Wednesday, 7 December 2016

WEDNESDAY, 7 DECEMBER 2016

WEDNESDAY, 7 DECEMBER 2016

Mr Speaker took the Chair at 2 p.m.

Prayers.

Visitors

Australia—Delegation, Australian Political Exchange

Mr SPEAKER: I am sure that members would wish to welcome Mr Samuel Duluk from the Parliament of South Australia and other delegates from the Australian Political Exchange, who are present in the gallery.

Points of Order

Pearl Harbor—75th Anniversary of Attack

RON MARK (Deputy Leader—NZ First): I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I seek leave to move a motion without notice and without debate to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, which falls today.

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

Oral Questions

Questions to Ministers

Economic Programme—Fiscal Strategy

ANDREW LITTLE (Leader of the Opposition): My question is to the Minister of Finance. Does he stand by his statement—

Rt Hon John Key: Oh, God, I’m irrelevant already.

ANDREW LITTLE: John, it is all over. It is all over, brother.

Mr SPEAKER: Order! Again, as I said yesterday, I can sense the excitement in the air, but we will still conduct question time under the normal rules.

ANDREW LITTLE: It is not the excitement; it is the relief on the face of the Prime Minister.

Mr SPEAKER: Order! We will have the question.

1. ANDREW LITTLE (Leader of the Opposition) to the Minister of Finance: Does he stand by his statement, “there is no room for significant loosening of the purse strings”, and does this apply to funding for health, police, and education?

Hon BILL ENGLISH (Minister of Finance): Yes. That comment was made in 2014, before a return to surpluses, but it holds as true today as it did then. The Government is not in the habit of spending surpluses before it has them, but now that it does have surpluses, some of them will be used up on funding the Kaikōura earthquake recovery. Whatever other surpluses there are it will use responsibly to make a difference to the lives of New Zealanders. [Interruption]

Mr SPEAKER: Order! I will not put up with that behaviour again from New Zealand First members.

Andrew Little: Which is more important to him: more tax cuts or fixing public services like health, education, and police?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: Both are important, because we need to reward hard-working New Zealanders and we need to make sure that the billions we spend on health and education actually change lives and make a difference for New Zealanders—that we are not just shovelling money out because it sounds good to spend on education, like the Labour Party does.

Andrew Little: Can he confirm Judith Collins’ claim that she has been requesting money for more police since June; if so, why has he rejected her?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: All propositions made by Ministers for the expenditure of significant public money, which we only have because people pay GST on their shopping at the supermarket—all of those propositions have to go through a thorough process. Sometimes Ministers find it a little bit irritating.

Andrew Little: Why has crime been surging in the last few years? Is it because he has not been funding enough police or because Judith Collins just is not a very good police Minister?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: There is, I think, quite a serious discussion, actually, to go on about what has changed about the trajectory of crime rates. It does look as if the lower tolerance for family violence is a big part of more arrests and convictions for those serious crimes. There is better investigation of serious sexual crime, leading to more arrests and convictions, and the clutch of criminal activity that goes with methamphetamine. We are digging pretty hard into why those numbers have been rising.

Andrew Little: When New Zealanders like 96-year-old Trixie Cottingham are having their home care cut by underfunded district health boards (DHBs), does he take responsibility for that as finance Minister?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: No, because, as that member will know, DHBs have considerable latitude as to how they use their money. As the Minister of Health has pointed out, I think, this year they got around $600 million more to meet the growing demand for health services. But when we put more money in, we want to make sure that it makes a difference. We do not just shovel it in because it is good to spend on health.

Andrew Little: Does he agree with Jonathan Coleman that “before we look at tax cuts, we’ve got to make sure we’re properly funding health”; if so, why is health not then funded properly already?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: The Minister has been a strong and persistent advocate, not just for more spending in health, actually—he has been an advocate for things like the bowel screening programme, for instance, which should save the lives of hundreds of New Zealanders. And he has overseen a programme where improved emergency room performance has halved the death rate over the last 5 years, and that is a pretty impressive achievement. [Interruption]

Mr SPEAKER: Order! A little less interjection from my left.

Andrew Little: Given his statement “No ifs, no buts and no fighting in school communities over whether to have it. Everyone is going bulk funding”, how quickly does he think he can resurrect that policy?

Mr SPEAKER: In so far as there is financial ministerial responsibility—the Hon Bill English.

Hon BILL ENGLISH: I am not sure what the member is referring to, but the Minister of Education has recently had a discussion with the education sector about a review of the funding system, made some decisions about what not to proceed with, and is proceeding with the other five or six aspects that she proposed. That is the Government position.

Economy—Reports, Housing Affordability, and Resilience

2. TODD BARCLAY (National—Clutha-Southland) to the Minister of Finance: What reports has he received showing the New Zealand economy is on track for continuing moderate growth?

Hon BILL ENGLISH (Minister of Finance): Well, another of many, actually, from the New Zealand Institute of Economic Research (NZIER). The NZIER has said that despite the recent earthquake, New Zealanders should continue to benefit from a growing economy. It is forecasting average growth above 3 percent for the next 5 years, and, over the next 5 years, 400,000 new jobs and picking unemployment will fall to 4.2 percent by 2018. The ability to achieve this kind of economic progress is relatively unique in the developed world.

Todd Barclay: What does the NZIER say are some of the factors supporting the growth outlook?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: The survey points to good confidence in businesses that they will hire more staff, and that this is related to higher consumer confidence, which is leading to higher growth. It points out that although the effect of the earthquake is significant for those affected, it will have a moderate impact on the economy at large. It points out that the New Zealand economy is in good shape, and will provide a buffer for any further shocks, whether they are international or of a seismic nature.

Todd Barclay: What other reports has he received that show the economy is delivering results for New Zealanders?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: Just today the ANZ published its job ads survey, which shows that the number of jobs advertised rose 2.9 percent in November and the number of job ads is 18 percent higher than a year ago—the strongest monthly growth rate in 2 years. [Interruption]

Mr SPEAKER: Order! Just before I call the supplementary question, there are just too many interjections, coming particularly from one person to my left. I will have to deal with it if it continues.

James Shaw: Has he seen the latest IMF Global Housing Watch report, which shows that New Zealand is the least affordable country in the world to buy a house in, relative to income, and will he be asking the new head of the IMF to write less critical reports in the future?

Mr SPEAKER: There are two questions. Either can be answered.

Hon BILL ENGLISH: Well, the Prime Minister tells me it is yet to be determined who the new head of the IMF is. That is just another report on the condition of the New Zealand housing market, and I would look forward to the support of the Greens to change their position from 20 years of opposing the growth of our cities, to helping with legislation that is going to allow our cities to grow and houses to be reasonably priced.

Todd Barclay: What indicators point to diversification of the New Zealand economy supporting resilience?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: One indication of the resilience of this economy has been the way that it has reacted to the fall in dairy prices. Dairy prices dropped significantly over the last couple of years, but almost all other exports performed much better, and, as a result of that, we have been able to continue with moderate and consistent economic growth, even though our largest single primary production commodity dropped in price.

Grant Robertson: In light of those probing and challenging supplementary questions, does he now regret not going to Todd Barclay’s barbecue last week and leaving it to Judith Collins?

Mr SPEAKER: Order! There is no ministerial responsibility, whatsoever.

Ministers—Confidence

3. Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS (Leader—NZ First) to the Prime Minister: Does he have confidence in all his Ministers; if so, why?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY (Prime Minister): Yes; because they are all highly capable.

Hon Annette King: Who’s the most capable?

Mr SPEAKER: That could well be a supplementary question, but I am about to call the Rt Hon Winston Peters.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: How can he have any confidence in a Minister who says that the National Party will be “A bunch of wusses” if they pass legislation that extends the Youth Court age to include 7-year-olds, 17-year-olds—[Interruption]—17; not your age—

Mr SPEAKER: Order! [Interruption] Order! Bring the question to a conclusion.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: —yes, all right—which extended the Youth Court age to include 17-year-olds, and someone in whom the Minister of Finance and the Minister of Health appear to have no confidence at all?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: I know the member is worried about the youth age being lifted to 70-year-olds, because it would include him, but he should rest assured that I am very confident that he will stay out of the court, having done so for the last 69 and something years.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: How can he have confidence in his finance Minister when, plainly, the Minister of Police, the Minister of Health, and a host of others have no confidence in him?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: Firstly, that is patently untrue, and, secondly, because Bill English is respected around the world as one of the best finance Ministers, and rightly so. He has led an economy that is back in surplus, that is growing rapidly, that has seen wage growth, and that is the envy of the Western World, and that is why he is acclaimed in the manner that he is.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: How can the Prime Minister have confidence in the health Minister when, clearly, the Minister of Police and the Minister of Finance and a host of others in the caucus have no confidence in him at all?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: It is not true. The Minister of Police and the Minister of Finance have great confidence in the Minister of Health. You see, the difference on this side of the House is that we actually have a capable caucus where we actually know each other and like each other. It is quite a bit different over there and over there.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: How can he have confidence in his social housing Minister when she clearly does not have any confidence in herself?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: I think you can say a lot of things about Paula Bennett, but she has enormous confidence in herself—trust me. Anyone who hosts a pirate party and does so until late into the evening has tremendous confidence in themselves.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: How can he possibly have confidence in all of his Ministers when all we are hearing from his answers and from the spills coming out of caucus is terrible instability, feuding, backstabbing, fighting, all sorts of secret calls—so much so that it has fallen to New Zealand First to look like the epitome of stability?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: Well, when you have a caucus of one, it is reasonably easy to be stable. But the member may have noticed that on Monday—the last time you held up a sign it said “No” and it should have said “Yes”.

Health Services—Funding Levels

4. Hon ANNETTE KING (Deputy Leader—Labour) to the Minister of Health: Does he stand by his statement, “I think we’ve got to be very careful before we look at tax cuts. We’ve got to make sure we are properly funding health and education”; if so, has health been funded properly over the last two Budgets to allow him to do everything he has wanted as health Minister?

Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN (Minister of Health): Yes. Although health got an extra $2.2 billion over 4 years in Budget 2016 for new initiatives and to meet cost pressures and population growth, there is always more to be done in health, and every extra dollar is helpful. Of course, my comments are focused on the future. I also stand by my comment that it is unbelievable that a previous Labour health Minister could be given an extra $3 billion but actually cut elective operations by 2,000 per year and first specialist assessments by 7,000.

Hon Annette King: Why has it taken a leadership challenge and his personal ambition for him to see that, under Bill English as Minister of Finance, $1.7 billion is missing from the health budget and that health now needs to be—according to him—properly funded, having caused untold misery to sick New Zealanders over the past 8 years?

Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: I fundamentally reject the premise of that question. Once again, Mrs King is making up a whole lot of stuff, including this $1.7 billion figure. She knows for a fact that the health budget has gone up every year under this Government, from about $12 billion to $16 billion over our 8 years in Government, and that is the fact of it.

Hon Annette King: Why has he spent 2 years hiding the fact that health, under Bill English Budgets, has not been properly funded, knowing that services have closed and been cut, people have waited in more pain before getting care, police are sent out to deal with very sick mental health patients, and thousands cannot afford to go to a GP?

Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: There are about five things there to say no to. Once again, Mrs King is making up stories about—

Mr SPEAKER: Order! [Interruption] Order! I am going to allow the Minister to finish his answer, but he cannot accuse another member of making stuff up, and I refer to Speaker’s ruling 46/1. The Minister can complete his answer.

Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: So, as I was saying, there are about five noes in that question there. We put an extra $4 billion into the health system, 6,000 extra doctors, thousands of extra first specialist assessments, and a massive uplift in electives. The member cannot name a single service under this Government that actually is not delivering more than before. I will tell you what, she would not want more scrutiny of her own record, but I commend her for her bravery in asking questions in the House every week.

Mr SPEAKER: In making comments to the Minister, I used Speaker’s ruling 46/1; it is actually 47/4, should any member want to check it.

Hon Annette King: Does he now regret gloating about the Government’s fiscal strategy and health back in January, when he said “We’ve slowed the growth, so the growth and health spending is down from 8 to 9 percent, to around 2.5 percent.”, which, from his comments over the past day, shows that he does not think that health has been properly funded; or does he not know the meaning of the word “properly”?

Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: No. I think we have actually funded health extremely well, but I am looking to the future.

Hon Annette King: Is he prepared to fund a programme advising of the dangers of second-hand cigar smoke being blown at people in close quarters in corporate boxes?

Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: No, but I think we could do with a programme on staying well past your used-by date, Mrs King.

Accident Compensation Corporation—Levies

5. MAUREEN PUGH (National) to the Minister for ACC: What changes to ACC levies come into effect from 1 April next year?

Hon NATHAN GUY (Acting Minister for ACC): Today I am pleased to announce further cuts to ACC work and motor vehicle levies. This will mean savings of $126 million over the next 2 years for New Zealand businesses and motorists. Today’s cuts come on top of more than $2 billion worth of ACC levy cuts that Kiwis have enjoyed under this Government since 2012. ACC is now in great financial shape. It is confident it can meet the lifetime costs of all claims on its books, reassuring those with more serious injuries who need lifelong support.

Maureen Pugh: How much will individual businesses and motorists save as a result of those cuts?

Hon NATHAN GUY: The exact levy that businesses and motorists pay depends on their particular circumstances. In general, the average work levy is reducing from 80c to 72c per $100 of liable earnings, a reduction of 10 percent. The average motor vehicle levy, which includes the annual licence levy and petrol levy, will reduce by around $16, a reduction of about 12.5 percent. The petrol levy itself will reduce from 6.9c to 6c per litre, a reduction of 13 percent. These reductions have been made possible by the improved financial management of ACC under our watch, which has seen significant improvements in the funding position of all levied accounts.

Police—Resourcing and Numbers

6. GRANT ROBERTSON (Labour—Wellington Central) to the Minister of Police: Does she believe Police have been given adequate resources to address crime in all areas; if not, which areas are in need of further resources?

Hon Members: Given up on finance?

Hon JUDITH COLLINS (Minister of Police): I do not think that member is going to have any better luck with this than he does with finance, but there you go. Police has been given substantial resources by National, with an injection of 600 extra police and a budget of $1.6 billion, up from $1.2 billion under Labour. As I have often said, it has been doing an excellent job with those resources. As I have also said—repeatedly—Police will need more numbers going into the future. As to where further resources should go, I actually think, everywhere. I want to see an increased police presence around the country—rural, regional, in our biggest city, and in our centres. I want to see more police out there making New Zealanders feel safe and secure, preventing crime, and ultimately making New Zealand the safest country in the world.

Grant Robertson: Given her statement on the need for more police “I’ve been [asking] since June and I’ve been waiting for that to happen.”, who is responsible for that not happening?

Hon JUDITH COLLINS: If the member had listened to previous questions in the House and if he had ever been a Minister he would know that these matters go through a Cabinet process. These matters are not just putting a few numbers on the back of an envelope—

Andrew Little: Why have you complained about it, then?

Hon JUDITH COLLINS: —and waking them up. It is not a complaint. The member asks why I am complaining; I am not complaining at all. I am just stating the fact. It has been a long process and a very thorough process.

Grant Robertson: Will she provide additional police resources to tackle the theft of public money, such as someone who uses a taxpayer-funded trip to China to advance their husband’s business interests? [Interruption]

Mr SPEAKER: Order! The question can be addressed.

Hon JUDITH COLLINS: If that were the case, then it would be. Of course, it is not.

Grant Robertson: In light of her statement that she “does not bear grudges”, can we bury the hatchet today, and will she tell me once and for all who was the border official at the dinner in China?

Mr SPEAKER: There is no ministerial responsibility there at all.

Ministers—Confidence

7. JAMES SHAW (Co-Leader—Green) to the Prime Minister: Does he have confidence in all his Ministers?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY (Prime Minister): Yes.

James Shaw: Does he have confidence in Jonathan Coleman, and does he even know what he looks like?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: Yes. I am pretty sure he is the one that is just over there. But, you know, given he has been in quite a number of my Cabinets, and I am awake for most of them—absolutely.

James Shaw: Does he have confidence that if Judith Collins becomes Prime Minister, New Zealand will not wake up one day and find itself tied with Zimbabwe on the Transparency International corruption index?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: I have absolute confidence in Judith Collins, and I have absolute confidence in all of my caucus and my Cabinet colleagues.

James Shaw: Does he have confidence that if Steven Joyce becomes the finance Minister he will not lose the entire surplus on one of those roulette wheels he gave to Skycity Casino?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: Here is a prediction: when the Skycity Auckland Convention Centre opens in, I think it is, 2019, from memory, it will be a sparkling asset used by many convention-dwellers, both internationally and locally. It will not cost a cent of taxpayer or ratepayer money, and, if it is true to form, the Labour Party members, who will still be in Opposition, will be coming over to the opening, just like they did when they objected to The Hobbit and so many other things in the past.

James Shaw: Is the real reason that New Zealand’s productivity is so low because every working-age New Zealander has been bored to death listening to Bill English?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: If that is his test, then I should introduce him to his own caucus colleagues. Man, they are not exactly people I want to party with when I leave Parliament—let me give you a clue. [Interruption]

Mr SPEAKER: Order! I dealt with the showing of those visual aids by New Zealand First earlier. If it continues again from any of those members, they will be leaving the Chamber. I do not want to have to issue that warning again.

James Shaw: Now that he knows who his likely successors are, is he tempted to turn round and say: “Actually, Bill, I’ve changed my mind.”?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: Definitely not. As I said on Monday, it has been a great privilege to be Prime Minister of New Zealand for the last 8 years and to lead such a fantastic Cabinet and caucus. I am immensely proud of what this Government has achieved, but, as I said on Monday, I have called time on my own political career, and I will not be turning back on that decision.

Hon Gerry Brownlee: In his long and successful tenure as Prime Minister over the last 8 years in this House, does he recall a day when the Greens have put more effort into their questions?

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: No, but it is good to see that they are getting the hang of it, because they are going to be asking questions for a very long time.

Crown Land Development Programme—Housing Developments

8. KANWALJIT SINGH BAKSHI (National) to the Minister for Building and Housing: What new housing developments has he announced as part of the Crown Land programme and how many homes will it provide?

Hon Dr NICK SMITH (Minister for Building and Housing): Yesterday I announced a new 300-home development on part of the Point England Reserve with Ngāti Paoa and the Tāmaki Redevelopment Company. For the last 30 years, 18 hectares of the 48-hectare reserve have been used for grazing cows. This is poor use of land that is only 12 kilometres from Auckland’s CBD. The cows will go, and 12 hectares will now be used for housing, and the remainder of the reserve will be developed into better amenity and recreation space. The Government is committed to all of the proceeds of the land being used for housing and to be reinvested locally—a position that has been strongly advocated for by the MP for Maungakiekie, Peseta Sam Lotu-Iiga, and Auckland Council.

Kanwaljit Singh Bakshi: How will this Point England housing development help support the Tāmaki project?

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: The major challenge with the Tāmaki redevelopment of 2,800 homes into 7,500 is the provision of housing in the interim for the large number of families dislocated during the demolition and reconstruction phases. The great advantage of this Point England project is that providing 300 additional homes in close proximity will enable that largest redevelopment project in New Zealand history to be able to be accelerated.

Kanwaljit Singh Bakshi: How many sites have now been confirmed under the Government’s Crown land programme, and how many homes are being built?

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: We have now announced nine sites in the Crown land programme, which will deliver over 1,500 homes. Four of them are partnerships with the private sector, and five, including Point England, announced yesterday, are with iwi partners. Announcements in the last month include 60 in Te Atatū, 120 in Great North Road and Waterview, and 100 in New North Road in Mount Albert. Further sites are well advanced, and by the end of this financial year there will be over a billion dollars’ worth of additional housing in the pipeline. In fact, this year the Government will be directly involved in building more houses than at any time in New Zealand’s history.

State Housing—Minister for Social Housing’s Statements about State House Tenants and Sale of Housing Stock

9. PHIL TWYFORD (Labour—Te Atatū) to the Minister for Social Housing: How many State house tenants turned down properties because of birds chirping in nearby trees, because a backyard was too small for a trampoline, or because they disliked the colour of a door?

Hon PAULA BENNETT (Minister for Social Housing): This question is so last year, but that is fine; let us have another go. Let us have another go. What the member is referring to is what we call people who decline an offer of a social house without sufficient reason. From when the changes took effect, which I put in on 25 January, to the end of September there were 1,760 offers of houses made that were declined, and 144 offers were found to be turned down for insufficient reason.

Phil Twyford: Why did she take three examples to portray 69,000 State house tenants as the ungrateful and undeserving poor, in order to play politics with the most vulnerable people and make herself look tough?

Hon PAULA BENNETT: A bit of kettle black there, mate. It is you who is doing that.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. There is no way that that Minister can call you a kettle or black. She has been around long enough; she is probably not experienced enough to take a higher job, but she should know the Standing Orders and Speakers’ rulings.

Mr SPEAKER: I would also hope that the member would know the Standing Orders and Speakers’ rulings, which were changed, I think, in 2011 so that the only person who can take a point of order on that matter is indeed the Speaker himself. If it is done absolutely deliberately and consistently, then the debate or question time would be interrupted. But in the event that it is done on occasion and not deliberately directed to the Speaker, we allow it to be left. I will find the particular Standing Order and refer it to the member for his education.

Phil Twyford: Why did she say that contamination figures are shockingly high and label innocent tenants as “worse than animals”, when she knew that Housing New Zealand’s methamphetamine testing has been shown to be a completely incompetent waste of money that cannot prove meth manufacture or hazardous levels of residue?

Hon PAULA BENNETT: I have never ever referred to tenants in that manner, and that member yet again is overreaching, exaggerating, and, in this case, just plainly not telling the truth.

Mr SPEAKER: Order! The last part is out of order. A member cannot accuse another of not telling the truth. Any member can certainly take it up in another way, and I refer members to Standing Order 359.

Phil Twyford: I seek leave to table the Stuff story that contains the words—

Mr SPEAKER: Order! Stuff stories are freely available to all members if they decide to refer to them.

Phil Twyford: Does she believe that someone who would deliberately call State house tenants “worse than animals”, who would say that homeless people do not want to be helped, in the case of the Pullman Park flying squads, and who calls State house tenants “ungrateful and undeserving” has the character and integrity to be a deputy leader?

Hon PAULA BENNETT: I just simply do not abide by the member’s characteristics.

Phil Twyford: Why is the Government sending officials to Australia on Monday to try to sell Christchurch’s State houses to Australian companies, when for the last few years she has been trying to spin the State house sell-off as being about boosting local New Zealand community housing providers?

Hon PAULA BENNETT: I stand by our policy around getting more community housing providers involved in social housing. I think it is good for tenants and I think it is good for New Zealand.

Phil Twyford: I seek leave of the House to table an invitation from the Government to Australian companies to a briefing at KPMG’s headquarters on Monday.

Mr SPEAKER: Order! And I just—[Interruption] Order! I just need the source of the document. How has the member sourced it?

Phil Twyford: It has been obtained via KPMG.

Mr SPEAKER: I will put the leave; the House can decide. Leave is sought to table a particular invitation to a KPMG function to be held in Australia. [Interruption] Order! Leave is sought to table it—[Interruption] Order! Leave is sought to table this particular document. Is there any objection? There is none. It can be tabled.

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

Fiscal Strategy—Government Financial Position and Spending

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

Hon BILL ENGLISH (Minister of Finance): Yes, in the context in which they were made.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Well, does he stand by his statement—

Mr SPEAKER: Order! [Interruption] Order! The member needs to stand, call, and then I call a supplementary question.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Well, I am calling. I am standing for a supplementary question.

Mr SPEAKER: Supplementary question—[Interruption] Order! I just need to explain to the member—and I should not have to—that the member stands, he calls “Supplementary question?”; if he gains my attention, I call him to ask the question. He does not lead straight into it.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Does he stand by his statement that he is fit to be the Prime Minister of New Zealand?

Mr SPEAKER: In so far as there is ministerial responsibility—the Hon Bill English.

Hon BILL ENGLISH: Yes.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Minister, what was the amount and percentage of public debt in 2008 when you took office as the Minister of Finance, and what is the amount and percentage of public debt today?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: When we took office it was single digits, like 7 or 8 percent of GDP. It was just before the global financial crisis and the Christchurch earthquakes, for which we borrowed, I think, almost $18 billion. But, of course, the member would think we should have just left them to it.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: If as Minister he is responsible for freezing the Police budget and the lack of policing resourcing and responsible for the decrease in real terms of the Health budget, would he agree that it is disgraceful to hold a ministerial warrant and announce a belt-tightening Budget, and then claim an accommodation allowance worth over $30,000 to live in his $1.2 million Wellington home?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: The Police has not had a frozen budget, and I invite the member to just look at the Police budget numbers. I think last year it was something, over 4 years, like $200 million in wage increases for everyone in the police force. The member may not count that as a relevant expenditure of public money, but we certainly do.

David Seymour: What percentage of GDP did Treasury recently forecast public debt would reach under historical spending patterns, as advocated by parties such as New Zealand First?

Mr SPEAKER: Order! The last part of the question—[Interruption] Order! The last part of the question is completely out of order. The first part of the question can be addressed.

Hon BILL ENGLISH: When we did take office in 2008 and Treasury did its forecasts based on the expenditure pattern of the previous coalition Government, it showed never-ending rising public debt. That is, if we had followed that pattern, public debt would never stop going up.

Student Achievement—Programme for International Student Assessments and Socio-economic Factors

11. Dr JIAN YANG (National) to the Minister of Education: What recent reports has she received on educational achievement for New Zealand?

Hon HEKIA PARATA (Minister of Education): Tēnā koe, Mr Speaker. I am pleased to see the results of the OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) released overnight. It is particularly pleasing to see that the 2012 fall in rankings has stabilised. New Zealand is now notably ranked 10th out of 70 countries for reading, up from 13th; is up two places from 23rd to 21st for maths; and has significantly improved in science from 18th to 12th. PISA 2015 also reports that New Zealand has one of the highest international proportions of all-round top achievers in all three subjects, at 6 percent compared with the OECD average of 4 percent. Furthermore, 20 percent of all New Zealand students assessed are among the top performers in at least one of these subjects. This is better than the OECD average of 15 percent.

Dr Jian Yang: What other insight does PISA tell us about how our education system is performing?

Hon HEKIA PARATA: I am very proud of New Zealand students who achieve these excellent results, but it is balanced by my concern that we still have too many in the lowest performing cohort and we see little shift from Māori and Pasifika in this group. So we have more to do. PISA is an important contribution to the indicators that tell us how well we are doing compared with the rest of the world. Other education systems are striving just as hard as we are to improve, and PISA reflects that dynamic. This latest report shows that although New Zealand has stabilised and improved its ranking, other systems have fallen. Our science and reading rankings place New Zealand students above countries like Australia, France, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

Catherine Delahunty: Tēnā koe, Minister. Given that the PISA results show that our schools have been unable to overcome the impact of inequality within their walls, which was confirmed by Ministry of Education officials at the Education and Science Committee today, will the Minister now acknowledge the effect that not having lunch has on a child’s educational achievement?

Hon HEKIA PARATA: That, in fact, is not what the member was briefed on at select committee this morning. In fact, Dr Jones, head of evidence, data, and knowledge in the ministry and New Zealand’s representative on the international PISA board, advised select committee that in 2012 the effect of socio-economic status was 18 percent. It has now reduced to 13 percent, which reflects how our social investment initiatives are supporting young people to be more successful.

Dr Jian Yang: What does PISA tell us about changes we can make to our education system to ensure New Zealanders continue to be internationally competitive?

Hon HEKIA PARATA: Similar to the trends in international mathematics and science study, TIMSS, released last week, PISA highlights that there remains more work to do to lift achievement levels of Māori and Pasifika students, who still, on average, have lower rates of achievement than other groups. We are making significant progress in both excellence and equity, and my work programme will continue to build on these next year. This will include directly targeting operational funding to students most at risk of underachievement, better and more consistent use of data, targeted professional learning and development, and a review of decile funding. We also want to help more of our students and teachers by extending the educational success we have in many of our schools, and communities of learning, or kāhui ako, are key to this goal being achieved, as they can turn best practice into common practice.

Catherine Delahunty: Does a child trying to do their homework in the back seat of a car that their family lives in place their educational achievement at risk?

Hon HEKIA PARATA: As I indicated earlier, our Government’s approach to, and record on, social investment reflects how concerned we are to ensure that the background, the home experience, and the support families at risk get from this Government is available to them. Whether that is in social housing, whether that is the fact that we are the first Government in 43 years to raise benefit rates, or whether it is the targeted operational funding in education, this Government is putting taxpayers’ money where it matters most.

Catherine Delahunty: So is the Minister now acknowledging that children from disadvantaged socio-economic circumstances are at greater risk of poorer health; cold, damp homes; and significant educational challenges, and that these issues are actually connected?

Hon HEKIA PARATA: I have never not acknowledged that the home life of a child has an impact. But what I have consistently said in this House is that that does not discharge the obligation of ensuring that every child has the best education possible, and, as Minister of Education, that is my focus. My colleagues are focused on the other elements that contribute to that success, and we are working well together to ensure that those most at risk get the support they need.

Student Achievement—Programme for International Student Assessments and Science, Maths, and Reading Performance

12. CHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka) to the Minister of Education: Why, after eight years of a National Government, are New Zealand students’ performance in science, maths, and reading continuing to decline as reported in the OECD Programme for International Student Assessment study, and is she concerned that their scores are now at their lowest point ever?

Hon HEKIA PARATA (Minister of Education): I am more concerned about the member’s understanding of the use of plurals and singulars—but never mind, he can review his question and check out the literacy of it. The scores have not continued to decline and have, in fact, stabilised and consolidated from 2012. Unlike the member, I was pleased. Unlike all members in the Opposition, I am pleased to see from these latest Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) results that New Zealand’s 15-year-olds place well above the OECD average in reading, maths, and science. How about a little celebration for them? I note that last week the member was less concerned about test scores and more concerned about New Zealand’s table ranking, so I am happy to report that New Zealand’s relative standing in science and reading has improved, and the fact we are sitting 10th in the world is something to be celebrated. It is also marginally pleasing that it beats the Aussies. This week the member has decided he is concerned about test scores, so I point out to the member that the declines observed in earlier studies have now stabilised, the scores have consolidated, and we are celebrating New Zealand students’ success.

Chris Hipkins: Is it not simply a fact that no amount of spin in the world from her can hide the fact that New Zealand students’ performance in reading, maths, and science has fallen in both of the PISA studies that have been published since National took office, and the only reason our international ranking has gone up is that other countries’ performance has declined even more than ours?

Hon HEKIA PARATA: New Zealand scores have declined slightly but they are within the margin of error, which the members of the select committee had explained in painful detail to them this morning. It has always been the case—as I explained in 2012—that PISA is a league table; it is like a tennis ladder. It is dynamic; countries go up, countries go down. New Zealand has gone up and, as a result, Australia has fallen below us, France has fallen below us, Switzerland has fallen below us, the United Kingdom has fallen below us—

Mr SPEAKER: I want to bring the answer to a conclusion.

Hon HEKIA PARATA: Mr Speaker is understanding the difference; perhaps the member does too.

Chris Hipkins: Why does she declaim that the decline in the average scores of New Zealand students in reading, maths, and science are statistically insignificant while boasting that New Zealand has moved up the international league tables due to even smaller changes in the statistics of countries we compare with?

Hon HEKIA PARATA: I am neither declaiming nor boasting; I am describing and explaining. I am telling the member, as he was told in select committee this morning, that the points difference in the scoring is statistically insignificant and, in respect of New Zealand, because of our sample size in comparison with other countries, the margin of error is smaller and therefore our data is more reliable. In terms of rankings, I have just explained at length, at the edge of tolerance of Mr Speaker, that when countries go up, others go down. New Zealand has gone up.

Chris Hipkins: Why should the New Zealand public have any confidence in National’s one-size-fits-all approach, given the latest PISA study records the lowest average student achievement scores for New Zealand students ever, ongoing increases in the number of students in the lowest performing cohorts, and a drop in the number of our students in the highest performing cohorts?

Hon HEKIA PARATA: I am so glad I am on this side of the House; that side of the House swims in a pool of misery. In fact, we can look at the data for performance in the New Zealand education system in far more detail than has ever been the case before. Why? Because this Government is prepared to be accountable, this Government wants to see every child succeed, and this Government has put the most amount of investment into education of any Government. We have seen the results—that is why parents can have confidence, speaking of tennis.

Questions to Members

Land Transfer (Foreign Ownership of Land Register) Amendment Bill—International Practice

1. RIA BOND (NZ First) to the Member in charge of the Land Transfer (Foreign Ownership of Land Register) Amendment Bill: Why is it important that the Land Transfer (Foreign Ownership of Land Register) Amendment Bill passes its first reading today?

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS (Member in charge of the Land Transfer (Foreign Ownership of Land Register) Amendment Bill): As we twiddled our thumbs, legislation to establish a new register for foreign ownership of water access entitlements in Australia passed the federal Senate at the end of November. In addition to Australia having an agricultural land register, soon foreign investors there will be required to notify the Australian Taxation Office of any water entitlements they hold, on a yearly basis.

Hon Gerry Brownlee: What?

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: We need to take off our blinkers, bring Gerry halfway awake, and pass this bill.

Ria Bond: Are there any other jurisdictions looking to do something similar to the member’s bill?

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: Absolutely. Aside from our second-largest trading partner, Australia, the UK Government is also committed to a public register of foreign companies purchasing UK property by April 2018. I can also add that the Netherlands, France, Ireland, and Norway are all moving towards land registers—like we are—either this year or very early next year, when they fly the white flag, as well. Currently, New Zealand is an all-you-can-eat foreign property - owning smorgasbord.

Land Transfer (Foreign Ownership of Land Register) Amendment Bill—Necessity

2. PITA PARAONE (NZ First) to the Member in charge of the Land Transfer (Foreign Ownership of Land Register) Amendment Bill: Why is the Land Transfer (Foreign Ownership of Land Register) Amendment Bill needed if, according to LINZ, transactions by foreign buyers are only 3 percent?

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS (Member in charge of the Land Transfer (Foreign Ownership of Land Register) Amendment Bill): Land Information New Zealand (LINZ) data has more holes than Swiss cheese, given there was no statement at all for 38 percent of foreign sales. We also note, from an Official Information Act request, that the Inland Revenue Department “does not record information based on tax residency”. That is a Grand Canyon - wide hole right there. What we have with the LINZ data is an honesty box based on an unverified self-declaration that the IRD has no means of verifying. To conclude, this is why this dynamic bill is definitely needed by our country.

Pita Paraone: What is the potential scale of investment New Zealand could expect that requires this bill’s introduction?

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: Bloomberg reports that current property investments from China are about US$234 billion. Capital Economics estimates that Chinese capital outflows in October 2016 reached US$73 billion, while Bloomberg intelligence estimated that in the 9 months through to September, US$620 billion flowed out of China. Having little restrictions while other countries erect their barriers means we could be swamped very quickly, and we should not just walk away and betray the country, like the Māori Party.

Mr SPEAKER: Order!

Land Transfer (Foreign Ownership of Land Register) Amendment Bill—Consistency with New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990

3. DENIS O’ROURKE (NZ First) to the Member in charge of the Land Transfer (Foreign Ownership of Land Register) Amendment Bill: Does he believe the Land Transfer (Foreign Ownership of Land Register) Amendment Bill breaches the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990, as the Attorney-General contends?

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS (Member in charge of the Land Transfer (Foreign Ownership of Land Register) Amendment Bill): That is a marvellous question. The Attorney-General has perfected the ultracrepidarian art.

Hon Member: What?

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: I knew you would say “What?”, because you have got to be educated to understand this.

Hon Gerry Brownlee: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. [Interruption]

Mr SPEAKER: Order! I have a point of order—the Hon Gerry Brownlee.

Hon Gerry Brownlee: That was a very unnecessary comment from Mr Peters. He was asked whether he could clarify what he was saying because he was mumbling.

Mr SPEAKER: Order! [Interruption] Order! If the member is having difficulty hearing—[Interruption] Order! If the member is having difficulty hearing then I suggest he moves closer for the rest of this question so he can clearly decipher—[Interruption] I must say I am finding it a little difficult myself, but I am putting it down to the background noise from some interjections. I invite the member, because we have now lost the continuity, to repeat the answer to the question.

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: The Attorney-General has perfected the ultracrepidarian art. His arguments are blurb-iated balderdash of the first order. How could foreign owners and buyers providing their name, country of origin, and the value of land purchased, in a publicly accessibly database, breach privacy, when anyone can pay a fee to the foreign owners of Quotable Value and get most of that information for themselves, as any practical lawyer knowing anything about property law—

Mr SPEAKER: Order! We just need the answer to the question. Supplementary question, Denis O’Rourke. [Interruption] Order! We just need the question first. [Interruption] Order! Mr Bridges. Supplementary question, Denis O’Rourke.

Denis O’Rourke: This will stump them.

Mr SPEAKER: Order! I am doing my best—[Interruption] Order! The member will resume his seat. I am doing my best to maintain order so the member can ask his question. It certainly does not help when he starts his question that way. Stand and ask the supplementary question or I will be moving on.

Denis O’Rourke: How have other jurisdictions successfully introduced registers without a Bill of Rights issue emerging?

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: Now that is a wonderful question, but it is better directed to our own self-appointed Lord Denning, or the “Blackstone of the Antipodes”. A basic tenet of our legal system is rights and responsibilities. If a foreign national is granted the right to own land here, then they would have the responsibility of being on this register. You would think a cumberground like—[Interruption] It is a bit heavy for me. You would think that a cumberground like Minister Finlayson would understand that.

Urgent Debates Declined

Programme for International Student Assessments—Results 2015

Mr SPEAKER: I have received a letter from Chris Hipkins seeking to debate under Standing Order 389 the release of the OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2015 results on the performance of school students in reading, maths, and science. The release of the results is a particular case of recent occurrence. As an OECD study, there is no ministerial responsibility for the data release, but the data deals with matters involving ministerial responsibility.

Educational achievement is of fundamental importance and is a matter about which the public needs confidence. An urgent debate on the report on the 2012 PISA data was held in 2013. In that instance the declines in the performance across reading, maths, and science were larger. I note that the 2015 results reflect relatively small declines in performance when compared with the 2012 data. Given the small movement in the results and the holding of a general debate today, I do not consider the matter important enough to warrant the immediate attention of the House by way of urgent debate. The application is therefore declined.

General Debate

General Debate

Hon CHRISTOPHER FINLAYSON (Attorney-General): I move, That the House take note of miscellaneous business. Can I begin by thanking the Rt Hon Winston Peters for describing me as Lord Denning. All I would say in response to his virulent attack on me is that at least I was never fired by Russell McVeagh after 6 months.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. As the record will prove, that is an outright lie—

Mr SPEAKER: Order!

Rt Hon Winston Peters: —and I want an apology.

Mr SPEAKER: Order! The member will resume his seat. [Interruption] Order! It is now the general debate, and that is very much a debating matter. If the member thinks that he has been misrepresented, it is not to be done by raising it as a point of order in the House. He is to refer to the Standing Orders, particularly Standing Order 359.

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

Mr SPEAKER: I hope—well, no, I just need to give the member a very clear warning. I have ruled on that matter. If the member wants to raise any other issue, that is absolutely his prerogative, but if he is continuing in any way to relitigate the statement I have just made with regard to his previous point of order, I will take a very dim view of it and be likely to be asking the member to leave the Chamber.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: The reality is that the rights of minorities are important in this House. The reality is that I am taking offence at a statement that goes to the very character and record of a person’s working history. To say that you—

Mr SPEAKER: Order! [Interruption] Order! The member is in danger of being asked to leave. I have said that the matter was into debate. If he feels that he has been misrepresented, I have advised him how to do it.

Hon Members: He’s taken offence to it.

Hon CHRISTOPHER FINLAYSON: Oh, if he has taken offence—

Mr SPEAKER: Oh—

Hon CHRISTOPHER FINLAYSON: —I apologise so that I can get on with my damned speech.

Mr SPEAKER: If the member is saying he has taken offence—oh, I did not pick that up in the statement that was made. The member has taken offence. Would the member kindly withdraw the last part of his statement.

Hon CHRISTOPHER FINLAYSON: I withdraw the last part of the statement, and I will go and indulge in some self-flagellation later on. Before the Speaker came into the House—

Grant Robertson: Nothing unusual there, then.

Hon CHRISTOPHER FINLAYSON: —quite a normal activity—Mr Robertson, whose views I so greatly respect, called out to me and asked why am I not standing for the leadership. I did say to him that I have the dream team: me as leader and me as deputy leader. But, unfortunately, there have not been any takers, and I have been told to concentrate on winning Rongotai in 2026. Now that Mrs King is standing down, I believe that opportunity will be upon me in 10 years’ time.

I came in here in—[Interruption] I thought that would wake her up. I came in here in 2005, and what a gloomy place it was then. It was a gloomy country because Helen Clark tended to spread gloom around the place. The Rt Hon Winston Peters had his problems with Simunovich Fisheries. We had the Electoral Finance Act, of which Mrs King was the author and was the prime mover behind it. It really was such a miserable place. We campaigned in 2008 on bringing New Zealand a brighter future. And what a wonderful future the outstanding John Key has brought New Zealand. That is why I am so proud to stand in this House and say that he is New Zealand’s greatest Prime Minister and that it has been an absolute honour to serve under him.

I come to 2008. As soon as we came in, there was a global financial crisis, and the team worked on that. There was no zealotry. There was no “mother of all Budgets”. There was no—

Iain Lees-Galloway: Thank you, Michael Cullen!

Hon CHRISTOPHER FINLAYSON: Oh, that was our lot. There was no need for punishment. It was a sensible, moderate, liberal-conservative path, which this great Prime Minister led his team on. Time and time again, in whatever portfolio I held, one could see the Prime Minister’s very determined, yes—professional, yes—but true leadership skill shining through.

I come to the golden years of arts and culture, for example, and he was so supportive of me as Minister for the arts in that time. I recall, for example, just a little example, the Arras Tunnel—it was the Prime Minister’s idea to do it well. They got Mr Brownlee to go and talk to Mr Robertson, because Mr Chauvel did not like me, and they thought if I went and saw Mr Chauvel, nothing would get done. But there is an example.

In the Treaty negotiations area, as I said this morning, I would be nothing without the enthusiastic support of the Prime Minister. Groundbreaking, hugely innovative settlements like the Tūhoe settlement and the Whanganui River settlement—they were because of that Prime Minister and his support for his Minister for Treaty of Waitangi Negotiations.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Another Doug Graham here, you know.

Hon CHRISTOPHER FINLAYSON: I know that the right honourable Mr Peters does not like Treaty settlements, because he lives in a negative, backward world. He dreams of a country that never was and never could be—utterly miserable and utterly negative, doomed to ask questions and do nothing more. He has nothing to contribute, unlike our great Prime Minister.

Then we move into the area of infrastructure. Mr Robertson, of course, as the member for Wellington Central, knows full well the need for proper infrastructure in this country. In 2008 Transmission Gully was a pipedream. The Kapiti Expressway was not even contemplated. In 2016 we are talking not about the Kapiti Expressway but the Ōtaki expressway.

I will never be prouder of this Prime Minister than when the Christchurch earthquakes struck. He was down there with Bob Parker immediately. He was working with Amy Adams, Gerry Brownlee, Lianne Dalziel, and the other Christchurch MPs to make sure that our second city could be rebuilt, and he has been an outstanding leader in that regard.

So although I am personally very sorry—[Interruption] I have just started. Although I am very sorry that he is going, I acknowledge his leadership. Whatever area he has done, he has done brilliantly, and there is a lot more for him to give.

JAMES SHAW (Co-Leader—Green): It is always a great pleasure to be offered the opportunity to respond to the Rt Hon Christopher Finlayson—

Hon Members: No, he’s not.

JAMES SHAW: —the Hon Christopher Finlayson—who, I have to say, from my interactions with him, could not think of anything worse than representing a local electorate like Rongotai. That is why we are putting up such an outstanding candidate there—to put him out of his misery and make sure he is safe in the knowledge that he will never actually have to represent an electorate and deal with common people. Teall Crossen is the Green Party’s candidate for Rongotai next year. She is an outstanding lawyer, like the Attorney-General. She is an environmental lawyer. She is someone who is so committed to the environment, and it is a great pleasure that she will be facing off against the Attorney-General next year.

Minister Finlayson referred to the promise 8 years ago of a brighter future. I think it is time now, obviously, that we talk about the leadership that the Prime Minister has provided and whether that promise—that hazy, wavy notion of a brighter future—has in any way been delivered. In my view, it has not.

The Government is fond of using big numbers like the rise in gross domestic product, for example, and the rise in the median wage. All those numbers do is obscure the real story about what is actually going on inside the economy. So, yes, the median wage has been rising, but for the bottom third their incomes have actually gone backwards relative to the cost of living over the course of the 8 years of this Government. You cannot say you are providing a brighter future for all when fully a third of your population have seen their incomes go backwards over the over course of your Government—the 8 years of this Government. I have to say that I think Mr Key has called it quits so that he does not have to sit through an entire year of Opposition members yelling “9 long years” at him next year. That is what is going to happen, because the Government’s record does not stand up to scrutiny.

As National prepares to vote on a new leader for its caucus and for its party and, by extension, therefore, on a new Prime Minister, it is time to talk about what leadership really means. Leadership is the ability and the means to go first and to show the way. That is what leadership is—to go first and to show the way. This Government has done anything but that over the course of the last 8 years. Everything has been focused on maintaining its popularity, not necessarily on fixing the underlying problems. It is about papering over the cracks when it should have been building houses. It has managed to maintain popularity rather than actually deal with the great crises that are facing us today.

The Government has dealt with some of the symptoms, or it is dealing with some of the symptoms; for example, in the housing crisis, where it is chucking a hell of a lot at it and hoping that something sticks, when in fact the housing crisis is a direct consequence of the way that it has managed the economy over the course of the last 8 years. It has encouraged an economy based on speculation and borrowing rather than on investment and productivity. It has presided over an enormous growth in inequality and a huge accumulation of wealth by, essentially, property owners in this country, because of the way it has skewed the investment flows and the taxation system towards property and property ownership.

On climate change, the single greatest challenge facing our civilisation and our country today, the Government has done absolutely nothing. Mr Key likes to stand up and talk about all of the things that the Government has done, but the results have achieved a 19 percent growth in our emissions over the course of the last 8 years. So Government members can say that they have done a whole lot of stuff, but their results show that we are going backwards when it comes to climate change.

Leadership is about getting beyond the politics of self-interest. Leadership is about the long term, not the short term. It is about much more than political gains over the course of the next few months, or the next year. We need a vision for this country that is about more than just staying in power, or staying in Government. The only way that we are going to get that is by changing the Government, and change is coming.

Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH (Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs): Mr Speaker—

Dr Megan Woods: Announce. Announce.

Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: No. This will not be the announcement, but it has not been the week that any of us has expected, and I do want to start by paying tribute to John Key, our Prime Minister. Enoch Powell’s ironclad law of politics—that all political careers end in failure—has been proved wrong in this context, as it has in the United States context, where they limit their presidents to 8 years in office. Our Prime Minister has done 8 years. He has given his all and described the tank as being empty. Having followed him around the country at various points and seen his regular habit of doing three functions in an evening—bang, bang, bang—and then up at 6 o’clock the next morning so that he could come back down the country, I can understand that he wants to do other things with his life. I do think the country owes him a debt of gratitude for all that he has done.

When you look at his legacy, fundamentally, he lifted the country’s confidence. He has showed us what we could do as a country—a small, little place in the South Pacific, but with so many natural resources, such great people, and such great skills to draw on. He was—and always has been—so upbeat about New Zealand’s prospects, and that infectious enthusiasm that he has had for our country has flowed through and made a real difference.

He has also delivered competent, sensible Government for an extended period of time, which has led us back to Budget surpluses. When we look around the world and at the very, very tricky economic environment around the world, with incredibly low interest rates leading to the asset price inflation that we hear about so much—particularly in the Auckland housing context—under John Key’s leadership, with the support of Bill English, we have successfully managed the economy for an extended period of time.

I think he will also be remembered for the welfare reforms as well. We have had 70 years of social welfare in New Zealand, all heading in one direction, and, for the first time, this Government, under his leadership, has strengthened the benefits and also started to put some boundaries around the system, showing responsibilities that are required from people who get help from the State. I think that is a very, very important signal that we have sent, and that will have a big impact longer term.

The other thing about the Prime Minister is his personal qualities. One of the previous speakers talked about leadership being something that people can follow. Again, when you watch the Prime Minister engaging with New Zealanders—I have never once seen him be anything but unfailingly polite to everybody he has met, whether they are young, small, or old. The way that he has done that and has shown leadership has been a real tribute.

We are going to build on that, and that is the point. We have had that legacy from the Prime Minister, but this is a Government that wants to continue the great work that is done for New Zealanders.

Grant Robertson: Who’re you backing, Paul?

Fletcher Tabuteau: Who’re you backing? Who’re you backing?

Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: Ha, ha! Some of the leaders around the House—it is a pity that some of the other people around the House have not followed the Prime Minister’s lead. We have seen the Labour Party leaders over the last few years having to be pushed by their caucus. I think of Mr Peters, who has been around for decades now and who has given a message of doom and gloom for over 40 years. I would say that Winston Peters is a good man, but he has been, I think, twisted over a period of time in this House. I thought it was amazing that he was the only leader who could not bring himself, on the news of the Prime Minister’s announcement, to say something positive about the Prime Minister. He had to come out with a negative, nasty comment, even at a moment when the nation was thinking about the contribution that the Prime Minister had made.

I have had the opportunity to watch a little bit of that programme called The Crown, which is about Queen Elizabeth II in her younger days. There is an ancient Winston Churchill who comes on the scene, who has been around a long time and is well and truly past his use-by date. I cannot help but think of Winston Peters in that context. He cannot look back on great achievements. All he can look upon, maybe, is holding Koro Wētere to account back in the 1980s.

I do not want to be harsh about Winston Peters, but I think there are plenty of other leaders of parties in this Parliament now who could take a leaf from John Key’s book and move on. In the meantime we are very focused on coming up with a new leadership team for this party that will carry this country forward over the next few years and build on the great strength that we have delivered in terms of growth, the number of quality jobs, the ability of New Zealanders to thrive in their own lives. Thank you.

GRANT ROBERTSON (Labour—Wellington Central): Well, what a trio of contestants we have in National’s most entertaining reality TV show. It is not so much the X factor as the “why” factor. Why are these the only people the National Government can put up in front of us? Why has the National Government not created a deeper pool of talent it could present to New Zealanders? But these are the three we have, so let us run through our contestants.

Bill English: “Old Caretaker Bill”—like a cross between the caretaker in Are you being served? and Arkwright, leaning on his broom giving you the minute detail of his view on social investment, boring his way to glory. He is, indeed, the architect of National’s policies; that is for sure. But there is a reason why people employ real estate agents to sell their houses, not architects. Bill English does not even have the energy to get his hands out of his pockets. His campaign is sponsored by Mogadon. New Zealanders are going to sleep. He is the political equivalent of microwaved fish and chips from the night before—leftovers from 2002, which did not taste that good the first time around and are now soggy, flaccid, and stale. What an unfortunate number for Bill English in the UMR Insight poll on who the preferred leader is. He was in front, on 21 percent. Any number but 21! It could have been 20, it could have been 23—any number but 21. But if he gets the job, and I reckon he might, he is just going to be minding the shop. He will never be seen as anything more than the caretaker, the guy John Key dropped in it, ready or not.

Then we have contestant No. 2.

Hon Member: Who’s that?

GRANT ROBERTSON: Old cigar-smoking Jonathan Coleman: “To the bedside manner born”, as he was described by New Zealand Doctor magazine, or as he is known to most New Zealanders, “Who?”—or, cheerfully, “Doctor Who?”. Jonathan told us that he has been taking a series of soundings as to whether he should be the leader. I understand most of these soundings were taken in the bathroom mirror. We have had the results leaked to us. They have come back with: “You’re the man, JC.”, “Go for it.”, and “When did you get so gorgeous?”. Unburdened by modesty or self-doubt, Jonathan is the candidate of change, of rejuvenation. Finally a rich North Shore doctor, so long part of the forgotten class of New Zealand, will get his moment in the sun! And what a mess he has made of health. He is reduced, day after day, to a puddle of contradictions and jibber-jabber by the king of health, my colleague Annette King. Here is Jonathan Coleman bleating away about the need for more money in health today. What has he been doing for the last few years?

Then there is the third candidate, Judith Collins, who has done so much for the milk exports of New Zealand that she must be “Countess Homogenised—I’ve come to drink your milk.” She does not bear grudges. Rather, she embraces them, keeps them in a locked, dark cupboard, nurtures them into full-grown feuds, and then unleashes them to Cameron Slater for safekeeping. Let us just remember what she did in Oravida. She used a $36,000 taxpayer-funded trip as Minister of Justice to promote a company where her husband was one of only three directors. She told us she popped into Oravida for a cup of tea on the way to the airport, but she actually cancelled appointments in the justice area to drive 45 minutes in the other direction for that photo op. The National Government has two JCs in this contest. One of them thinks he walks on water, and the other one thinks the original JC was a weak, socialist hippy.

So that is what we have got: corrupt and nasty versus vain and incompetent versus tired and out of touch. Such are the choices facing National, a party that has relied for so long on the salesman skills of one man, now cruelly exposed. The good news is that there is another choice: a Labour Government under an Andrew Little - leadership, with a plan for New Zealand to be back at its best. Homeownership for young New Zealanders, a place for everyone to live and call their own, a health system where you get the best treatment no matter where you live or how much money you have, a country where you know that every school, the school your children will go to, will be a world-class school and that there are decent jobs all around for every New Zealander; a country where security and opportunity are possible for all—that is the real choice for New Zealanders.

IAN McKELVIE (National—Rangitīkei): I do not often get the opportunity to get this far up the speaking list, but I certainly have never heard a more interesting speech than that one. For that speech to come from a person, Grant Robertson, who has been through more leadership contests than I have had hot meals is pretty extraordinary, I think. We have an expert in the matter speaking to us on that issue, so we would have to take a little bit of notice of him, because he has been beaten only three times! He is well practised. But it was an interesting speech, and, of course, the statistics he was quoting about one of the candidates—Labour does not even poll that much.

Anyway, back on to the real issues of the day. I want to take a very brief time to acknowledge the Prime Minister, who is about to take leave of this House. I came into Parliament in 2011—like many of us who have been in the real world, not really knowing what I was coming to. I came into a place where we had a leader who, I think, was extraordinary. I will say no more about him, because I do not think he needs any more said about him. I think it has been an extraordinary time for New Zealand, under his leadership.

I want to make another comment about leadership, which James Shaw led off with. I have noticed that anyone who leads by being up front and showing the way very seldom looks behind themselves, and often those kinds of leaders find a massive gap behind them. We saw one in this House not that many years ago. When she left there was a massive gap behind her. I think leadership is much more about enabling people around you to perform at their best and to front things in troubled times.

I want to get on to some real facts of the issue now. I note that a previous speaker, Paul Goldsmith, spent a bit of time talking about the welfare reforms of this Government. I too think that they are a pretty special achievement, and I think the Prime Minister certainly led that for us. I will say no more about those, because, in fact, Paul Goldsmith covered a lot of that.

What I really want to talk about is the fact that in recent years this Government has created an environment where our unemployment rate has dropped to—[Interruption]—it is OK, Mr Speaker. I am happy with them talking like that, because they are talking to themselves. Our unemployment rate has dropped to 4.9 percent. We have, in the last quarter, created 35,000 more jobs in New Zealand. We clearly need this population to continue growing at the rate it is, just to supply the job market with people. The New Zealand Institute of Economic Research is now predicting some 400,000 more jobs in the years leading up to 2021. I think, in fact, that will prove to be conservative, so we certainly need to increase our population at a great old rate. We are doing that, fortunately, because from a producing or agricultural perspective, the more people—well, not necessarily the more people, but certainly it is to our advantage to have more people living in New Zealand. I think it is most important.

The other thing I want to touch on is the tourism industry. The north part of the Rangitīkei electorate, my electorate, significantly benefits from the massive increase in the number of tourists coming to New Zealand and from the investment that we have been making in that sector, particularly around cycling, walking, climbing, and the Whanganui River. In fact, the Whanganui River settlement came through Parliament this morning—and that will progress very quickly, in my part of the electorate. The other settlement that came through Parliament this morning was in the lower part of my electorate, in the Rangitāne, and I think that is pretty special for them as well.

Very quickly on the dairy industry—we have seen extraordinary growth in the dairy industry in recent years. It has slowed down significantly, and that has enabled some of the environmental challenges that dairy industry growth was causing to be managed. I think the dairy industry is in a much better space now. It is much stronger than it was in the boom times of 4 or 5 years ago, and I think we are going to see a very good return to those dairy farmers in the next year or two. I also think we will see some of our major challenges around the environment overcome.

Finally, my electorate relies on sheep. We are the biggest sheep electorate in New Zealand, and we have seen the sheep-meat industry, I think, turn around to some extent. Interestingly, it has turned around on the back of two very significant investments of overseas foreign currency into our two biggest firms: Silver Fern Farms, with that deal going through yesterday or the day before; and the other one where we had the Alliance Meats company having a strong partnership with overseas companies, which will enable those to grow too. So I think we are in pretty good order, and I will take my leave.

FLETCHER TABUTEAU (NZ First): Look across at the other side of the House right now. Look at them. Look at their eyes opening like newborn babes as the thumb comes off and they realise: “We can think for ourselves. We can think. We don’t need to be told what to say and do any more.” Look at their eyes. They are like headless chooks right now—they are like headless chooks, they really are. They do not know what to do with themselves. They are running around the room, and they are literally bumping into one another. Then they are running to corners and they are whispering to one another. Today, for example, I saw a group of Ministers and MPs I have never seen together, sitting down, chatting to one another. Goodness knows what about—goodness knows what about.

Hon Member: Asking them their names.

FLETCHER TABUTEAU: “Doctor who? ‘Crusher’ who?” So here we are now. It is wonderful. The thumb has come off, the leader has left the building, and the sycophantic bobbleheads no longer have to bobble their heads quite as hard as they had to the week before. It is wonderful. It is empowering for them. But it is freaking them out—it is freaking them out. I think it is fair to say that the “Hunger Games” have begun. What we are now seeing is the aspirants fighting one another now—

Todd Barclay: Mahesh. Give Mahesh a go.

FLETCHER TABUTEAU: —for the leadership of the National Party, a party that has passed its use-by date and is probably on its way down anyway, Mr Barclay.

Now we have to ask: what has the New Zealand public been saying to those people over there? What has the public been saying? What has the response been to this amazing news that John Key has left the building? Actually, it is quite simple: now is not the time for tax cuts, look after the people of New Zealand first—talk about that. Now is not the time to be talking about housing consents; now is the time to be actually building homes for New Zealanders. Stop talking about it and start doing something about it. Stop the flood of migrants coming into the country, and manage the population of New Zealand for the benefit of New Zealand. Make it work. Make it work. Fix the gap. Here is the critical one, because—I will get into the detail shortly for some of the smiling members on the other side. Fix the gap between the ultra-rich and the desperately poor. That is what the people of New Zealand want to see.

Those backbenchers, like the rest of New Zealand, now want to see an actual plan. For too long they have been detritus or debris, floating on the sea of random chance. To be fair to Mr English, it has worked out not too bad for him. He has been able to paint some pretty numbers, but New Zealanders know that there is no plan, and right now the future is not looking bright at all.

What is the legacy of this former Prime Minister, of the Prime Minister who has left the building? What is his legacy? Let me put it to the House in the form of numbers, because you cannot argue with the numbers. Since that National Government came into power, farmers’ debt has increased by $17.2 billion; businesses now owe $13.8 billion more, and it was $100 billion before that; and homeowners have almost doubled their debt in terms of debt for their homes. This is the legacy of that National Government. Here are some numbers for that side of the House: private debt has increased by $409 every second since that party came into power. That works out to be $24,000 every minute. That is $1.47 million every hour, and $35.5 million every single day, on that former Prime Minister’s watch—on that Government’s watch. It is debt—mountains of debt. It is businesses borrowing more and more to do less and less. It is people borrowing just to survive week to week. This is not John Key’s legacy, but the legacy of a decapitated snake now in its death throes. Thank you.

SARAH DOWIE (National—Invercargill): Well, I certainly do not mind being described as a wide-eyed, newborn babe, but I am certainly no bobblehead. So thank you very much for that description, Mr Tabuteau. I am not sure why it is so interesting that the party of competition and the party of promotion on merit is running a competition for the leadership, given the resignation of our most excellent Prime Minister, who has a record that is second to none over an 8-year period. I too would like to join with my colleagues in congratulating the Prime Minister on those 8 years in which he has delivered sound, stable Government, which has been compassionate to the vulnerable but was aspirant for New Zealand. He delivered his policies with dedication, energy, and, of course, warmth. I thank him for his service, and I think it is only fitting that he has left on his own terms, with such an excellent record. Well done to the Prime Minister—he deserves to be commended.

I am actually going to talk about the regions, because last Wednesday was a fantastic day for Southland, where the Government swung in behind the Southland Regional Development Strategy and invested millions in our action plan. This is a Government that is supportive of the regions, and the plan was to do with several can-do Southlanders coming together to work out a plan to attract 10,000 more people into Southland by 2025.

These people were divided into action teams, and they led from the front. There were teams such as “Vibrant Urban Centres”, which is looking at rejuvenation in our centre city of Invercargill—a fantastic city, but one that needs a little bit of work around its CBD. There was one looking at “Ease of Doing Business”: when you come to Southland, there are several governing councils that rule over Southland, and so it is looking at a consistent regulatory framework across the four. There are things like “Destination Attraction”, building on tourism, and, certainly in respect of our new industries, there is “Business Extension”, “New Industries”, and a team looking at innovation. These people came up with a plan—which should be commended—because they are Southland business people and community leaders who came up with a plan and they turned to us and said “Would you like to get involved?”, to which the Government said: “Absolutely.”

The one thing that I would like to focus on is in respect of “New Industries”, because I was very involved in that team, and we were responsible for investigating the potential of aquaculture in our region—and there is potential there. We had an initial survey in respect of what the community thought about aquaculture, and 91 percent of Southlanders were in favour of investigating and delivering on aquaculture in our region. Let us look at some of the statistics. For one surface hectare of aquaculture, it delivers 70 jobs and creates $14 million worth of revenue. That is fantastic. It is a sustainable industry, and it is a very low carbon footprint for those salmon farms.

The Government has swung in behind that project and delivered $950,000 in research to help Southlanders, firstly, look at their environment to see where aquaculture could be feasible, and then has delivered some more money in respect of looking at community engagement as to where, in respect of these sites, it is appropriate to deliver on aquaculture.

It is a fantastic project, and the community has been very involved. I also want to thank Ngāi Tahu, because iwi have also led from the front in respect of this project. Often people can be somewhat apprehensive about iwi getting involved in projects. However, Ngāi Tahu have been completely progressive on this. They would like a slice of this action. They want to deliver jobs and wealth for their families, as well as jobs and wealth for Southlanders. This is a plan where we are capitalising on our strengths. We are building capabilities, we are creating jobs, and we are investing in our people. We want to attract more. Thank you.

CHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka): The scab has been ripped off and the pus is now spewing forward in the National Party. All of that naked ambition, those divisions that they have been covering up for so long, are now spewing forth into the public arena. The digs at each other, the snide remarks, the plotting in Copperfields, the asides during select committee meetings—it has all started. All we know is—and I tell you what, I have read this book before. I can tell the members opposite that it all gets worse from here. I can tell them with some certainty that their troubles are just beginning. It is all going to get worse from here. Whoever the next temporary leader of the National Party is, the plotting will continue. All of those ambitions that have been uncovered in the last 48 hours are not simply going to go away. They all think they can do the top job better than the person sitting next to them, and they are all out to get each other. It is absolutely clear.

But of course we have got the retirement bench over there, who clearly are no longer interested. They are checking out of the building.

Hon Hekia Parata: I’m staying.

CHRIS HIPKINS: Hekia Parata is thinking about staying. She is probably going to throw her hat in the ring. She would be the only person left on the front bench who has not. Of course, we know that the National Party is absolutely ripped open. We saw that in question time today when Jonathan Coleman had a dig at Bill English about staying past his use-by date. It has already started—Jonathan Coleman talking about Bill English staying past his use-by date. Jonathan Coleman thinks, of course, that he is the young, refreshed face of the National Party.

Then, of course, we have got Judith “Crusher” Collins, whose career has been an absolute glowing success. She wants to lead the National Party into the next election. I say to Judith Collins that she has got my backing. There is no one else I would rather that we were running against at the next election than Judith Collins.

But, of course, the National members, at the end of the day, are going to chicken out and settle for Bill English, the caretaker Prime Minister, the guy whom they will let have the job if he can hold their numbers up enough—if he can hold their numbers up enough to lead them into the next election. But, of course, if the numbers start going down, we could see this happening again, before the next election. This may not be the end of the matter for the National members, as their numbers go into free fall because, of course, “Mr 21 Percent” is about to take over as the leader of the National Party. I have read that book before, as well, and that did not end very well for the National Party either. It is not going to like that one. It is not going to like that one, one iota.

But you can already see the plotting and the scheming. The more green leather we see over there, the more we know that they have hurried away. They are in their little groups. They are plotting their numbers. They have got their spreadsheets out and they are desperately trying to figure out how they can advance their own interests, at the expense of the interests of New Zealanders. Fundamentally, that is what this is about.

At a time when we have people who are homeless, when our educational rankings are plummeting in the OECD, the National members are focused on themselves and not on the challenges that face New Zealand. They are in the Government. They do not have that luxury, and yet that is the luxury that they are taking. This week it is all about the National members talking to each other and not communicating to New Zealanders and not talking about the hopes and aspirations of New Zealanders. Instead, they are busy fighting each other.

So let us look at some of the things that we have seen in the last 24 hours. I was taken by this photo of John Key hanging out in the corridor, desperate to avoid being seen with Judith Collins. Judith Collins was already in front of the media when John Key came to walk down to the House today. So desperate was John Key not to be seen with Judith Collins that he hung back in the corridor, all on his lonesome. How things have changed.

And then, of course, we have got the anonymous leaks from the National caucus. This is how it starts—with the anonymous leaks from the National caucus. But there is a huge mood for change on the backbench. I think that is Todd Barclay. Bill English did not back Todd Barclay, down there in Clutha-Southland, and Todd Barclay is getting his own back. He is getting his own back. He wants a mood for change.

Another National backbencher, another anonymous comment to the media: “Bill English shouldn’t just be anointed.” That was the other comment from a National backbencher. Of course they are not willing to put their names on record, yet, but the plotting and the scheming will continue. National members’ troubles are all ahead of them. In the meantime they are not focused on the hopes and aspirations of New Zealanders; they are focused on their own ambitions and their own internal squabbling. They are not acting in the interests of the country, and that is why there will be a change of Government next year.

Mr SPEAKER: I call Todd Barclay.

Hon Members: Confess, confess.

TODD BARCLAY (National—Clutha-Southland): I am not sure what I am being asked to confess to, apart from the fact that I am proud to be part of a strong John Key - led National Government, and have been for the last 2½ years. One thing I want to say about the Prime Minister is that he is relentlessly optimistic and aspirational for New Zealand. He has been, every day that he has been in this Parliament, and he is absolutely an inspiration to us all. That is more than the Opposition members can say of their leader.

We have heard a number of speeches this afternoon in the general debate. The general debate is meant to be about putting your case for talking about the positive aspirations that you have for New Zealand and for your electorate. But, instead, every single Opposition member has spent their 5 to 10 minutes talking about National, and that says a lot about them and what they have to offer. This is why I have absolute confidence that the next leader of the National Party and the next deputy leader of the National Party will be the next Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister of New Zealand in 2017.

We are proud of our achievements over on this side of the House. We have a lot to offer New Zealand moving forward. One of the things that the Prime Minister can walk away taking pride in is having built a successful, cohesive, passionate, and compassionate team. That is one thing that we have on this side of the House that the other side simply does not have.

I want to speak about an announcement that was made last week in Southland by Steven Joyce, Nathan Guy, Sarah Dowie, and me in support of them and in support of the 550 Southlanders who showed up for the launch of the Southland Regional Development Strategy action plan. We had almost 1 percent of our population at that launch, which is an incredible backing for a regional development plan that really has been led from the grassroots up.

One of the remarks that Steven Joyce and Nathan Guy made in their respective speeches throughout the day was that the people of this region took the bull by the horns and started this plan themselves, and then came to Government and said: “Hey, this is what we’re doing. Do you want to be a part of it?”. “Absolutely”—that is what the Government said. We have got behind this plan. Sarah and I, as local MPs in Southland, have been totally supportive, right from the start. Sarah has talked about aquaculture and some of the primary production benefits of this plan. I want to echo those comments, and I want to talk about some of the aspirational targets we have for the growth of our population.

We know that if we want to maintain and grow our potential as a region across New Zealand, towards our contribution towards our GDP, we need to increase our population by 10,000 people. Southland and Otago are lucky in that they have such low unemployment and such high participation in employment. We need more people to come to our beautiful part of the country, in order that we can continue making the contribution that we are towards New Zealand. We are about diversification, we are about resilience, we are about self-determination, and we are about ruthless passion. That was echoed by the 550 people represented in the stadium at Bill Richardson Transport World last Wednesday.

One of the benefits we have for Southland going forward is harnessing the potential in tourism, which already exists in the region, but growing on that. We have Queenstown as part of my electorate, just outside of the Southland region. There are 1.5 million visitors a year who visit Queenstown, over 3.2 million guest nights. We have the potential to claw back some of those visitors who are going to Milford Sound and through Southland, spreading the benefits more broadly across Southland. That is a project that I have been involved in from the outset. It was pleasing to see, as part of the launch last Wednesday, that the Milford Opportunities Project, which was an organisation that I established about 2 years ago to greater coordinate about a dozen projects that are in place in the Milford Sound, attracted $250,000 for a coordinator in order to shepherd those projects through.

We have a great opportunity to expand and to grow and to exponentially enrich our tourism proposition in Southland, to support the growing and the well-performing primary production sectors that we have. Agriculture is the backbone of our country and it is the backbone of my electorate. In support of the opportunities we have with tourism, it has been a privilege to be a part of the Southland Regional Development Strategy launch.

Dr MEGAN WOODS (Labour—Wigram): Well, it is a full-on, full-blown “Blue Wedding” over on the other side. We are seeing the blood being spilt, but, clearly, the word had gone out before today’s general debate: “Don’t mention the war. Everyone channel Bill and bore them into submission. Everybody make sure they are as uneventful as they possibly can be.”, and for that I give you a 10 out of 10. The Minister of Education may even achieve an Achieved on that one.

But make no mistake, this is a backbench in revolt. They have never had so much to do. You can see the lights in their eyes, as has been said somewhere else—the plotting, the scheming, the extra coffees in Copperfield’s. You can see it all happening. All over the second floor of Parliament House, it has been awash with bewildered and lost-looking Ministers asking us whether we know where so-and-so’s office is and what they look like, because they would quite like a chat. For once, this backbench in the National Government has something to do other than not last 10 minutes. So it is all on over there.

One member, one unnamed backbencher from National, told me that he never knew he had so many friends. I said: “Don’t worry, it will all be gone by lunchtime Monday. It will all be over.” But what happened at that pirate party last week? Well, a mutiny emerged. That is what came out.

Kris Faafoi: The swords were sharpened.

Dr MEGAN WOODS: As my colleague here, Mr Faafoi, is saying, the swords were sharpened. What may have been planned was that now-infamous barbecue at Todd’s place down in Gore on Friday. Who was there? Well, we know that the maternal overlord of the National backbench was the guest of honour—Judith Collins was the keynote speaker at this. But who else was there? Maggie was tweeting up a storm, saying what a hard-working member that member was, but his mate Sarah Dowie seems to be backing Bill, and it seems to be that Bill will not back Todd, so what went down at the barbecue? Was that Don of the South Island National Party, Roger Bridge, in attendance, desperately trying to secure a lifeline for his old mate Gerry B? Or has he given up on him too, as everyone else seems to have? But what went down?

Todd Barclay was at pains to say he was proud to be a member of a John Key - led National Government. I wonder whether John Key is as proud of him, or whether he has more pride in his mate from Merrill Lynch who is contesting that seat for selection. Nowhere were the fault lines in the National Government more revealed than in Gore on Friday.

But when we thought it could not get hotter, today it got hotter. Bill’s bridesmaids emerged. No one wants to be Jonathan’s deputy; everyone is queueing up to be Bill English’s deputy. There is Simon and there is Paula, both hustling it out to be the generational change. They have declared the 50-year-old North Shore doctor not to be hip enough to represent that generational change. I do not know—he knows how to smoke a cigar at a U2 concert. That might be quite hip enough. But Simon is making it clear that he is Generation X and Jonathan is not. This has to be the defining thing. So “Si/Bill”—as it is going to be known—is going to be offering 10 lanes on the North Harbour bridge at any moment.

But then, on her way into the Chamber, Paula Bennett declared her hand. She said that she too wanted to be the face of generational change, and that she was the one who was going to be the deputy. This is a change from the normally reserved Paula Bennett, who does not like to blow her own trumpet: as quoted in a recent article this month, when asked who was the politician, dead or alive, whom she most admired, she said: “Me.” But, most chilling for all the—

Hon Annette King: You?

Dr MEGAN WOODS: No, no, she said “Me.”—quote unquote—not me. But most chilling for members on the opposite side who are up against Ms Bennett is that when she talked about her softer side, her more tranquil side, she revealed that she likes to go fishing. She said: “I love being on the sea. I find it tranquil. I find it reflective. I find it cleansing. All that kind of good crap. And then I kill something.” This is why there will be a change of Government to Labour in 2017 and there will be an Andrew-led Government after the next election.

TODD MULLER (National—Bay of Plenty): Every now and again an event occurs that is so unexpected that it sears into your memory, and for me, Monday lunchtime and the announcement by the Prime Minister that he was stepping down is one of those moments. For me, I was initially very shocked, and saddened, actually, that I would not have the opportunity to continue being part of his caucus and learn from his extraordinary experience and demonstration of leadership.

Ten years at the top is a long time, and reflecting on the judgment that he has given, or the reasons that he has given for his judgment, I can understand and see from his perspective why he has indeed made that call. At the core of it is integrity, which has been his touchstone for the time that he has been in Parliament, and certainly for the time that he has been the leader. He knew that he could not stand in front of the New Zealand public and say that he could commit to a fourth term when he knew that he could not. So, because of that, he has stepped aside, and, of course, we are going through that process of replacing him. But the ability to step aside at the height of his power, to me only reinforces his uniqueness.

Certainly, in history, be it in corporate or in other areas, it is very easy for people to stay too long. They can see themselves and their judgments as indispensable. They have rehearsed the arguments and the strategic intent for so long that they find it almost frustrating and have a sense of impatience at having to continue to repeat it. The Prime Minister has never ever been like that. He is a person who has always held the view that he was in a job that he loved, for a country that he loved, working for people whom he loved.

Another observation on his incredible value to this country was the ability to check and adjust as needed. So often in the past, politicians and leaders boxed themselves into a corner over a particular policy or direction and saw that any movement or any direction or any change in direction was, somehow, weakness, but he knew that the real strength of character and leadership is the ability to check and adjust as necessary. He did that, in my view, at a level that has had no peer in this place, and it has been extraordinary to watch.

I first met the Prime Minister when he came to an event in Tauranga in 2007. He filled the Queen Elizabeth Youth Centre, and he was just the Leader of the Opposition—the first time that had ever happened. I have listened to a number of leaders, both political and corporate, and I could tell from the moment he spoke that we were in the presence of someone who was materially different. He had a different tone. He was incredibly relaxed. He was very comfortable about who he was and what he stood for and the vision he had for this country. He took the job seriously but not himself. That capacity is something that too few people can apply to themselves in whatever career, but he has set the benchmark for it. But above all, his stand-out ability has been the ability to frame up arguments in a way that spoke to New Zealanders in the language of their lives, and he has done that in a way that, in my opinion, has had no peer.

Look how far we have come over the last 8 years. He has talked often about being ambitious for New Zealand. It is very easy to stand behind that statement, as we do as a party every day, and talk to the various Better Public Services targets that we have driven in this country and the performance that we have achieved against them. But when the Prime Minister stands and talks about ambition for New Zealand, it is not just the statistics of success that stand echoing his performance; it is what he has done for the attitude and approach of this country. When I have been out in my electorate in the Bay of Plenty and the city of Tauranga, I believe his greatest legacy, and one that will go through the years, is his focus on embracing New Zealand with the world—a sense of optimism, of connecting ourselves with the future, and an unrelenting belief in the potential of New Zealanders.

Little by little, over the last 8 years, New Zealanders have caught that wave of self-belief. It has been an absolute privilege to watch that happen in this country and to be part of it in Tauranga, and it has been a huge privilege to be with him in the last couple of years and see his leadership in action. He has been a tremendous leader for this country. He will leave, of course, a great hole, but we have an incredible contest under way and I have great confidence that whomever we choose on Monday will take this country forward in a way that amplifies his legacy and will return this Government to the Treasury benches in 2017. Thank you very much.

JAN LOGIE (Green): In my contribution I would like to just riff loosely off the previous speaker, Todd Muller, and add a contribution to this House that may help fill that gaping hole that is going to be left for the country with the leaving of John Key. It is a contribution that will, hopefully, help build optimism in the country and restore our belief in our ourselves and our potential as a country. I am, of course, talking about my member’s bill, which was drawn from the ballot last week, to provide workplace protections for victims of domestic violence. It is a bill that I would like to commend to all political parties that have aspirations to lead after the next election and to all those many National Government members who are vying for the leadership of their party.

The reason I believe this bill will help all of you out is that Colmar Brunton research that was done this year on New Zealanders’ concerns had, at the very top of the list, violence in society. Among the top 10 concerns of New Zealanders were (1) violence in society; (2) the increasing cost of living; and (3) the protection of New Zealand children. My member’s bill will address all of those concerns. We also know that this member’s bill is being supported by The Warehouse, the Auckland chamber of commerce, many different businesses across the country, the Human Rights Commission, all of the unions—the New Zealand Council of Trade Unions as well as other unions—the National Council of Women, and the 290 community organisations that are part of the National Council of Women, as well as, of course, Women’s Refuge and Shine. So there is massive support for these interventions.

The reason is, of course, pretty obvious, sadly: we have an epidemic of intimate partner violence in this country. In 2014, the year of the last statistics we have, every 5½ minutes the police were being called out to a family violence incident. One in three women in this country is likely to experience intimate partner violence in her lifetime. This is having a massive impact on the lives of thousands of people right now and on their families, and it is impacting on workplaces. Research tells us that this is costing, at a very conservative estimate, about $368 million every year in lost productivity in our workplaces. That is because of the impact of that violence and our lack of systems to respond to it in the workplace.

My bill addresses—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): Order! I am talking to Dr Woods and ask her to sit down. Thank you.

JAN LOGIE: Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker. That was very helpful. My bill addresses that concern and it supports businesses to be able to reduce the impact of that violence on their work colleagues and on their workplaces. We also know from overseas research that 70 percent of people needing a sole parent support benefit are likely to be leaving a violent relationship. This is probably the key driver of the need for people to receive income support internationally, and it is probably the same in New Zealand.

If we want to increase productivity in our workplaces, reduce the need for welfare and the costs on the Government because of that, and, most importantly, provide victims of domestic violence with pathways to safety and protections in the place where they are most vulnerable when they leave a violent relationship—because if they are leaving a relationship and they are still in work, then that is the place their abuser knows where to find them—that is the place where they are most at risk. Significant research shows that women are stalked in their workplaces, either by phone or outside that workplace, so it is a dangerous place and time for victims, particularly when they are trying to leave. I commend my member’s bill to everyone in this House, to make a real difference on an issue New Zealanders really care about.

The debate having concluded, the motion lapsed.

Bills

Private International Law (Choice of Law in Tort) Bill

First Reading

Debate resumed from 30 November.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the Private International Law (Choice of Law in Tort) Bill be now read a first time.

Ayes 108

New Zealand National 59; New Zealand Labour 31; Green Party 14; Māori Party 2; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.

Noes 12

New Zealand First 12.

Bill read a first time.

Bill referred to the Justice and Electoral Committee.

Bills

Land Transfer (Foreign Ownership of Land Register) Amendment Bill

First Reading

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS (Leader—NZ First): I move, That the Land Transfer (Foreign Ownership of Land Register) Amendment Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Government Administration Committee to consider this bill. The bill will amend the Land Transfer Act 1952, and the purpose of the bill is very straightforward. It is to ensure there is an accurate, reliable, and practical way to measure the amount of land under the control of foreign nationals. This New Zealand First bill is designed to shed long-overdue light on the true extent of foreign ownership of land and housing in New Zealand.

Currently, there is no comprehensive official database of foreign ownership of land in New Zealand. Although the Overseas Investment Office (OIO) collects data about applications and decisions and whether they result in approval or rejection, these details do not comprehensively capture the true extent of foreign ownership of land in this country. The OIO is a facade—nothing more than a sheep in sheep’s clothing. The OIO is not properly resourced to monitor any of the conditions it sets, but relies upon the community to undertake that vital function, and, of course, that is proving to be an incredibly hard thing to do if you cannot find out who owns the land in the first place. In denying the right of New Zealanders to know what land is foreign-owned and what land is not, Messrs Key, Joyce, and English, and their acolytes are all spouting piffle and platitudes.

The bill will mean that a full and comprehensive register of all foreign-owned New Zealand land is compiled and is made readily available to the general public. It will record names and nationalities, the amount and value of the land involved, and the region in which the land is situated. Purchasers will be required upon registering land dealings to provide the information for the register. The register will apply to all dealings in land as that term is defined in section 2 of the Land Transfer Act 1952. The definition of the term “land” in section 2 includes “messages, tenements, and hereditaments, corporeal and incorporeal, of every kind and description,”. That means the register will extend to dealings involving a dwelling house, the physical things on land such as building materials, minerals and trees, which are corporeal and hereditaments, and interests in land such as easements, land, and rent charges, which are incorporeal hereditaments. The register will provide an important resource for policy makers and the general public, who will be able to gauge the foreign stake in landholdings across New Zealand and in their local communities.

The bill also has teeth. New section 47A(1)(4), inserted by clause 4, states: “A person who knowingly fails to comply with subsection (3) commits an offence and will be liable to a fine not exceeding 25% of the value of the land involved.” For the first time, the register will provide transparency for concerned New Zealanders as to the real extent of the foreign ownership of New Zealand because—I want to say to the Government members—ignorance is not bliss, unless you are a National Government intent on hiding and obfuscating the extent of foreign ownership of land and housing in this country. But New Zealanders have a right to know what is happening in their country, and fundamental to that is who owns what and where. That is why this bill is so vital.

The issue of foreign ownership of land and property in New Zealand is one of great importance. It always has been. Foreign ownership of land goes to the heart of our sovereignty as a country. If we no longer own our own country who indeed are we? As well as the sovereignty aspect, the transfer of land and housing to non-resident foreign citizens has enormous and enduring economic impact. But this Government, with its short-term “everything is for sale” attitude, has no concern about the damage that the remorseless loss of land into foreign ownership is doing to New Zealand.

It is essential that a comprehensive register of foreign ownership of land is developed as soon as possible and this bill is it. It is urgently required because of the alarming loss of land into foreign ownership. The losses are staggering. From January to July this year—a period of just 6 months—the amount of land sold to foreign buyers has almost tripled with 108,724 hectares being sold compared with just 40,000 during the same period in 2015, which was bad enough. It is more than double. The three largest sales comprised Hong Kong buyers who paid $16.5 million for Braemar Road, Lake Tekapō; an Australian investment company that bought 1,341 hectares of Wairarapa land, and a couple from China who paid $8.5 million for 1,191 hectares of land in Stockerau Station, Whakatāne.

This wholesale sell-off of New Zealand land and business to foreign interests is completely counter to New Zealand’s long-term interests. As in New Zealand, the Australian public is deeply alarmed at the loss of the land to foreign ownership—the difference is that the Aussie Government has taken action in this area. It was in response to growing concerns with foreign ownership that last year the Australian Government implemented a register of foreign ownership of agricultural land that requires companies to disclose any foreign ownership of farmland. Clearly, the Australian Government has accepted the need for greater scrutiny of foreign ownership. Information from the Australian register of foreign ownership of agricultural land confirms that the Australian public were right to be concerned. It has revealed that foreign ownership grew by 2.5 million hectares over the past 3 years and now foreign ownership accounts for 13.6 percent or 52 million hectares of Australia’s total agricultural land.

The real question that New Zealanders ask in connection with Australia is this: why do we not already have this in place? What has the Government been doing for the last 8 years? After all, what Government interested in defending the rights of New Zealanders would want to continue in its blissful ignorance about who owns land and houses in this country? Indeed, most New Zealanders are incredulous, dumbfounded, and concerned that a comprehensive register of foreign ownership of land does not already exist. Most New Zealanders would say a well-ordered society and democracy rests, ultimately, on a well-informed public, but, of course, the National Government members have no interest in a well-informed public. On the contrary, as far as they are concerned, an informed public would ask awkward questions. That is why, in relation to foreign ownership of land, they want to keep New Zealanders in the dark—the sort of political mushroom policy. And as we have seen in many other areas, this Government is averse to data, averse to numbers, and averse to keeping the score, measurement, or facts.

But facts are real. Facts mean that Government Ministers cannot just dismiss legitimate public fears and concerns over foreign ownership with the breezy wave of the hand and a comment like “Nothing to see here; just move along.” After 8 years the public have learnt to distrust this Government, which is probably why someone is moving on. They are no longer buying the blithe and empty assurances that all is well and that all you have to do is trust the Government. So let us stop the spin and deception. The public do not want smoke and mirrors; they want to know. The Government has thrown all sorts of sand in the public’s face to confuse and mislead them; the reasons for inactions are bogus.

For instance, we had the ludicrous finding, by the Attorney-General of all people, that somehow a register of land owned by foreigners will breach the New Zealand Bill of Rights. That, against the UK, Canada, and the United States, and, indeed, our settings in this country, is absolute balderdash. It is a disgrace that someone would use his formerly self-confessed excellence in the law to come along and see himself so misused, seduced, and puppetised like that. It is hard to believe any self-respecting person who even got a law degree would behave in his way. But he will get up again, he will throw all this dust, smoke and mirrors, and try to sound erudite, but let me tell you that there will come a time soon when he will be gone, and by that time we will be left to fix things up—and fix them up we will. But, in the interests of the nation, they could be fixed up now—they could be fixed up now. Go and ask the public “Would you like to know what is going on, yes or no?” and I can guarantee you that 90 percent who are not in the special elitist group of the National Party—all 90 percent—would say: “Yes, we want to know.” For heaven’s sake, do they think New Zealanders are stupid?

Around 930 years ago, William the Conqueror undertook a massive stocktake of medieval England that became the famous Domesday Book. If Norman England could go into a comprehensive land survey with nothing but quill pens, parchment, and horsepower—no phones, no computers, no tweeters—then New Zealand in 2016 can figure out what land is owned by foreigners. I hope this bill is passed in this first reading and sent off to a select committee, but let me just say to my National Party colleagues over there that if it is not, we will campaign on it, and it will be “Good night, nurse.” for you.

PAUL FOSTER-BELL (National): The Land Transfer (Foreign Ownership of Land Register) Amendment Bill as introduced by the right honourable member Winston Peters, unfortunately, will not be supported by members on the National side going forward. There are several reasons for that, but before I expound upon those let me just comment on the irony of the member who just resumed his seat referring to parchment and quills and horse-drawn carriages. There is an irony there.

This is a country that has a modern land registry system already in place. This is a country where we have a very efficient and, actually, a legally reliable means of registering land. This is an important fact to note, because as a country that has derived our heritage from our Commonwealth forebears, we have a Torrens registration system in place in New Zealand.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: What about the Māori? You forget about them, do you?

PAUL FOSTER-BELL: We have customary ownership too, Mr Peters. We do have customary ownership, but we know the view that New Zealand First takes on customary ownership of land. Anyway, we have a system based on a Commonwealth heritage. It was actually in our own part of the world, in Australasia, that the Torrens registry system was devised—in South Australia, actually, by Sir Richard Torrens, a former Premier of South Australia. So we have—

Rt Hon Winston Peters: In what year? Come on now, what year?

PAUL FOSTER-BELL: —been innovators as well as inheritors of that proud tradition. It was back in the 1860s, Mr Peters, when you were just a young lad, before you came to this place. I am sure you were still in high school. The system we have guarantees that the registry of land in the land registry system is actually evidence of ownership. It is not a system where we register ownership; registration is, in fact, evidence of ownership.

This proposed legislation is not necessary, and the reason I believe it is not necessary is that overseas tax resident buyers already form a very, very small percentage of those who purchase land in New Zealand. Around 3 percent of New Zealand property transfers that are conducted in this country involve an overseas tax resident. So this bill diverts attention from the real issue. We know that we do have a shortage of housing in this country. We do have a shortage of housing in Auckland in particular, but also in other fast-growing areas such as Tauranga and Hamilton—even in Wellington. We hope soon to have something of a housing shortage in Wellington as people flood here to take maximum advantage of the opportunities that our capital city offers. There are wonderful employment opportunities, and there has been a 1.6 percent reduction in unemployment here over the last year.

This bill, in diverting attention from that housing supply issue—and the National-led Government is taking leadership, with its comprehensive planning on this issue—is also adding significant costs and delays. We have recently reviewed the Land Transfer Act in New Zealand. Only several months ago, through the Government Administration Committee and in this House, we looked at exactly this issue of land transfer. In doing so, we did modernise several elements that had become outdated. For instance, the Land Transfer Act 1952 was clearly devised in a time where paper registers and typewriters and manual concatenation of land registry information was the only option available. But having computerised registration as we now do makes this an efficient system.

In the select committee hearing process on those reforms, we were advised that to add in, as was suggested, I believe, by Mr Cunliffe at the time—or, certainly, the prospect was raised by the Hon David Cunliffe—some sort of test for foreign ownership, as this bill seeks to do, would add significant costs. We were advised by not only the representatives of the banking industry but also the learned and distinguished representatives of the legal profession. The Law Society was very, very clear in its advice that this would add significant costs to those who are seeking to purchase homes. It talked about figures for a standard mum and dad house purchase, or an individual or young couple buying a simple New Zealand house—an ordinary house, without complex ownership arrangements. We are not talking about trusts or companies or partnerships or any other kind of arrangement; we are talking about the average New Zealander looking to buy their family home. This sort of measure could add in the order of $1,500 or perhaps $2,000.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: How? How?

PAUL FOSTER-BELL: This was the advice that the select committee received in terms of the additional legal work that would be required to provide the verification. The Inland Revenue Department gathers significant amounts of information, but what we are talking about here is having lawyers check the work of other lawyers, and that is where we can see something in the order of $1,500 or maybe $2,000 worth of costs added to the simple family home transaction. You can only imagine how much that would add to transactions that are more complicated. Obviously, in our farming communities you often have property in family trusts or, actually, in partnerships or other company or limited liability structures. We do not want to see those extra compliance costs levelled upon the sellers or the buyers of homes and land in New Zealand, as Mr Peters’ bill risks doing.

This bill provides for the insertion of a new section into the Land Transfer Act 1952. Clause 4 inserts new section 47A, “Registrar to keep foreign ownership of land register”. So it requires the Registrar-General of Land to keep an electronic register—electronic, at least; that is one thing, I suppose, given the talk before of quills and feather pens and ink. It requires the registrar to keep the person’s name and nationality, the amount and value of the land involved, and the district or districts in which the land is situated. What we know is that the Overseas Investment Office already collects data about these large-scale applications and their subsequent grant or rejection, but I would rather not see this extended to every single farm, every single house, every single cottage in every single village, hamlet, borough, and small community in our country. There is no need to do this, with such a small number of foreign owners purchasing land in New Zealand—only 3 percent.

Richard Prosser: How do you know it’s a small number if you don’t check it?

PAUL FOSTER-BELL: It is only 3 percent, Mr Prosser, so I think that that is unnecessary. It is also possible, Mr Prosser—you may not be aware of this—for a person’s nationality and their country of tax residence to be different, or for a person to be registered as a tax resident or national of more than one country. In fact, we may even have members of this House who are tax residents or nationals of more than one country. This means that the current information collected from property transfers is different from that required for the proposed foreign ownership of land registration, so this actually counters the point that you have made, Mr Prosser—that we are already collecting the information so why not just extend it further. The reality is that this is very different information that we are asking for.

I am also somewhat uncomfortable with this concept of foreign ownership. “Foreign ownership” is a term undefined in this legislation. I think it will give rise to enormous compliance cost issues for sellers and purchasers of land but will also, I think, fuel a xenophobic argument that foreigners should not be able to own land in New Zealand. I think we should be thankful for the significant capital investment that foreign investors make when they come to New Zealand, set up businesses here, and employ people, including many, many New Zealanders. We would not want to put them off.

A final point that I would make regards our trade agreements. We have a number of trade agreements where we have the ability to modify the Land Transfer Act 1952, but only in a non-discriminatory fashion. For instance, for our closer economic relations investment protocol agreement with Australia, concluded in 2013, we could not put up potential barriers to Australian investment whilst discriminating in that way against others. So this actually makes it a very complicated situation.

We must adhere to the international covenants and agreements that we have concluded in good faith, which also allow New Zealanders the opportunity to invest elsewhere and allow New Zealanders the ability to go and invest in Australia—as they are doing in increasing numbers, given the strength of the New Zealand economy and the weakness of the Australian economy. I think the specific legal advice from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, when it comes, should be taken into account, because there needs to be a detailed assessment of whether this bill would breach our international obligations and our trade obligations, which we have signed up to in good faith.

This bill is unnecessary. It could potentially be very expensive. For that reason, I would argue that it progress no further.

Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE (Labour—New Lynn): The member Paul Foster-Bell is capable of arguments that are so much better than the ones he has manufactured. Let us just touch on a couple of them. That this bill would divert attention from other measures to solve the housing crisis—that has got to be the dumbest argument this House has ever heard. It is precisely to focus attention on one of the drivers of the housing crisis, which is unrestrained gushes of foreign cash driving up people’s house and farm prices, to the benefit of no one other than the banks and some of that member’s rich mates. He argued that the bill would add cost and delays. Surely that is an exaggeration and a trifle when we are faced with the situation of thousands and thousands of hectares of New Zealand land leaving New Zealand ownership and control.

The truth is that National does not know and does not want to know, and that has nothing to do with the closer economic partnership with Australia, precisely because Australia already has this kind of register, or a similar register. The Australians already have a policy that says that foreigners can build houses in Australia and can move to Australia to live in the house that they have bought, but they cannot buy something and remain a non-occupying foreign resident. If Australia can do it—and we have a closer economic partnership with it—surely, we can do it.

Then there is the argument that this legislation is just xenophobia. No, it is anything but xenophobia. It is to have a fact-based discussion and fact-based policy, based on real and actual data about how much of our land, in which places, is actually under foreign-owner control. Only then can we have a rational discussion, as New Zealanders, about the future of our country.

This is the first opportunity I have had to speak since Mr Key announced his resignation. Can I just acknowledge the Prime Minister, as one who has had the huge privilege of leading a party against him in a general election. He was, obviously, no mean opponent. He is a tremendously skilful leader who has a massive machine in support. Labour should not and will not take National for granted, but, by God, we are back in the game. I do want to take the moment to acknowledge the contribution that Mr Key has made to New Zealand and to this Parliament over the decade of his leadership.

But his legacy will not, I think, be so much about what he did do—he certainly remained popular; he certainly built political capital—it will be a legacy of what he did not do. He did not address the looming crisis in superannuation. He did not address the problems of climate change. He did not—I am coming back to the bill, Mr Assistant Speaker—address the issue of our most important problem, the one that is dividing our nation, which is the housing crisis. It is not an issue just for those who are renting rather than owning and who are slipping further and further behind in the Kiwi Dream. It is also an issue for those who do own and who are making decisions in their lives based on what they think their wealth is, even though it is created by a bubble that is partly fuelled by unrestrained migration and otherwise-driven foreign investment.

That is not to say that we do not want foreign investment—we want good foreign investment. We want migration that suits New Zealand’s interests. We want to have a diverse, humane, tolerant, and creative society. But what we do not want is to make bad decisions because we lack real information about the extent of foreign ownership of our land and our resources.

Iwi have known for many years that it is the whenua that generates life, and that when you lose the whenua you lose your very being. We are a small country, and we must have knowledge of and we must have regard for who owns what. Today, faced with a Government that steadfastly refuses to address—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): Order! The member’s time has expired.

ALASTAIR SCOTT (National—Wairarapa): Well, unfortunately for Mr Winston Peters, this bill is redundant. This bill carries no purpose, it is not useful, and it contributes nothing to any of the property registration—the idea of a register is completely redundant and unnecessary, and I will tell you why.

First of all, we have, for the protection of his fear of overseas people owning property, the Overseas Investment Office, which scrutinises investment in our land. So that is the first thing. We can talk about whether that is a useful office or not and whether it is doing an appropriate job or not, but in any case that is its role—to scrutinise overseas investment. Secondly, since, I imagine, this bill was put into the ballot, there has been a lot of legislation passed that deals with some of the things that Mr Peters talks about. We have passed, I think it is, three tranches of legislation that dealt with property speculation, essentially. Part of it was the brightline test, so that brought in the 2-year time period, which clarified what was taxable.

We also brought in some information that was required from buyers and sellers of New Zealand land, so that is already there. That is there to provide some tax information for the Inland Revenue Department, and those people have to provide a bank account number with that information. So they have got to get their IRD number, they have got to get a bank account number, and this is to go through and protect against the possibility or the opportunity of money-laundering. Those three pieces of legislation have been passed, and parts of the legislation were kicked off on 1 October last year.

So, in my view, a lot of the concerns that Mr Peters has have been covered, have been taken care of, and have been looked after by the passing of those three pieces of tax legislation and, as I say, by the Overseas Investment Office. If we were to do what has been suggested, it would create a whole level of bureaucracy and a whole lot of confusion around who has to register. So does my son, who lives overseas, have to register his name when he purchases a property in New Zealand?

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Yeah, he does.

ALASTAIR SCOTT: Oh, he does? Even though he is a New Zealand passport holder?

Rt Hon Winston Peters: That’s the law now.

ALASTAIR SCOTT: So that is the point. I think there is a whole lot of information that is being made redundant, or is unnecessary, with the passing of time. So I cannot commend this bill to the House, and I do not support this bill.

EUGENIE SAGE (Green): Tēnā koe, Mr Assistant Speaker. The Green Party is pleased to be supporting the Land Transfer (Foreign Ownership of Land Register) Amendment Bill because, at the moment, we do not have an accurate picture of how much land in New Zealand is owned by overseas persons, and without that understanding we cannot develop good policy and we cannot fully understand the assets that we are actually alienating. Until 1998 Government agencies did not even think it was necessary to record any of the purchases by overseas investors.

Alastair Scott, the previous speaker, claimed that the Overseas Investment Office (OIO) scrutinises investment in land. That is only if it is sensitive land, which is quite a narrow category of land. It does include some rural farmland, but we do not have a good picture across the whole of New Zealand. So this bill is a useful, small step to actually ensuring that there is a good information base, by requiring overseas persons to provide information about their name, their nationality, and the amount and value of the land that is being purchased and the land district it is in.

But it does not go far enough. The Green Party believes that landownership in New Zealand should be limited to New Zealand citizens and permanent residents. We would introduce legislation to restrict the purchase of our whenua, of our land, by non-citizens and non-residents, because we have seen with the Overseas Investment Office that almost universally—except in the case of Lochinver Station—the OIO has just rubber-stamped purchases of quite significant areas of productive land.

You cannot have an economic strategy of adding value to our primary products when New Zealanders are steadily losing ownership of our land, our forests, and other productive assets in that value chain. They are the building blocks of our economy, and when we have got more than 40 percent of overseas investment concentrated in agribusiness, energy, and large-scale real estate, we are seeing ourselves alienated from ownership of those basic building blocks. We do not want our primary industries and our natural resources to be owned and dominated by overseas companies, because we cannot control the value chain when we do not own our own forests and our farmland.

National could smarten up, but it will not—it could stop our most productive farmlands slipping into overseas ownership, but it will not. That is one of the reasons why the Green Party is supporting this bill: so that we get a better understanding of just how much is being alienated, because at the moment it is media speculation. There are estimates that between 5 and 10 percent of our most productive farmland is being sold to overseas persons. If it is 5 percent, that is an area the size of the Auckland super-city. By a very simple change in the law—by restricting the sale of land that is more than half a hectare to New Zealand residents and New Zealand citizens—we could prevent that alienation. That would ensure that our productive farmland stays in Kiwi hands.

As David Cunliffe noted, the whenua is critical. If we want to be proud residents of Aotearoa, we should actually ensure that our economic base and all of the industries that depend on it are generating revenue for New Zealanders, and that we do not simply become tenants in our own country. That is one of the reasons the Green Party is supporting this bill.

BRETT HUDSON (National): I rise in opposition to this Land Transfer (Foreign Ownership of Land Register) Amendment Bill in this, its first reading. The fundamental basis of opposition to this is that this is a piece of legislation that is simply unnecessary.

I mean, we should always permit the facts to get in the way of a story, whether that story is a good one or a bad one—in this case, a bad one. The reality is that since this Government announced a tightening of the rules around foreign or non - tax residents purchasing property, particularly investment property, in New Zealand well over a year or so ago now, we have been collecting data on the extent to which that actually happens. So that is the extent to which people who are foreigners and who are not paying tax in New Zealand—not tax residents—are actually purchasing and buying up New Zealand properties. The sum total, if you will—the percentage of the extent of that issue—is 3 percent. That now spans multiple quarters of data, and there is a great deal of consistency across the information that has been collected. It is not that one quarter was 3 percent; it is that now we are seeing a trend and a very clear, consistent line there. So why would we put in place this register for something that simply is not a great problem? It would add compliance time cost for no significant benefit.

We have the measures already through the tightening that we did, where, if non-tax residents are purchasing our investment properties, they will be taxed accordingly, and that in itself will mean one of two things. Either it could put a brake on the scale and rapidity or the size of those transactions, or, where it does not, it makes sure that we are collecting appropriate tax revenue from that.

But this bill simply does not fix a problem. It does something; I am not denying that. It certainly does something—it certainly creates a register. But the register does not address a problem and the bill provides no solution, indeed, for that problem that does not actually exist. It misses the very clear distinction that I alluded to earlier there, which is that individuals can have a nationality and country of tax residence that are different. In fact, an individual can have more than one country of tax residence.

If we look at what we might want to achieve—if we looked at a policy of ensuring that there was not just wholesale buying up of our land and property—what we are really trying to achieve, I would suggest, is a situation where people who have no personal investment, if you will, in our country, might try to take it off us. But a tax resident is, effectively, invested in our country. By paying tax they are helping to provide the infrastructure that the country needs. They are helping to pay for our schools and our hospitals. They are actually contributing to the economic well-being of the nation. Why on earth would we, as a policy—certainly here—look to penalise or prevent those people transacting in a country that they are actually helping to fund? It seems that there is a misplaced targeting here.

Certainly, on this side of the House, we have got no issue with people who might be considered foreign. In fact, the diversity of New Zealand is one of its greatest strengths. So, rather than simply looking at the way that someone appears or the sound of their surname, we actually believe that where one is contributing to New Zealand—and the best measure of that, for someone who was not born here or does not have permanent residence, is perhaps their tax status. So when someone is contributing to this country, why on earth would we want to take some backward position from 40 or more years ago, when a certain member first entered this place, and say: “Look, you’re not allowed to participate in our country and in our economy. You’re somehow to be treated differently. You’re somehow to be treated as a second-rate person in this country.”?

It is simply not necessary. For that reason, and that, I believe, is a very, very good reason, I do not commend this bill to the House.

PHIL TWYFORD (Labour—Te Atatū): This issue—the issue of the impact of non-resident foreign buyers in the housing market and in the buying up of rural land in New Zealand—is one of the starkest issues that draws a line down the middle of this House between National and its acolytes and the major Opposition parties on this side of the House. Between 70 to 80 percent of the New Zealand public support this bill that Winston Peters has brought to this House. On this issue, New Zealand First, Labour, and the Greens are overwhelmingly supported by the public of New Zealand. Between 70 to 80 percent of New Zealanders want to see Labour’s policy of a ban on non-resident foreign buyers buying existing residential property in New Zealand, and I would wager that a similar proportion of the people of this country would support Winston Peters’ bill.

The member who spoke before, Brett Hudson, raised the question of the data that Land Information New Zealand, a Government agency, had been gathering about the impact of foreign buyers in the housing market. He repeated the spurious claim that we have heard from numerous Ministers that only 3 percent of the buyers are people who are not resident in this country or not citizens. It is a nonsense. The data that has been released for the last three times over the last year basically excludes people who are non-residents and non-citizens who are in this country on a student visa, a temporary student visa, or a temporary work visa but buying houses. They are not citizens, they are not residents, and they are buying houses, but the National Government thinks it is a good idea to exclude them.

The figure is not 3 percent. If you add those temporary workers and temporary students who are buying houses, it is 13 percent—one, three. It is 13 percent of the property transactions. Thirteen percent of the homes are being purchased by people who are not residents and non-citizens. That is very significant—13 percent. There is no question that that will be having a very significant impact, driving up house prices in a market that is already overheated and undersupplied.

Countries all over the Pacific Rim—Canada, particularly in British Colombia and Vancouver, but Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, and Australia—all have policies that are designed to protect the opportunity for their citizens to have decent, affordable housing, and to protect them from the impact of demand pressures from overseas money. But not under this National Government; that will not happen in New Zealand while the National Government is in office. It is in denial. It has been confusing, diverting, and denying that this is even a problem now for the last few years. It does not trust New Zealanders with the facts, and that is why the National Party members in the House today are not voting for Winston Peters’ bill.

This is a sensible bill. We support it. It is the policy in Australia. It is the policy in the UK. Why not collect this information and make it publicly available? I think that there are issues that, I would say, we would like to see explored fully at select committee. We are not convinced that you would need to necessarily publish the names and addresses of the individuals who own these properties, but we would like to explore and get expert advice on that at select committee.

This Government has a mantra that fixing the housing crisis is all about supply. Well, it has not even delivered on that because it built hardly any houses and hardly any affordable houses. But it has this blind spot about the demand forces that are driving up house prices, not just in Auckland but around the country.

The next Government will tackle these demand forces. We will review the immigration policy that currently is throwing fuel on the fire and driving up demand, particularly in Auckland. We will ban foreign buyers from buying existing residential properties in this country. We will implement the recommendations and the commitments that New Zealand has already made under the anti - money-laundering convention to stop dirty foreign money, corrupt foreign money, flooding into the real estate market in this country. We will do that and we will tackle the tax incentives that currently channel vast amounts of savings and capital, which we need in the productive economy, into real estate speculation. Those are the changes that we will make.

IAN McKELVIE (National—Rangitīkei): I, like my fellow National Party MPs, rise to oppose this bill, but I will have some slightly different reasons for doing so. I want to, firstly, congratulate the member Winston Peters on getting a bill drawn out of the ballot. I have not been here—in fact, I have been here for over 30 years’ shorter time than him, and I have not had one drawn out of the ballot yet. But anyway, that is beside the point.

I have some suspicion as to why he would want to design a bill like this, because I am old enough to remember the days of the land court, when you had to register every purchase made in New Zealand. You then had to get it through the land court, and I would have to say that it caused the creation of a myriad of trusts, companies, and various other devious methods of obscuring the names of the people who own land from being on the title of that land. Of course, Winston Peters, the member who drew up this bill—I think he is trained as a lawyer. My memory of the land court days, of death duties and those sorts of things, is that they were just loved by the lawyers. It was a field day for them. So I guess that one of the reasons I do not support this bill is that I think it is—some of the objectives of it are fine—hugely complicated. It will be very expensive to operate, on the face of it—and I have got no proof, and I am sure the member has no proof of that either—and I am sure it will be administratively very difficult to manage. That is the first reason that I am opposed to the bill.

The second reason is that—and I think the reasons of the previous speaker, Phil Twyford, for his thinking this was a great idea is very different, in fact, from those of the member who designed the bill. I do not think this bill is intended to ban overseas buyers from New Zealand at all; it is designed to give information around the number of overseas investors, or overseas people, who are buying land in New Zealand.

The previous speaker also alluded to the legislation, or policy, in place in Australia and the UK and various other countries around the world. It has not had any positive effect on house values, or any other values, in those countries either, so that was a spurious argument. So, from the point of view of lowering costs for our people trying to get into housing markets, or into farming or whatever else, in fact, it does not achieve that. His argument around that point was, in my view, quite inaccurate.

We already have in New Zealand a tax regime that discourages people from short-term trading in any type of property. It is, in effect, I suppose, a short-term capital gain. That has been in place for some time. It has been reinforced in the last 12 months, and so we have a tax regime that gives us the ability to temper people’s opportunity to trade property in the manner purely for capital gain in the short term.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: How many years?

IAN McKELVIE: Two years—

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Precisely. That’s no protection at all.

IAN McKELVIE: Well, when you are my age, and your age, 2 years is a long time. Ha, ha! We need every bit of time we can get—we might not be around in 2 years’ time.

So I think that although I can understand the sentiment behind some of this type of activity, I certainly do not think from New Zealand’s perspective that we should be looking at banning, or even making it more difficult, for foreign people, or people who are coming to New Zealand, to invest in the New Zealand market. I do think we need to collect data. I think Land Information New Zealand is doing a very good job—a much better job—and there was some significant questioning of that in the last week or two around a lot of the stuff that goes on in respect of landownership and property ownership in New Zealand.

It is also doing a very good job in respect of Overseas Investment Office, and it has increased the resource going into that area and the amount of effort going into that area significantly in the last 12 months. Last week its officials appeared before the select committee, and I thought we got, certainly, a massive improvement in the accountability in the way they were performing, and that was primarily because they had been stretched for resource. That has been resolved, and so we are getting a much better result in that respect.

In speaking against this bill, I think that there are some points in it that are worth picking up on in the future, and I am sure future Governments will pick up on some of those. But, in the course of that, I do warn against this very complicated type of legislation, because it leads to all sorts of opportunity for people to find alternative ways of owning land, registering land transfers, and all sorts of things. I think the simpler we keep our structure, the better off we are. Thank you.

RINO TIRIKATENE (Labour—Te Tai Tonga): Tēnā koe, Mr Assistant Speaker. I am pleased to add my contribution in support of this bill. Can I congratulate the right honourable member on his good fortune in bringing this bill to the House. We are supporting this bill. It is a very straightforward bill. Why should Kiwis not be entitled to know when foreign nationals are buying up our land, where those purchases are, and how much land is being sold? Why?

It is a very clear bill. We have heard, in this debate, people touching on the loss of whenua to Māori, and this cuts deep to every Māori when we are talking about a debate on land. Mr Peters is from the North, and I am actually reminded of the great Ngāpuhi prophet Āperahama Taonui—his prophecy has come to pass. The prophecy was that there is a taniwha coming from across the sea, and its kai is land. It has an insatiable appetite, and its puku will never be filled. To Māori, that prophecy has come to pass, but I fear that the taniwha is coming back and it has grown another head. The taniwha is coming back, and this Government is not keeping a tight rein, or any measure whatsoever, on this taniwha.

That is all we are asking for in this bill. All we are asking for is that there is an accurate, up-to-date register of foreign nationals who are purchasing land in Aotearoa New Zealand. We have heard all sorts of excuses. The Government is great at coming up with excuses and throwing up tax definitions and the like as to why it should not do things. But this is a very simple piece of legislation. All it is asking for is—it is applying the definition that is contained in the Overseas Investment Act 2005, that “Any purchases of lands by overseas persons should be entered into a register.”

So who are we talking about when we are talking about overseas persons? It is better if we say who we are not talking about. Obviously, we are not talking about New Zealand citizens and we are not talking about overseas persons who may be ordinarily resident in New Zealand. So those who hold resident class visas under the Immigration Act, or who are domiciled here and have an intention of staying here, we are not talking about those people; they are all fine. But what we are talking about are foreign nationals who have no intention of being ordinarily resident in New Zealand, who are not New Zealand citizens, and yet have unrestrained access to buying up residential land, rural land, all lands within New Zealand.

All we are asking for is that we keep an accurate measure and a register of that. How can we manage an issue, how can we manage a problem, when the Government refuses to measure it? It refuses to capture the data, and the data that it does use is so crude it is absolutely pointless. So that is all we are asking for. All we are asking for is an accurate measure and that we keep this register. Sure, there may be some tweaks that may be required to the bill. I am sure that the select committee will tease out those issues, but fundamentally the purpose of this bill is very sound, and that is why we are supporting it.

We want to see, and I think all Kiwis right throughout the country would like to know, how much of our land and where, in all of our lands, is owned by foreign nationals, by those who are not citizens of our country, who are not ordinarily resident in our country, and who have no intention of being so. That is all that this bill asks for. I think if it is good enough for Australia, if it is good enough for the UK, and if it is good enough for all those other jurisdictions from around the world to implement exactly what we are doing here, then surely it is good enough for this Parliament to be supporting this bill and putting it to select committee so we can tease it out and, hopefully, usher it into law. I commend this bill to the House. Kia ora.

DAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): What a dark and sad day to have this bill before the House on a members’ day when there are so many other worthwhile things that could be debated. On behalf of the ACT Party I rise in opposition to this Land Transfer (Foreign Ownership of Land Register) Amendment Bill. This is an example of why politicians are so poorly trusted and have such a bad reputation in our community—worse, almost, than the journalists. The reason for that is simply that this bill promises to do something, but it will not deliver. It is a promise by Winston Peters to his constituents that he will scratch some sort of concern or need and help them and somehow improve their lives, when in reality this bill will do no such thing. The reason for that is that once you get down to the definitions, who really knows what this bill is attempting to capture?

Would a constituent of mine, who happens to be Chinese, who does not spend a lot of her time in New Zealand but owns property, be counted under this bill? That is somebody who under this bill would be counted as a non-resident foreign landowner. What if I were to say that that person actually, being a permanent resident, does live in New Zealand and has bought lands with money that does not belong to them but is actually sourced offshore? What is this bill really trying to work out? Is it the nominal ownership of the land, which in this case is perfectly legitimate and would not be captured as foreign ownership under Mr Peters’ bill, or is it the beneficial ownership, the person who actually provided the money in order to ensure that the land was able to be bought in the first place? Are we trying to work out whose money it is, or whose name is on the title? The fact of the matter is that this bill cannot tell you either of those things.

What about my uncle, who lives in Perth? He has not lived in New Zealand for 40 years. He still cheers for the All Blacks, though. He is not a New Zealand citizen, and might like to buy property in New Zealand. Would that be foreign ownership of land under Mr Peters’ bill? Well, yes, it is, but when we talk about a problem, how is that more or less of a problem than the earlier example I described? I think we all know the answer that Mr Peters dog-whistles to his supporters, and it is that the first person was Chinese. The reality of this bill is that it does not tell us anything about whose money is really coming to New Zealand. It tells us only whose name is on the title, and that information in itself is not particularly useful for any purpose, even the nefarious and dark purposes that Mr Peters likes to bring to this House from time to time.

Worse than that, it is not actually obvious why we should be concerned about inflows of foreign capital into New Zealand. I can give you examples from business. Take Lion, an iconic New Zealand business that has enormous difficulty purchasing vineyards because, technically, Lion is owned by the Japanese—well, actually, Lion is owned by the Japanese firm Kirin Holdings Company. Why would we introduce more laws that make it more difficult for capital to flow into New Zealand, when throughout the entire history of this country one of our greatest challenges has been attracting a greater flow of foreign capital? One of the reasons our productivity growth has been low is that we have traditionally paid about a 2 percent premium on capital, all the way back to Sir Joseph Ward, who was around in Mr Peters’ early days. He took a delegation to London in the 1890s in an attempt to secure cheaper loans for New Zealand.

It used to be something that the Prime Minister and the leaders of this House would do: actually go overseas to try to attract better capital so that New Zealand could invest and grow. Today we have these political stunt bills that will not actually have any effect on who really owns or who really funds property ownership in New Zealand, but what we will have is additional red tape and bureaucracy that makes it less attractive to invest in New Zealand. Sadly, that is the kind of politics that New Zealand First and Winston Peters bring to this House: high on rhetoric, ineffective, xenophobic, populist stunt bills that will do nothing to make people’s lives better but will make New Zealand a slightly darker place. I proudly oppose this bill on behalf of the ACT Party, and I look forward to my colleagues voting it down. Thank you.

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS (Leader—NZ First): Let us deal with the member for Epsom, who was placed there by the National Party. This is how informed this young guy is. He said that Lion is “technically” owned overseas. No, it is not “technically” owned overseas. It is owned overseas, sunshine. Not technically; it is owned offshore. Then he said that Ward went over to get this money in the late 1800s. No, he did not. He went in the 1920s. Does he not know any history?

Ron Mark: No, he doesn’t.

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: No. He gets up here, beats his mouth off—

Ron Mark: He hasn’t been to school yet.

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: He has not gone to school. He is a policy wonk. He just makes a right fool of himself.

I want to thank Rino Tirikatene for that brilliant example, and Phil Twyford, and Eugenie Sage from the Greens, for their contributions, and David Cunliffe as well, for making plain common sense. Common sense is what New Zealanders want. They are sick and tired of this ephemeral, neo-liberal claptrap that people like David Seymour cannot get their heads around, as they cannot get their heads around the fact that he does not belong to a political party. He gets up and he says “On behalf of the ACT Party”.

Ron Mark: What’s that?

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: Well, what party would that be? What party would that be? How did he get here? Well, the National Party guy pulled his hoardings down. Do you feel like a puppet? “Yes, I do.” That is what he should be saying, but he has got the arrogance to get up here to criticise a party that is talking plain common sense.

Let me start with Mr Foster-Bell. He said this would cost each house purchaser $1,500. That is balderdash. Do you know what the register cost in Australia? It cost $186,000—$186,000 for the country. We are living in a computerised age. It is a matter of compilation, so you know what is going on. Then he says it is an offence against foreign owners’ rights. But he did not say it was an offence against New Zealanders’ rights, because they have to go on the register now. That is the law. In fact, Alastair Scott, who lives in Wellington, represents Wairarapa, and speaks for the banks, said he backed the Overseas Investment Office (OIO). He said the brightline test is a bank account number. That is his answer. But no one, Mr Scott, is collating the information. That is my point. Does he not get it?

For example, here is the essence of it all, because it is seriously fundamental: no statement came from Land Information New Zealand for 38 percent of foreign sales. For 38 percent there was no statement.

David Seymour: Who cares?

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: Oh, “Who cares?”. Well, apparently, everybody excepting the moron does care. We also know from the OIO that the Inland Revenue Department does not record information based on tax residency. But then Mr Foster-Bell talked about all those people—no doubt from the National Party—who have got multiple tax residencies. Well, why do we not name them? Are they going to act for the New Zealand people, or are they just going to act for all these foreigners? We know the answer to that.

I think Mr Foster-Bell also said: “It’s against our free-trade agreements.” Funny, that—China does not allow us to buy land in their country. So that cannot be right, can it? Australia—well, it cannot be against the Australia and New Zealand Closer Economic Relations Trade Agreement, the oldest one we have got, because they have a register. I want to say this: it is astonishing, you know, when you get somebody who gets up, like the member for—what is it—Wairarapa, who lives in Wellington, Alastair Scott. He said this: “Does my son have to go on a register if he buys land?”. Well, Mr Scott, if he is a New Zealander, yes, he does now and has done for decades. Look, it is one thing to come from the banks, but your job is to represent Wairarapa and the good people there.

Can I say, also, there, when Brett Hudson got up, what he said was simply unnecessary. Incoherent, he said—that is what he talked about: “incoherent”—and he said the Government had been collecting data. It is not a great problem, he said. Well, it is a great problem when 38 percent of the information is not required to be registered in the first place.

But here is the most important thing—here is the most important thing. Australia, the UK, the Netherlands, France, Ireland, and Norway are all going to it. China, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Malaysia are all heading down this track. So are nearly all the countries of Asia. They know that they are not making any more land. The problem with the ACT Party, and the National Party, which is similarly of its ilk, is that they do not realise that there has been a massive change in this country’s politics in the last 2 years. The game is up. The game of disguising facts for the New Zealand people is simply not going to work. And in fact—yes, Mr Assistant Speaker, I will wind up very fast. I am going to get on the campaign trail, and wind in the Wairarapa, and down to Invercargill—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): Order!

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: —and all over the country to spread the word because, out there, New Zealanders want to know.

Jono Naylor: What about the people of the Far North?

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: No, no, in Palmerston North, I will.

Jono Naylor: What about Northland; are you going to visit them?

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: In Palmerston North, yes—well, unlike your leader, I live there. He lives in Parnell. I have been in my electorate more times in 1 month than he has for the full 10 years, in his electorate.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): Order!

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: We are not here to still have these silly questions again. Thank you very much. I commend this bill to the House.

A party vote was called for on the question that the Land Transfer (Foreign Ownership of Land Register) Amendment Bill be now read a first time.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): Could I just, while the Clerk is adding them up, remind members that votes are meant to be held in silence. While I am at it, I will remind Mr McKelvie that he does not wander round and interject. He interjects when seated, if at all.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the Land Transfer (Foreign Ownership of Land Register) Amendment Bill be now read a first time.

Ayes 57

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

Noes 63

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

Motion not agreed to.

Bills

Environment Canterbury (Democracy Restoration) Amendment Bill

First Reading

Dr MEGAN WOODS (Labour—Wigram): I move, That the Environment Canterbury (Democracy Restoration) Amendment Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Local Government and Environment Committee to consider the bill. We have an opportunity here to rectify a wrong that has been done in Canterbury. We have an opportunity here to put back in Canterbury what exists in the rest of the country, and that is a fully democratically elected regional council. Six years after the sacking of our regional council in 2010, Canterbury still does not have a fully democratically elected council. This is not something that I, as a Cantabrian, am prepared to sit by and watch happen, because it simply is not good enough.

We entered 2016 with great hope and great opportunity for our region and part of that is us taking back our destiny: us being in charge of our city. We have seen the transitional legislation around the power being given back to the locally led recovery in terms of the Greater Christchurch regeneration. There is simply no justification for continuing this mixed model of democracy, as the Minister for the Environment has labelled it. We have opposed the removal of our democratically elected councillors in Canterbury all the way through. We opposed it in 2010 when the council was sacked. We opposed the legislation in 2013 that extended the period out to 2016, and we opposed the legislation in 2016 that put in place this halfway house of having half of our councillors in our region appointed. It simply was not good enough.

But more concerning was the Cabinet papers that I read that were going around in the context of this legislation, one of which was a document from the Ministry for Primary Industries that was opposed to the restoration of full democracy in 2019 because it saw it as an impediment to its agenda. There is not a universal will in this Government to ever return Canterbury to having a fully democratically elected council, and this is not good enough. It is an insult to Cantabrians that we are treated differently to the rest of the country and an insult that the Minister for the Environment, the Hon Nick Smith, says that democracy in our region carries too many risks. This is from a democratically elected member of Parliament, who has the audacity to stand up and say that democracy is risky. That simply is not good enough.

My bill had the good fortune to have its moment out of the biscuit tin, its number being drawn only days after the triennial elections were held in Canterbury, which, of course, were held under the 2016 legislation that put in place the mixed model of democracy. This saw us have some elected members, but the Government appointees continue. This is not something that we are willing to see happen again. It is for this reason that—because this bill was drawn right after those triennial elections were conducted—I have drawn up and released Supplementary Order Paper 251 to signal my intent. The intent is that given that we have had democratic elections for just over half of the positions on the regional council in Canterbury, it would be an absurdity for those people who were duly elected to have to go through another round of elections. This bill calls for the holding of elections in a very short time frame after it receives the Royal assent, but we would not—and my Supplementary Order Paper has been released—be asking for re-election of duly elected councillors who were elected in the 2016 election.

One of the interesting questions, of course, that has come up and something that was contained in the 2016 legislation is the appointment of iwi representation sitting around the Environment Canterbury table. I think that this is an interesting question. I think this is something that deserves consideration at select committee about how this would fit with a democratically elected council. When speaking to other parties about this, I have certainly signalled our intention to remain open to how that may work within the framework. We are not simply looking to put in place exactly what existed in 2010.

We can see that there have been some improvements and some things that could improve in terms of going forward into our future and that is that having strong iwi voices around the table that talk about our waterways and that talk about how we are going to protect our environment could be of a huge benefit to our region. That is certainly something that we think would make a very fruitful and a very good topic of conversation at select committee about the best model to do that. Would that be through the way in which it is done under the current legislation, the 2016 legislation, which allows Ngāi Tahu to appoint those members, or would it be through a process of election for those? They are all important discussions that would need to be held at that select committee phase.

We do need to make sure that we are putting back in place, in Canterbury, the very best model of governance of our region and our regional assets that we can have to take us forward into this next, exciting phase that we face in our region. So much of the emphasis of the work of Environment Canterbury centres on the irrigation agenda that lies at the heart of why it was that our regional councillors were sacked in the first place. But what we also have to consider is the other functions of Environment Canterbury. I want elected members to be making those decisions about our transport in our region. I want elected members to be thinking about how it is that we can have the best and most progressive public transport system in our region that is going to be integrated into the fantastic rebuild that we are doing.

It simply is not good enough that councillors sitting around the table have not been chosen by the people. They have been appointed by the Government of the day. This is not something that I, as a democratically elected member of Parliament, can ever condone. I cannot understand how it is that fellow elected members can pass legislation after legislation that strips away the democratic representation of an entire region and treats it differently from the rest of the country. By voting for this bill and sending it to the select committee there is a great opportunity to think about how it is that we can put back in place a better model and how it is that we can put in place a model of governance for our region in Canterbury that takes us beyond this Draconian way of looking at our region, this top-down approach from Government that if elected members do not do what you want, then you sack them and put in place people who will do what you want.

This is not the way any of us want our country to be governed, and this is not the way that Cantabrians want their region to be governed. I call on Canterbury MPs from across the House to vote for this legislation. Vote for your region, and not your party. Vote for the people whom you represent, the people who elected you and put you in this House, so that you can go back and look them in the eye and say: “I have not stripped away your democratic rights yet again. I have stood up for the people whom I represent and the people’s rights to have democratic representation.” Those members could go back home to their constituencies, or to the areas where they are based, and they could have their consciences rest easy, knowing that they have stood up for a fundamental right of no taxation without representation. It simply is not good enough that we are having this period continue.

We are going to see members stand up and hear them say that the legislation is outdated and it has missed the boat. There has already been a Supplementary Order Paper that has been released. We are absolutely open to the question of how best to have iwi representation and iwi input into the Environment Canterbury structure. If members opposite will not take up the challenge to vote for their region and not for their party, what I want to hear is their justification for why they are treating their voters differently to the rest of the country. This is an opportunity for us to put in place the best governance structures for the future of Canterbury—one where we can genuinely have a locally led future. Thank you.

NUK KORAKO (National): Tēnā koe e Te Mana Whakawā. It is a great honour for me to speak on this bill, the Environment Canterbury (Democracy Restoration) Amendment Bill, at the first reading. I speak on this bill as a Cantabrian and as a member of Ngāi Tahu whānui. What we want to see is our regional council operating as well as it can, for the good of all Cantabrians. So I also speak as someone, as I said, with a Ngāi Tahu background who is keen to see tangata whenua being involved in environmental management and decision making in our rohe. I welcome the opportunity to address the Parliament on a matter that I know is of such importance to the Canterbury region and also to Ngāi Tahu whānui.

Some time ago I was accused of bringing to this House a member’s bill that was a so-called waste of time. My bill was small, its effects minor, and it was entirely appropriate that the Government supported its inclusion in a Statutes Amendment Bill. In fact, I think that bill took less of my time than it did of those Labour members opposite who spent their own time and the House’s time making a fuss about a measure that they ultimately supported. But today, in this bill, we have an absolute waste of time: we have a bill that amends a piece of legislation that is no longer in force. Leaving aside, for a moment, the absolute shambles that this bill is, I would still like to do Megan Woods the courtesy of looking at what she was actually trying to achieve.

The Environment Canterbury (Democracy Restoration) Amendment Bill has a single-minded purpose, which is to overturn existing governance in the Canterbury region. The result, should it pass into law, would be a return to the status quo prior to the appointment of the commissioners in 2010. New governance arrangements for the regional council were put in place to address two primary issues: freshwater management, and the relationship with Ngāi Tahu.

Status quo governance was failing in the areas that I know to be fundamental to the well-being of all Cantabrians and are at the heart of what matters to my whānau. At present we have a majority of elected regional councillors who won their seats through a democratic process of local body elections in October. At the table with these elected councillors are commissioners who have served Canterbury over the last two terms, and two appointed iwi representatives. These arrangements were the result of the Environment Canterbury (Transitional Governance Arrangements) Act 2016. The key to that piece of legislation is the word “transitional”. My colleagues here in Government recognise the need to provide continuity for freshwater management programmes under way and for active partnership with Ngāi Tahu to be maintained at the governance level.

Although the call for a full return to democracy has an intellectual appeal, the reality is that there has been an enormous amount of progress in those key areas of freshwater management and the Ngāi Tahu relationship with councils over the last 6 years. There has been an incredible development in that relationship. What we have with the transitional arrangements is an opportunity to embed those gains for the long term. Overturning current arrangements in a rapid, knee-jerk reaction has the potential to undo all of that good work, and also the council leadership over these years, since it was acknowledged that status quo council governance was really failing. Importantly, the Ngāi Tahu relationship with Environment Canterbury had been woeful prior to the appointment of the commissioners. When looking at that too we now have—since the arrival of the commissioners, and moving forward to what we have today—Environment Canterbury in a real place of strength.

Right now, council and iwi together are focused on working in partnership to help Kaikōura and North Canterbury recover from the recent, devastating earthquake sequences. Working together can happen with relative ease, as a result of strong lines of communication and habits that have been built over the last 6 years. The governance level down through the regional council structure was also a major part in that. Now is the wrong time to overturn that governance arrangement in Canterbury. We have 3 years of transitional—of transitional—legislation, during which time all of those interested in Canterbury Regional Council governance can work towards ensuring we do not lose what has been gained over those last 6 years.

Understanding that earthquake recovery takes time and having stable leadership and governance over the next 3 years will be of great benefit to the people of Kaikōura and, also, North Canterbury. We are fortunate to have the existing council in place with those elements of continuity in experience at this time. I know that for Ngāi Tahu whānui in Kaikōura—this is a particular relief for them as they tackle the innumerable challenges that link back to the resource management function of the regional council. Challenges of this magnitude require strong, stable leadership, and that is what we currently have in place at Environment Canterbury. With the mix of a majority of elected councillors alongside seasonal commissioners and iwi representatives—

Hon Ruth Dyson: Seasonal commissioners?

NUK KORAKO: Seasoned—seasoned. I am glad you picked that up, because that was actually for you; that is why it was for me to attest to that.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): Order! Not me.

NUK KORAKO: This is a local government, central government, and iwi working together, which is what this side of the House is about. The bill is framed around the premise of a loss of democracy in Canterbury. Making that assertion ignores the fact that the transitional arrangements for Canterbury are a local government, central government, and iwi partnership arrangement. It ignores the fact that the people of Canterbury made their choice in the last general election—in the last general election—if you have forgotten that. In Selwyn, Ilam, Waitaki, Waimakariri, Rangitata, Kaikōura, and Christchurch Central—these communities voted for National. They voted for National to continue on with the programmes in place within the region. That includes the Government commitment to stable, effective governance arrangements in Canterbury. That recognises the importance of the relationship with Ngāi Tahu, which this bill wants to throw out the window.

What I can do here is to really just go back and say that what has been in place since the end of this council—when you had so many mayors come to Wellington and wanting to see the back end of it; commissioners were brought in—after 6 years, we are at a place of strength. So this bill here is a waste of time, and I hope that Megan Woods’ colleagues are happy with her taking up that time on members’ day ahead of more worthy bills that they and members on our side of the House have in the ballot. This bill is a shambles, and National will not support it. Kia ora rā.

Hon RUTH DYSON (Labour—Port Hills): I want to warmly congratulate Dr Megan Woods on, first of all, instigating this bill, recognising that in New Zealand we value democracy. It is quite a fundamental part of our culture. We should not have a democratic right taken away from us without good reason.

Jacqui Dean: Oh, let’s talk about the Electoral Finance Act, then.

Hon RUTH DYSON: Jacqui Dean, I thought, as an elected constituency member, you would understand the value of democracy, but clearly not. So I want to congratulate Dr Woods, first of all, on thinking of this, recognising the gap in our democratic process, and then on the sheer good luck of having the bill drawn. Not very many members get to have bills drawn. For some it is better that they do not have them drawn, because the content of them is exposed, but in this case, this is a very good bill.

I remember when we first had the taking away of democracy legislation introduced by Dr Nick Smith, on totally false premises. Anyone who has read the Creech report would understand that the two reasons Nick Smith gave for taking away our democratic right to vote were lies, a misrepresentation of the Creech report. Frankly, when you have had somebody like the Rt Hon Wyatt Creech as a Deputy Prime Minister in the National Government, you would think he would earn more respect from his colleagues, but they just dismissed his report and then made up a whole lot of stuff.

I want to get back to those fundamental points before. I want to congratulate the elected Environment Canterbury (ECan) councillors, who for the first time in 6 years were elected in the last local body elections. The member who has just resumed his seat, Nuk Korako, said that Ngāi Tahu are unable to have a strong relationship with a democratically elected organisation, and I think that is cobblers. I think that Ngāi Tahu can do pretty well anything, because they are incredibly competent and incredibly passionate about their mandate of representation. They are able to have a strong relationship with a democratically elected organisation, and Dr Woods gave a very clear commitment to working with other members in this House to ensure that we did have tangata whenua representation on a democratically elected board. This is a total win-win that we could get out of this situation, and that is certainly where my vote is going.

At the heart of this bill is the restoration of democracy. How could anyone in a New Zealand Parliament vote against the restoration of democracy? How is that possible? No answer, as usual, from the National Government members—no answer. I know they are distracted this week, I know there is a lot of self-promotion and number-counting going on, but I think it is a pretty fundamental question for a member of Parliament to be answering. What is good about voting against the restoration of democracy?

Ian McKelvie: I’ll tell you shortly.

Hon RUTH DYSON: I doubt it—I doubt it. That member is not up to it.

There were two lies, as I mentioned earlier, about the removal of our democratic right. The first one—the first lie—was that ECan was dysfunctional. I have read the Creech report, and any implications of a dysfunctional regional council were totally dismissed by Wyatt Creech in that report—totally dismissed. The second was that ECan failed to prepare a water plan. The 2004 draft water plan is the water plan that is now operational, that is now in effect. Both of those “reasons” that Nick Smith, as the Minister responsible for taking away our right to vote, gave—neither of them were correct. Neither of them were true. I challenge any member of the National Government to read the Creech report and show one single sentence that backs up the flawed arguments that Nick Smith put in place.

In 2010 Nick Smith said: “This is going to be a short-term measure. We’ll just get ECan back on track and then you can have your votes back.” He put in another “transition to democracy” plan and said it was another short-term measure, and then he put another short-term measure in place. When he was challenged, he said that a return to full democracy in Canterbury was too risky. He has relied on gerrymandered boundaries, and he has relied on people he has appointed who are accountable to him and not to the citizens of Canterbury. It is time for a genuine and immediate transition back to democracy in our region.

SCOTT SIMPSON (National—Coromandel): It is with some trepidation, I guess, that I rise to speak on this bill, because it is a bill that has come to the House completely unnecessarily. We are occupying the time of the House on a bill that is actually not necessary and has been completely overtaken by the effective, efficient, and very good work that has been done by this Government in this area.

Back in 2010 Environment Canterbury (ECan) was entirely dysfunctional—entirely dysfunctional—by any and all measures. So a set of commissioners was installed. Then in 2011 the new, keen, enthusiastic member for Wigram, Megan Woods, was elected to what was once a safe Labour red stronghold and what has become, under her candidacy, a marginal seat, one at risk next year. This member came into the House and did as she is required to do by the instructions of her party and her whip. She put a bill in the members’ ballot. And, there, she did. She put a bill in the ballot and then promptly forgot about it. She forgot about it and left it there.

Subsequent to that, of course, back in 2016—earlier this year—this efficient and effective Government made really good changes to improve the transition of ECan back to full democratic election at the next local government elections. Then, the member having forgotten that her bill was in the ballot, it was drawn from the ballot. Nobody in this Parliament got a bigger surprise than the member for Wigram when the bill that she had completely forgotten about was drawn from the ballot.

I cannot believe what her face might have looked like when the news arrived that the bill had been drawn, because the bill had been completely overtaken by events that this Government had done. “So what to do now?”, was the great issue for the member. The member’s problem was that because her member’s bill was completely superfluous and no longer required, she had to prepare the hastily drawn up Supplementary Order Paper 251 to ensure that the member’s bill that she had put in the ballot when she was first elected as the new, bright, shiny, bouncy member for Wigram—in the marginal seat of Wigram. She has had to do a very quick change around and try to double back, to put it into some kind of context that makes it vaguely—barely, marginally—relevant to the legislation that this Government has put forward in terms of transitioning ECan back to a full democratic process.

This bill is an embarrassment to the Labour Party. It is an embarrassment to the member, who showed so much potential when she was first elected—so much potential; potential that has actually not lived up to fulfilment. If the member had been more in tune with what was going on in this Parliament, in terms of the legislation that was before it, and had not forgotten about her member’s bill in the ballot, and then suddenly realised it had been drawn out, she would have probably just completely withdrawn it. That would have been the appropriate, sensible thing to do. But, no, this House is now occupying valuable time addressing a bill that is completely irrelevant, no longer required, and is actually so backward-looking in its view that one must really begin to doubt why we are here at all.

This bill is one that is out of touch. The member is trying to amend an Act that has already been adequately replaced by the hard-working members on the Government side. I am disappointed. I thought that the member had greater potential than to allow this bill to proceed, to go forward. I thought the member came to this Parliament to be proactive, to make a positive contribution, and to look forward, rather than to spend the time of Parliament trying to drive while looking through the rear-vision mirrors.

This is not a good bill. It is a bill that the Government will oppose. It is a bill that is not required and is not necessary. It is a bill that is wasting the time of our Parliament. I hope that this bill will be soundly and positively rejected by the Parliament on its first reading. I do not commend it to the House.

EUGENIE SAGE (Green): What a load of cobblers. I am astonished that the chair of the Local Government and Environment Committee, Scott Simpson, can say that democracy is unnecessary, is irrelevant, and is no longer required, and that a bill that restores democracy in Canterbury is out of touch and a waste of time. That is extraordinary, from a member of this House. I congratulate, and the Green Party congratulates, Dr Megan Woods on having the Environment Canterbury (Democracy Restoration) Amendment Bill drawn from the ballot.

This is a very important bill because Canterbury is the only region in New Zealand where citizens do not get to vote for a completely elected regional council. Instead, we have got this mickey mouse arrangement where there are only seven elected councillors and six appointed commissioners—an arrangement where we have, effectively, a rural gerrymander, where a vote in South Canterbury is worth more than a vote in Christchurch because fewer than 60,000 citizens in South Canterbury elect a councillor but 90,000 citizens in Christchurch elect a councillor.

Hon Jo Goodhew: How many voted? I wonder how many voted.

EUGENIE SAGE: It is an obnoxious state of affairs that we do not have full democracy back. The Minister, Ms Goodhew, is asking: “How many voted?”. Well, Minister, we can change that by ensuring that we have civics education in schools and that the Electoral Commission has a much greater role in enrolling voters.

It is a disgrace that we do not have a fully elected council back in Canterbury. Why do we not have one? It is because it is so tied up with promoting an irrigation agenda. What did the then Minister of Agriculture say to Irrigation New Zealand at its conference in April 2010, just after the commissioners had come in? He said: “I would have thought what happened recently with Environment Canterbury would be a signal to all regional councils to work more constructively with their farmer shareholders.” He went on to say: “We had to act here, in Canterbury, because the situation was untenable if we are going to seriously make progress in delivering this irrigation.” That is what the denial of democracy in Canterbury was all about: allowing New Zealand Agribusiness, Irrigation New Zealand, Waimakariri Irrigation, and others to have a hotline to Ministers, and for the commissioners, who were appointed, to ensure that water management and the plans in Canterbury favoured more irrigation.

Members on the opposite side have talked about the Creech report. They have talked about how Environment Canterbury was not performing. Well, I was one of those councillors; it was. We had cleaned up the air in Christchurch and we were tackling water management. What has happened under the commissioners? If they had done such a good job for the last 6-plus years, why could they not have solved the problems in 6 years? Why do we still have six appointed commissioners on that body if the Government’s half-pie model and its appointed model were so successful?

We only have to look at rivers like the Waikirikiri River, the Selwyn. That river goes underground in its middle reaches, but that stretch where there is just a dry riverbed, which is, effectively, a four-wheel drive track, has become wider, and the dry reach of riverbed has extended for longer. Why is that? It is because too much water is being taken for irrigation. The commissioners have overseen the decline of the Waikirikiri/Selwyn River so that you now have ankle-deep water at Coes Ford. Instead of a swimming hole—it is not safe to swim, down at the Lower Selwyn Huts. I was visiting there recently with Catherine Delahunty and Mojo Mathers. The water is a vivid green. The community at Selwyn Huts has been able to swim in that river in the past; now it is too polluted to bathe in or even to boat on. There is a picture in the Press that shows a rope just hanging forlornly. People cannot go swimming in the Waikirikiri/Selwyn River. The decline of the river has been exacerbated, under the commissioners, because they have failed to put limits on irrigation, to put adequate limits on water quality, to see these spring-fed rivers, like the Waikirikiri/Selwyn River, restored. We need democracy back. The Green Party supports this bill, which would do that.

PAUL FOSTER-BELL (National): E Te Mana Whakawā Tuarua, tēnā koe. I am speaking against this Environment Canterbury (Democracy Restoration) Amendment Bill, and—unlike the previous speaker, Eugenie Sage, implied—it is not because I have any problem with democracy; in fact, I am a great supporter of democratic institutions and methods of appointing governance bodies.

The current arrangements that are in place for Environment Canterbury do not represent an abrogation of democracy. Need I remind the House that just 2 months ago we actually had elections for Environment Canterbury? And would members opposite claim that a district health board, for instance, is an abrogation of democracy? District health boards, which were, in fact, put in place by the previous Labour Government, that use exactly the same method of determining the members of their governance body—that is, a combination of those elected and those appointed.

But the point I would make first, before delving into any of the details, is that these issues have been quite well canvassed in recent select committee hearings—recent, as in the last 12 months—in Christchurch. We heard from those who suffered from the failures of the previous Environment Canterbury body. So when we hear pleadings from the other side that there was no fault found in Environment Canterbury by the Creech report we know this is not the case, and these are not the lived experiences of people who had to tolerate the incompetence and the inability of Environment Canterbury—as it previously was formed—to arrive at decisions.

We heard passionate arguments from, for instance, the disability community in Christchurch, who very credibly claimed before the committee that the situation for disabled passengers, for instance, on public transport—for which Environment Canterbury has responsibility within that region—has improved massively under the current arrangements. They paid enormous credit to Dame Margaret Bazley and others—appointed members—who they said had brought into place much, much better, much more respectful, much more accessible systems for those with disabilities who rely on public transport. This was a lamentable failure by the previous Environment Canterbury governance arrangements; they let down one of the most vulnerable sections of our community. So when members opposite claim that they were doing their job and doing it well, they should actually hang their heads in shame at that failure to look after some of the most vulnerable people in this country.

The previous Environment Canterbury failed to deliver a plan for the use of water in the region. One of the most important and one of the most fundamental duties that it was given by the people of Canterbury was freshwater management—and it failed, again, lamentably in that. So I make no apologies for the arrangements that have been put into place by this Government: firstly, to bring in commissioners; and then the transitional arrangements that have only just recently been introduced and that recently involved an election with a combination of appointed and elected councillors, which is working well for the people of Canterbury. Certainly, that is the evidence we heard on the committee.

As the chair of the Local Government and Environment Committee, Mr Scott Simpson—the very fine member for Coromandel—said during his contribution that this bill is redundant: it seeks to amend an Act that is no longer in force. So, as he mentioned, there is the hastily drafted Supplementary Order Paper 251, which seeks to amend the, unfortunately, completely irrelevant and out-of-date member’s bill that the member allowed to continue to go forward in the ballot.

But in my view we have just elected a local and regional council in Christchurch, and we have a process in place—and it is a very sensible and pragmatic process in place—to see a transition to fully elected councils in that area in 2019. But we are doing that in a controlled and sensible way—not the chop-and-cut approach that Dr Woods is suggesting in her, frankly, embarrassing and ill-advised member’s bill that for some reason she failed to withdraw from the ballot when, in fact, the legislation that it amends has been changed. This will slow progress and lead to instability in Canterbury. This is something that the people of Canterbury do not need and for that reason this bill must not progress.

DENIS O’ROURKE (NZ First): New Zealand First will enthusiastically support this bill because a call for fully democratic regional government in Canterbury now is a perfectly valid call. The comments by members opposite only show how utterly out of touch they are with the feelings of the people of Canterbury. Nine years is far too long for a return to a fully elected regional council in that province; 6 years was easily long enough for the commissioners to do whatever they felt they needed to do—and I thank them for their service, but it is time for them to go. Their time is over. Whatever it was that they needed to achieve they have had time to do and it is high time they went.

Local government is fundamentally about representative democracy. Therefore, when commissioners are needed their term must be short. Six years is not short; 9 years is, frankly, ludicrous. The people of the region will become disillusioned with local government altogether and give up on the democratic system if they feel they are not engaged with it—and we can see that in the low turnout that happened in last year’s elections. The damage in that respect in Canterbury has been huge because of the grossly unnecessary delay in returning to a fully elected council. It was troubling enough when the commissioners were appointed for more than 3 years; it is absolutely, totally wrong for them to be appointed for a term of up to 9 years.

The Government claimed, when it passed the bill for the current hybrid council, that we needed a stable Environment Canterbury with “specialist skills”. It said those skills were, firstly, the management of fresh water. Well, that is not exclusive to appointed people. Elected people are more than capable of handling that. It also referred to “local authority governance and management”. Well, appointed people cannot do that at all. It referred to “knowledge of the Canterbury region and its people”. I would have thought that elected people can actually do that much better than appointed people could do. So, when you look at the reasons that are given in the current legislation empowering the hybrid council, they do not justify any appointed members at all. They justify only elected people.

The Government has also claimed that it wanted continuity. That means continuity of the commissioners—or at least some of them; half of the current council. But the issue is not continuity for them; it is continuity of democracy, which is the normal state and the proper state for local government in local communities. Local government as a democratic function is an absolute right for local communities and should be abrogated only for very, very good reasons and for the shortest possible time. Nine years gets nowhere near those criteria.

Lip-service only to democracy has been painted by the current Government. It is not really interested in local government at all, especially the member who spoke last on that side of the House, Paul Foster-Bell. He talked nonsense. He said that he was for democracy and then gave a speech against it. That is absolutely shocking and completely unacceptable.

The last thing I want to say in the last few seconds is that the current Act providing for the hybrid council says that “Environment Canterbury must review” the arrangements for the regional council that is to happen after 2019. That means that appointed people are going to be sharing in the decision as to what the new so-called democratic council is going to be. That is utterly wrong and also shows just how out of touch and how uninterested in local democracy that party across the House is. They are not interested in local democracy. Their opposition to this bill proves it. This bill rectifies all the problems with the current hybrid council and it needs to be passed.

JOANNE HAYES (National): I stand to take a short call on this bill, which, really, at the end of the day, is basically wasting the House’s time, because we have already passed the bill for a transitional regional council, Environment Canterbury (ECan), and I absolutely support what we have done in doing this. But what the member is trying to do in this bill is trying to usurp the current state by telling those who were democratically elected that that was a waste of their time—it was a waste of their time doing that. That is rubbish. That is an insult to the intelligence of those who actually put themselves forward for the new regional council, and at the end of the day to have this bill in the House is an insult to them.

We all know why the transitional Environment Canterbury bill was put in. It was because the councillors in 2010 were not living up to the responsibilities that they were given by the people of Canterbury. They were not living up to that, and that is why they came to this Government and said: “Please intervene. Please replace and put in a team of regional councillors who will actually do the job that we want them to do around water management planning.” So we did that and, yes, we came to 2016 and we said: “Yes, we do believe in democracy, but it is going to be for this particular regional council a transitional process. It is going to be a transitional process, because why throw the bathwater out with the baby. Let’s keep some of those councillors from the previous council—the appointments from the Minister, let’s keep them there—and let’s keep that continuity of the work that they have done there on that council to help the people of the region in Canterbury.”

I do not support this bill. I think it is wasting the time of this House to actually have it here. I think that what we currently have in place, the transitional ECan bill, will suffice until 2019 when Cantabrians can have their full say on that vote. Thank you.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): I call Jan Logie for 15 seconds.

JAN LOGIE (Green): This Government has clearly thrown out the baby, and its members are throwing out the water, as well, with this bill in their lack of support for this bill. The Green Party is very pleased to be able to support this bill.

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

JAN LOGIE: Before we rose for dinner, I was talking about the Government member prior to me talking about the Government having “thrown out the baby”. I do think it was an interesting concept—particularly when you think of cradles of civilisation and how Greece is often talked about as one of the cradles of civilisation, as well as some of the supporters of democracy—and it does seem apt in this situation that the Government has thrown the baby out of the cradle.

The Greens are very happy to be supporting this bill, because we really believe in local democracy. We heard from another previous National speaker who was saying he was absolutely an advocate for democracy—and then went on in his speech to sing the praises of how much better the politically appointed commissioners were than those who were democratically elected. It does seem to me that you cannot really have it both ways. We have also heard from previous speakers that the compromise of democracy—which we have been told is still democracy—is a transition; that it is being returned to the people, even though the Law Society described this as a loss of local democracy. But, you know, do not worry about the law, do not worry about our constitutional arrangements, and keep on holding on to that truth/post-truth reality that you seem to have.

We have also heard from speakers that the reason we need this abrogated democracy is that we need to protect the freshwater management in Canterbury. Yet—

Hon Ruth Dyson: Yeah right!

JAN LOGIE: Exactly. What we have heard and seen in Canterbury, and the people in Canterbury have seen so vividly, is an absolute loss of environmental integrity in our waterways. In the time that those commissioners have been in place, the proportion of rivers in Canterbury that are swimmable has gone from 74 percent of them that were swimmable in 2010 to only 64 percent of them now—down 10 percent in that time. These are the people who have been brought in, overriding local democracy, to supposedly improve freshwater management. You have got to wonder what their concept of management really is if they think that is success.

Then we heard that, actually, this is about the relationship with Ngāi Tahu and securing their voice in the local government process. That is something that the Greens absolutely support. We are very pleased that the member whose bill this is is keen to have that discussion in the select committee. But I would challenge the Government members that if they really were keen on that, then go around the country and talk to every single iwi and ask them how happy they are with the performance and their relationships with their local government partners. You will find that if that is your rationale for putting in commissioners, then there is a need for a whole lot more commissioners. And, actually, for the Government: you should be making changes to your Local Electoral Act and removing the blatantly racist provisions in there that require a referendum for the provision of Māori seats where there is no requirement for referenda for any other local electoral amendment. So if you are saying that an iwi representation is important for you, then this bill does not stack up against your other actions.

But, ultimately, this bill is about restoring the voice of the local people in Canterbury. They managed to get the elections and they elected people who supported freshwater management. Now we want that area to have 12 elected people—not 6. We want the Government to relinquish control and its agenda of irrigation and pollution. The hybrid model was not supported by the people of the area. Of the submissions last time, when that model was brought in, there were over a thousand and only 15 supported that. There is no way you can say the Government’s model is wanted.

IAN McKELVIE (National—Rangitīkei): I am a bit slow to rise, Mr Deputy Speaker. It takes me a while to get up, because of my age.

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: I was thinking that.

IAN McKELVIE: Well, the slow legs—that is a bit of a problem. Anyway—

Hon Nanaia Mahuta: We needed that information.

IAN McKELVIE: Yes; do not pick on me. I have a great deal of pleasure in rising to speak on the Environment Canterbury (Democracy Restoration) Amendment Bill. In 2010 the Government intervened—I suppose “intervened”, for want of a better word—in the Canterbury Regional Council and put commissioners in place. I would have to say that the commissioners they put in place, in my view, were extremely competent, but that is beside the point.

I think the issue that I have with this—and I have some experience of local government, having spent a bit of time there. I think one of the challenges regional councils have is that the agenda they are set as councillors is extremely complicated. I think one of the problems that Canterbury had as a regional council, and I am sure many other regional councils in New Zealand have had as well, is that that agenda, when set, was extremely difficult for those councillors to get their heads around. I will go on to that in a minute.

I am not criticising the councils, because I think, if you look at the way we elect our councils throughout New Zealand, being elected to a district council is a whole lot more of a different issue than being elected to a regional council or, for that matter, to a health board. A district council is all about people, and people are—well, for those of us who have spent our life managing people—not that difficult. They are things that are easy to manage—well, not easy to manage, necessarily—but they are things that we can get our heads around. But the issues of health and the environment are much more complex.

I think that one of the challenges our regional councils throughout New Zealand have had in their time, or particularly since they started to merge plans—in fact, since 1989—is that the issues have been very complex. So I do not blame the people elected to those councils for not necessarily getting their heads around what was going on, and I guess at the end of that, then holding up progress from an environmental perspective, and from an economic perspective, I suppose, but for me the environmental perspective is a lot more important.

I ask why a local hearing commissioner, for example—who used to be elected to a district council; nowadays they are slightly more professional—has to undertake onerous training to sit on hearing panels. They undertake examinations. There is quite a difficult threshold for a hearing commissioner or a person to be appointed to a hearing panel on a local council, or wherever. We then elect people to the regional council and expect them to come with all the skills. Sure, we do some councillor training and stuff like that, but it is not that easy. I think that the reason there were challenges in many of our regional councils throughout New Zealand was the fact that it was extremely difficult for the average person to be elected to a council and then have to deal with the very complicated environmental and scientific issues that they are faced with.

When you are elected to a local district council, to a community board, or whatever else, you do not generally face those very complex issues, and if you do, they are pretty easily resolved—whereas, in my experience of regional councils, particularly around scientific water and environmental stuff, it is very complicated. So I can understand why Canterbury had some challenges with their council. I can understand why we have had challenges in other parts of New Zealand with, I guess, the progress and the progression of regional plans and things like that, because it is a hugely complicated issue to understand.

So although the member has had her bill drawn, and I wish her every success with her bill—as I said earlier in the day, I do not have any success in having bills drawn. In fact, I am pretty sure my bill is missing from the ballot. I would like to go and test that one day, just to see whether, in fact, it is in there. But it is not; I am sure it is not, because it has never been drawn. This bill really is not relevant any longer, simply because the Act has been changed and the progress towards restoring democracy has started. It will be interesting to see how that progress goes.

I just want to touch on health boards for a moment. For quite some time now we have had a mixture of appointed members, who then create the expertise, and elected members, who give the community vision to the health board. A very similar sort of thing, in my view, exists for the Canterbury Regional Council. I think history will prove this model to be a very successful model for something as complicated as a regional council. Thank you.

Dr MEGAN WOODS (Labour—Wigram): Thank you to the speaker Ian McKelvie, who has just taken his seat for giving a far more constructive contribution on the bill than many of his colleagues did; it is much appreciated. I just want to run through the reasons why—the four reasons that the Opposition has put up—they cannot support democracy and the restoration of democracy in the Canterbury region.

The first argument is that it is unnecessary: that the current arrangements and the mixed-model that we have in Canterbury are OK, and that it is a return to democracy. Well, I have said it before and I will say it again—you cannot be a little bit pregnant. This is not a mixed-model of democracy; this is the Government appointing people to run Canterbury. I do take note of the speech that the member Ian McKelvie, who has just taken his seat, gave because he gave a speech that reached far beyond Canterbury. He talked about how this is a necessary and desirable tool to use outside the specific conditions of Canterbury, which the Government has continually used as its justification for the 2010 sacking of our regional council, the failure to return democracy in 2013, the failure to return democracy in 2016, and the failure to support the restoration of democracy.

The current model is not fit for purpose. No member who has taken to their feet on the other side of the House has given a single justification for why it is that Canterbury should be treated differently from the rest of the country. The closest we got was with the member who has just spoken, who basically made the case for rolling this out across the country rather than confining it between the Waitaki and the Clarence rivers—that he seemed to see some things there.

We also heard, and we heard it in the first contribution from a Government member, which was repeated, some concerns that iwi representation had been achieved through this legislation, although the last speaker was not so keen on that himself—so maybe that is another split and division within the National Government. But what we did see, and what we have consistently said, is that, yes, there could be something really good that has happened in Canterbury in terms of Ngāi Tahu’s representation around the Environment Canterbury table, and we are up for that conversation at select committee; it is something that does need to be worked through with officials. It is something that some work needs to be put into and worked through. So to say that you cannot vote for this because it would do away with iwi representation is utter nonsense. That is not what we have said and we have been very clear in that all the way through.

Paul Foster-Bell then raised an argument—it was often raised—that it is democratic: otherwise, you are saying that district health boards (DHBs) are not democratic. Well, there are very different circumstances: first of all, a regional council is spending a locally collected rate, and not centrally collected taxation. This is as simple as taxation without representation. A very fundamental part of what we are meant to believe in as elected members is that we do not have people just appointed to spend money that is collected from citizens as a levy, or a rate, or a tax; that we do have something called elections, which are usually quite useful. The other very different set of circumstances around the DHBs is that that is a consistent system that is rolled out across the country. What we have here in Canterbury is a bespoke set of circumstances for Canterbury that no case has been made for—the way in which we are represented has not been justified. So that does not stack up.

Then there was quite a lot of slippage with what the speakers were saying. They started out saying that the changes in this bill are not necessary because the mixed-model is doing it, but then we heard speech after speech about how democracy is just “too risky”—I think those were the Minister’s words—for Cantabrians to be allowed to get their sticky little fingers on, because they might muck it up, because we have something very different there, and they have to protect the gains that were made. So what is it? Do we have a democratic system? Is that why the members opposite cannot vote for the bill? Or do you want to continue an undemocratic form of government in Canterbury?

The allegations of dysfunction are unfounded. The reasons why the council was originally sacked do not stack up. This is a chance for elected members of Parliament to vote for the restoration of democracy to the region of Canterbury. I encourage Canterbury members around this House to vote for their region, and not for their party. Thank you.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the Environment Canterbury (Democracy Restoration) Amendment Bill be now read a first time.

Ayes 57

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

Noes 63

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

Motion not agreed to.

Bills

Films, Videos, and Publications Classification (Interim Restriction Order Classification) Amendment Bill

First Reading

CHRIS BISHOP (National): I move, That the Films, Videos, and Publications Classification (Interim Restriction Order Classification) Amendment Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Justice and Electoral Committee to consider this bill. Last year Ted Dawe’s award-winning novel Into the River was banned in New Zealand. The reason it was banned was a strange anomaly in our censorship laws, and it is that anomaly that this bill seeks to address. Let me start by briefly recounting the somewhat complicated factual matrix that is the background to this bill.

In New Zealand, publications are classified by the Office of Film and Literature Classification. In September 2013 Into the River was classified as unrestricted—“M Suitable for Mature Audiences 16 Years and over”—by the classification office. Classification decisions can be appealed to a body called the Film and Literature Board of Review, and this decision was indeed appealed by Family First, a lobby group that sought a restricted classification for the book. So, in December 2013, the board of review classified the book R14. This is a unique classification that had never previously been assigned. Don Matheson QC, the board president, issued a dissenting view, which is very rare in these circumstances, and said he would have rated the book R18.

So that was where things lay until 2014, when there was growing dissatisfaction with the board’s decision, particularly amongst teachers and librarians, because it was cutting off access to a particular class of people—young people, obviously—and Auckland libraries requested that the board’s decision be reconsidered by the classification office. So, in August 2015, the classification was changed, again, to unrestricted, and this was the first time the classification office had ever reconsidered a decision of the board of review.

Following the reconsideration, Family First again appealed the classification decision through the board of review, and this time it decided to ask the president of the board of review to impose an interim restriction order—which is where we get to the bill—and that application was granted on 3 September 2015. What that restriction order did was make it illegal to supply the book to anyone or to display the book in, or within, view of a public place. It was the first time an interim restriction order had ever been imposed on a book in New Zealand. They have previously been imposed on films, and I will talk about those in a few moments. So there was a gap between 3 September and 14 October 2015 when the board of review could examine the book again, and for that 6-week period the book was illegal to be supplied or to be displayed within view of a public place. So, essentially, the book was banned in New Zealand for that 6-week period. After that time, the board of review examined the book again, and this time the majority decision was to classify the book as unrestricted, and the interim restriction order was rescinded.

Interim restriction orders can be issued pursuant to section 49 of the Act by the president of the board of review after an initial classification is made but before a review hearing is held by the board of review, and that power is essentially replicated in section 67 when it comes to the High Court. The problem with the regime is that in the case of Into the River, the president had only two options. He could either allow the decision of the censor—that Into the River should be unrestricted—to stand while the board made its decision on the appeal, or ban the book entirely until the board had made its decision. What was not available to him, under the existing law, was the power to reinstate either of the two original classifications—i.e., unrestricted M, or R14.

The end result, I believe, was clearly a nonsense. You had a book banned for 6 weeks, even though three previous censorship decisions across the Office of Film and Literature and the board of review had ruled it should be legally available, albeit with some restrictions. Even the president of the board of review, in his dissent in the initial hearing, would have made the book R18. So what this bill does is propose a simple amendment to section 49 and section 67 of the Act to expand the toolbox of the president, giving the president the same powers available to the classification office and the board of review, which means the ability to restrict a publication based on age or specified classes.

What this means in practice is that in the case of Into the River, it would have meant the president could have reverted the book back to its R14 status rather than banning it outright. The president was unable to keep the book available, even with a restricted rating on it, such as R14 or unrestricted M, because that power is not available to the president in the interim restriction regime currently. What this bill will do is it will give the president the power to do that. It will eradicate the binary nature of the president’s decision-making options, which are basically: restrict the book completely—ban a publication—or leave it under its existing restriction.

I want to make a couple of comments, in the time I have got left, about interim restrictions more generally, because I believe there is a strong case for abolishing them completely, for three reasons. The first is that I believe they interfere unjustifiably with freedom of expression. Section 14 of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990 is an affirmation of the importance of freedom of expression in New Zealand. As Justice Anderson put it, in Hosking v Runting, it “is the first and last trench in the protection of liberty.” Clearly it is of vital importance in our liberal democratic society.

The problem with interim restrictions is that they give the power to the president of the board of review to ban a publication outright, even after that publication has already been assessed and classified by the classification office. New Zealand courts, like those in cognate jurisdictions in the United States, United Kingdom, and Canada, have traditionally viewed with distaste the prospect of judicial restrictions on speech—this is known as prior restraint—in advance of a substantive hearing. Courts have emphasised that even in cases involving defamation, breach of confidence, and breach of privacy, freedom of expression values will ordinarily prevail at the interlocutory stage. Given the importance of freedom of expression, even at that stage, I believe it should definitely prevail once an actual hearing has already been held on a publication.

In the highly unlikely event that a publication is unrestricted by the classification office, only to be banned later by the board of review, then any harm suffered by society in the interim is surely, I believe, at the margins. There is no magical reason to privilege the decision-making power of the president of the board of review over the classification office.

The second reason is that the extraordinary power enjoyed by the president to ban a publication in the interim is arguably unnecessary. I got the Parliamentary Library to dig up some cases, and between 2005 and 2012 the board of review altered only seven classifications made by the classification office, out of 101 reviews. Moreover, none of these decisions reclassified a publication as objectionable—i.e., banned.

Thirdly, interim restriction orders can be abused, and this point is neatly illustrated by the Bully and Visitor Q cases. In 2002 these two controversial films were classified R18 by the censorship office, with their screening restricted to film festivals or for tertiary study. Not long before Beck’s Incredible Film Festival, which the films had been imported to be shown at, the Society for Promotion of Community Standards appealed their classification to the board of review, arguing that the films should be banned entirely, and the then president of the board of review imposed interim restriction orders on the films.

By the time the board of review met to consider the classification, the festival had been and gone. It had finished. So the films were banned for a few weeks, effectively, including when they were actually due to be shown. So the Society for Promotion of Community Standards achieved its aims. It, effectively, banned the films at the only outlet that they were due to be shown at in the first place, and, of course, by the time the actual decision had been made and they had been classified or reclassified by the board of review, the time for them to be actually shown had gone. Actually, the board of review in the case of the film Bully maintained its R18 film festival / tertiary study only classification. Visitor Q, for which an interim restriction was argued, was actually rated R18 without any special conditions. So what that shows is that power to issue interim restriction orders, albeit not recently in the case of films, can be abused.

Those were just a few closing remarks about the nature of interim restrictions. It is a little-known part of the law. Probably most members of the House, I suspect, did not know much about them until the case of Into the River happened last year, but I think Into the River demonstrates that we need to fix up this anomaly—that there is an anomaly in the law. I decided to do something about it, and that is what the bill before the House does. It is a simple bill, but, I think, an important one for freedom of expression, and I commend it to the House.

CLARE CURRAN (Labour—Dunedin South): Labour supports this bill and agrees with Chris Bishop that this is a small but quite significant bill and that there is a definite anomaly in the legislation that exists. Of course, often we do not know about these anomalies until they hit us in the face. When a book such as Into the River by an author such as Ted Dawe ends up being temporarily banned—and I know that it was not an actual ban but it was temporarily taken out of the community—it raises issues that are bigger than one would think. These are issues that relate to civil liberties, freedom of speech, community standards, and where we are as a society, and it causes us to do quite a bit of reflection. So I commend the member on this bill, genuinely. I think that this is a small but significant piece of legislation that we should take to a select committee and scrutinise: not just this individual instance but the wider issues that surround it and what they mean, where we sit as a society in terms of our community standards, our children’s access to information, the information that is important for growing up, and the processes around how a book like this can end up in the situation that it ended up in.

I asked the Parliamentary Library to give me a list of the books in New Zealand that have been banned, and, curiously, a long list has come back today. It is much longer than I actually would have thought it would be: I think I have counted up 180 books that were banned between 1963 and 1994. I am not quite sure why I only got to 1994. I do not really want to read out the titles of many of them—these were banned by the Indecent Publications Tribunal. I guess the question I was asking myself was: what does it take to actually ban a book in this country? I will read out the title of a couple: Secrets of Methamphetamine Manufacture: Including Recipes for MDA, Ecstasy and Other Psychedelic Ampthetamines—that is a good one to read out—and Kitchen Improvised Plastic Explosives was another one. I am not going to go any further than that, and please do not do this at home—and I mean that most seriously.

The situation is that there are reasons—and good reasons—why some things get banned. New Zealand is a liberal country; New Zealand is a country where freedom of expression is highly valued, and I hope it stays that way. I hope that we maintain the vigilance of politicians across Parliament around the importance of freedom of expression. But there are times when things are produced that need to be taken out, or not allowed into the country; there are good reasons for that. But the issue that brought this bill to Parliament tonight is not one of them. It is a clear anomaly that needs to be corrected. I hope that when it gets to select committee there will be a wider discussion.

If there was to be a criticism of the author of this bill, it would be that before you bring a bill like this—or any member’s bill—to the House I think it is always important to do some exploration in the community, and, particularly, to talk to the organisations that will have views. We certainly know that there were authors in New Zealand who had views around the temporary “banning”—and I am using that word knowing that it was not an actual ban, but there was a taking of this book out of circulation. There were authors who had views. There is a Society of Authors. There are civil liberties groups. There is the Law Society. There is the Library and Information Association of New Zealand that no doubt could have provided—and hopefully will at select committee—views on this issue and the wider issues. I think that it is incumbent upon us as parliamentarians, when we are putting in a member’s bill before the House, to seek some of those views before we actually craft the wording of the legislation—not that we have to take on board all of their views, but we should go out and seek their views. That would be the only criticism that I have.

The other point that I would like to make in the time that I have got remaining is to talk about the further reform. The member is putting a reform into the Films, Videos, and Publications Classification Act. There has been, in this country, under the Minister for Communications, a review—called the convergence review—that has been going on for several years now, which has still not ended up with any action—

Jacqui Dean: It’s “converging”.

CLARE CURRAN: —around the classification of content generally.

Tracey Martin: It’s “converging”—“converging”.

CLARE CURRAN: “Convergence”.

Tracey Martin: Sorry—Jacqui Dean says it’s “converging” now.

CLARE CURRAN: It is “convergence”, Jacqui Dean—and if she does not know what the word means, then she can look it up. There has not been any reform by this Government in this area, and this is really basic. There is a proposal being put forward, supposedly by the Government, that we still have not seen on the Order Paper around the difference between online classification and TV. So we have the same content coming in through Netflix, or Lightbox, or whatever online mechanism, and we have got it on Sky TV, or on TVNZ, or MediaWorks—and they are being classified under different regimes, whether it is the Broadcasting Act or the Films, Videos, and Publications Classification Act. Which is it to be, and where is the reform that this Government is talking about?

Clearly, we are not going to get that legislation through before the end of this parliamentary term. What that shows is a paucity of ideas and vision and action coming from the Minister for Communications and the Minister of Broadcasting, who clearly has not been able to bring together any convergence—any real actions—in the convergence space since she has been the Minister. I think that is very telling. She gets a lot of plaudits for her work in the justice sphere—and I am not dissing that—but what I would say is that there is no action in the area that is glaringly obvious in the convergence between the online world and the other world of broadcasting.

Thankfully, we have a small but significant piece of legislation before us today, which is likely to go to select committee. Labour supports this bill to select committee. We would like there to be a wider discussion being held around convergence, which may be able to be sparked at select committee on this piece of legislation. Ted Dawe’s book is a book that is aimed at 14-year-olds or young people, which deals with some real issues affecting young people, and which has sparked a bigger conversation. What better for the convergence discussion than for this to be the spark that might light a bigger fire? I commend this bill to the House.

JACQUI DEAN (National—Waitaki): This is the first reading of the Films, Videos, and Publications Classification (Interim Restriction Order Classification) Amendment Bill in the name of Chris Bishop. First of all, congratulations to the member on having his second bill drawn from the ballot, and, like the first bill that Chris Bishop brought to the House, this is good one. I am very pleased that this one is coming to the Justice and Electoral Committee.

As has already been noted in the House this evening, this bill has its genesis in the classification fiasco of Ted Dawes’ book Into the River—an award-winning book. I thought I would just go through the time line of what occurred with Into the River, perhaps to give a little bit of context. In September 2013 the book was classified as being unrestricted M, which means that it is suitable for mature audiences of 16 years and over, and that was done by the classification office. Family First, as it is entitled to do, applied to the Film and Literature Board of Review seeking a restricted classification for the book. In December 2013 the board of review classified the book R14, which, as it turns out, was a unique classification that had never previously be used or assigned. Don Mathieson QC, who is the board’s president, issued a dissenting view and would have rated the book—he held the view of it being R18.

In 2015, following growing dissatisfaction with the board’s decision—particularly amongst teachers and librarians, Auckland libraries requested that the board’s decision be reconsidered by the classification office. So in August 2015 the classification was changed again all the way back to unrestricted. This was the first time that the classification office had ever reconsidered a decision by the board of review. Following the reconsideration, Family First again appealed to the classification office’s decision to the board of review.

So it came round again. This time it also asked the president to impose an interim restriction order. The application was granted and it was granted on 3 September 2015—so we are 2 years down the track. The interim restriction order made it illegal to supply the book to anyone or to display the book in or within the view of a public place.

Members and any members of the public who are tuning in to this will possibly recall the furore that surrounded this classification uncertainty. To go from R14 to R18 to a total prohibition or restriction just did seem a little inconsistent, and it highlighted some deficiencies within the legislation. It is notable, also, that this was the first time that an interim restriction order had ever been imposed on a book. On 14 October 2015—that same year—the board of review examined the book again, and this time the majority decision was to classify the book as unrestricted. The interim restriction was rescinded. It was a bit of a dog’s breakfast, and so in came Chris Bishop and his bill, which will help avoid a repeat of what some would argue is a fiasco—the banning of Ted Dawe’s award-winning Into the River book.

Into the River was the first time an interim restriction had been ordered on a book. It meant that there was a complete lack of certainty, a complete lack of clarity, a complete lack of consistency, and a complete lack of options. This bill of Chris Bishop, which is coming to the Justice and Electoral Committee, seeks to remedy that. I think it is a good bill. I think the committee will have an interesting time considering all the issues around it, and I commend it to the House.

GARETH HUGHES (Green): Kia ora, Mr Deputy Speaker. Ngā mihi nui ki a koutou, kia ora. I rise to support the bill. I would like to congratulate the member Chris Bishop on having another bill pulled from the ballot. Look, we will be supporting it. It is a minor bill. It is dealing with an issue, a problem, that has happened all of one time in history! It is quite phenomenal, when you think that there are 70,000 young New Zealanders out of work and out of training, 40,000 people sleeping in cars and garages, unswimmable rivers, pollution going through the roof, and systemic economic problems, that the issue to deal with is an issue that has happened once.

Look, it is a real issue. It is a minor issue. We will be supporting it because it is a real issue, but let us focus on the real, important issues to New Zealand.

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: Let us focus on this bill.

GARETH HUGHES: On this bill, which you have got to say is better than an airport luggage bill—this bill deals with this minor quirk that happened. I was one of many New Zealanders who were outraged at the decision that resulted in Ted Dawe’s book, the award-winning Into the River, seeing a temporary ban. I remember standing outside Unity Books in Wellington with a whole bunch of noted authors and publishers. We all had books covered in brown paper bags to symbolise how ridiculous it was in 2015 to see a book literally taken out of public circulation. Kids and libraries could not access it. The amazing foot-in-mouth, Barbra Streisand - effect result of all this negative publicity is more people bought the book. More people read the book. I think it is great to see that freedom of expression—to see that Kiwis wanted to get some of the forbidden fruit that the office had decided they could not access through their libraries, etc. So, look, it was a real issue, a minor issue, and we support the intent of the member to address it.

It does, though, raise some bigger issues. This gives the office a greater sense of flexibility, which the Green Party supports wholeheartedly. It will be interesting to hear the arguments and the experts in the select committee. But I have noted quite particularly in the last couple of years that we are seeing a much more proactive and publicity-seeking chief censor in New Zealand. This is someone whom traditionally you do not hear a great deal of, but we have seen a lot of the chief censor over the last couple of years.

One of the issues the chief censor has really picked up on, which is not contained in this bill, is how we treat books, literature, and games. One thing the chief censor wants to do to New Zealand is require all the video games—and, look, we consume $162 million worth of computer games in New Zealand, according to the last data in 2013. The chief censor wants to apply a classification regime across those thousands of video games that are consumed in New Zealand. The irony, of course, is that because of the creaking, old-fashioned approach we have, this would be an incredibly expensive proposition—in the order of $1,400 to $2,000 a game. At a time when we have got hundreds of Kiwis coming up with great ideas and selling them on platforms like Steam or the iTunes App Store, often this would mean the difference between that game being available in New Zealand or not, if the chief censor got his way.

When I was recently in Australia at the largest Southern Hemisphere video game exhibition, supporting about 10 New Zealand companies that are exporting into the Australian and the global market, doing great work as part of the $92 million in exports our video game and interactive media industry earns New Zealand each year, what they told me is that in Australia they have got a system called the International Age Rating Coalition. This is a voluntary body where game developers can submit their game to a voluntary self-classification body. It uses the power of the cloud and participants to give it a rating. The costs are almost minuscule. What they have seen in Australia is hundreds of thousands of games now getting a classification, instead of the 200 or 300 a year that previously got a classification. I have got a message to the member. If he wants to focus on some of the bigger issues facing the sector and the chief censor, maybe this is an area where New Zealand should be looking as well.

I want to touch on the sentiment of Clare Curran. What we have seen from the broadcasting and communications Minister is this process, the broadcasting convergence review. Years and years have gone into it, screeds and screeds and papers and papers have gone into it. What did we get out of it? A potential release of the advertising ban on Sundays. That is the result. We are seeing giant media corporations merging in New Zealand, and real threats to net neutrality if the Sky-Vodafone merger goes ahead, in my opinion. There are ginormous issues coming from new technology, but if the Government wants to focus on these minor technical issues, so be it. We are going to focus on the big issues facing New Zealand.

MAUREEN PUGH (National): It is my pleasure to stand in support of the Films, Videos, and Publications Classification (Interim Restriction Order Classification) Amendment Bill tonight in its first reading in the House. This bill seeks to amend the Films, Videos, and Publications Classification Act of 1993 by providing the High Court and the president of the Film and Literature Board of Review with some flexibility around making interim restriction orders. The situation arose, as we have heard already tonight, when the book Into the River found itself banned completely for 6 weeks after going around the circus of review and restriction, review and restriction.

This is a very simple amendment. The current system, unfortunately, is extremely black and white, like a good old movie, and coming to the rescue, like a great hero in a black and white movie, is Chris Bishop. He has recognised the simple amendment that is needed just to bring some common sense into the system. He has ridden in on his white steed and he has got the solution for us all. The only interim option currently available is to completely ban a publication or to leave it unrestricted. There is no discretion available. This bill provides for applying classifications that could restrict the publication based on age or a particular class of people, such as M, which is suitable for mature audiences, or perhaps R14, which, of course, is restricted to those aged 14 and over. This simple amendment gives the president of the Film and Literature Board of Review a couple of practical tools in the available tool kit so that common sense can prevail, thereby avoiding the situation that found the book Into the River completely banned for a 6-week period. I look forward to this bill making its way through to the Justice and Electoral Committee. That will be ably overseen by its chair, Jacqui Dean. I congratulate my colleague Mr Chris Bishop on his initiative in recognising the need for this bill to come to this House.

I will just mention very briefly the sections that will be inserted. Clause 4 will insert a new section 49A. That will allow the president of the board to restrict availability to a particular age or class of person or for a particular purpose. Clause 5 will insert a new section 67A, to allow the High Court, when making an interim restriction order on appeal, to restrict availability to a particular age or class of person, or for a particular purpose. Sometimes, as we have seen in this House, it just takes a little bit of common sense to bring around some very workable legislation. It is very easy for us, sometimes, to put it in the too-hard basket, but my friend and colleague the able Chris Bishop has used this opportunity to bring this legislation into the House. I have great pleasure in supporting him, and in commending this bill to the House.

TRACEY MARTIN (NZ First): Kia ora, Mr Deputy Speaker. I rise on behalf of New Zealand First to address the Films, Videos, and Publications Classification (Interim Restriction Order Classification) Amendment Bill—long title, small bill. New Zealand First will support this bill to select committee only, at this stage.

I want to pick up on a couple of things that have been said, apart from the visual image of Chris Bishop riding in on a horse and saving the day, and so on and so forth, which nobody really needed. Let us get real—the National Government did not need to talk about a hero riding in right now either.

Many of the contributors this evening have talked about the book Into the River being an award-winning book, and it was. But let us talk about where this conversation started. It is a winner of the children’s book award—the children’s book award. Because it won that award, schools and school libraries bought it in large numbers. I remember this, as the chairman of the board of Mahurangi College. This book was then placed on the shelves for the students to actually access. At the same time, the librarians began to read the book, as they do in all things.

There are things that are inside this book—there are phrases inside this book—that I cannot say because of the time of night. There are descriptions of actions inside this book that I cannot repeat to you inside this House because it is unparliamentary language. I cannot say them on mainstream television because of the hour of the day. Let us be clear: the first mistake with regard to this book was the category in which it won its award. I am not making any statement on its literary value. It perhaps should have been the teenage award. It could have won the young adults award, but it did not; it won the children’s book award, and it was placed into libraries and into schools—primary schools and secondary schools—for full access.

Then, Family First quite rightly—now Mr Bishop made a comment where he described Family First as a lobby group, and it is. I would have thought that Mr Bishop was the last person to talk about lobby groups in any sort of detrimental manner. However, Family First has absolutely, as Ms Dean said, used its democratic right to ask for this decision around classification to be reviewed. What we had here was a 6-week ban from the shelves. So the error in the first instance, I believe, was actually being given the wrong award for this particular book, and when it had a classification of R14 it went on to the shelves. I do not know how many members over there have read any part of this book. Hands up—anybody ready it? No. Right.

Jono Naylor: “Is anybody listening?” is more to the point.

TRACEY MARTIN: Ha, ha! But you have not read the book. So you are going to make a decision—that member is going to make a decision in ignorance, and I find that very interesting. But it is pretty much standard for that particular member. That particular member is in ignorance, and the man behind him continues on that pathway. What we are talking about here is—and what we in New Zealand First want to make sure happens at select committee is—that we want to hear the voice of all of the community around what this might do. All that happened here was that one book, for one time in history, had a 6-week ban while it was reassessed. That is what happened here. Is it necessary to change the whole law because of that?

Jono Naylor: You’re going to vote for it.

TRACEY MARTIN: Was it a single one-off incident—Mr Naylor, I know you are going, but please try to concentrate—that we do not need to change the whole legislation for? That is what New Zealand First will be looking for.

With regard to Mr Bishop’s comment about abolishing interim restrictions completely, that is a wider conversation. Let us hope that that is outside the scope of the bill, because that is another whole conversation that should be wider than just this particular select committee, with regard to how the country sees censorship and protection—because that is what it comes down to—of certain age groups and certain demographics. And we heard from Clare Curran the reason why certain things end up getting banned.

What we are talking about here—and, as I say, New Zealand First will support this bill at first reading, to select committee only at this stage, and I have explained that to the member whose name is on this bill. I am hoping that I will sub in on that select committee, just to liven it up a bit, so that I can hear all the submissions that should take place. I hope that Family First comes forward, and I hope the chief censor himself comes forward to actually contribute. Kia ora.

JONO NAYLOR (National): Firstly, can I say that if my good friend and colleague Mr Bishop is around next time the Lotto Powerball jackpots to $44 million, I think I will go down to the shop with him and let him choose the numbers, because for a member of Parliament in their first term, within 2 years, to get two bills drawn out of the ballot is very, very lucky. They say luck comes in threes, so, as I say, next time Powerball jackpots to $44 million I will be with Mr Bishop. We will be down at the local Lotto shop, and I will certainly be lining up with him and letting him choose the numbers.

That said, the things that he has actually put in have been very worthy. Last week we had the third reading of the Compensation for Live Organ Donors Bill—a great bill, and I just want to congratulate my colleague Mr Chris Bishop on actually getting that one through—and no sooner has that been dealt with, out comes this second bill, which is another very good bill that I am happy to support. Many of the speeches tonight have been focused—and the last speech in particular was very, very focused—on one particular publication. It seemed to be very focused on whether or not one particular book was going to be in Mahurangi College’s library, but this bill is about far more than one book. It is actually about what actually goes on beyond that.

The Films, Videos, and Publications Classification (Interim Restriction Order Classification) Amendment Bill—which is definitely a mouthful, and certainly, when we get to the Committee of the whole House we may want to debate a little and see whether we can shorten that down a little bit so that perhaps it is not so much of a mouthful for us to say every time we refer to it—I think addresses a very important aspect. Yes, there are some publications that do need to be dealt with in the way that the publication Into the River, which has been talked about, needs to be dealt with, but there is potential for this kind of thing to happen again. This is not just about that book; it is about ensuring that we actually have processes in the future available to the president of the Film and Literature Board of Review and to the High Court to empower them to make better decisions that will actually address issues in an appropriate way.

For example, if I was to have made a film that I wanted to release, and the initial classification on that film was deemed as, perhaps, M—suitable for mature audiences—and my good friend Mr Bennett behind me then came out and said “You know what—this is terrible. Clearly it should have been an R18 movie.”, then the only opportunity that the president of the Film and Literature Board of Review would have, while they were undertaking that, would be to simply take that film right out of circulation. As someone who, perhaps, had made that film, and had not necessarily decided for myself what audience it was intended for and was leaving that up to the censors, I would be financially impaired in terms of making some money off that. Even if that person was against it being classified as M, and wished it to be R18, it would seem stupid and pointless for that film to actually then be taken completely off the market.

The mechanism that is proposed by this bill would then allow the powers that be to, in fact, actually put in an interim classification of, perhaps, an R18, or an R20, or whatever it is that they might choose to do. At that point it allows for a certain level of revenue to flow into the film maker. It will, in fact, appease the person who is appealing the decision and is not happy with the way that it is being administered. It is appeasing them in the first instance. So everybody ultimately is a winner at this stage.

I am happily going to support this bill, and not just at the first reading. I am sure we will get some interesting submissions through the select committee process. I look forward to hearing those submissions as they come through the Justice and Electoral Committee. I am pretty confident that at the second and third readings I will be voting for this bill as well because it is eminently sensible and it is practical. It is about getting good measures in place for good legislation going forward. I commend the bill to the House.

ADRIAN RURAWHE (Labour—Te Tai Hauāuru): Tēnā koe e Te Māngai o Te Whare, otirā, ki a tātou katoa i tēnei pō, tēnei te mihi ake ki a tātou.

[Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker, but at the same time to us all this evening, I commend us.]

We have heard about heroes on horses and winning Lotto; I was wondering for a moment what bill we were actually debating. So how about a bit of kaupapa Māori, just for the mix? I want to congratulate Chris Bishop on having a second bill drawn from the biscuit tin. I think there is some real merit to this particular bill, and I want to commend him for bringing it here, although I do note the contribution of others as well. I want to support my colleague Clare Curran in this respect.

We live in quite a different world. The 14-year-olds of today live in a different world from the one we all grew up in, I can assure everyone in the House. I think the challenges for young people around what they read are highly influenced by what happens overseas, particularly on television and on the internet. In a way, despite this particular bill addressing one instance that we are aware of, something that has gone wrong, do we honestly believe, in this House, that 14-year-olds are not accessing information and quite a lot of other things through the internet and through television?

Even on mainstream television—and for those teenagers who have access to pay TV, they get to see adverts from overseas on those particular channels that do not comply with the restrictions within New Zealand television. So they get to see things that they might not otherwise get to see on New Zealand broadcast television. I agree with Tracey Martin; I think we do need to have a wider conversation around all of these things.

As I said, I commend the member for bringing this bill to the House because I think it has sparked that new conversation that has to happen. I look forward to seeing the submissions that come in on this bill. I think there are potentially quite a number of sector groups and organisations, individuals, who will put in submissions on this bill, and quite rightly so.

I will not carry on for too much longer. I did start by saying that I would make a contribution around what would be a Māori world view of this issue. I kind of reflect and put this position, that on these issues information is power—information, and correct information—and it is really important that we make certain that all of the information around this particular bill is discussed openly and transparently. I support this bill. Thank you.

MELISSA LEE (National): Thank you for the opportunity to take a call on my parliamentary colleague Chris Bishop’s excellent Film, Videos, and Publications Classification (Interim Restriction Order Classification) Amendment Bill. I echo my other colleagues who have congratulated him. I have had a member’s bill in the ballot for—God knows how long; ever since I came into Parliament in 2008. I have not been that lucky, and Chris has been very lucky to have had two bills drawn from the ballot. So I congratulate him.

I used to make G-rated television programmes; that is, family viewing, on a Sunday morning. The G-rating means no violence, no anything, and it has to be viewable by all the family. I was just thinking about classification and what could have gone wrong. I remember an incident when one of my reporters had done a story about wrestling. It was obviously wrestling—it is not really real; it is just make believe. One of them used a foil plate to make it look like he was bashing somebody over the head with it. It was foil, but the classification office thought it was a little too violent, and I remember having to re-edit that particular scene because it was seen as too violent. So I do know one or two things about classification and ratings.

I totally understand what Tracey Martin was talking about, in terms of the content of a book that should be relooked at. As a parent raising a young teenager I used to constantly worry about what was in a book. I had to trust that the classification on the book or the video game or the video was correct. You cannot always monitor what the content is. As a parent, you cannot always read the book before you give it to your child. You have to trust that it is, in fact, the correct classification.

However, I do believe that the 6-week ban might have been an overreaction, perhaps. There were other, milder, classifications that they could have gone to, but the law did not actually allow that. Mr Bishop put forward this bill due to the situation that happened last year, as other members have said. The situation in law is not acceptable, in that it limits creativity and the potential of our creative communities, when they know that the professional censors may overclassify their work and they may be unable to sell or publish while they challenge the decision.

Talking about the concerns of parents over certain ratings and whatever, I think Adrian was talking about how children who are now 14 live a very different life from when we were 14. I was thinking back to when I was a child and going to the movies with my parents, and my parents’ restrictions on certain aspects of the movies. My parents were big fans of 007 and went to see Roger Moore. There were lots of romantic scenes, and scenes that were a little bit more amorous. My parents’ way of restricting our viewing was to call out: “Children.” We understood what that meant. My brother and I had to hide our eyes, and my mother would close our ears with her fingers, and that was our way of having our viewing restricted. That is how we grew up.

I think different cultures have different ways of dealing with these things. I grew up in Korea, where there are no overt romantic or sex scenes on television. Usually it was about family things, so we did not have to worry about that. But having grown up in that society and then coming to New Zealand and now seeing a whole lot of different varieties of movies and texts from around the world, I think the censors and the classification office have major work to do.

In summary, I believe that Mr Bishop’s bill is an excellent piece of legislation, and I am sure you will find that out. I am sure that the select committee process will bring out that maybe there are other things that you might have to work on. Perhaps you could improve the bill. Maybe there are other areas, apart from texts; maybe it is videos as well that you could extend it to. I would like to once again congratulate Mr Bishop on the excellent job of being very lucky in getting his bill drawn. I wish him good luck through the select committee process. I am very jealous that I am not on the Justice and Electoral Committee to sit through this. I commend this bill.

BARRY COATES (Green): Mr Deputy Speaker, tēnā koe. I rise to address this bill, the Films, Videos, and Publications Classification (Interim Restriction Order Classification) Amendment Bill. One of the pleasures that I am finding as a new parliamentarian is the need to go out and do a little bit of research on the bills that come before us, and I have learnt a lot about censorship in New Zealand in understanding the context for this particular bill. It is timely for this bill to be introduced. Censorship is 100 years old in New Zealand. It was introduced in 1916 in response to churches, local boards, education boards, and social action organisations, which were concerned, in those days, about the advent of film as well as books.

There is a recent exhibition by Ngā Taonga Sound and Vision called Censored: 100 Years of Film Censorship in New Zealand, and that traced the history of censorship in New Zealand back to Battleship Potemkin, a 1925 film and one of the greatest films rated of all time, which was censored; followed by All Quiet on the Western Front, which was regarded as anti-war propaganda; followed by films such as The Wild One in 1953, starring Marlon Brando—some of us may remember that—and up to Mad Max in 1979. These are all films that were, for varying periods of time, censored.

Our censorship laws and practices have evolved significantly since then. It has not only been films that have been censored; there have been publications that have a political nature, as well. During the 1951 waterfront dispute, for example, it was illegal to publish material in support of the waterside strikers. So we are seeing, now, censorship having evolved into its current form, and we have talked about the controversy around Ted Dawe’s book Into the River.

I will join my Green Party colleague in welcoming this bill, and congratulations to Chris Bishop on having it drawn. However, it feels a little bit like we are fiddling while Rome burns, given that, actually, technology has taken over the broadcasting and consumption of images and words in a way that is very hard for us to keep up with. The changes in technology have been quite profound. These days, kids can access material from around the world in real time, across an amazing variety of media, and we need to be aware of what dangers there are for children, for adults, in exposure to some of this information on the internet. I think that we have been focusing excessively on films, videos, books, and now, perhaps, games, without actually understanding that this is a moving picture and, in fact, the landscape is shifting very quickly.

So the question is whether our censorship processes and laws are able to deal adequately with the modern technologies. I think that is the relevant question for us in looking at censorship issues. We need to update our legislation and we need to update our practices. I fear that this bill will not take us far in that direction. As a minor tweaking of the current law we are happy to support it, but it seems like rather a shame to be spending a significant amount of parliamentary time when, in fact, the real challenges are elsewhere. Thank you.

CHRIS BISHOP (National): I want to thank all members of the House for their, well, reasonably positive comments in support of the bill. It is good to have, I think, my second member’s bill in the last year—

Hon Louise Upston: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

CHRIS BISHOP: Ha, ha! My colleague next to me is “yeah, yeah, yeah”-ing me, but it is good to have a member’s bill supported unanimously—certainly, at least, at first reading. I take the comments from Tracey Martin that they will want to have a good look at the bill at the Justice and Electoral Committee.

I thought it was a strange speech from Gareth Hughes in response to the bill, essentially running the argument that there are much bigger things that Parliament should focus on. I have made this point before in this House that not everything we consider in Parliament is a matter of momentous significance to the country. Actually, the business of lawmaking in New Zealand is about changing laws that are sometimes technical, sometimes boring, but really important, and sometimes really important for particular subsets of people.

This bill deals with one of the most fundamental rights in our constitution, and that is the freedom of expression. So yes, it is technical; yes, it is small; and yes, it arises out of a peculiar set of circumstances, but it actually touches, in quite a real way, upon a fundamental right in the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act and the broader New Zealand constitution.

What we saw with the case of Into the River was the revealing of a strange anomaly in the law that needs fixing, and this bill sets out to do it. What we had with Into the River was a strange situation where a book, which was an award-winning children’s book, was published and was, essentially, taken off the shelves and made illegal to possess or to display for 6 weeks because of a strange quirk of the interface between the appeal functions of the Film and Literature Board of Review and the classification office. Actually, it is incumbent upon Parliament to do something about that, and that is what this bill sets out to do.

The other point I made during my speech, which I think rebuts some of the points that Gareth Hughes and, latterly, Barry Coates made, is that it is not just one case. Gareth Hughes talked about the Into the River case. That was the genesis for this bill, that is the origin of it, because it is the first time an interim restriction order has been imposed on a book, but as I said in my first speech on this bill, interim restriction orders have been applied to films.

Actually, generalising slightly, the Green Party should be the most in favour of at least reforming the power of interim restrictions, because it is things like the incredible film festival, which I strongly suspect a lot of Green Party supporters in Aro Valley go to in Wellington, to watch the weird and wacky films that often get brought over—and it is the weird and wacky films that groups like the Society for Promotion of Community Standards and Family First try to stop being shown in New Zealand. So it is all very well for Gareth Hughes and Barry Coates to say “Oh, well, this bill’s a waste of time.”, but, actually, it deals with a very real concern for their core constituency, which is the wealthy urban liberals in Wellington Central.

I talked in my first reading speech about the case of Bully and Visitor Q, which had interim restriction orders applied to them by the Film and Literature Board of Review—but were applied for by the Society for Promotion of Community Standards—and that were, basically, banned for the period before which the appeal was heard. Of course, the film festival happened for a couple of weeks, and by the time the appeal was heard, the film festival was over. So the Society for Promotion of Community Standards got its way, essentially, by using this law. I said in my first reading speech that we need to have a look at that.

There are real free speech problems with interim restrictions generally. They can be abused. Actually, the board of review very rarely alters the classification office’s decisions in the first place, which makes you wonder why we need this power. Third of all, they interfere unjustifiably, I believe—or, at least, there is a case to be made—with freedom of expression.

New Zealand courts have viewed with distaste the idea of prior restraint on speech—the idea that the courts should, before anything is even allowed into the public domain, restrain speech from being made. In this case, we are not just talking about speech even being restrained in an a priori way; we are talking about restraint on speech after it is made. We are talking about a restraint on a publication after it is actually available in the public domain. So we should be even more wary, I believe—or society should be even more wary—about placing wholesale restrictions on speech through interim restriction orders.

So those are the things that the select committee is going to examine, but the bill deals with a specific set of circumstances arising out of the Into the River case. It was wrong that Into the River was not available for 6 weeks because of the misuse of the interim restriction power. I commend this bill to the House.

Bill read a first time.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): The question is that the Films, Videos, and Publications Classification (Interim Restriction Order Classification) Amendment Bill be considered by the Justice and Electoral Committee. Those of that opinion will say Aye; to the contrary No—no one voted. [Interruption] Did you? Very quietly? The Ayes have it.

Bill referred to the Justice and Electoral Committee.

Bills

Charter Schools (Application of Official Information and Ombudsmen Acts) Bill

First Reading

Hon NANAIA MAHUTA (Labour—Hauraki-Waikato): I move, That the Charter Schools (Application of Official Information and Ombudsmen Acts) Bill be now read a first time. Should it be successful, I nominate the Education and Science Committee to consider the bill. I am pleased that my member’s bill has been drawn from the ballot, to highlight the double standard the Government is creating in the education system between charter schools and public schools. A classic divide is now emerging in our education system, which is based on ideology—in fact, it occurred over a cup of tea between ACT and National. It is based on failed charter school models from other countries, like the USA and the UK, which the evidence in itself shows did not work and is not working. Why are we following blindly down this track?

Blind ideology is not the foundation of a good quality public education system. The bill proposes to shift away from offering special treatment to charter schools, and to bring them into line with other schools in our public education system. So what is this special treatment that I am referring to? The fact that charter schools are funded at a different rate to public schools is a shame. The fact that charter schools get bonus payments, even though the terms of their contracts are not publicly visible and neither is their educational performance comparable to the expectations of our public schools—that is also a shame.

Charter schools are able to make a profit. The terms of the agreements of charter schools are not publicly transparent. So my bill will enhance public confidence. My bill will ensure that charter schools are subject to the Official Information Act and the Ombudsmen Act, which they are currently exempt from. The bill will impose greater accountability for the use of taxpayers’ money so that these schools face the same level of scrutiny as any other schools in our public education system, and that is as it should be. The Ombudsman has called the current exemption situation unconstitutional, which calls into question how has the Government allowed publicly funded charter schools to be exempt from public accountability. It is not just about transparency of funding; it is also about transparency of school policies and decisions that impact on our children’s learning environment.

But let us pause for a moment and think about that learning environment and some of the shocking situations that required the Ombudsman to step in. In 2011, when serious bullying accusations were being made in a school in Wellington, an investigation took place. Were it not for the ability of the Ombudsman to gather information that was not readily available from the Education Review Office (ERO) or the Ministry of Education, some of the improvements and recommendations that we now have within the education system would not have been made. It is really important to ensure that the Ombudsmen Act and the Official Information Act exist. These are the pillars of accountability in our public system, and they should apply equally to charter schools.

Let us also pause and have a look at the issue of suspensions, stand downs, and exclusions. The Ombudsman himself said that by not enabling a complaint to the Ombudsman “the absence of independent oversight [in] partnership schools could potentially employ expulsion or exclusion procedures as a means of indirectly circumventing the requirement to accept all students, irrespective of background or ability, who apply for entry [at a charter school].”—ostensibly, a backdoor method of choosing winners. These are really important comments when we think about the practical applications of what this bill is trying to achieve.

Unfortunately, there have already been too many issues with charter schools, which just goes to show how important greater transparency is within the charter school system. Te Pūmanawa o te Wairua in Northland was closed by the ministry after just 2 years of operating. It spent a whole heap of money on buying land—a farm. There were already problems recognised in this school before charter school approval was given, yet the ministry and the Minister and the Government continue to pursue establishing this charter school. Bullying, drug-use claims, and issues around teaching capacity were things that emerged. This is the very reason why we would want to see the pragmatic approach in my bill being implemented.

An Auckland charter school has had complaints made against it by parents and a teacher about behaviour policies, bullying, and a lack of cultural awareness. Like the 2011 example that I raised, this would be the exact reason why you would want to have the Ombudsman and their independent oversight being able to investigate such claims, to assure parents and students that the policies and processes being implemented at a charter school are sound and are fair.

There is also a document that has just been released to show that charter schools’ NCEA results have been massively overinflated, raising concerns on a case by case basis about the robust nature of the statistics and outcomes being reported through these charter schools. I see the member for ACT guffawing over there, but he knows, as many members on the Education and Science Committee know, that this is a tragedy. It should not happen, and it is not the way in which we believe a good education system is founded.

All of these examples demonstrate that we need greater accountability, not just for the taxpayer but for the parents and the students who attend these schools—it is so important. Millions of dollars are going to charter schools—over four times the rate of State schools, yet there is very little accountability for that money. Labour believes that every dollar invested in education should go to supporting the learning outcomes of children, but sadly it is unclear whether it is happening or not. In fact, many charter schools can derive a profit from their operations.

David Seymour: Oh no!

Hon NANAIA MAHUTA: The member says “Oh no!”, so he accepts that a profit is being made by charter schools, yet our public schools still continue to struggle. They are not being funded what they should be funded. A student going to a charter school is paid more than a student going to a public school—how is that right? How is that right? It is not right. Funding for our State schools has been frozen and parents have been asked to contribute more towards their children’s education through voluntary donations.

Coming back to the bill—under Labour, a two-tiered education system creating winners and losers, haves and have-nots, via charter schools will not be supported. But let us get back to the point: greater transparency and accountability in our current education system is absolutely necessary. In fact, reporting on a level playing field would be fantastic, to ensure that we could compare apples with apples. This bill will go a long way towards ensuring that that happens. You cannot have a system where boards can hide their operations, their policies, and their processes when public schools are expected to be accountable to their parent communities and to the Education Act for what they do.

The bill proposes to level the education landscape so that transparency and accountability of charter schools is the same as of any other school in our State sector. It is a simple amendment that I am proposing: it is to ensure that the Ombudsmen Act and the Official Information Act apply equally. It does fill a gap that currently exists that is not covered by ERO or the Ministry of Education. The Ombudsman, when the charter schools were being established, commented on this. He made a number of fine points in his submission to ensure that the select committee and the Government would give greater consideration to the proposal that I am now putting before the House. We have now had the benefit of hindsight. There are local examples that members in this House can point to, to justify why this bill would be a sensible and pragmatic approach to levelling the education landscape and ensuring greater transparency and accountability in reporting and to give parents the assurance that if they had a concern those concerns would be heard fairly with the oversight of an independent body and not under the shroud of a school board that is not as accountable.

So I implore the House to consider the pragmatic approach that I am offering in the bill. It is one that is supported by previous representations of the Ombudsman, and it is one that will ensure, again, greater transparency in the current education offerings that we have between charter schools and public schools. Kia ora.

DAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): It is members’ Groundhog Day on the partnership school kura hourua policy. For the third time in this parliamentary term we are debating a bill drawn from the members’ ballot designed by the Labour Party to do nothing more than score cheap political points against partnership schools kura hourua.

First, it was about ensuring that teachers at partnership schools kura hourua were registered with the Education Council, ignorant of the fact that practically every teacher at these schools is registered with the Education Council and that those exceptions allowed under the law are adding extraordinary value to the students, such as a retired air force engineer teaching engineering at Vanguard Military School. What is wrong with that? I will very quickly cover the second bill in the series. It said: “Abolish partnership schools in spite of their success.”

Then we come to this bill tonight, which would apply the Official Information Act (OIA) and the Ombudsmen Act to partnership schools. We have heard again, just like every previous time that one of these anti - partnership school, political stunt bills has come up from the Labour Party, all of the misinformation from the Labour Party members. I have to ask whether they really just do not care enough to find out the details of the debate—or are they actually not up to the task of understanding modern public policy?

There is Nanaia Mahuta trotting out the same line—that partnership schools have failed overseas. What evidence does she have in reference to that? It cannot be from Stanford University’s Center for Research on Education Outcomes, which has the most comprehensive study of charter schools anywhere in the world and which shows that charter schools outperform public or State schools in the United States. It cannot be from the C. D. Howe Institute in Canada, which shows that charter schools outperform public schools in Alberta. It cannot be from Sweden, where it has been shown that for poorer kids and kids whose parents have less educational attainment, partnership schools—or free schools, as they call them—particularly those that are allowed to make a profit, have better outcomes. It cannot be that. She says it is blind ideology, but if the evidence is all against the argument, then what else does the Labour Party have?

Then we heard it again: the hoary old chestnut from the member that partnership schools are funded at a different rate. Really, I wonder how many times I have to come down to this House and explain the most simple matters of fact about this policy—that every school, whether it be State, whether it be partnership, or whether it be a start-up integrated school, gets additional funding to get it started in its early years, when it is small. To compare a new school with an old school, a start-up school with a developed school, at scale, and to try to represent that as an indication of the type of funding that the school type gets, is, frankly, very, very close to misleading the people watching at home, because it is simply not true.

We have heard that there are bonus payments to partnership schools. The member clearly has not done her homework. Actually, it is the opposite: partnership schools have 1 percent of their payment withheld. They actually have to perform to get all of their payment, which is the opposite of a bonus payment—but there is not much hope of the Labour Party picking up those sorts of details.

It was said that there is not comparable education performance. Well, there is some confusion around the way that we deal with participation-based rates and enrolment-based rates of passing in partnership schools versus State schools. But this was done precisely in order that we would be able to compare on a school-to-school level—something that was not possible with the existing State system.

We heard that you are allowed to make a profit at a partnership school. Yes, the education system is riven with profit. Whether it is the people who build the buildings, or who manufacture the computers, or who supply the textbooks—actually, many people in education make a profit, and what is wrong with that?

I have now finished rebutting the falsehoods that we have heard so far, and it has taken up half my time because there are so many falsehoods in this policy from the Labour Party. But what of this particular bill, which would apply the Official Information Act to partnership schools kura hourua and bring them under the auspices of the Ombudsmen Act for all activities, rather than simply enrolments, expulsions, exclusions, and suspensions—in other words, the process of entries of students and exits of students from the schools? What of this bill?

First of all, it is not necessary. Partnership schools already reveal more information and more performance data than any other type of school in the system. If you want quarterly reports of whether a school’s finances are in shape or whether it is meeting its academic targets, or if you want to be able to see how many exclusions and suspensions and expulsions a school has had in a period of time every quarter, or if you want annual reports with audited financial statements, then you do not need the OIA. All you need to do is go to the partnership schools system of the Ministry of Education website, where we have been proactively releasing all of that information every single quarter, going on for 3 years now. But still the Labour Party members have not twigged. If there was more information that was part of the rigorous performance enforcement contract that these partnership schools have, then the Ministry of Education would have it. And here is news for the Opposition: the Ministry of Education is subject to the Official Information Act.

There is simply no need for this bill, because partnership schools already reveal more information than any other type of school. Was it not telling that the only example Nanaia Mahuta could come up with that she thought might reveal information found under the Official Information Act was to do with expulsions and exclusions and, possibly, enrolments? She said that, potentially, partnership schools would try to filter through their students in order to get better results, and that her bill would fix this by applying the Ombudsmen Act to the expulsions and the exclusions and suspensions of students at partnership schools. Well, not only does Nanaia Mahuta not understand how partnership schools work; she does not understand how her own bill works, because under this bill—

Hon Nanaia Mahuta: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): A point of order—but I will warn the member that she has to be very careful that she has a point of order and is not just going to debate something.

Hon Nanaia Mahuta: I seek leave to table the Ombudsman’s submission to the Education and Science Committee, in which he himself states that the issue of expulsions and suspensions—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): Right—the member will resume her seat. The member does not interrupt a member’s speech in order to attempt to table something. The second point is that it is either currently publicly available as a submission or it is not publicly available, and if it is not publicly available, the member should not be trying to table it.

DAVID SEYMOUR: If that is the true interpretation of the document the member was quoting, then why on earth does her bill say, in clause 7, “delete ‘when performing a standing-down, suspension, exclusion, or expulsion function.’ ” from the Ombudsmen Act? Why would she want to do that, if not for the fact that that particular clause applies the Ombudsmen Act to partnership schools when they are performing those functions?

It is almost impossible to have a debate with these people. Not only do they misunderstand the policy, but they misunderstand their own bill. Beyond that, you just have to ask yourself—well, maybe it would not hurt. Maybe we should apply the Official Information Act to partnership schools, just to be sure—just to be sure that they are totally transparent. Maybe there is some information that could be garnered through an Official Information Act request that we have not already made transparent through all of the disclosure that we do proactively—maybe. Well, the reason that they are not in the bill is that the attitude of the Labour Party and its puppet masters in the teachers’ unions throughout the whole time this policy has—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): Order! The member will resume his seat. The member knows that that term he just used is unparliamentary. He will withdraw it.

DAVID SEYMOUR: Mr Assistant Speaker, I withdraw it. The fact of the matter is that the negativity towards this policy, however it has been motivated, has been so relentless that we know that the only effect of putting these schools under the Official Information Act is that every school—small organisations set up to help kids by innovative educators—would be bombarded with vexatious Official Information Act requests, which even ministerial offices with the force of a department behind them find challenging to process at the best of times and which State schools almost never receive. That is why it is not in the current Act. That is why this bill should not pass.

But I just hope that one day we will live in a New Zealand where eight small schools run by innovative educators can actually be held accountable for their failures, cherished for their successes, and met with an open mind instead of the relentless badgering and negativity that we are seeing from the Labour Party tonight, with the third bill in this parliamentary term designed to sabotage them by political stunt. I proudly oppose this bill and I look forward to voting it down with my parliamentary colleagues later tonight. Thank you.

CHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka): In all of that noise from David Seymour in passionate defence of partnership schools or charter schools he did not really give a reason why they should not be covered by the Ombudsmen Act or the Official Information Act, except at the very end where he said: “Then people might ask them for information.” That seems to be his objection. On those grounds, I think every Government department would like to see themselves exempted from the Official Information Act as well. But the reality is that if Mr Seymour and the National Government are so proud of what partnership schools are doing, why would they want them exempted from the Official Information Act? Why would they want them exempted from the Ombudsmen Act?

I just want to talk particularly about the Ombudsmen Act for a moment. There is a provision, and it was negotiated at select committee by Tracey Martin, Catherine Delahunty, me, and others, to ensure that part of the Ombudsmen Act would apply to partnership schools, but only part of it, and it was only in so far as it relates to disciplinary decisions, stand downs, suspensions, and so on.

But then I want you to consider the example that the Ombudsman gave us in his submission to the select committee, which went much wider than simply those decisions around stand downs and suspensions. That was of a school, which I am very familiar with, where there were systemic bullying issues. The school failed the students involved, the Ministry of Education failed the students, and so did the Education Review Office. Ultimately, it was the Ombudsman who got to the bottom of that situation, ensured that it was brought to the light of day, and ensured that the problem was dealt with. These were very serious problems, including—I am not going to go into all of the details—the violation of students with a broomstick. All of the official agencies responsible for dealing with those problems failed those students. The Office of the Ombudsmen, the last safeguard, was the agency that finally dealt with it. If that was happening in a partnership school, there would be no final safeguard available for those students.

So if the ACT Party and the National Party are so proud of partnership schools, so confident that they are supplying a higher quality education than every other school in the country, so confident that they are so much more accountable, why would they not want them to be covered by the Ombudsmen Act and by the Official Information Act?

David Seymour: We answered that, “Chippy”.

CHRIS HIPKINS: They have not actually answered it. All they have said is that they think it might be a bit too much work. That seems to be the sum total of David Seymour’s argument. If somehow people were able to complain to the Ombudsman or ask for information under the Official Information Act, then they might actually do so. Would that not be a terrible thing in the world of the National Party and in the world of the ACT Party?

The Ombudsman came to the select committee when this bill was being debated and actually took the very unusual step of presenting before a select committee. The Ombudsman, as an Officer of Parliament, does that very rarely. In fact, it has happened twice, to my knowledge, in the time that I have been an MP. Once was in this case and the other is now, in the case of communities of online learning, the online learning schools, which the Government is also going to exempt from the Ombudsmen Act and the Official Information Act. It is very unusual. The Ombudsman, basically, had to come along to the select committee to defend their very existence. Because if parts of the apparatus of government, and schools are part of the apparatus of government, are going to be exempted from the Ombudsmen Act and the Official Information Act, then the Ombudsman is really coming along to justify their very existence. That is quite an unusual thing. As I think the Ombudsman says, it is a constitutional anomaly because, actually, the Ombudsmen Act and the Official Information Act are parts of our constitutional framework. They are vitally important. They are part of the process of open and transparent government.

I am not going to get into an argument with David Seymour about the performance of partnership schools or otherwise; there are plenty of opportunities for us to do that, and we certainly do. That is a very legitimate thing for any political parties to be doing. I would encourage David Seymour to look not just with rose-tinted glasses at the performance of partnership schools but to actually have a realistic look at them. Actually look at some of the pitfalls and some of the problems that have been encountered, because it has not been all sunshine. There have been some legitimate issues, and rather than turning a blind eye to those, perhaps he would like to deal with them. But, no, he is not going to. But we will debate those at another date, because, actually, the purpose of this bill is quite a narrow one. It is not actually an attack on partnership schools. It is saying that they should simply be accountable to the public, and that they should be subject to the same provisions and protections as State schools are when it comes to public transparency and accountability.

Dr JIAN YANG (National): I speak, firstly, about the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) results. According to the latest Programme for International Student Assessment, or PISA, findings relating to New Zealand, New Zealand has been doing very well, actually. The results show that New Zealand has consolidated and improved its place in the top half of the OECD after a fall in rankings in 2012. So in reading, New Zealand has come up from 13 to 10.

Now I am coming to the topic—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): Good, good.

Dr JIAN YANG: —because the point I am trying to say is that we have been trying very hard to raise our educational achievement. We understand very clearly that we need to make sure all young New Zealanders have those kinds of skills and qualifications to enable them to participate in the modern economy. So that is our particular goal.

To do that, we need to invest more; that is one thing. Also, we need to be more innovative, and we need to have more options. Partnership schools are one particular option for some kids; those kids from low-decile areas or from disadvantaged communities. Those kids have not been performing very well in the public schools or State schools. Partnership schools can be one option for those parents and their children. So this is why we believe that partnership schools have their place. Partnership schools and students—all our children—are all unique. They have their own ways of studying and that is why we believe there is a place for partnership schools.

Of course, this particular bill has a concern about the accountability of partnership schools, but we do have safeguards there to make sure that partnership schools are able to deliver quality and to meet a standard. So what are these safeguards, then? Well, firstly, partnership schools must have a sponsor, which must be a governing body, and, also, partnership schools must have a signed contract—a fixed-term contract—with the Crown, which will make sure these schools must deliver specific school-level targets. So if it is unable to deliver its targets, the Minister of Education could simply end the contract and the partnership school needs to be closed. So this is a particular safeguard.

Of course, we have more safeguards. In addition to the right to terminate, the Minister could also intervene to make sure that schools are running properly and also that kids are receiving proper education and welfare. Partnership schools may have more—actually, greater—transparency than State schools because they have to report quarterly, 6 monthly, and annually to the Minister of Education and also to the Partnership Schools Authorisation Board. So this is a more frequent reporting system. And also, partnership schools need to deliver their annual audited financial statement, and these statements can be subject to Official Information Act (OIA) requests. So this is another safeguard.

Also, we say that the partnership schools are not subject to the OIA or the Ombudsmen Act because they are not Crown entities; they are simply non-governmental organisations. Although they have a contract or are partly funded or fully funded by the Government, there are many NGOs that deliver services and that are partly or fully funded by the Government that are not subject to the OIA or the Ombudsmen Act. So if these partnership schools are subject to the OIA or the Ombudsmen Act, then how about the over 5,000 education organisations that are receiving partially, or fully, their funding from the Government? So this bill is not right. Thank you.

CATHERINE DELAHUNTY (Green): Tēnā koe, Mr Assistant Speaker. Tēnā koutou ko tēnei pō. I would like to just congratulate the member who put up this bill, Nanaia Mahuta. I think that she is a person who has a long tradition of working for communities, understanding the needs of the people she represents, and caring about what happens in the education system. This is a narrow, effective, and just piece of legislation, which should go through. If it does not, it just shows the double standard that she mentioned in her speech. But, really, I found that the previous speakers from the National Party and ACT do not seem to understand the concept of transparency in a modern constitutional educational framework.

The point, my friends, of having the Official Information Act (OIA) and the Ombudsmen Act is so that when things go wrong there is somebody who is a higher, independent voice who can check on behalf of the vulnerable, and maintain democracy and transparency in education. That is why the Ombudsman came and said that the four provisions of the Ombudsmen Act should apply. I know this is a serious issue. I know this bill matters, because I receive many calls from people who are struggling in the State system as well, but at least in the State system they can say to me “Will you write an Official Information Act request to the school about this child of mine, who has experienced abuse?”, or exclusion or something very serious. And, yes, I do that, and, yes, that can be done, because it is State money and it should be held to account.

It is also a State institution that has to respect the human rights of the students. But, for some mad reason, a completely unjustifiable reason, these schools—when it suits them, they are State schools and when it suits the Government, they are not subject to these provisions. I can say, without exposing more detail, that there are people who have contacted me whose children are in charter schools and are experiencing the same kind of vulnerability, and they cannot use the Ombudsman or the OIA, and they want to. They have no redress through the system because Nanaia Mahuta’s bill is not law yet.

It is fine to talk about quarterly reports—I read those quarterly reports—but it has got nothing to do with potential human rights abuses. They do not appear in the innovation jargon of the education sector reports on charters. So why are the Government and the ACT Party so keen to sacrifice the rights of our children? It is extraordinary. The stories that come to me are deeply painful and they tell me that some of the charters are doing no better—in fact, worse—because they are subject to less scrutiny, which means these children, who are supposed to be priority learners and who are supposed to get all this benefit, have no protection under the law. For shame! These children deserve better. As we heard at the select committee today, there are many reasons why we need scrutiny of these charter schools, because we heard today that some charter schools’ results, when they claim 100 percent achievement, turn out under the Education Council of Aotearoa New Zealand methodology to be 60 percent achievement. It is mickey mouse education if it is reported wrongly.

That is about achievement statistics, but even more significant is when things go wrong. God knows, Whangaruru charter school was a disaster for those students, whom everyone on the Government side seems to have forgotten about—a disaster for those kids—and these parents who approach me and ask for help do not have this natural justice, this redress, that other State schools receiving State funds have. It is just wrong and it is just unfair, and I will be very disappointed if this bill is not supported. We need to protect the rights of our children—the most vulnerable—in all of our schools, not just the public schools, which are open to the OIA and the Ombudsmen Act but, particularly, the privatised, contract-based ones.

Dr Jian Yang, the previous speaker, made an argument about how the contract protects. The contract protects nothing. The contract protects the concept that education is private business that we cannot hold to account. That is shameful. We need to hold all of it to account, and we need to support this excellent bill. Kia ora tātou katoa.

TRACEY MARTIN (NZ First): Kia ora, Mr Assistant Speaker. New Zealand First will be supporting this bill. New Zealand First will support this bill, because in the interim between now and a New Zealand First majority - led Government that will not renew the charter school contracts, we need to have some protection for these students.

I want to take issue—and it is with great disappointment that I do so—that the chair of the Education and Science Committee believed what the Parliamentary Under-Secretary to the Minister of Education said with regard to the fact that charter schools are more accountable than State schools, and they quoted several things. They said it was because there are audited financial accounts. Every State school files an audited financial account every year. They said it was because they have quarterly reports. Every State school is required to file a quarterly roll return. They said it was because they have in their contracts an annual plan or key performance indicators (KPIs). Every State school has an annual plan with KPIs that must be publicly available to its parental body.

It shocks me and disappoints me that the Parliamentary Under-Secretary to the Minister of Education and the chair of the Education and Science Committee do not know these things and that they stand and say these things at the same time as they denigrate the State system of this country. It is a shame, and they should be ashamed, that they stand in this House and speak of education when they know so little about it.

With regard to why New Zealand First will support the overview of the Ombudsman and the application of the Official Information Act, Mr Hipkins referred to the negotiations that took place in the last Parliament, in the 50th Parliament, when Nikki Kaye—no, it was not. It was Cam Calder who was the chair of the Education and Science Committee, when the Government had cocked up a—or stuffed up. I beg your pardon. The Government had stuffed up the search and seizure part of an education amendment bill, and it required a majority vote to get the bill out of the House so that it did not have to do something like 53 Supplementary Order Papers to actually fix what was a complete stuff-up around those search and seizure regulations in the Education Act 1989.

So I negotiated with Cam Calder, supported by the other members of the Opposition, and I was able to get section 158E, which gave oversight of the Ombudsman around the discipline process for expulsion and exclusion. So at least parents, if their children were excluded from a charter school—which is required, supposedly, to have an open-door policy, like any State school—it could not push them out the back door.

What we did not foresee, of course, was that the charter schools would not use the expulsion method, they would not use the exclusion or expulsion method—they have decided to dissuade. Charter schools—at least two of them—have decided to dissuade parents, when they come inside the front door, to not stay inside their school. They have decided that it would be better to use methods that are abhorrent inside the State education system, particularly for students who have high needs or special needs—the very students whom supposedly this was supposed to support. They have decided to put pressure on their parents to remove them.

It might be that the State decides that that is voting with your feet, but I can tell you that considering that those are taxpayers and it is their dollars that are funding these organisations that are using this method of dissuasion so that it cannot be recorded and the parents have no opportunity to complain to the Ombudsman—we cannot allow this to stand. If this bill fails, can I suggest to the parents whom I am talking to, who contact members of the Opposition—I suggest you go public if you have no other way. If this Government will not give you the opportunity to use the system that was put in place to protect you and to protect your children, I suggest you go to the media.

I suggest that Mr Seymour should be made to stand up in this House with a glossy brochure of one charter school, and then have to hold up a newspaper article about another charter school, that outlines how these parents are being treated because Mr Seymour refuses to give them an option by which to complain. Mr Seymour refuses to allow them to have the right to complain as they do inside a State system. We are not sure what Mr Seymour is afraid of, but we know that Mr Seymour is afraid.

MELISSA LEE (National): Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker, for the opportunity to take a call on the Hon Nanaia Mahuta’s member’s bill today, the Charter Schools (Application of Official Information and Ombudsmen Acts) Bill. Tracey Martin is always very passionate when it comes to education bills. I do know that she is passionate, because I sit on the Education and Science Committee with her. However, I would like to perhaps make a note to the member that nobody on this side of the House, as she characterises us, would like to see children being abused, or being bullied, or that we actually stand for that in any system, whether it is actually in a partnership school or in a public school. I think we actually oppose that, and we are aghast at the idea that children are being abused in any system, and we want to protect them.

I think there are a lot of times when Tracey and I agree, because both of us are parents and we have raised children and we want to make sure that our children are in the best possible care when they are at school and that they are receiving the best possible outcome. We might differ in the way that it might actually be delivered, but I think the fact that we care that they get the best possible outcome is something we agree on. As the Parliamentary Under-Secretary has actually pointed out, in my memory I think this is the third time that the Labour Party has brought a bill like this to the House. I think the first one was in fact the Hon Phil Goff’s and the second one was Chris Hipkins’, and today it is the member for Hauraki-Waikato’s bill. I oppose this bill, obviously.

The Opposition today, speaking on the way that the schools operate, claims that by making them liable directly to the Official Information Act (OIA) it will make them more accountable for their use of public funds. What this shows is that the Opposition really does not understand that partnership schools are more accountable. I know that some people on the other side have actually said that they are less accountable; I believe that they are more accountable. There is a contract in place and, if they do not perform, the contract is actually ended and they cannot operate as a partnership school any more.

Partnership schools already report, as my learned colleague to my right, the chair of the Education and Science Committee, Dr Jian Yang, has actually said. They report quarterly, 6-monthly, and yearly to the Minister as well as the Partnership Schools Authorisation Board. If anything crops up, I would think that the Minister or this board would actually not sit there and accept the fact that there are things going wrong, like the abuse of children or bullying of children—that it would not actually go unnoticed. In terms of requiring a private entity like partnership schools to be accountable to the OIA—subject to the duties of the Crown—it would be wrong to require a private organisation to respond to an OIA request. There are over 5,000 education groups that receive Government funding but do not have OIA requirements, such as industry training groups, early childhood education providers, and the like. It would be vexatious and an absolute waste of school administration time to make all of these organisations accountable to the OIA.

Some of these organisations do not have enough funding to hire lots of administration staff who can actually do this. In addition to the Crown, they are reporting to the ministry. Frankly, it would actually hinder the fantastic work that they are already doing. I think it was the Parliamentary Under-Secretary who mentioned the Vanguard Military School and the engineering department. It was always very fascinating to hear them report in their annual report on the successes that they are actually achieving for these children who are underprivileged and who actually come from lower-income families. As someone who comes from an ethnic community that speaks a different language, sometimes I wish we had a partnership school that would teach languages, because we do lack language teachers in our schools. The only way that they can actually teach—perhaps it may be the only way—is in a partnership school. I oppose this bill and I am with my colleagues on this side. I think it is a bad idea.

METIRIA TUREI (Co-Leader—Green): I am very pleased to take a call on this legislation. When the charter schools were first proposed, they were well regarded by the education sector—by those who are experts in education—as simply a means by which some private organisations would access significant amounts of public money with less oversight and with a great deal of less control over the standards of education than you would expect. It was a policy that was proposed by ACT, which has very, very small support in this country. So there was a lot of concern about what charter schools would actually deliver.

The first lot of charter schools were put in place, and all of the concerns about the failure of oversight, the excessive amounts of money that were going to charter schools compared with public schools, and the failure of those charter schools—all were met. All of those concerns were actually met. In fact, the charter schools experiment on our children has proven to be a failure, repeatedly. One of the major concerns I have about the charter school experiment—failed experiment—is the fact that concerns about Māori education were used as an excuse, but, in fact, it was an abuse of those concerns about Māori education. As a result, charter schools that involved Māori communities failed because the system itself, the concept, is so repugnant to good education in this country.

So I welcome this bill. Although we, unfortunately, still have this failed policy, repugnant policy, of charter schools in New Zealand, this bill at least tries to bring those schools under some greater public scrutiny. It is absolutely essential, that increased scrutiny, because of the extra amount of money that these schools are getting because of the freedom that the neo-liberals on the other side of the House have given to the private organisations that are taking that public money. So, therefore—

David Seymour: This is like a high school essay.

METIRIA TUREI: Well, Mr Seymour, you were the one who claimed that we should not be using ideology, if I remember rightly, in a public session I had with you recently. I would argue that it is your ideology. It is the neo-liberal ideology that has put in place this policy and it has, therefore, been an experiment on our children, whose education is critical—[Interruption]; thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker—particularly Māori education. So this is why I welcome this bill, to at least provide greater oversight for these charter schools, which are taking so much money and performing such a terrible experiment. At least it would give members of the public, parents, and others who are involved in the education sector the ability to investigate the decisions that are being made by charter schools, abuse in the schools, and bullying in the schools. I mean, there is a whole range of issues.

Let us be aware, too, that one of the reasons why these schools have been—because they are schools. They are not NGOs. They are not private organisations. They are actually schools, at their hearts, so they need to be treated like schools. There is a real concern that there are kids in these schooling institutions where there is not sufficient public oversight over the quality of their education, what is happening with their pastoral care inside those centres, and what is happening with the financial management of these schools.

When these schools close down—like they have, because there has been a number that have closed because it is such a scandalous policy—it is not Mr Seymour who suffers as a result of that school closure. It is not National that suffers as a result of that school closure. It is the kids. It is the kids, who have been experimented on. Even so far as their schools have failed, the fact that these school institutions are not subject to the Official Information Act means that we do not have the real information about why they failed and what could be done to protect those kids in the future.

So I fully support this legislation. Thank you very much.

PAUL FOSTER-BELL (National): E Te Mana Whakawā Tuarua, tēnā koe. I am speaking against the Charter Schools (Application of Official Information and Ombudsmen Acts) Bill for several reasons. First, I just want to reflect on the fact that—[Interruption]

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): Order! Can I ask the member to resume his seat, and I will get him to start again. Ms Delahunty and Mr Seymour, can you quieten your discussion down or sit next to each other, but—[Interruption] Well, I was going to suggest you go outside, but that could cause all sorts of problems. We will start Mr Foster-Bell’s speech again.

PAUL FOSTER-BELL: Well, sir, I do not know whether you were inviting them to have a fight or what. But, look, in restarting my speech, I want to reflect on what Metiria Turei, the previous speaker, was talking about, because it strikes me that it was a rehearsal of the ideological arguments against charters schools per se, rather than a discussion around the application of the Official Information Act (OIA) and Ombudsmen Act to charter schools. This is obviously an area that we take some interest in on the Government Administration Committee, where I usually sit. We dealt with the Official Information Act in so far as it applies to the parliamentary under-secretaries bill that came through this House recently, and which the Government did support through so that Mr Seymour, the only current parliamentary under-secretary of State, is now subject to the Official Information Act.

I pointed out at the time that Mr Seymour discussed at quite some length what proactive steps he takes to make available information that is of interest to the public, particularly in the range of portfolios. He has some wonderful portfolios—the most tremendous portfolios. He has got small business. He is, obviously, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary to the Minister of Education.

So this bill, I would argue, is unnecessary. Mr Seymour, in so far as he has parliamentary responsibility for charter schools, is subject to the Official Information Act. But I think it would create something of an unfortunate precedent to make what are non-State institutions subject to the Official Information Act and the Ombudsmen Act. The Ministry of Education does collect significant data from charter schools—or, as we prefer to call them, partnership schools—and this information is of course subject to the OIA, and the actions of the Ministry of Education are subject to review by the Ombudsman.

The member who spoke previously did touch at length on the issue of bullying, harassment, and those issues in schools, and this is something I personally feel very passionate about. It is not only in the private, the independent, and the State-integrated education systems where bullying exists. It is also, unfortunately, and tragically, throughout our public education system. There are many schools that are wonderful examples of good practice in this area, but there are public schools, sadly, that we can point to where bullying of children for all sorts of reasons, be it their religious background, their ethnic background, or their sexuality, is pervasive. This is something I feel very strongly on, and I do not think the application of the Official Information Act or the Ombudsmen Act to a charter school will help a single child in that area. If I did, I would be crossing the floor and I would be voting for this bill.

The kinds of measures that will help those children who are subject to that kind of bullying are directions and encouragement and prioritisation by the Education Review Office to add homophobic bullying, or bullying in the widest possible sense, to the list of items that it reviews when it goes into schools. Currently, it looks at the safety of buildings and it looks at educational attainment achieved by students. It looks at many other things, and I would be very much in favour of the Education Review Office taking a greater level of interest in, or giving a higher priority to, homophobic bullying, in particular, but bullying more widely.

But I think this bill, as has been proposed, does not actually do anything to contribute to the greater safety of our students in schools, and, let us face it, under the current excellent and outstanding Minister of Education, the Hon Hekia Parata, our schools are being well run, and being better run all the time. This has been reflected in the Programme for International Student Assessment results that we have seen—

Tracey Martin: Not a teacher involved.

PAUL FOSTER-BELL: —where New Zealand has climbed up the international league tables. Mrs Martin may be unable to comprehend the league tables that we have recently seen. But this bill, as far as I see it, does nothing to improve the quality of education enjoyed by New Zealand children, which has gone up under the John Key - led Government and under the leadership of the Hon Hekia Parata, who will probably be remembered as one of the finest, if not the finest, Ministers of Education that this country has ever seen.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): Order!

PAUL FOSTER-BELL: You may have picked up a theme here, Mr Assistant Speaker. This is a bill that I see as an ideological, knee-jerk reaction to charter schools—emphasis on the “jerk” when it comes to “knee-jerk”. I think it is something that this House should reject as unnecessary and something that does nothing for the quality of education in New Zealand.

KRIS FAAFOI (Labour—Mana): Let us forget the arguments about the merits, or not, of charter schools. That has already been well fleshed out within this debate. Let us look at the issue that this bill actually looks at.

The question I want to ask both the ACT Party and the National Party is: what is wrong with sunlight? What is wrong with sunlight? Why is it that these two parties do not want that torch to shine on those charter schools, which they set up over a cup of tea during the 2011 election? I do not think I have heard a decent answer.

Melissa Lee, in her contribution on this bill, said that there already is accountability—that charter schools are accountable to a Minister, and also that there is some accountability around an oversight board—but Melissa Lee forgets the ultimate accountability that we have in this Parliament, and that is to the public. It is the public who put us here. It is the public who vote Governments in. Governments make decisions as to whether they establish charter schools. They are the ones that, in their Budgets, are putting money towards funding charter schools, and yet with the ACT Party and the National Party, charter schools seem to be exempt from scrutiny, not by the Minister and by an oversight group, but by the New Zealand public, who do not have the ability to have a look into those organisations, whereas they would with nearly any other Government-funded entity, because the Official Information Act and the Ombudsmen Act do not apply to this piece of legislation.

We want to know why. Why does the ACT Party, which wants this Government to be held accountable for every dollar that it spends—if you follow the logic of ACT, it does not want any taxpayer money spent. So why does it not want to have the scrutiny of the Official Information Act and the Ombudsmen Act applied to charter schools, which are organisations that the ACT Party—

Clayton Mitchell: It’s not a party. You’ve got to have more than one person to have a party.

KRIS FAAFOI: —I think it was more than a party of one at that stage—set up in its little sweetheart deal in the 2011 election?

Hon Member: The tape.

KRIS FAAFOI: I am not sure whether that level of detail was discussed when John Banks and John Key had that cup of tea. I do not recall it in the teapot tapes. They said other things during that negotiation—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): Order! The member will come back to the bill.

KRIS FAAFOI: —and whether or not this level of scrutiny was mentioned in that discussion, I do not know. From memory, I do not recall it being part of the transcript.

But why does the ACT Party, which says that we should have open and honest Government, not want to have open and honest governance and insight, and that sunlight, when it comes to charter schools? I do not know. I do not know. It is a mystery to me why someone like Mr Seymour, who talks about his liberal values and who talks about making sure we have accountability when Government money is spent, does not want to have this accountability for charter schools.

It is a mystery, because this goes against what I believe Mr Seymour’s ideological bent is. I am not questioning—he is entitled to his beliefs. But in this case, in a big way and in a fundamental way, he is going against those beliefs by saying “Well, there is Government expenditure here, but, in this case, we will not have any public scrutiny.” Well, on this side of the House we think having an organisation like a charter school, which does get taxpayer money to operate, does need more scrutiny than that of a Minister who has helped to set it up and an oversight board that may not have the ability to look at everything, and it does need the scrutiny from those people who put us here. They are the people who trusted those guys on that side of the room to be in charge of the purse strings—to spend the money that they go out to work hard every day to earn and that they give and entrust to this House.

I sound like David Seymour, but why is it that Mr Seymour does not want any of those schools that his Government and his party set up to have the accountability of the Official Information Act? That is a rather large question, which Mr Seymour has failed to answer during this debate. He has failed to answer it during this whole debate around charter schools, and it is his Achilles heel when it comes to charter schools.

Hon NANAIA MAHUTA (Labour—Hauraki-Waikato): I want to thank all the members who participated in the debate, and, to some extent, to apologise to you, Mr Assistant Speaker, for the broad berth with which I launched into this really narrowly defined bill. I want to respond to some of the comments that were raised through the debate.

In the first instance, clause 7, in the way in which it amends Schedule 1 of the Ombudsmen Act, is designed to do exactly what the member Paul Foster-Bell referred to, which is to address the issue of bullying and to ensure that the Ombudsmen Act and the Official Information Act can have oversight on issues such as that, some of which I have referred to in my opening statements. When the Parliamentary Under-Secretary, David Seymour, identified that he could not understand why that is in the bill, he obviously did not understand that the select committee process amended the bill to ensure that suspensions would be included, but bullying would not and the financial operations of charter schools would not. In the first instance, that is a response there.

There were also statements made by Government members that the bill will not improve the quality of education. Well, it was not designed to, actually. It was designed to ensure that greater transparency and accountability could be gained through opening access to the oversight roles of the Ombudsmen Act and the Official Information Act. That in itself will give parents and students the assurance that they can ask questions when they need to, gather information when they have to, and that it will cover areas that, currently, the Education Review Office and the Ministry of Education do not cover.

This has been a wide-ranging debate. I hoped that the pragmatic, limited nature of the suggested amendment would ensure that charter schools would be treated equally to public schools—and why not? When we see that the range of per-student funding ranges from $9,000 to $40,000 in a charter school, and, on average, $7,000 in a public and State-integrated school—there is the level of difference. It is really important to ensure that, when people are looking at comparing apples with apples, you see the stark difference of investment in charter schools, and, therefore, some of the outcomes there, and, also, what is needing to be done within the public education system.

I do not want to take up too much more time in responding. It is a limited amendment that is being proposed. It is one that is well endorsed and supported by the Ombudsman. I was being a little bit trite in trying to seek leave, and referred to the submission of the Ombudsman to the Education Amendment Bill, which was made in January 2013. But if anyone has time to read it in conjunction with the amendment proposed in my bill, they will see that it is absolutely congruent with what the Ombudsman had suggested. It does not depart from the intent there. Thank you for the opportunity to put this bill to the House to be considered. I recommend that it be supported.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the Charter Schools (Application of Official Information and Ombudsmen Acts) Bill be now read a first time.

Ayes 57

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

Noes 63

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

Motion not agreed to.

Sittings of the House

Sittings of the House

JAMI-LEE ROSS (Junior Whip—National): I seek leave for the House to adjourn.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): Is there any objection to that? There is objection.

Bills

Crimes (Increased Penalty for Providing Explosive to Commit Crime) Amendment Bill

First Reading

ALASTAIR SCOTT (National—Wairarapa): I move, That the Crimes (Increased Penalty for Providing Explosive to Commit Crime) Amendment Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Law and Order Committee to consider this bill. I am pleased to have my member’s bill drawn from the ballot. This bill will amend section 272 of the Crimes Act 1961 to increase the maximum penalty for providing explosives to commit an offence from 2 years’ to 5 years’ imprisonment. At present there is an inconsistency between the maximum penalties for people who provide explosives, compared with people who have possession of a dangerous weapon. The maximum penalty for providing explosives to commit an offence is 2 years’ imprisonment. Considering the harm and death that explosives can cause, a 2-year prison sentence does not adequately reflect the seriousness of the offence or the potential for harm.

In this day and age the use of explosives internationally has increased. It has increased in New Zealand as well as in other parts of the world, over recent years. From 1980 to 2015 there were 26 charges of providing explosives to commit crime. Of those, there were four imprisonments. Under this bill there could be longer sentencing periods for those. Again, I would like to reiterate that explosives cause immeasurable harm to innocent bystanders. This bill is sending a strong message that supplying explosives is unacceptable.

Another reason for this bill is to fix up inconsistent sentencing guidelines in the Crimes Act. Under section 202A, individuals carrying or possessing dangerous weapons unlawfully are potentially liable for a longer term of imprisonment than an individual who knowingly provides explosives, intending to endanger property or people. So that does not make sense. That is what this member’s bill is about.

A person carrying an offensive weapon, even when they do not cause any harm, can face a term of imprisonment of up to 3 years, and yet a person who provides an explosive, such as a bomb, knowing it will be used to commit a crime, can be committed to prison only for up to 2 years. We do not want harsh penalties for relatively minor offences and soft penalties for offences that have the potential to cause major harm to people and the community. This is why a change is appropriate.

Providing an explosive to someone for the purpose of an offence is objectively worse than simply carrying an offensive weapon, and so the maximum sentence should therefore be higher. A maximum 5-year term of imprisonment is needed to adequately reflect the seriousness of the offence and to deter others, without being unnecessarily harsh. The offence does not have a minimum penalty, so when sentencing for this offence arises in court a judge can impose what he or she considers to be a fair and reasonable penalty.

Debate interrupted.

The House adjourned at 10 p.m.