mr Bennett alluded to—why in practice this is necessary, and I ask for him to give us some examples of how this would have either changed outcomes or made the rights of people who have suffered, or are alleged to have suffered, a tort. I would like him to explain why this is necessary.

Hon CHRISTOPHER FINLAYSON (Attorney-General): I am really pleased to take a call on this bill, because it is actually a practically important bill. Let me say immediately, we are not talking about anything to do with public international law—the sorts of disputes that often occur between States as to boundaries and so on—that needs to be determined in the International Court of Justice. No, we are talking about private international law, or what was often called, when Mr Denis O’Rourke and I were at university, the conflict of laws—what happens when legal systems collide.

A couple may have been married in England, they come back to New Zealand, and they seek to divorce, or maybe they got married in Saudi Arabia and they come back and seek a divorce in New Zealand. Is it possible to seek a divorce in New Zealand? What is the law that would govern the determination of that particular relationship? So they are the sorts of issues that arise in the conflict of laws. Custody disputes where children are taken out of the jurisdiction, and family disputes are very common in the conflict of laws. I recall when I first studied the subject there were about eight students in the class, but now, because of growing interactions between States and the frequency of these sorts of problems, more and more students are studying this area and it is very important. This is a hugely significant and practical question, therefore. It is not some airy-fairy, academic subject, and, as Mr David Bennett said in his excellent speech, it is something that has engaged a number of foreign jurisdictions, including Canada and, more recently, Australia.

Basically, when there is a clash between legal systems, if there is litigation with a foreign component, two questions arise. The first question is: where should the case be litigated? Take my example of a cause of action that may have arisen partly in New Zealand and partly in Saudi Arabia. The issue would be, well, should the case be determined in Saudi Arabia or should it be heard in New Zealand? If it is heard in New Zealand, the New Zealand party will be very much happier than if it is heard in Saudi Arabia, because the New Zealand party will understand the court system and the way in which you go about preparing a case in New Zealand in those sorts of matters. So that is what is called the forum conveniens to determine the dispute.

The second issue that arises is: what is the law to be applied in those circumstances? Take my hypothetical—is it going to be the law of Saudi Arabia or the law of New Zealand? If it is litigated in New Zealand but the law is that of Saudi Arabia, then it gets rather complex because the person who seeks to rely on Saudi Arabian law has to prove Saudi Arabian law as a fact. So you can see there are all sorts of complexities that begin to creep into the litigation, and often this area of the law suffers from what could be called satellite litigation, where, instead of getting on with the substance of the dispute, people are spending all their time in court determining these sorts of matters.

So the first question, as I said, is: where should the case be heard? The second question that often arises is: what is the law to be applied? In the law of contract it is normally spelt out in the contract, so it is no big deal. Normally, the contract will say that all matters arising for dispute shall be governed by New Zealand law or English law. It becomes much harder when one is dealing with the law of tort, and, as Mr Bennett said, there are various types of torts. There are negligence and defamation—negligence and defamation would be the most common ones, I guess. But then you get into this difficult question of what the law is that governs the particular resolution of the allegation of negligence, and that is where we get to this legislation.

Mr Bennett has, rightly, pointed to a number of old cases, the most famous one being Phillips v Eyre, where the double actionability rule was propounded, if you like, and it has been most recently applied in New Zealand in a case called Baxter v RMC Group plc. The purpose of this bill is to simplify the law, abolish the double actionability rule, and introduce new rules, as Mr Bennett has spelt out in his speech.

So it is a very interesting area of the law. I am pleased the Labour Party is supporting it. It is, as Chapman Tripp said, a “no-frills” piece of legislation. Some members’ bills seek to change the world. This does not do anything other than clarify an important area of the law. It is a brilliant effort on the part of Mr Bennett, and I commend him for his hard work.

DAVID CLENDON (Green): I am pleased to offer a short contribution in the first reading of this bill. I am not a lawyer, and I have never aspired to be a lawyer, I must say, but I have taken some advice on this, and I can say that, based on what I have heard, the drafter of the bill, Mr Bennett, has proven himself to be a somewhat unusual member, which may not be news to some people. I understand that to many law students, and indeed lawyers, tort law is something that encourages them to run screaming from the room, but Mr Bennett, by all accounts, enjoys this thing. So good on him. We are told it is a convoluted area of law, a difficult area of law.

The Greens are supporting this legislation because it does seem to address a real issue. It is a real opportunity to do better, which is something, again, that is a surprise in this bill—that it is a National member’s bill that is providing a substantive, useful piece of legislation. That is something that we have not seen much of in recent offerings from National Party members’ bills, and let us not talk about missing suitcases. Having said that, we are supporting this bill. The question has been raised, to ask that, arguably, a member’s bill is not a particularly good mechanism for changing tort law. Arguably, it is something that should perhaps be part of an overall review of the law, to take a broader look—that a Government bill might be more appropriate.

The point has also been made that this is a very simply drafted piece of legislation, and that in itself is often a significant virtue. It is something that cannot be said about a lot of our statute book. But, again, just a very small red flag has been raised, to ensure that the simplicity of the drafting of this bill does not cause problems further down the track, that it does not cause people to trip over.

One of the complexities, I understand, of tort law, and one of the differences perhaps, is that judgments tend to be based more on precedent decisions that have been made by other judges, rather than on statute, which in my mind at least—my non-lawyer mind—would suggest that it is something more of a moving target than something that is grounded in a piece of statute. And for that reason, arguably, it is somewhat more difficult for judges to come to grips with.

Certainly it is an area that bears some investigation. Anything that can simplify, clarify, and reduce the amount of time that judges spend on a particular case is a good thing. Our courts are, at least, busy and often overly busy. Anything we can do to progress matters through the courts more quickly, more efficiently, and to get good justice outcomes has got to be a good thing. If this bill contributes to that, then so be it.

Mr Bennett, arguably somewhat immodestly, has noted that at least one law firm has said some good things about his legislation. He notes that Australia, Canada, and England have gone down this route already, albeit in a slightly different way. The models are not entirely comparable, but they have made some effort to cut through the inevitable tangle when you are endeavouring to decide which country a particular matter should be addressed in when, clearly, you are going to have significant interests on the opposing sides. I suspect very often in these matters there would be quite a lot of money sloshing around as well, in order to fund the argument and to extend it. So it is a good thing, I argue, that it is happening.

Another law firm made commentary on this bill, and just highlighted a bit of a cautionary note, I guess, for companies that are doing business overseas, where these matters arise, where disputes arise. If the decision is that a case will be heard in another country, it would most certainly be in their interests to make sure they understand tort law in that country, because New Zealand law would have no influence.

So, in conclusion, I simply say that, yes, we are somewhat surprised and, shall I say, pleased a little that a National member’s bill has come through with some substance that might effect a useful and positive change in the legislation. The only other point that was made was that there was some concern, particularly about intellectual property for Māori, that there could be situations or circumstances where this legislation could potentially shade that a little. But I am sure that is something that the very good minds on the Justice and Electoral Committee will resolve in good time, and we look forward, at this point, to supporting the bill. Thank you.

JACQUI DEAN (National—Waitaki): I congratulate David Bennett, first of all, on having the Private International Law (Choice of Law in Tort) Bill drawn from the ballot and in front of us for its first reading. Congratulations to him also on his introductory speech, which has set the scene for this House in its first reading this evening.

It is a bit like being given an early Christmas present, actually, because here is a whole new area of expertise that the Justice and Electoral Committee is about to become familiar with. In that spirit, I propose that we should put together a bit of a dream team. So I would like to see David Parker sub on to the Justice and Electoral Committee for this item of business, because in his speech I welcomed and appreciated his inquiring nature as he approached this piece of unfamiliar law, which I have to say is even more unfamiliar to me as I am not even a lawyer. So you will see some chairing ability from myself, but I am looking to people like David Parker to provide some of the intellectual grunt as we consider this.

Having said that, even on a little bit of study this evening already and in hearing some excellent speeches around the House, some of the fog is beginning to clear about the intent of this piece of legislation—about its intent to provide some clarity and some sanity in legislation, or tort, across jurisdictions. And I can see that Denis O’Rourke on the other side of the House also shares our delight, and I do hope that he also shares the House’s enthusiasm for supporting this bill at least to select committee, so that we can give it a thorough working over.

I have very briefly looked at several of the cases that David Bennett did raise, and yes, indeed, we occasionally hear of incidents where there is a dispute perhaps involving children, as the Attorney-General has noted, or perhaps involving some aspect of commerce where an agreement goes wrong. The question in the courts then becomes under which jurisdiction we address this concern.

If I just turn, perhaps, to the clauses in the bill, because it is a well-set-out bill, and have a look at the bill clause by clause very briefly. Of course, we have the title and commencement. As the bill’s explanatory note sets out, clause 3 “provides that the purpose of the Bill is to establish rules for choosing the law to be used for determining issues relating to tort.” Of course, clause 4 binds the Crown. Clause 5 “states the general principles relating to the applicable law for the purposes of private and international law. These are—the characterisation of issues arising in a claim as issues relating to tort is a matter for the courts; the applicable law is to be used for determining the issues arising in a claim, including the question of whether an actionable tort has occurred; and the applicable law to be used for determining the issues arising in a claim excludes any choice of law rules forming part of the law of the jurisdiction or jurisdictions.” We then go on to clause 6, which, “abolishes several common law rules that relate to the applicable law for the purposes of private international law as they apply to any claim in tort.”

There are nine clauses in this bill. Clause 7 “provides that the general rule for determining the applicable law for the purposes of private international law is the law of the jurisdiction in which the events constituting the tort in question occur.” Clause 8 “provides for situations where the general rule is displaced.”—that will be an interesting aspect of our deliberation. And, of course, clause 9 completes this rather well-set-out bill.

I do look forward to the consideration in the select committee. I sincerely mean that this is an early Christmas present, because I think we are going to find it very interesting and very practical. Thank you.

DENIS O’ROURKE (NZ First): The first thing that I ask myself about this bill is why did David Bennett decide to sponsor it. Could it possibly be that he intends to go to live overseas permanently and wants to prepare the ground for that? Could that be the reason? If so, that in itself would be a very good reason for supporting the bill. Could it be that there is such huge pressure from his constituents in the Waikato that this bill be passed that he could not resist it? Could that be the case? Somehow, I doubt that very much. Could it be that Mr Bennett is looking for a legacy bill, something so that he can say to his grandchildren “This is something”—the only thing probably, but something—“that I did when I was in Parliament.” Could that be the motivation? Somehow, again, I doubt whether that would be satisfactory as a legacy bill.

Could I say next that I also have had only a little experience with what I used to call the conflict of laws, and that was in my early years as a lawyer in the Public Trust Office, when I had to deal with the conflict of laws around testamentary law. I remember very distinctly the difficulties that arose when people who lived in New Zealand still had a domicile of origin overseas. They had made a will in New Zealand and there were difficulties because English common law and New Zealand statute law are quite different to the Code Napoléon, which applied through most of Europe—that was where, I remember in one case, in particular, the deceased person had lived. They were very, very difficult situations to deal with—quite different from the law of torts, but also very difficult.

New Zealand First will not be supporting this bill, even though we accept that the current law is far from perfect. We are not doing so because we do not really think that there is any particular need to abolish the current law as it applies and as it is proposed to be abolished in this bill. We are not satisfied that change to the existing common law rules around the conflict of laws and the application of the law of torts of one jurisdiction or another is actually necessary, and we would have to be persuaded that that would be the case.

The third reason that I want to give for not supporting this—apart from the fact that it is not needed; apart from the fact that there is no requirement for this, there is no pressure for this—is that we are concerned about clause 8(1), which displaces the general rule. Mr Parker has already pointed to the fact that it introduces a new test, and I quote from the latter part of clause 8(1), where it refers to when the circumstances in which “ it is substantially more appropriate for the applicable law … to be the law of the other jurisdiction …”, and so on, apply. The concern we have about that is that we are not sure in what circumstances it would be substantially more appropriate or not. That is a discretion that the court would have to exercise. I do not know how it would exercise that discretion. I would like to hear discussion about that and how that test would work in practice.

So I think that is too general. That is not specific enough and does not actually achieve a sufficiently robust new regime to justify the abolition of the current law, which has been developed over such a long period of time.

Overall, this bill does have some merit, because it does deal with that difficult issue of double actionability, but we think in New Zealand First that the solutions that are provided for in this bill are not necessarily the best. For those reasons we will be voting against the bill, but, on the other hand, I will certainly be interested at the select committee to listen to the arguments that will no doubt be put forward to justify the bill that we have before us today. For the time being, however, New Zealand First will be voting against it.

SARAH DOWIE (National—Invercargill): I rise in support of the Private International Law (Choice of Law in Tort) Bill in its first reading, brought to this House by Mr David Bennett. Mr David Bennett, the dairy farmer of this House, has, I understand, completed a law degree. He is the chair of the Finance and Expenditure Committee, and now a lover of torts. I never knew this. He obviously majored in tort law in his law degree. He is an absolute lover of torts, and passionate about clarifying this rule around double actionability.

How impressed I was as I came back from Invercargill today, from the Southland Regional Development Strategy launch, where this Government has swung in behind our strategy team leaders with millions of dollars of investment. When I should have been coming back on the plane basking in that glory, here I was racking my brains back to 1995, thinking about tanks of water that had burst and run into a neighbouring property and caused nuisance, and a woman who had swallowed snails while drinking ginger beer. In other words, these cases are known as Rylands v Fletcher and Donoghue v Stevenson. I had real trouble remembering that last one, but it is Donoghue v Stevenson. That is how hard I had to work to rack my brains about torts that I studied back in 1995.

I do not feel so bad now, after Mr David Parker’s speech, because I too had real problems with torts and with this double actionability rule. I could never understand it. I think it has been described in some of the literature as difficult to understand. So I am pleased that Mr Bennett has brought this bill to the House to look to clarify and codify this law.

Jacqui Dean: You can come on to the committee as well.

SARAH DOWIE: No, Ms Dean, I do not want to come on to the committee in respect of this bill, but I am sure I am at the mercy of the whips.

A tort, as we aware, is about a private action. It does illustrate the importance of case law. Obviously, case law develops these important laws in our legal system, but the issue remains that when an action occurs in a foreign jurisdiction, it is difficult to understand which actual jurisdiction applies. So this is a bill that clarifies which jurisdiction of law is applicable to torts and provides guidance to the courts on matters of characterisation.

One of the great things, as I mentioned before, is that it abolishes the so-called rule of double actionability, and I am going to have to refer to my notes in respect of this rule—“when a tort claim is brought in New Zealand for an action committed in another jurisdiction, the New Zealand court can hear the claim only if the tort is actionable in both jurisdictions, and then it must apply the New Zealand law, unless the other country has the more significant relationship with the occurrence and the parties.” Excellent, Mr Bennett, thank you very much for that. That will clarify things.

I think it is only wise and proper that if an action occurs in New Zealand, then our law should be applied, and if overseas, then that jurisdiction should apply. I think that the rules and the principles set out in this bill will actually clarify that, codify it, and make it easier for young lawyers as they come into the legal profession. As this bill has been described, it is a no-frills bill, but, look, backbenchers do not need bells and whistles when you are working for the Government. It is a no-frills bill, but it is pragmatic, it is a good bill, and it is solid, and I congratulate Mr Bennett on bringing it to the House.

LOUISA WALL (Labour—Manurewa): Tēnā koe e Te Māngai o Te Whare. It is my pleasure, as a member of the Justice and Electoral Committee, to speak in support of this Private International Law (Choice of Law in Tort) Bill. Congratulations, David Bennett, for proposing what Chapman Tripp did say was “smart, no-frills law making, bringing New Zealand into step with comparable jurisdictions.” There is no doubt that this bill is valid and it is needed, and so I am happy to stand up in support of you, as a member of Parliament, proposing this legislation. Congratulations.

The word “tort” is derived from the French word for “wrong”—I am doing definitions here, because I do not know very much about this area either. What a tort is is: “a civil wrong that … causes someone else to suffer loss or harm resulting in legal liability for the person who commits the tortious act, called a tortfeasor.”, who, apparently, is the wrongdoer. So a civil wrong is an act against another person or their property. Obviously, what we are trying to do is to be very clear about what jurisdiction will apply.

I found another interesting blog about this bill and its relevance. It was by a guy called Timothy Lindsay from Lowndes Jordan, and he said: “New Zealand companies doing business with foreign parties and foreign companies doing business in New Zealand will be [particularly] interested in [this bill]”. I wanted to highlight that. He said the bill “aims to clarify and simplify the New Zealand law conflict of law (aka private international law) rules that apply to actions brought in tort”, and the issues that we are talking about are “negligence, tortious interference … defamation, breach of privacy”, and “the law of the jurisdiction in which the events constituting the alleged tort took place.” That is what this bill is going to be able to clarify and simplify for us all.

The other point that Timothy Lindsay made was that “it will require New Zealand companies to do their homework and understand the tort law of the land in the place they are doing business.”, so, actually, that is a good thing. People should know the laws of the land in which they are doing business, so if this piece of legislation highlights that for New Zealand companies and makes them think about it, then, actually, that is a good thing for New Zealand businesses. Or, he said: “parties can avoid … both the existing common law choice of law rules … by incorporating carefully drafted governing law provisions into their commercial contracts.” So I guess that is the other thing that this piece of legislation will do—to highlight in the contracts that New Zealand companies have with overseas companies how they are going to deal with it themselves. The merit of this piece of legislation is actually in providing the clarity that everybody needs when they conduct business.

I want to congratulate you, David. I think that we all strive in this House to make things better—to make things better for the people whom we are here to serve. This, for me, is not a flippant piece of legislation; it is actually a very relevant piece of legislation, and I am happy to be on the select committee that will be hearing submissions. I am really interested in the number of submissions that we will receive. Maybe we should run a little bit of a, you know, what do you call it, when we all put in five bucks and the closest—

Hon Members: A sweep.

LOUISA WALL: A sweep? Maybe a sweep would be really interesting. I am now really interested in the different areas—obviously companies, but other people whom this piece of legislation is relevant to and who are going to make submissions. We could be really surprised. We could have hundreds of submissions to our select committee. We just do not know. It will be fascinating, I think, for the House to engage in serious discussion about this piece of legislation. I will not take too much more time, other than to say that I commend this bill to the House. Kia ora.

JAMI-LEE ROSS (National—Botany): It seems I have 40 seconds. I am not a lawyer and I have not done this before, but I am going to bush lawyer it.

It appears to me as though this bill, effectively, says that the double actionability rule is out the door. We are going to have some general rules. The general rules, basically, are, if it is damage to property—[Interruption] Mr Speaker, this is good stuff, do not interrupt me. Come on! All right, I will let you go, Mr Speaker.

Debate interrupted.

The House adjourned at 10 p.m.