Tuesday, 7 March 2017

TUESDAY, 7 MARCH 2017

TUESDAY, 7 MARCH 2017

Mr Speaker took the Chair at 2 p.m.

Prayers.

Points of Order

Leave for Introduction and First Reading—New Zealand Superannuation and Retirement Income (Fair Residency) Amendment Bill

DENIS O’ROURKE (NZ First): I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I seek leave to introduce the New Zealand Superannuation and Retirement Income (Fair Residency) Amendment Bill, a member’s bill in my name, and for the bill to be set down as members’ order of the day No. 1.

Mr SPEAKER: Leave is sought for that purpose. Is there any objection? There is.

Oral Questions

Questions to Ministers

Superannuation—Entitlement Age, Residency Requirements, and Life Expectancy

1. ALASTAIR SCOTT (National—Wairarapa) to the Minister of Finance: What is the Government doing to improve New Zealand’s long-term fiscal sustainability?

Hon STEVEN JOYCE (Minister of Finance): This Government is making a number of important policy decisions to best serve New Zealand’s long-term interests. For example, we announced yesterday the Government’s intention to lift the age of entitlement of New Zealand superannuation from 65 years of age to 67 years of age, starting in 20 years’ time, in 2037. This is a fair and responsible thing to do. Although New Zealand has a more affordable superannuation scheme than most developed countries, the increasing costs due to an ageing population would require future trade-offs, either restricting spending increases in areas like health or education or increasing taxes. Making this change over a reasonable time frame gives today’s younger New Zealanders the ability to plan with certainty for their retirement in the future.

Alastair Scott: Who will be affected by this change and how will it affect the amount of New Zealand superannuation they receive? [Interruption]

Mr SPEAKER: Order! The level of interjection is making it hard for me to hear what the Minister’s answer is going to be.

Hon STEVEN JOYCE: Firstly, let me say that all current superannuitants are not affected at all by these changes. In fact, only those born on or after 1 January 1974 will be impacted by the full 2-year change. Increasing the age allows us to keep pace with increasing life expectancy. A retiree turning 65 today can expect to spend just under one-quarter of their life, on average, receiving New Zealand superannuation. By 2041 a 67-year-old, similarly, will expect to live just under one-quarter of their life on New Zealand superannuation as a result of increased life expectancy.

David Seymour: In light of the Minister’s answer to the primary question, is this something the Government is doing, or something it forecasts some future Government will do, long after the Minister himself has retired?

Chris Hipkins: Good question.

Mr SPEAKER: Order! Then we will hear the answer.

Hon STEVEN JOYCE: Well, the hint there is in the question, which is about New Zealand’s long-term fiscal sustainability, and, actually, Governments do have a responsibility to be thinking and acting in the longer-term interests of New Zealand. It is, of course, the right of any future Government to change any piece of legislation it sees fit, but, actually, if you look at the life expectancy of New Zealanders, which is increasing at about the rate of 1.3 years every decade, it would be irresponsible at this stage of the process, where we have the opportunity looking out 20 years, not to be thinking about these sorts of issues.

Alastair Scott: What other changes are you making? [Interruption] To the—[Interruption]

Chris Hipkins: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker.

Hon STEVEN JOYCE: The Government—

Mr SPEAKER: Order! We have a point of order from Chris Hipkins.

Chris Hipkins: The member asking the question is not a new member and knows that that is not an appropriate way to ask a question.

Mr SPEAKER: I will allow the member Alastair Scott to re-ask the question in full.

Alastair Scott: Other than the answers that you have given so far regarding New Zealand superannuation, what other changes are you making?

Chris Hipkins: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. [Interruption]

Mr SPEAKER: Order! The member will resume his seat. I just require substantially fewer interjections coming from my left. If Chris Hipkins has a point of order, I will hear it.

Chris Hipkins: I think the members on this side of the House would very much like to know what changes you, Mr Speaker, are proposing to make to superannuation, but that is not a question that is in order.

Mr SPEAKER: And that is not a helpful point of order. We will hear the answer—the Hon Steven Joyce.

Chris Hipkins: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. All the rules of the House are very clear that questions have to be asked in the third person; otherwise, they are questions to you, as the Speaker.

Mr SPEAKER: I would be grateful if the member would please familiarise himself with the Standing Orders and Speakers’ rulings. I refer him particularly to Speaker’s ruling 31/3.

Hon STEVEN JOYCE: The Government is also proposing to increase the residency requirements for New Zealand superannuation, so that applicants must have lived in New Zealand for 20 years, with 5 of those after the age of 50. That is double the previous requirement of 10 years. Increasing the residency requirements brings New Zealand more into line with other countries and focuses superannuation more on those people who have paid taxes and made a contribution to New Zealand. It should be noted that this change will not affect anyone who is already resident of or a citizen of New Zealand when the legislation is passed.

Chris Hipkins: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker.

Mr SPEAKER: A point of order, Chris Hipkins—and I hope, before the member starts, that he is not in any way attempting to relitigate a decision I made regarding his earlier point of order.

Chris Hipkins: No, I am not.

Mr SPEAKER: Because if he were to do that, I would deal with it very severely.

Chris Hipkins: Speaker’s ruling 31/3(1) refers to debate; it does not refer to questions, and questions are, in fact, covered by different Speakers’ rulings.

Mr SPEAKER: I would be grateful if the member would then familiarise himself with Speaker’s ruling 31/3(2): “application of this ruling is at the sole discretion of the Speaker”.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. May I suggest, from a legal point of view, that the application may be at your discretion but that discretion is as to the application when it is to do with speeches, not questions.

Mr SPEAKER: I have heard the point of order and I have made a ruling, and that will be the end of the matter. But if I am not going to get more cooperation, then I will not hesitate to be asking members to leave the Chamber. It has been very noisy to date; I am prepared to have a reasonable amount of interjection, but the way that question time has been conducted so far will only bring this House into disrepute, and I will not put up with it for much longer.

Marama Fox: In light of the Minister’s reference to life expectancy, where inequity exists in regard to life expectancy for groups of people, will the Minister consider flexible arrangements for those affected groups; if not, why not?

Hon STEVEN JOYCE: The Government has said that it would legislate for a review of any transition requirements to be considered in 2030, because then we will have more understanding of the nature of people working over the intervening 13 years. That will be for the Parliament then to address. But in terms of ethnicity, for example, the good news for the member is that the life expectancy of different ethnic groups in New Zealand—including, of course, Māori—is steadily improving. The gap with other ethnic groups is getting smaller, and I am certainly hopeful that that gap will have closed up—indeed, that is the projection—substantially by the time this particular policy comes into place.

David Seymour: Given the Minister’s answers that adjustments to the age of entitlement to superannuation are good and necessary, and his concession that this Government cannot bind future Governments, why does his Government not start adjusting the age now?

Hon STEVEN JOYCE: Because—for the member’s benefit—actually, it would be unfair to start adjusting the age now at a period of time that would be very close to the day’s date. Those people would not have the opportunity to adjust the way they approached their life decisions when they were close to retirement. I think it would be very unreasonable to do as some parties have proposed in the past, and suggest that it happen over less than a 10-year period, because once people get into those age groups where they are not far from retiring, they do not have the opportunity to respond to a long-term decision like this. The member can, of course, make that argument, but I think this approach is much fairer.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Is it the Government’s policy on this and other matters to prop up members of Parliament, give them jobs that are way above their quality, ability, and talent, and then put up with impertinent questions whilst they try to demonstrate that they are not National Government doormats?

Hon Member: I don’t think you should describe Winston Peters like that.

Hon STEVEN JOYCE: With the greatest respect, I think the member might be describing his own party.

Alastair Scott: What aspects of the New Zealand superannuation scheme will remain the same?

Hon STEVEN JOYCE: The Government remains committed to the universal aspect of New Zealand superannuation, with no means testing or asset testing. In addition, we remain committed to New Zealand superannuation being indexed to 66 percent of the average weekly wage. It is worth noting that the weekly payments to superannuitants have increased by 35 percent after tax since 2008, compared with inflation over the same period of 14 percent. Finally, KiwiSaver will continue to be available to savers once they turn 65.

David Seymour: If the Minister believes a sudden adjustment in the age of entitlement to superannuation would be unfair, why does he not start early and adjust it more gradually, rather than proposing to lump the entire cost on millennials long after he himself has reached retirement age?

Hon STEVEN JOYCE: I thank the member for referring to my youthful nature. It is important to note that what is actually happening here is that life expectancy is increasing by 1.3 years every decade. If we make a change 20 years from now to superannuation, and extend it a further 2 years, people who retire at 67 in 2040 will spend a slightly longer proportion of their lives on superannuation, on average, than somebody who retires today at 65. I think the increased life expectancy is a good thing—I think most people agree with that—but it is important that we ensure we are not increasing the burden, not on this next generation but on the one after, who will end up paying national superannuation.

David Seymour: Is the Minister seriously suggesting that increases in life expectancy do not begin until 2037?

Hon STEVEN JOYCE: No. The member should listen more carefully to the answer, with respect. What I had pointed out is that over that period life expectancy is increasing, and then when we make the change, actually, the percentage of life people will spend on superannuation will be, as I say, slightly more than it is today. The reason we are not changing it in the meantime is that those closer to retirement have far less time to adjust their living expenses and conditions to cope with the change, and that is just being fair.

David Seymour: How does the Minister reconcile that answer with the fact that every country cited in the Government’s information sheet on this topic, including Australia, the United Kingdom, Denmark, the Netherlands, Ireland, Germany, Italy, and the United States, are all making that adjustment within the 2020s and will finish making their adjustment 7 years before his proposed adjustment even begins?

Hon STEVEN JOYCE: Because our cost of superannuation is significantly lower as a percentage of our economy than those other countries, on average. The average cost of superannuation to OECD countries is 9 percent; ours is currently around 4.5 percent, which gives New Zealand time to make the change in a more gradual manner. I think that is a good thing. That is why it is an appropriate, fair, and reasonable response to make this policy change today. I invite the member to consider it further and consider supporting it in due course.

Chris Hipkins: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. Mr Speaker, I would like to ask that you give some consideration to a considered ruling on the issue of the form of address that members should use when asking questions. I went back and looked at the Standing Orders Committee’s report that is referenced in the Speaker’s ruling that you just gave me—

Mr SPEAKER: Bring the point of order to a conclusion.

Chris Hipkins: —and it refers specifically to speeches and debate, not to questions. Just very briefly, I think the reason it is important that the form of address is clear in a question is that it has to be clear whom the question is addressed to. A question that uses the phrase “you” or “your” is actually being addressed to you as the Speaker, not to the Minister whom the member may be intending to ask.

Mr SPEAKER: I will give it further consideration.

Prime Minister, Statements—Superannuation Fund, Freshwater Management, Youth Unemployment, and Housing

2. ANDREW LITTLE (Leader of the Opposition) to the Prime Minister: Does he stand by his statement that “we have the best opportunity in decades to make positive sustainable choices for our country”; if so, do those choices include not contributing to the Superannuation Fund, increasing the acceptable level of E.coli in swimmable water, writing off young people as “pretty damn hopeless”, and treating a housing shortage as a “problem of success”?

Rt Hon BILL ENGLISH (Prime Minister): Yes, we do have the best opportunities in decades. I disagree with the member’s characterisations of my statements. The choices the Government is making, for instance, include improving our fresh water quality with a national framework, the first time there has ever been one; tightening up the tax rules for multinational companies; rolling out ultra-fast broadband to another 150 towns; and opening brand new roads and schools around New Zealand, which mean New Zealanders know we can do much more of that.

Andrew Little: Why is he refusing to save for New Zealand’s superannuation and instead kicking the can down the road for another 20 years?

Rt Hon BILL ENGLISH: If the member means he wants to raise the age to 67 now, then we are very happy to hear from him about that, but in respect of the Superannuation Fund, the member needs to understand that up until about now, or another year or so, the money that you would put into it would have to be borrowed and, over time, there is no particular gain from doing that, which is why the Government has said that when debt levels are down to a reasonable level—within the next 2 or 3 years—we will start contributing to the Superannuation Fund again.

Andrew Little: Why is he literally increasing the allowable level of crap in the water today while promising cleaner rivers in 20 years’ time?

Rt Hon BILL ENGLISH: The member, of course, has got that wrong. For the first time ever, New Zealand now has a system of measuring its water quality, and for the first time ever, we have some goals that are going to require those who may be polluting the water to act in a way that is going to help improve the quality of our fresh water. I know the Labour Party is a bit disappointed that the Government has set out with this long-term goal to lift the quality of our fresh water, but I can tell you communities all over New Zealand will be buying into it.

Andrew Little: Why is he writing off young people as unemployable drug users when, in fact, 99.8 percent of them pass Work and Income drug tests just fine?

Rt Hon BILL ENGLISH: I am not writing young people off at all, but I am clearly much more in touch with what is happening with young people in New Zealand than that member is. I am so proud of our young people, because more of them are achieving at school than ever, more of them are getting tertiary qualifications than ever, 10,000 of them are apprentices in the construction industry—more than ever—and their prospects of jobs and opportunities in New Zealand are better than ever.

Tim Macindoe: What reports has the Prime Minister seen of alternative approaches to managing the rising long-term costs of New Zealand superannuation?

Rt Hon BILL ENGLISH: I have seen one report describing the rising cost of New Zealand superannuation as “terrifying”. It went on to say “If there’s one thing that scares the bejesus out of me, it’s the looming cost of superannuation. That’s a significant chunk of the budget.” That was just 2 years ago—said by Andrew Little. [Interruption]

Mr SPEAKER: Order! Now the interjection from my right-hand side is far too loud and will stop.

Andrew Little: Why, in the face of overwhelming indications of the rising cost of superannuation and the crisis that some were feeling about it, has this Government, in nearly 9 years, done absolutely nothing to contribute to the future cost of superannuation by resuming contributions to the New Zealand Superannuation Fund?

Rt Hon BILL ENGLISH: As the Government outlined back in 2009 and 2010, we did not intend to borrow money to put into the Superannuation Fund. We did borrow significant amounts of money to maintain national superannuation and all family and welfare entitlements through a recession, and we borrowed $17 billion to $18 billion to rebuild Christchurch. Now that the economy is in better shape, now that it is growing, and now that our debt is falling, over the next 2 or 3 years we can see a path to resuming contributions to the New Zealand Superannuation Fund. The member needs to understand that there is no free lunch with the New Zealand Superannuation Fund. If you have to put money into it, you either borrow it or you are taking it from the taxes of the current generation, some of whom are feeling the pressure on their incomes and want to be able to get ahead.

Tim Macindoe: What reports has the Prime Minister seen expressing concern about the rising future cost of New Zealand superannuation?

Rt Hon BILL ENGLISH: I have seen a whole range of reports. Here is one: “In 3 years superannuation will cost more than the entire education budget. … It will grow to 20 times the cost of unemployment benefits. We need to ask whether the universal age of super is set at the right place.” That was the new deputy leader of the Labour Party, Jacinda Ardern.

Andrew Little: Moving on from Government flip-flops—[Interruption]

Mr SPEAKER: Order! I issued what I thought was a reasonably warning to my right-hand side. It appears to have been ignored so far, so I will not hesitate to identify somebody who continues to loudly interject and ask them to retire for the balance of question time.

Andrew Little: Given his outlandish claim that 40 people desperate to rent a house—which happened to be in Wellington—in the middle of a housing crisis is a problem of success, just what kind of a problem does he call Nick Smith?

Hon Gerry Brownlee: A problem solver.

Rt Hon BILL ENGLISH: That is right. Nick Smith has dealt with some of the most complex problems of resource law and housing more successfully than any other politician here could have. But he is better at solving problems than the Leader of the Opposition, who often gets his advice from the Dominion Post editorials. I invite him to read today’s editorial, which concludes that Labour leader, Andrew Little, is in a “hopeless position”.

Andrew Little: Is this not the truth: a Government that wanted a better future would be building it now by saving in the Superannuation Fund, cleaning up our waterways, backing our young people, and building affordable homes for families to buy; and why does he refuse to do any of those?

Rt Hon BILL ENGLISH: This is where we probably agree. The Government is doing all of those things and doing all of them very well, with the exception of actually putting cash in the Superannuation Fund. At the moment we are planning to reduce debt first, because that is prudent management of the Government’s balance sheet. As soon as we have got it down to 20 percent of GDP, we will start contributing to the Superannuation Fund.

Superannuation—Entitlement Age and Government Policy

3. METIRIA TUREI (Co-Leader—Green) to the Prime Minister: E māia ana a ia ki ōna kaupapa here katoa?

[Does he have confidence in all his policies?]

Rt Hon BILL ENGLISH (Prime Minister): Yes.

Metiria Turei: Why did the Prime Minister choose Generation X as the generation to bear the full cost of his planned changes to superannuation?

Rt Hon BILL ENGLISH: That, of course, is not what has been decided—or not decided. The question that member needs to answer is why the Greens think no one should do anything about the rising cost of superannuation, so that Generation X and anyone who follows them continue to pay for a superannuation when our lives are getting longer, our working lives are getting longer, our life expectancy is better, and there is every reason to want to spread our resource so we do not focus it all on retirement income but have some left for health and education.

Metiria Turei: Has the Prime Minister seen the evidence that the retirement savings of those born in the 1970s is likely to be $100,000 less than that of the generation born before; if so, why is he targeting that generation with the biggest burden of his planned changes to superannuation?

Rt Hon BILL ENGLISH: The younger generation is now, of course, entering KiwiSaver much earlier than the previous generation did, because the scheme was only begun about 10 years ago. Although, of course, it is always a struggle—it feels like a struggle—to get ahead, particularly in your late 30s and early 40s, they have the benefit of economic policy that supports growth in incomes, growth of job opportunities, and an innovative economy with a real sense of direction. I have to say that that is a bit of a better outlook than that of previous generations in New Zealand, who were trying to make their way through very significant economic restructuring. Every generation has its challenges; we understand Generation X have theirs, and we are here to support them through it.

Metiria Turei: When the Prime Minister chose Generation X to bear this burden, did he also understand that this was the generation that also bore the full cost of student loans and interest?

Rt Hon BILL ENGLISH: We just need to get the implications of the announcement made yesterday clear, which is to somewhat reduce the burden on generations coming into the workforce, compared with the Greens’ proposition, which seems to be that they should bear any burden that will enable the Greens to not have to change national superannuation. I cannot understand the member’s logic. Our announcement reduces the burden somewhat on the younger generation; it does not choose a generation to carry the burden—that is what the Greens are doing.

Metiria Turei: Can the Prime Minister please explain how he expects young people—our kids, actually—to plan for their retirement and pay for ours when they are already struggling with high student loans and sky-high property prices?

Rt Hon BILL ENGLISH: As I have said, each generation has its own challenges that it needs to meet. Today’s 30- or 35-year-olds, under this Government, face a future with supportive, lower taxes and policy that helps the economy grow and is consistently and moderately lifting their incomes. What would make their planning very difficult would be if the Green Party decided to cross over or scrap the announcement of the policy that was made yesterday, or if it actually got the chance to implement its policies of higher Government spending and higher taxes—a burden that would certainly be carried by today’s 35-year-olds.

Metiria Turei: Why is the Prime Minister forcing our kids to work much harder than we did for their birthright: a good education—[Interruption]—much harder than he or I had to do for a good education—

Mr SPEAKER: Order! I cannot hear the question now. I will invite the member to start the question again, and it is to be heard without interjection from my right-hand side.

Metiria Turei: Why is the Prime Minister forcing our kids to work much harder than us—him and me—for their birthright: a good education, a decent home, and now just for some security in their retirement?

Rt Hon BILL ENGLISH: Well, I am very admiring, actually, of the work ethic of a whole lot of our younger generation, and I get to see how hard many of them do work. But, as a result of the announcements made yesterday, they will spend about the same period of their life on national superannuation when they turn 67 as someone turning 65 today—

Hon Amy Adams: Actually, more—more.

Rt Hon BILL ENGLISH: —slightly more—and that is around 25 percent of their life. And they will enjoy longer years of better health. Now, they do have some challenges, and as I have said, we are there to support them. What is going to make life hard for them are the policies of Labour and the Greens to put up taxes and to spend a whole lot more taxpayers’ money on stuff that does not work. I do not think any 35-year-old now will welcome those policies.

Metiria Turei: Why is the Prime Minister fuelling the intergenerational struggle between our generation—his and mine—and our children’s generation by locking them out of housing and forcing them to pay for their own education, to pay for their kids’ education, to pay for their parents’ superannuation, and now to have to wait longer for their own?

Rt Hon BILL ENGLISH: The member is still under the burden of a basic misunderstanding. The announcement—the Government’s policy—somewhat reduces the burden on the generation who will be paying for superannuation. It is actually the Greens’ and Labour’s policy that says “Nothing will ever change.” that guarantees growth in the burden on our workforce in a way that we believe is not fair or reasonable. So we are lightening the burden. Labour and the Greens want, for short-term political benefit, to keep the burden in place and ensure it gets worse.

Superannuation—Entitlement Age, Government Policy, and Life Expectancy

4. Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS (Leader—NZ First) to the Prime Minister: Does he stand by his statement to The Nation, “Well, it’s turned out that because so many more people are working as they get through the age 60, 65, that super is more affordable than was expected, say, 15 years ago. I haven’t made the same undertaking as John, so we have the opportunity for a bit of a reset there”?

Rt Hon BILL ENGLISH (Prime Minister): Yes. The reality is that because of stronger economic growth in New Zealand now, over the last 7 or 8 years, the projections about the cost of national superannuation show that it is a bit more affordable than it was, but it is still increasing quite significantly. The fact is that if the economy had not grown as successfully as it has, probably more drastic decisions would be required. That is why we would take the opportunity for a fair and reasonable transition to a higher age of eligibility.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Why should New Zealanders trust National’s phase-in from 2037, and does he recall National’s 1990 promise to raise the age to 65 over a 20-year period, in annual increases of 3 months in the age of entitlement, which then, having won the election, National switched to just 8 years after the 1990 election?

Hon Gerry Brownlee: The member’s the only person who was in Cabinet that day.

Rt Hon BILL ENGLISH: That is exactly the point I was going to make. The person who would remember all of that is the member, who was both in the Opposition and then in the new Cabinet that made those decisions.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. There are some people in the National Party—and you would be one of them—who would know that statement is demonstrably false.

Mr SPEAKER: Order! [Interruption] Does the member want to add—no. If the member feels there has been a misrepresentation, then he knows what to do about it.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Why should New Zealanders trust National when it, first, promised to get rid of the surtax and did not, and, second, increased it to 92c in the dollar—a situation that only New Zealand First redeemed?

Rt Hon BILL ENGLISH: The member would have a better recollection than any of us, as I said. But the question the member needs to answer is: what exactly is wrong with the announcement made yesterday and what is wrong with the policy? It protects all existing superannuitants, it protects those whom he labels as near retirement—and in this case it is everyone aged 45 and over—from any change in their superannuation entitlement, and it changes the residency requirements in a way that I assume the member supports. So then the question is: just what is wrong with the announcement that he seems to be so vehemently opposed to?

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Does the Prime Minister not understand that what is wrong is the trust factor, such as when in 1996 National promised voters to maintain New Zealand superannuation and then, after breaking the coalition agreement, of which that was a central factor, took the figure from 65 percent of the net average weekly wage down to 60 percent—again, a circumstance that the New Zealand First Party had to fix up. It is the trust factor, son.

Rt Hon BILL ENGLISH: I respect the member’s recollections of those arguments, now over 20 years ago. He was in the National Party when those decisions were made, and I respect the fact that it was one of the reasons that he ended up leaving the National Party but it does not tell us anything about his views on the actual announcement. So I take it from what he said that he has no problem with the announcement itself.

David Seymour: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. How can the Prime Minister in 2017 have prime ministerial responsibility for the actions of the National Party in 1990? What is next, Dick Seddon?

Mr SPEAKER: Order! That was certainly part of the question but it was not the essence of the question. The question was in order.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: What is wrong is the issue of trust. Why should New Zealanders trust National, when it promised not to change superannuation settings in 2008, then, first, promptly stopped the Government contributions to the Cullen fund and, if that was not bad enough, then started taxing it?

Rt Hon BILL ENGLISH: We have put out a policy in election year, when there will be plenty of debate and plenty of opportunity for the public to debate it. But I invite the member to consider the policy position that we have outlined, because I believe it is one that he could support. Not completely, maybe, but he could support these aspects: it protects existing superannuitants, it protects everyone over the age of 45 from any change in their entitlement, it allows a very fair and reasonable 20-year transition, and it changes the residency requirement for national superannuation from 10 years to 20 years. I just invite the member to consider those propositions.

Marama Fox: Given the review period in 2030, should that show up a continued discrepancy and inequity in life expectancy will the Minister then consider flexibility in eligibility for superannuation?

Rt Hon BILL ENGLISH: The good news is that Māori life expectancy is increasing, and is actually starting to close the gap between Māori and Pākehā; that is good. The second thing is that the review in 2030, of course, will be in circumstances a bit different from the ones we have today. Who quite knows what jobs are going to be there and who is going to be doing them? But the point of it is simply to recognise what the member is referring to, and that is there will be some people for whom 67 looks a bit of a stretch, and well ahead of changing the age we believe the Government of the day should consider what it can do for what will be a small minority of workers.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Does the Prime Minister not understand that what is wrong is a past record of the National Government not keeping its word on the issue of superannuation, like, for example, promising not to tinker with the SuperGold card entitlements and then fiddling with the travel privileges?

Rt Hon BILL ENGLISH: As I said, I invite the member to consider and comment on the actual policy that has been announced. But, just as importantly, this Government, through a period of recession and very large Government deficits, said that nothing would change about national superannuation entitlements and we stuck to that despite running up one of the largest deficits that a New Zealand Government has run up in a long time. We have stood the test of fiscal pressure. Now that we have been able to rebuild surpluses, that pressure is not there the same way.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Why should any soon-to-be or present superannuitant trust National on this matter—or, for that matter, why should New Zealand First trust it—when there is a record already laid out in this House of seven breaches in the past of their trust; or when we sought to raise the issue of overseas acquisition from 10 to 25 years its members said it was racist and bigoted, and the self-appointed Lord Denning of this House claimed it was discriminatory and conflicted with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act—he is right down over there.

Hon Christopher Finlayson: The law clerk fired by Russell McVeagh.

Rt Hon BILL ENGLISH: If he had not appointed himself as—

Rt Hon Winston Peters: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. There is no way the Attorney-General should be lying in this House. I am asking for an apology.

Hon Members: Oh!

Rt Hon Winston Peters: He is. I have taken offence to what he said.

Mr SPEAKER: Order! If the member wishes to take it further, then I suggest he looks at Standing Order 359 and proceeds from there.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I take offence at what he said, and I am asking him to withdraw and apologise.

Mr SPEAKER: If the member has been offended, I ask the Hon Chris Finlayson to withdraw that remark.

Hon Christopher Finlayson: Certainly, I withdraw.

Hon Gerry Brownlee: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. Although the remark may well be withdrawn, the accusation of lying in the House came from the Rt Hon Winston Peters against the Attorney-General. I think that also needs to be withdrawn.

Mr SPEAKER: No, I think on this occasion I have dealt with the matter. The accusation of lying is to be dealt with by reference to Standing Order 359. I was then informed that the member was offended by the remark—I have asked for that to be withdrawn, and it has been withdrawn. That closes the matter. We now have a question that was asked some time ago and I invite the Prime Minister to answer it.

Rt Hon BILL ENGLISH: I just disagree with the member’s assertions, but I would propose that as he gets around the countryside talking to a lot of older audiences, who will be interested in hearing from him, he gives them the opportunity to make up their own minds by outlining the policy that has been announced—we are happy to brief him on that in detail—and letting them decide whether it is fair and reasonable to superannuitants, to the near-retired, and to younger generations. We are not necessarily going to be taking the member’s view as representative of all people who are retired or near-retired.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: When laid out in the House today are eight examples of the trail of the National Government’s word on this matter in recent times, why would anybody sane in the full capacity of their thoughts ever trust it in the next year, the year after that, or beyond? [Interruption]

Mr SPEAKER: Order! The question has been asked.

Rt Hon BILL ENGLISH: Of course, if the member is mistrusting, then he knows what the National Government’s policy is. We have outlined it in detail, prior to an election. What he cannot know is what Labour’s policy is because it does not know. How can he predict what its policy would be?

Rt Hon Winston Peters: You might have a point there. I wish to table two documents. One is a screenshot of a deleted tweet, not available to the House any more, from Mr Bill English—staunch as he purports to be. Another one—probably not available also, because it has not been read by members—is the Lord Denning statement from the Attorney-General, talking about it being outside the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act, of all things.

Mr SPEAKER: On the basis that that information could be of interest to members, I will put the leave and the House will decide. Leave is sought to table those two particular documents. Is there any objection? There is none.

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

Children in State Care—Addressing Historical Abuse Claims

JACINDA ARDERN (Deputy Leader—Labour): My question is to the Minister for Social Development and asks: is she satisfied with her Government’s treatment of those who have been abused by the State?

Mr SPEAKER: Before I call the Minister, my office has been advised that this answer may be longer than normal.

Hon ANNE TOLLEY (Minister for Social Development): I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I understand that the question on the sheet is actually “the Government’s treatment” not “her Government’s treatment”—in the question.

Mr SPEAKER: I did not hear the way it was asked. I will ask for it be asked again and will pursue from there.

5. JACINDA ARDERN (Labour) to the Minister for Social Development: Is she satisfied with the Government’s treatment of those who have been abused by the State?

Hon ANNE TOLLEY (Minister for Social Development): Could I congratulate the new deputy leader on her elevation and her first question to me in 6 months as a result. [Interruption]

Mr SPEAKER: Order! Now we will have the continued, longer answer than normal. [Interruption] Order! It is a good example that some answers do not help the order of the House. I will now ask the Minister to continue.

Hon ANNE TOLLEY: In answer to the question, of course I am not satisfied with the Government’s treatment of those who have been abused by the State. Any kind of abuse in State care is absolutely abhorrent. That is why this Government extended the previous Labour Government’s confidential listening and advice service for 7 years and has focused on settling claims with victims directly and personally wherever possible. We also introduced an optional fast-track process for historical cases of abuse in recognition that the claims process was taking far too long in many cases. Prior to the fast-track historical claims process 2 years ago, there had been around 400 historical claims payments totalling over $8 million since 2004—about 9 years. Following this, the number of settlements has more than doubled to about 900 with total payments of over $17 million, all, of course, accompanied by an apology from the chief executive. As I have said on many occasions, I am also more than willing to add my personal apology to that, as I am sure every member in this House would. Nothing can change what has happened in the past, but we know that these experiences remain with people, and of utmost importance to them is that their experiences are heard and believed and acknowledged in a personal and tangible way.

Jacinda Ardern: Is she satisfied with the outcome of the Whakapakari camp abuse case, where the Crown paid one Queen’s Counsel more to fight tooth and nail than any of the people who were abused ever finally received?

Hon ANNE TOLLEY: As the House is aware, I cannot comment on matters currently before the courts, but what I can say is that for more than a decade the Government has recognised the importance of settling claims, and we try to settle these claims with an individual as early and directly as is possible. I am advised that in line with Cabinet directions the ministry is required to be represented by the Crown Law Office in any litigation before a court, and, in fact, especially where there are significant and complex claims matters that have considered, or will consider, areas of law not previously considered in New Zealand and that involve multiple parties and witnesses and have been subject to subsequent appeals.

Jacinda Ardern: I seek leave to table a response to an Official Information Act (OIA) request released by the Minister, detailing that three-quarters of a million dollars has been paid to one Queen’s Counsel to battle just three cases—

Mr SPEAKER: Order! Leave is sought to table that particular OIA response. Is there any objection? There is none. It can be tabled.

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

Jacinda Ardern: Why is she willing to spend millions of dollars fighting historical abuse claims but will not act on the call for a State inquiry into abuse to ensure that it never happens again?

Hon ANNE TOLLEY: As I stated in the previous answer, there is a requirement, and the Crown does have a responsibility, to protect the taxpayers’ interests where there are significant and complex claims or matters that will have considerable impact on future taxpayers. We do have that responsibility and we are taking that responsibility seriously.

Jacinda Ardern: If all the work that is needed on historical abuse has been done, as she claimed in her first answer, why did Caroline Henwood, the chair of the Confidential Listening and Assistance Service, which she finished the work of, state: “We haven’t investigated the department … we haven’t spoken to staff … there’s been no inquiry … so why wouldn’t it happen again?”

Hon ANNE TOLLEY: I have met with Caroline Henwood on a number of occasions, and I met and thanked the members of the Confidential Listening and Assistance Service for the sterling work that they did over the 7 years. All of her recommendations were forwarded into the expert advisory group that I set up to completely review our system of care and protection of children in New Zealand. In fact, Caroline Henwood herself met with that panel, I understand, on at least one occasion—possibly more—to discuss what her findings were and how the new system must ensure that it never happens again. That is why this Government has embarked on a 4- to 5-year programme that completely overhauls the way we deal with our most vulnerable children and young people, which has never been seen before in New Zealand.

Jacinda Ardern: Can she confirm that one of the recommendations that Caroline Henwood made was that an inquiry take place—and she made that recommendation in 2015—and why has the Minister not acted on it?

Hon ANNE TOLLEY: Yes, that was the only recommendation from the Confidential Listening and Assistance Service that was not proceeded with. The reason for that, as we have said, is that all the findings of that service have been put into the inquiry that was done into our care and protection system. The question I ask is what we would gain from an inquiry that revictimises the victims for whom we are trying to get some compensation and some settlement. It is appalling that we would put those people through that again—[Interruption]

Mr SPEAKER: Order!

Hon ANNE TOLLEY: We know that what happened in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s was the State institutionalisation of 100,000 or more young people. That should never happen again. We are living in a very different environment today. We are overhauling the system. I would welcome the support of the Opposition parties to do just that.

Freshwater Management—Policy Costs and National Standards

6. SCOTT SIMPSON (National—Coromandel) to the Minister for the Environment: What is the estimated cost of the 90 percent of rivers and lakes swimmable by 2040 policy, and what specific requirements will it place on councils and farms to achieve this target?

Hon Dr NICK SMITH (Minister for the Environment): The estimated cost is $2 billion. For councils, this will mean upgrading water-treatment plants and waste water and stormwater infrastructure; for farms, it means requirements to fence 56,000 kilometres of waterways, and riparian planting. The cost to farmers is $367 million, although I would draw to the House’s attention that three-quarters of that cost is for the reticulation of stock water, which is required when animals are appropriately fenced out of our lakes and rivers.

Scott Simpson: What requirements were there from the Government on regional councils back in 2008 to address New Zealand’s water quality issues, and what are there now?

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: In 2008 there were absolutely none. We started in 2009 with the national requirements to meter water takes, and the volume measured is now up from 25 percent to over 90 percent. In 2011 we introduced the first National Policy Statement on Freshwater Management, which puts requirements on councils to set minimum river flows. In 2014 we added requirements to limit nitrogen, phosphorus, dissolved oxygen, algae, and ammonia. These latest proposals focus on improving swimming, but there are also important new requirements in the package for improving the ecological health of our waterways.

Scott Simpson: When was the standard of 540 E. coli per 100 millilitres set as the acceptable level for swimming?

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: The 540 limit for swimming water quality was set in 2003 by the Labour Government, supported by the Greens. This limit was included in the 2014 national policy statement and remains. The key change is, for the very first time, the setting of specific requirements and targets on improving the times that that standard is met.

Superannuation Fund—Government Contributions and Returns

7. GRANT ROBERTSON (Labour—Wellington Central) to the Minister of Finance: Is the New Zealand Super Fund correct that the impact on the fund as a result of the suspension of Government contributions in July 2009 has been a reduction in the projected size of the fund of $20.5 billion?

Hon STEVEN JOYCE (Minister of Finance): I can confirm that had contributions not been put on hold in 2009 the Government would have put about $13 billion more into the fund, which would have required around $13.5 billion of additional borrowings. The exact impact this has had on the overall balance of the Superannuation Fund depends on a variety of factors including sharemarket returns, which fluctuate over time. I note Treasury has completed a comparative analysis to the one run by the fund that the member refers to, which results in a significantly lower estimated fund balance.

Grant Robertson: Does he understand that the fund’s average performance has been an 8 percent return and that, in actual fact, it has made $11.2 billion more than the cost of borrowing the Government would have faced?

Hon STEVEN JOYCE: Well, I appreciate the member’s financial advice, but, actually, financial advisers are very clear to say that past performance does not indicate future performance, and I am sure the fund would say that as well. But the key question that the member should be considering is: where would that $13.5 billion come from? The simple fact of the matter is that nobody who has proposed putting that $13.5 billion in has indicated where that might have come from. Would it be increased borrowing, reduced Government expenditure, or higher taxation?

Grant Robertson: Does he realise that the amount of money that his Government was due to put into the Superannuation Fund this year alone will actually be worth more to future superannuitants than the $4 billion he says he is going to save from increasing the age, on the basis of average returns?

Hon STEVEN JOYCE: Well, actually, no, the member is incorrect. If he thinks you could put an amount in this year—of the amount that was said was going to go into the fund—and that it would return $4 billion a year thereafter, then he has definitely been smoking something. The simple reality is that that would never happen. But, again, the more fundamental question is: where does the $13.5 billion come from?

Grant Robertson: Can he confirm that he continues to prioritise borrowing for tax cuts ahead of restarting contributions to the Superannuation Fund that have been consistently earning far more than the cost of borrowing?

Hon STEVEN JOYCE: No. What I can say to the member is that if the Government had taken a decision to continue contributions to the Superannuation Fund it would have had to borrow $13.5 billion more on top of the current net debt of $61 billion, or it would have had to put up taxes by the same, or reduce expenditure by the same. There is no free money, for the member’s benefit; he would have to say whether the debt was going to be higher, the taxes were going to be higher, or expenditure was going to be less.

Grant Robertson: I will put it simply for the Minister—

Mr SPEAKER: Order!

Grant Robertson: Has the Superannuation Fund earned more on average over the last 9 years than the cost of the money the Government would have had to borrow if it had contributed to the fund? A simple question, Steven.

Hon STEVEN JOYCE: The member misunderstands. The Superannuation Fund is not in the Government’s net debt calculation, because it is hypothecated to future superannuation needs. So if we had put the money in we would have had to borrow it. I know Grant is struggling with this concept, but we would have had to borrow $13.5 billion to put the money into the fund, and, yes, they might have made a return on it, but we would have still borrowed the $13.5 billion.

Grant Robertson: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker.

Mr SPEAKER: I will invite the member to ask his question again.

Grant Robertson: It was not written down so it will be as close as we can to it.

Mr SPEAKER: I can help.

Grant Robertson: Well, would you like to ask it? Has the New Zealand Superannuation Fund, on average, earned more than the cost of borrowing to the Government for the contributions it would have made had the Government not suspended them?

Hon STEVEN JOYCE: On average, yes. [Interruption] But you still have to borrow the money, and the member is basically saying that he would either borrow the money and put up net debt, or he would increase taxation, or he would reduce expenditure. He needs to say which one.

Freshwater Management—National Standards and Water Quality of Rivers

8. CATHERINE DELAHUNTY (Green) to the Minister for the Environment: Does the Selwyn - Waikirikiri river at Chamberlains Ford meet the “good for swimming” standard as outlined in the Government’s Clean Water plan?

Hon Dr NICK SMITH (Minister for the Environment): The new information provided on water quality does not cover flow rates, and needs to be interpreted with common sense. A river in flood or a river in drought is not good for swimming. The water quality at Chamberlains Ford has been measured weekly over the summer compared with the 540 E. coli limit. It is currently eight per 100 millilitres, it has averaged 43 per 100 millilitres, and has never posed any health risk. If the member looks at the website that is provided by the Government, it also states that the site has a problem with algae growth.

Catherine Delahunty: Would the Minister take a refreshing dip in the Ōpihi River at Waipopo Huts, rated as excellent in the new standards, while at the same time there are potentially toxic algae blooms that can kill dogs and make people ill at this site?

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: We are providing a lot more information for the very first time. E. coli rates over all rivers and lakes across New Zealand, where there are problems with algae bloom, are also flagged on the website. What we are doing is, for the first time, giving New Zealand open, honest information on the state of our rivers. We share a desire with the Greens to improve the standard; we just want it to be practical.

Matt Doocey: What is the downside of setting water quality limits at higher levels, like not exceeding 540 E. coli per 100 millimetres more than 1 percent of the time?

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: The downside is an impractical standard that discourages people from swimming when the risks are negligible. A 1 percent limit would classify both major swimming spots in my home community of Nelson as unswimmable, where I and my family have swum hundreds of times. The Sunday Hole and the Lee River picnic area were monitored weekly over summer. The two sites both posed no health risks, except during floods, when the far greater risk is from drowning. We want a water quality standard that drives improvements, but it needs to be practical. Labelling hundreds of rivers like the Lee and Maitai unswimmable would discourage New Zealanders from enjoying a river swim when the risk is negligible if they apply a bit of common sense and do not swim in a river when it is in flood.

Catherine Delahunty: Given that Graham McBride from the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA), who advised on the plan, has already said that these standards are less precautionary, independent scientists have attacked them, the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment called them very confusing, and Forest and Bird has withdrawn from the Land and Water Forum because of them, why should we trust them?

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: I think the reason Forest and Bird has left the Land and Water Forum is because its former Green leader thinks it is an extension of the Opposition. In respect of the work, I would note that respected NIWA scientist Graham McBride is actually one of the architects of the new standards, as are other scientists. As for Mike Joy, I note that he has said his objective is for New Zealand to have no farm animals by 2050 in New Zealand, and that is not the Government’s policy.

Catherine Delahunty: Let us focus on the questions. Is his clean water package coherent and understandable to people who just want to go for a swim and do not want to look up a complicated and unreliable website before doing so?

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: The problem is that no Government, not even a Green one, will be able to prevent floods, where E. coli levels go through the roof. So it is only practical to provide good information. My plea would be: when is the Green Party going to get a science-qualified MP so it might have some common sense?

State and Social Housing—Availability and Accommodation Supplement

9. PHIL TWYFORD (Labour—Te Atatū) to the Minister for Social Housing: How many social housing places are receiving an income-related rent subsidy now; and by how much has this changed since the Prime Minister’s 2015 State of the Nation speech?

Hon AMY ADAMS (Minister for Social Housing): At the end of the most recent quarter, there were 61,777 social housing places receiving an income-related rent subsidy (IRRS), which is an increase of 860 places since January 2015. This, however, is not the same thing as the total number of social housing places, which sits at around 66,000. Nor is it the same thing as what the then Prime Minister was referring to, which was the number of IRRS places the Budget appropriation provides for, which is currently 64,000.

Phil Twyford: Why will she not admit that the number of tenants getting an income-related rent subsidy, the number of social housing places, is only 61,000, despite 2 years ago the Prime Minister promising to lift that number from 62,000 to 65,000?

Hon AMY ADAMS: I am not sure which part of the answer the member did not hear, but I made a number of comments. First of all, the number is currently 61,777. Second of all, the commitment was to raise the Budget appropriation to provide for up to 65,000, which was to be by the end of June 2018, and we are currently at 64,000. Thirdly, the total number of social housing places available for those in need of social housing under the eligibility criteria and on the register is currently sitting at around 66,000. For the member’s benefit, we have actually indicated an intention to take it out to around 72,000.

Phil Twyford: Empty houses that are boarded up.

Hon AMY ADAMS: Not at all.

Phil Twyford: Does she agree with Treasury when it says that her Government’s promise of 65,000 social housing places was made up to announce in a speech, that it was not based on any official advice, that there is no robust plan to achieve it, and that the likelihood of achieving it is low?

Hon AMY ADAMS: What I do agree with is that the Government has made a commitment that we want to head towards 65,000 budgeted IRRS. We are on track for that. But even more than that, we have gone further, actually—we have gone further—because last year in December we put out our purchasing intentions, which have replaced that first statement, and said that, actually, by 2020 we want to have 72,000 social housing places.

Phil Twyford: You promised 65,000.

Hon AMY ADAMS: Well, we are now aiming for 72,000. The point is, Mr Twyford, that our goal is to have social housing places for those who need it, and we are well on track to do that.

Phil Twyford: Is it not true that the promise of 65,000 social housing places was just a sweetener for a deeply unpopular State house sell-off policy, that there is no chance of achieving the Prime Minister’s promise, and that there was never any intention of achieving it?

Hon AMY ADAMS: No, none of that is true. What I would say is that there are more people today receiving income-related rent subsidies than there were in 2008 when we took over, even though the waiting list was considerably bigger under a Labour Government than it is now.

Vulnerable Children, Oranga Tamariki, Ministry—Establishment and Principles

10. JOANNE HAYES (National) to the Minister for Social Development: What recent reports has she received on the establishment of the new Ministry for Vulnerable Children, Oranga Tamariki?

Hon ANNE TOLLEY (Minister for Social Development): I have seen reports that show the new Ministry for Vulnerable Children, Oranga Tamariki is ready to come into effect on 1 April this year. It is a fundamental shift from the crisis management approach of Child, Youth and Family to a focus on ensuring better long-term life outcomes for our most vulnerable children and young people. The new ministry will focus on five core services: prevention, intensive intervention, care support, youth justice, and transition support. I have seen reports from some people labelling it as simply a rebrand of Child, Youth and Family; instead, what this Government is pursuing is a fundamental change in the way that we deal with care and protection in New Zealand.

Joanne Hayes: How will the new Ministry for Vulnerable Children, Oranga Tamariki differ from the current care and protection system?

Hon ANNE TOLLEY: While Child, Youth and Family had a focus on crisis management, the new Ministry for Vulnerable Children, Oranga Tamariki will take a child-centred approach with a much greater focus on prevention and early intervention to keep families together. This is not a quick fix. This is a long work programme of reforms over 4 to 5 years to be fully implemented and bedded in. We have already seen some of these reforms taking shape, with the establishment and naming of the new independent connection and advocacy service, VOYCE - Whakarongo Mai, which will ensure young people in care will be heard and their voices kept at the centre of decisions made about them. They run it.

Joanne Hayes: What other changes are being made as part of the overhaul of Child, Youth and Family?

Hon ANNE TOLLEY: There will be intensive, targeted support for caregivers, including some increased financial assistance and better access to support services. National care standards will be introduced so there is a clear expectation for the standard and quality of care in placement homes. We have already passed legislation to raise the age of State care to a child’s 18th birthday. I have to say it is disappointing to see members who have launched and presented petitions calling on me to implement these exact changes then voting against the legislation, including Labour’s children’s spokesperson and new deputy leader, Jacinda Ardern.

Environment, Minister—Freshwater Management and Marine Protected Areas

Hon DAVID PARKER (Labour): My question is to the former deputy leader of the National Party and—

Mr SPEAKER: Order! [Interruption] Order! The member will now stand and deliver his question the correct way.

11. Hon DAVID PARKER (Labour) to the Minister for the Environment: Does he believe that he has control of his environment portfolio, given the Kermadec sanctuary legislation he is responsible for is becalmed, and his proposed standard for swimmable rivers has been condemned by freshwater scientists and environmentalists, as well as the recreational users of the rivers and lakes that have been deteriorating under his watch?

Hon Dr NICK SMITH (Minister for the Environment): I am happy to be judged on results. I have successfully concluded 10 marine reserves under this Government and three previously. All the key stakeholders on fresh water acknowledge that this Government is doing more than any Government has in advancing reforms to deliver better water quality. The controversy is that some extreme Greens want impractical policies that simply will not work.

Hon David Parker: Does he agree with Forest and Bird that his swimmable standard excludes a large number of local rivers that Kiwis actually swim in, or with fresh water scientist Mike Joy, who has said his Government has “shifted the goal posts” and “tried to pull a ‘swifty’ on the people of New Zealand”?

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: In respect of Kevin Hague’s comments at the weekend, I would love to take members of this House to some of the streams that he said should be monitored for swimming in Wellington, because they are actually underground pipes, and I am not sure you can swim in those. Secondly, the swimmable standard that our Government has set applies to lakes that are more than 40 centimetres deep and lakes, but—hello, hello—90 percent of the smaller waterways actually flow into those and will have to have improved water quality for the policy to be delivered. Thirdly, regional councils are able to identify smaller water bodies, set standards for them, and improve them.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. It is just a matter of courtesy I seek to raise, but I am watching the Minister there, and he is so carried away that he is being absolutely rude in the extreme to his colleague sitting next to him. There are photographs coming in to me to show how rude he is. He should show some manners and give her the space that she deserves.

Mr SPEAKER: Order! Well, that is not a point of order that is relevant at all.

Hon David Parker: Does he accept that his swimmable—

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I take offence at the allegation that has been made by Mr Peters, and I think he should be asked to withdraw and apologise.

Mr SPEAKER: I ask the member, therefore, to—and the member is not meant to be using his cellphone to take photographs in this House, either. The member stands, withdraws, and apologises.

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

Mr SPEAKER: And apologise—[Interruption] Order! And apologise.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Like Mr Finlayson did?

Mr SPEAKER: Order! The member will stand, withdraw, and apologise.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: I withdraw and apologise. I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. When I raised an objection and said I was offended by Mr Finlayson’s comment, you did not require him to withdraw and apologise—and he did not.

Mr SPEAKER: I did not; that is absolutely right, and it is not a point of order. I judge it on the occasion and based on the interjection that is made or the accusation that is made, and that is my prerogative. The member will resume his seat.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Pardon?

Mr SPEAKER: The member will sit down when I am on my feet. I thank the member. I make those judgments based on the level of order or disorder in the House and I make them on a case-by-case basis, and that is at the discretion of the Speaker.

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

Mr SPEAKER: Point of order. Is it a fresh point of order?

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Yes, it is a very fresh point of order—fresh as the morning dew. I seek leave to table two photographs relating to—

Mr SPEAKER: Order! I am not even prepared to consider it any longer. The member will resume his seat immediately. He is very lucky to be staying here.

Hon David Parker: Does he accept his swimmable standard has no rule for slime or nutrients and that his underlying wadeable standard allows pollution to cause more slime and algal blooms in rivers that he is now calling swimmable?

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: I would note that when we came to Government there were no rules about nutrients or about algae, and the new national policy statement specifically put rules and new requirements on both.

Hon David Parker: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. My question was very specific—

Mr SPEAKER: Order! I am not sure whether it has been addressed. I will give the member the benefit of the doubt, but I do not want interjections—loudly—from Dr David Clark throughout the question or the answer.

Hon David Parker: Does he accept his swimmable standard has no rule for slime or nutrients and that his underlying wadeable standard allows pollution to cause more slime growth and algal blooms in the rivers that he is now calling swimmable?

Mr SPEAKER: There are two questions there.

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: No, the 90 percent clean rivers and lakes by 2040 policy specifically refers to algae concentrations. Furthermore, the new website specifically provides information in that regard, and I remind the member that when we came to Government there were absolutely no limits on algae or nutrients at a national level, and we put them in place.

Hon David Parker: Does he agree that his credibility hit rock bottom when his fake swimmable standard was exposed as a scam that would make Bernie Madoff blush?

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: If it was a scam, it was a scam by the previous Labour Government, because the 540 E. coli limit for swimmability was set by Marian Hobbs in 2003.

Andrew Bayly: Could the Minister please outline which marine protected areas he has successfully concluded?

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: Akaroa, Antipodes Island, the Bounty Islands, Campbell Island, Hautai in South Westland, Hikurangi in Kaikōura, Kahurangi, Pōhatu, Punakaiki, Te Angiangi in Hawke’s Bay, Te Tapuwae in the East Coast, Waiau Glacier in the Haast, and I have also been supporting the Minister of Foreign Affairs in the creation of the Ross Sea Marine Reserve—the largest marine protected area that our Government has ever created.

Small Businesses—Asia-Pacific Small Business Survey 2016

12. BRETT HUDSON (National) to the Minister for Small Business: What reports has she received on how New Zealand’s small business growth expectations compare to other economies?

Hon JACQUI DEAN (Minister for Small Business): I have received the latest CPA Australia Asia-Pacific Small Business Survey, which shows that 71 percent of small businesses in New Zealand expect to grow over the next 12 months and that 61.5 percent expect their local economy to grow over the same time. This is significantly higher than in Australia and in line with the Asian average. The report highlights that business confidence is up strongly in New Zealand and this shows the impact a strong economy, a stable Government, and resilient small business can have on business confidence.

Brett Hudson: How are Government programmes such as the ultra-fast broadband (UFB) roll-out supporting New Zealand small businesses’ confidence?

Hon JACQUI DEAN: The CPA Australia report highlights that New Zealand is second in the Asia-Pacific region with internet connection speeds. Fifty-five percent of small businesses believe their internet speeds are fast enough, well ahead of the average of 46 percent. The Business Operations Survey of 2014 reinforces this, showing that businesses are increasingly seeing the benefits of ICT. One of the aims of the Government’s $2 billion investment in UFB and rural broadband initiatives is to enable businesses to grow and become more productive. There is still more work to be done, however, which is why the Government has announced a $300 million extension, which will see another 151 towns covered by the ultra-fast broadband programme.

Urgent Debates Declined

New Zealand Superannuation—Proposed Changes to Entitlement Age

Mr SPEAKER: I have received a letter from Andrew Little seeking to debate under Standing Order 389 the Government’s proposal to raise the age of entitlement for superannuation from 65 to 67 years. This is a particular case of recent occurrence involving ministerial responsibility. The age of entitlement for superannuation is an important issue, but the test for whether a particular case requires the immediate attention of the House is a high one. It requires the matter to be of such urgency that it justifies the House spending a substantial part of the sitting in debating it. In this case, legislation is required to give effect to the policy, and the Government has indicated it would legislate only if in such a position after the upcoming election. I am not convinced the matter has such an element of urgency that it must take precedence over other business of the House. The application is therefore declined.

Urgency

Urgency

Hon GERRY BROWNLEE (Leader of the House): I move, That urgency be accorded the introduction and passing of the Child Protection (Child Sex Offender Government Agency Registration) Amendment Bill. This bill amends the Child Protection (Child Sex Offender Government Agency Registration) Act 2016. The House may well wonder why we are back here so quickly. It is because, in the pedantic world of legal interpretation, there could be some confusion over exactly who should be on the register and when they should be there. The intention of Parliament was very, very clearly stated, though, by all parties in the unanimous support of the legislation in 2016, and this simply goes to a point where we are clarifying further the intention of Parliament so that there may be no misinterpretation of the intention.

A party vote was called for on the question, That urgency be accorded.

Ayes 106

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

Noes 14

Green Party 14.

Motion agreed to.

Bills

Child Protection (Child Sex Offender Government Agency Registration) Amendment Bill

Procedure

Hon GERRY BROWNLEE (Leader of the House): I seek leave for the second reading of the Child Protection (Child Sex Offender Government Agency Registration) Amendment Bill to be taken without debate.

Mr SPEAKER: Is there any objection to that course of action being followed? There is objection.

First Reading

Hon PAULA BENNETT (Minister of Police): I move, That the Child Protection (Child Sex Offender Government Agency Registration) Amendment Bill be now read a first time. A key focus for this Government has been protecting children from harm, particularly family and sexual violence. That is why last year we passed the Child Protection (Child Sex Offender Government Agency Registration) Act, which imposes additional reporting requirements on convicted child sex offenders who have finished their sentence and are living in the community.

The principle of keeping our children safe from abuse was clear; however, the Act required a number of complicated technical provisions to ensure convicted offenders were required to report personal information to police, sometimes for life. It has become apparent in operationalising this Act that a small group of offenders who were intended to be covered may not be able to be put on the register. We believe the public expects these offenders to be covered by the register, so we are acting with urgency to make Parliament’s intention clear and remove any doubt that these people are subject to registration.

This amendment bill amends the principal Act to reflect the original retrospective policy intent of the legislation. There is no new policy involved. It was intended that the retrospective provisions of the principal Act would apply to all child sex offenders who had been released from prison and were subject to release conditions under Department of Corrections oversight when the Act came into force. It was also intended to include all those child sex offenders who had been convicted of a qualifying offence prior to the Act coming into force but were yet to be sentenced.

The laws that govern release from prison and release conditions are complex, and rightly so. There is a range of legislation that governs how and when a prisoner is released from prison based on the prisoners assessed risk, the sentence imposed, time served, and the circumstances of the offender and the offence.

As with any new legislation, there is a settling-in period, when the application of the legislation comes under scrutiny. This led to the identification of a small group of child sex offenders for whom eligibility for registration could be challenged. This amendment bill confirms that these child sex offenders are subject to registration. It will reassure the public that a wide range of child sex offenders are registered and are subject to the proactive monitoring and management by police and Corrections, as originally intended. It is important we pass this bill today under urgency to ensure that these offenders are subject to reporting obligations, as per the register, as soon as possible.

There are two key issues that are being addressed through this bill. First, the application of the principal Act to those released from prison and subject to release conditions. This issue relates to those child sex offenders who, when the Act came into force, for a range of reasons could no longer be required to serve time in prison but were still required to report to a probation officer and fulfil certain criteria. Examples of release conditions are: to attend counselling or to not be alone with a child under the age of 16 years. The intention of the Act was to link the ability to retrospectively register an offender to the release conditions that relate to that prison sentence. Whether or not the offender has completed the custodial part of the sentence is irrelevant for the purposes of this Act. This bill addresses each of the different release types separately. This is to ensure that all release types are covered by the amendment. This part of the amendment bill will bring 107 child sex offenders back onto the register.

The second issue relates to the application of the principal Act to those convicted of a qualifying offence before the principal Act came into force but who had not yet been sentenced. The principal Act does not make it sufficiently clear that registration applies to all offenders who are sentenced after commencement of the Act, regardless of when they were convicted. Sixty-seven offenders had been convicted but not yet sentenced when the Act came into force.

This Government is committed to improving the well-being and safety of all children in New Zealand. This bill will ensure that a technical issue does not place children at risk from a number of unregistered child sex offenders who were always intended to be subject to registration. It is the up-to-date personal information regularly reported by registered offenders that enables police and Corrections to proactively assess and manage the risk presented to children by child sex offenders living in the community.

I would like to make it clear that all of those who were not necessarily registered have been monitored closely by police, and there have been no further convictions against children due to that monitoring. I want to thank those parties that will be supporting this legislation, and for working with us on this. I commend this bill to the House.

STUART NASH (Labour—Napier): The seriousness of this issue was shown by the fact that the original bill was actually brought before the House by Minister Anne Tolley, and now it has been escalated to the Deputy Prime Minister. I mean, it is not her fault that we are here, because she was not responsible for the primary Act, but the fact that she is shepherding this bill through now, I think just shows that a mistake has been made—quite a serious mistake has been made. The Minister of Police said that no sex offender has been convicted of any offence due to confusion within the original bill. That does not mean that no harm has been done. We are all very hopeful that no harm has been done, but we cannot prove that, and, as we know, a conviction does not mean that something has not gone on that we have not been privy to at some point in time.

Let us get back to the original intent of this Act. What it was was that there was a register—and this is the reason Labour supports this, and I must say first and foremost that we are supporting this wholeheartedly; of that there is no doubt. So we are supporting this. And we supported the original Act as long as the register was not made public—so it was private, and this is what this is about. But the reason this register is in place in the first place is that it provides New Zealand Police and other agencies, like the Department of Corrections, with access to personal information that allows them to proactively monitor individual sex offenders when they are back in the community. The hope is that what this will do is mitigate—you can never eliminate, but will mitigate—the risk of these offenders offending again. You can argue whether they should be in the community in the first place, but I am assuming that is a debate for another time.

I suppose my point is that this Act gained Royal assent on, I think, 14 October 2016. It is actually less than 6 months later, and we are back here actually changing a pretty fundamental part of this. It is a legal interpretation, and the Minister has outlined this very well, but, initially, the Act said “conditional release”. That is a pretty important part of the legislation and, as it has turned out, lawyers—or some smart lawyer somewhere—have argued that, in fact, if the statutory date of sentence has passed, then there are certain offenders, as the Minister has outlined, who are not covered by this. So what has happened is we have had to go through and change the terminology in the Act to reflect the purpose and what we are trying to achieve here.

But I suppose the reason why I have a little bit of disquiet is that this is not some small sort of technical matter where a comma was missed out or phrasing was incorrect or a legal definition has been challenged in the courts where we thought we had it right. This is a pretty fundamental piece of legalese that should have been picked up by the original Minister of Police at some point in time before the Act actually went out there. I am not too sure when this was actually picked up by the courts or by lawyers, or when it came to the current Minister of Police’s attention, but it took a while. It took a while, and I suppose the thing that is a bit disappointing for me is that all the way along this process the officials did not pick this up. I am assuming that Crown Law had a say in this, but the fact is that no one picked it up and said: “Hold on a second here. There is a difference between conditional release and people who are on release conditions.” As the Minister has outlined, there is a very big difference in this.

What we have ended up doing is coming back, less than 6 months before this is out there, on a really important piece of legislation. And the reason I say it is important is that New Zealanders care a hell of a lot about this piece of legislation compared with, for example—with all due respect to my colleague Michael Wood—tax legislation and provisions relating to look-through companies. I mean, of course that is important, but this affects the very fabric of our community, and the fact that this amendment bill is going to be passed today shows how serious this is and shows how serious this Minister takes this. But this Minister is only reflecting the will of the community. We could have a first reading with this amendment bill, like we do with the vast majority of bills. We could have it go to a select committee, we could call for a whole lot of submissions, and we could hear them. We could write reports, and it would come back to the House again. It could go through the various stages, and in 6 or 8 months’ time, it could come out the other side with exactly the same result because it is retrospective legislation. But the fact that we are debating this in urgency actually shows the seriousness of this.

In fact, I could be wrong, but I think the last time we debated a bill right through from first reading all the way through to the end of the third reading was when we changed the excise duty on tobacco. I know I could be wrong on that, but that is the sort of thing we do and what we use this type of urgency for, because we know it has got to be done immediately because there are unintended consequences—well, in fact, they are not unintended. There are consequences that we are very aware of if we do not get it through in a matter of hours. This is what we do in here, and this shows why this bill is so serious, because the consequences of getting this wrong are dire. They are not consequences that anyone in this House will face; they are consequences that people in our vulnerable communities will face, and, worse, they are consequences that the most vulnerable New Zealand citizens may potentially face—that is, our children.

Let us not make any bones about this. We are talking about a law here that governs what happens to what I believe are the most reprehensible New Zealanders in this country—the most reprehensible. These are the people who abuse children. In fact, there is probably a level above this, and those are the people who kill our children. It does not get any worse than that. But these people have done what I think is the most unspeakable act—that is, taken the innocence away from our children.

We are supporting the bill. We are going to support it all the way through to the end. There was never any doubt about whether we would support this or not, because it is incredibly important. But what I would urge the Government to do on pieces of legislation—whether it is tax legislation or whether it is social legislation, police legislation, or anything else—is to just be a little tighter and a little more careful in the way this stuff is drafted before it is even brought to the House, because what we are doing today is tying up—I do not know—4, 5, or 6 hours of Parliament’s time on an amendment bill that actually would not have needed to come before the House in the first place if this had been done properly.

So, just wrapping up, I do want to reiterate that Labour fully supports this bill, and the sooner it is in place the better, because what we really need to do is protect our most vulnerable children from those who are the worst in our society. Thank you very much.

KANWALJIT SINGH BAKSHI (National): I rise to speak on the Child Protection (Child Sex Offender Government Agency Registration) Amendment Bill. First of all, I would like to acknowledge the Minister for her proactive approach. As soon as the problem was identified, she came to the House to get it rectified, which is the most important thing because we want to ensure that our communities feel safe from sex offenders.

The intent of this legislation was to ensure that a register would be maintained where child sex offenders could be identified, and that could be communicated among the agencies so that all the details of those offenders can be readily available for agencies. The register provides information to a dedicated police unit as well as to Department of Corrections staff, which assists those staff to identify and manage the risk posed by convicted child sex offenders who have been released from custody or who are serving non-custodial sentences or an order in the community.

It has been noted from time to time that unless we have got this information readily available for the authorities, the offenders can reoffend, and we do not want reoffending to happen. When this information is readily available to the agencies, it will ensure that we can keep track of these people who move easily in society. The law also already makes it compulsory for them to inform the authorities of the change in their circumstances. When they move to a new address, or if there is any other kind of change, they have to inform the authority between 48 and 72 hours so that the register can be updated. If we do not have this kind of register or information available, then it will be hard to find the sex offenders who move freely in society, and they can reoffend.

The law governs the release from prison as well as the release conditions. There are complex situations that are dealt with in this law. When the Act was passed last year, it was intended that it would apply to all sex offenders who had been released from prison or who were subject to release conditions when the Act came into force. It also specified that those who had been convicted when the law was passed but who had not been sentenced would also be included in this register.

So it is an error that we need to fix, and with the passing of this legislation in urgency, it will ensure that the register can be maintained up to the requirement and that the clarification is made. I commend this bill to the House.

KELVIN DAVIS (Labour—Te Tai Tokerau): Before I get into the technical parts of the bill, I would just like to retell the story about why I have decided to be a man who stands up and speaks out about sexual violence. When I was the principal of Kaitāia Intermediate School, I heard of 13 instances in 3 weeks where children in the Kaitāia area had been sexually abused. I called a meeting of teachers, principals, and support agencies in the community. There were about 35 to 40 people in the staff room when we had this meeting, and I said: “This is the reason I have called the meeting: 13 instances of sexual abuse in the last 3 weeks.” I have to say that they were not all sexual abuse instances that occurred at Kaitāia Intermediate School, although some of the children were. There was a deathly silence and a bit of fidgeting and then someone finally said to me: “Well, what do you want to do about this, Kelvin? Why have you called this meeting?”. I said: “I don’t know. I just want to blow this issue out of the water. It is unacceptable.”

There was a bit of silence and a bit more fidgeting, and someone finally said: “Well, have you given any thought as to what might fall out of the woodwork and whether we are resourced to deal with this issue?”. I said: “No, sorry. I haven’t really given it that amount of thought, but we’ll adjourn this meeting and we’ll come back in a couple of weeks when I have given it some thought.” But, of course, there are many excuses and many reasons why meetings do not get reconvened and, basically, the issue faded off. I think people were quite happy to not actually have that meeting reconvene. What actually fell out of the woodwork was that the deputy principal at a school 6 minutes down the road was sexually abusing young boys. He is now 50 kilometres away from here—30 to 40 kilometres away from here—in Rimutaka Prison, where he deserves to be.

Also, in November of 2013 when I was enjoying a 2-year weekend from Parliament, not having been re-elected in 2011, I was sitting watching TV when the Roast Busters issue came on. I was sitting there, and our former colleague Carol Beaumont was on one of the news shows saying that this was really unacceptable behaviour by these young men. I thought there and then: “She’s not getting any cut-through. Where are the men in Parliament? Where are all the men in Parliament—the Prime Minister, all the leaders of the parties? Why are we not, as men, or why are they not, as men, jumping up and down about the issue of sexual violence?”. It was there and then, while sitting in my La-Z-Boy at home, that I made the vow that if I ever got back into Parliament, I would be a man to stand up and speak out about sexual violence.

So, having got back into Parliament, we organised the hīkoi from the harbour bridge up to Cape Reinga, walking 440 kilometres in 16 days. Last year we walked seven marathons in 7 days around Kaitāia. Another group walked a marathon around Kaikohe, and another group walked around Ngāti Whātua land just to raise awareness around sexual violence. Sexual violence is one of the greatest inhibitors, if not the greatest inhibitor, of human potential in the country. Therefore, it is essential that we stand up and we do what we can to stamp this rampant disease—for want of a better word—out of the country. Sorry, there are probably better ways to describe it.

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: To the bill.

KELVIN DAVIS: To the bill—we are here debating this bill because there was a mistake made by the Government last year, not some 6 months ago. We should not be here, and we should not be making mistakes that may allow a sexual offender to not be held to account by the law and, in this case, to not be added to the sexual offenders register. I take what the Deputy Prime Minister is saying—that this is not about adding new provisions to an Act. But the reality is that this should all have been addressed the first time around, and here we are, going through this again.

One in three girls in New Zealand is sexually abused before they turn 16, and one in seven boys; I have to make it known that boys also are sexually offended against by both men and women. One in five New Zealand women—young people between 16 and 24—is four times more likely to be sexually assaulted. Sexual offending is responsible for just about every form of mental unwellness going. It is essential that we do not keep coming back into Parliament to fix up mistakes around these sorts of bills—that we get it right the first time.

My heart goes out to anybody and everyone who has been sexually violated in some way, and I just take my hat off to the survivors, who are doing the best they can in the circumstances that they find themselves in. That is why we as politicians, as parliamentarians, have to get this right and we have to do it right and get our laws right at the very start. It is unfortunate that we are here. It is unfortunate that, as my colleague Stuart Nash said, in the previous process somebody, some official, some members of Parliament never picked up the gap in the legislation that would allow some people who have been convicted but are yet to be sentenced for an offence to miss out on being on the register.

I do not intend to speak for much longer, other than to just reinforce what I am saying. We as parliamentarians need to get this right. I urge my male colleagues from across the House to stand up and be counted when it comes to speaking out about sexual violence. Just incidentally, this week is Light It Orange week, 4 to 10 March, which is about domestic violence, and there are elements of sexual violence amongst much domestic violence. I do commend this bill to the House. We do support it. But let us get it right the first time. Kia ora.

MAUREEN PUGH (National): I stand in support of the Child Protection (Sex Offender Government Agency Registration) Amendment Bill. Last year the Government passed legislation that established the child sex offender register. Since the legislation was passed and since the establishment of that register, there have been some concerns raised that it may, in fact, not be providing for the registration of some offenders, as was initially intended. The public’s expectation is that all offenders whom Parliament intended to be registered are in fact registered.

The intention of the original bill, which was passed last year, was that it would apply to all child sex offenders who had been released from prison and were subject to release conditions, as well as to those child sex offenders who had been convicted but not yet sentenced. However, 107 offenders who were intended to be on it have, in fact, come off the register. Those child sex offenders should be on that register, and this amendment bill confirms that.

There are two key parts to this bill. One is that it clarifies that those who have been released from prison but are subject to conditions, such as attending counselling or not being in the company of a child under 16—and the second part of that is that those who have been convicted of this offence before the original Act came into force but who have not yet been sentenced—should be on the register. There are 67 offenders who qualify for that.

There is very little more to say. I am completely in support of this amendment. I congratulate the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Police, the Hon Paula Bennett, on acting so quickly to make Parliament’s intentions clear. I commend this bill to the House.

DAVID CLENDON (Green): When Mr Brownlee, the Leader of the House, put forward the urgency motion earlier, he said the necessity was a matter of the potential, at least, for confusion in the legal interpretation of the primary Act—the Act that is sought to be amended today. He went on to say, if I understood him correctly, that when the primary legislation passed through the House last year, it enjoyed the unanimous support of the House. In that, Mr Brownlee is slightly confused. The Greens actually opposed the legislation.

To be fair, we did support the bill going to the select committee. We supported the bill at its first reading, to go to the select committee. We did that because—I would agree with the points made by Mr Nash and others—sexual offending against children is probably one of the most abhorrent forms of offending in the eyes and hearts of New Zealanders generally. We recognise that. The stated purpose of the primary Act was to make our children safer from people who would predate on them in a sexual way. The Greens entered into that with goodwill and with an open mind, willing to listen to the arguments made by experts, by submitters, and the like. We went through the select committee process, and having heard from those experts, having heard from the communities, and having heard from people best positioned to give a clear, evidence-based analysis of the legislation—the bill as it was then—we determined that in fact the legislation would not make our children safer, and for that reason we opposed it.

I think it is interesting that it has been identified that we are here today, not many months after the bill received the Royal assent, to correct an error. When the primary legislation, the bill as it was then, had its first reading in September 2015, there was some surprise in the House when the Minister—if I recall correctly, Minister Tolley—presented the bill and indicated her intention to send the bill to the Social Services Committee. That genuinely puzzled a number of us, and certainly the Greens commented on it. Again, as I recall, Jacinda Ardern, for Labour, also questioned at some length why the bill had been sent to the Social Services Committee.

The parliamentary website tells us that the Social Services Committee considers matters related to housing, senior citizens, social development, veterans’ affairs, and Work and Income support. We struggled at the time—and we continue to struggle—to understand why the Social Services Committee, with that mandate across those portfolio areas, ought to be considering a bill that was clearly a justice bill. After all, it was imposing penalties, conditions, and the like on people who had offended against children. I am normally far too modest to quote myself, but I will on this occasion.

Hon Jacqui Dean: Oh, go on then.

DAVID CLENDON: Thank you, Jacqui; I will. In the first reading of that bill, I made the point that “it is a genuine concern that committees build up a level of expertise and experience in their area around specific matters of interest. The Law and Order Committee and the Justice and Electoral Committee are accustomed to working on legislation around offending, around courts, around corrections, and with police,”. We expressed concern. I said then: “I really am puzzled as to why you would not send it to one of those committees.” I do wonder. Had the bill—18 months ago, or whenever it was—gone to a more appropriate committee, advised by officials with clear and current expertise in these matters, we might not be here in the House today trying to undo the error that has occurred, or the oversight; call it what you will.

This bill we are looking at today seeks, in effect, to broaden the net. The intent of the Government at the time was to ensure that a certain group of offenders were captured by the provisions of the legislation, that they would suffer the penalties imposed, and that they would be obliged to go on to this register, with all of the implications inherent in that. For that reason, I think that it is worth again looking back to our objections to the original bill, because, in a sense, this is simply compounding what we see as the harm that that legislation will do.

One of our first objections to the primary legislation was that there was very clear guidance from both the regulatory impact statement and from the Attorney-General, in the section 7 New Zealand Bill of Rights Act report, which said that the primary legislation—the Act, as it is now—was actually based on very thin evidence indeed that registers are effective in reducing reoffending and improving public safety, specifically the safety of our children. That was very thin evidence indeed, and that became more apparent through the course of the select committee submissions.

A larger concern, in terms of human rights concerns, is that the Attorney-General’s report found that the bill, as it was prior to becoming an Act, was unjustifiably inconsistent with two sections of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act—those being section 9, the right not to be subject to disproportionately severe punishment or treatment, and section 26 of the same Act, the right not to be punished multiple times for the same offence, and the fact that the bill had some retrospective application of requirements. All of those were deemed at the time by the Attorney-General to be unjustifiably inconsistent with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. And by expanding the catchment, in effect, of the legislation today, I think we are compounding those errors of passing legislation that is unjustifiably inconsistent with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act, as this bill most certainly is.

At the time the Law Society also commented on the efficacy—or otherwise, rather—of sexual offending registers. They pointed out that the literature available identified significant adverse impacts arising from registers, including such things as perpetuating the idea that the most likely offenders against children are strangers—the old “stranger danger” concern or accusation. Undoubtedly, those sorts of offenses do occur, but they are a very small part of the overall suite, if I could call it that, of sexual offending. Sadly, most often sexual offenders against children are, very sadly, known to those children. They are often close family members, people in the neighbourhood, or people who are trusted by the families of those children, and that, of course, makes the offending all the more abhorrent. But the notion that we should put these people’s names on a list and thereby ensure they do not reoffend actually perpetuated the myth that, most often, children were at risk from strangers.

The Law Society went on to say that it re-stigmatised sexual offenders. There were claims made from some quarters at the time that sexual offenders can never be redeemed, can never be cured, and can never have their behaviour altered permanently in such ways that they do not reoffend. That is fundamentally wrong and untrue. There is ample evidence that sexual offenders can resile from that offending, that they can come to a realisation of the danger and the impact of their offending, and that they can make a personal commitment to no longer offend. There are numerous cases where people have made that commitment to themselves and are properly supported within communities—they can become people we can actually trust to live in our communities. The bill that we passed—the Act—completely overlooked the reality that people can actually come back from that offending.

The Law Society at the time also objected to the fact that this legislation sort of creates this imaginary homogenous group of offenders. In fact, sexual offenders, like all other offenders, are individuals. They are unique in terms of the drivers and the reasons they offend, their personal backgrounds, their attitudes, and the like, and to suggest that some sort of blanket rule is going to somehow manage or deal with that offending is simply not based on any evidence that we could find at the time or since then.

The Greens will continue to oppose this amendment legislation, consistent with our opposition to the original legislation. Thank you.

DENIS O’ROURKE (NZ First): I will agree with Mr Clendon on one thing, and that is that the original legislation should have gone through the Justice and Electoral Committee, which does specialise in this kind of legislation. Without intending any criticism of the Social Services Committee, it is not as used to dealing with this sort of legislation as the Justice and Electoral Committee is. I think that if that had been the case, it may well not have been necessary to have this amendment bill here before us today. But that is water under the bridge. We cannot go back and change that. What we do have to do is to put things right.

But I do want to disagree with Mr Clendon on his comments concerning human rights—not because human rights are not an issue here; of course they are. To impinge upon human rights by creating a register for one section of society certainly is a very serious matter. New Zealand First has a long history of protecting the human rights of people of all kinds. But this particular infringement—if I can put it that way—on human rights is actually justified. When it is justified—properly justified—it is always acceptable to limit human rights reasonably in relation to the harm that the group or person may do. So there is a balancing effect to be put in place here, and I think that the original legislation actually does do that. All it does, after all, is create a register to assist the police and Corrections to monitor the people who are subject to the registration. That actually helps the people themselves as much as it helps the community, so I think that the benefits gained, in this case by registration, far outweigh the human rights limitation that will be imposed in the circumstances.

I also want to say this: New Zealand First has an absolutely zero-tolerance approach when it comes to child sex offenders. We will do whatever it takes to make sure that their offending is absolutely minimised, and that is why we supported the original legislation and why we will support this amendment bill. After all, it is only a system of registration. I think it has got the potential to be effective, and even if it is only effective to a small degree, it would still be worth having. We must do all that we possibly can to minimise child sex offending in the community, and a system of monitoring and registration for that purpose is justified. And I do not think there is any good argument why that should not happen. So we do not accept the Greens’ position against registration in the first place. We think it is a good thing and it should happen.

After all, this particular bill only applies to amend the retrospective application of the Child Protection (Child Sex Offender Government Agency Registration) Act 2016 so that all child sex offenders will be registrable as intended under the principal Act. Under that Act, it was intended that registration would be for all offenders subject to imprisonment, to include post-sentence orders relating to qualifying offences and those yet to be sentenced when the Act came into force who would have been registrable offenders if they had been convicted after the commencement of the Act.

It was intended to do all those things, but it has now been revealed—to my surprise, I might say—that that legislation was thoroughly defective and there are, in fact, three groups, which are identified in the bill, and I am not going to go through all of them, that are not covered. They number, we are told, approximately 130 individuals. That is a very serious issue. That is a significant number of people who should be under the Act. So New Zealand First certainly does want the Act amended to correct this. It is important that child sex offenders who are serving a qualifying sentence or are still subject to any conditions or requirements relating to that sentence or were yet to be sentenced for a qualifying offence when the Act came into force on 14 October 2016 must go on to that register.

There is a need to bear in mind that the purpose of the Act is, in the first place, only to provide police and Corrections access to personal information that will make it possible for them to proactively monitor individual child sex offenders’ risk of reoffending while in the community, and it provides an opportunity for the sharing of registered child sex offenders’ personal information with other Government agencies. The point here is that that will assist greatly those agencies to carry out their duties in terms of monitoring offenders in the interests of public safety. So the importance of that cannot be more greatly emphasised—could not be overstated. We are talking about the safety of our children and we are talking only about registration, which is a relatively minor infringement of individuals’ personal rights, which the benefits greatly outweigh.

We must, as MPs, be vigilant to make sure that the law that was intended to operate as in the principal legislation actually does operate in the way it was intended. We found that it does not. This bill is absolutely necessary to correct that, and New Zealand First will therefore have no hesitation whatsoever in supporting it.

JONATHAN YOUNG (National—New Plymouth): Thank you for the opportunity to speak to this bill. The subject matter is one of the most complex matters that our society faces on how to deal with this situation, balancing the concerns of our communities with the rights of people who have been imprisoned for their actions yet want to go on to continue to live in society.

Having these registers is important because it enables our communities to be protected. It also enables those people who are, for whatever reason, offenders or who have been offenders and have the propensity to offend again in the future to have around them the observation and support that would stop them from reoffending and thereby be able to live more freely in our society.

Like a number of MPs—perhaps many MPs—I have had constituents come to me who have become aware of sexual offenders living in their neighbourhood. Without the jurisdiction and the observation and the work of Government agencies to ensure that those people behave and live in appropriate ways, those families often feel that their homes become a prison.

It is important to realise in this very complex area that there is a balancing of rights. This piece of legislation says the young and the innocent should have the balance of rights go their way. What this amendment bill is doing today is picking up a couple of areas that have been identified as needing attention and needing work, because out of all the people on this register—and there are over 1,600 people—there is nearly 10 percent, or 107 people, who are not on this register and ought to be. So what this bill is doing is attending to that. I think, at times, that these sorts of things happen through the passage of legislation, and it is important and imperative for this House to address that today. Thank you.

JAN LOGIE (Green): I rise to take a short call on behalf of the Green Party to again oppose the Child Protection (Child Sex Offender Government Agency Registration) Act, which is now being brought back to fix mistakes that were made previously. I have got to express my frustration with the time in the House being spent on this and also the tone of the debate, as if this is about the human rights of sex offenders versus the human rights of our children to be safe. It is not. It is about what is effective in making sure that we put our resources towards what we know will be effective.

Child sex offender registers—we do not have information that tells us they are effective. What we have here is political grandstanding in covering an intention to protect our children. We have resources being taken away from the frontline work and resources being put into an exercise of window dressing, from my perspective. We have been told that this register will cost $146 million over 10 years, when we are hearing from providers who are trying to work with people who have concerns about their own behaviour—or have already been through a court, to be able to support them to change their behaviour—who are chronically under-resourced and are now being asked to provide the private data of those people, which they are desperately worried is going to prevent them from getting the help that they need. And then we have this register and the time of this House being spent on something that we do not have evidence will work. That is not protecting our kids. That is not what we should be doing.

There were specific points that were brought up through the select committee process around that: that we do not have good evidence internationally where this has been brought in that it has been effective; also, that it will perpetuate the idea that strangers are the danger rather than the most likely and the most common pattern of offending, which is the people we know and within our families—the people who have been convicted through the courts whom we should be concerned about, when we know that we have got a, basically, 1 percent conviction rate in our courts. If we put our attention and our sense of safety there, around knowing those people who are on the register, we are missing the 99 percent.

It is also about treating sex offenders as a homogenous group. The problem with that is not that it is missing the personal nuances of the individual situations but that, actually, New Zealand has done internationally leading work on assessing offenders’ risk based on their risk of reoffending rather than on the type of offence. It is world-leading work because it is actually grounded in evidence, and we know that it will help keep us safe as a society. This completely turns that on its head and goes back to assessing risk based on the type of offence that has been committed, which is not real and is not helpful.

It is not even that we just do not have the evidence for this, but that it is actually going counter to the evidence that we do have of what is going to be effective. We are wasting our time in this House, going backwards on something that, I do believe, everyone in this House is committed to, which is the welfare of children. I really wish that people, including Government members, would just go back to the evidence and put aside the political soundbites for a minute and think about how we can tangibly, practically do the right thing to support our kids. It really is not this legislation.

Particularly, it really does, for me, go back to the resource—particularly when the Law Society told us, when it presented on this, that the outcomes in terms of looking at tracking and protection would be better achieved by allowing judges or the Parole Board to make decisions to impose registration and reporting requirements at the conclusion of an individual’s sentence. That is where the evidence suggested it was warranted, rather than again—which is what this does—just going by the class of offence without any understanding of the dynamics or the risk. Putting $146 million into that is a shame.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): Before I call the next speaker, I just want to remind members from both sides of the House, having listened very carefully to the last two speeches, that we are now discussing the amendment bill. I would ask members to focus on the amendment bill—not general discussions about whether or not the substantive bill should have been passed. This bill and processes around it are OK as the substance of their contributions, but not whether we should have previously passed another bill.

CARMEL SEPULONI (Labour—Kelston): I do want to support some of what Jan was saying, because it is frustrating that we are now back here discussing an amendment to legislation we just recently had in the House given that there was lots of debate on that original legislation. There was lots of frustration for those of us who were on the Social Services Committee at the time. We were thinking that it was not the most appropriate committee for that legislation to be in in the first place. I do wonder whether or not we would be in this position now if it had gone to the right select committee in the first place.

It is interesting that it is the Minister of Police who is pushing for this amendment when it was the Minister for Social Development who dealt with the original legislation. There is a breakdown there, and we in the House have to acknowledge—I think very fairly—that this is reflective of the shambles that that Government is in when it comes to dealing with matters in this House. We should not be back here less than 6 months later, I think, making amendments because a bill was not dealt with appropriately to begin with—mainly, I think, because it was not sent to the right select committee initially.

We did support the original legislation, and we will be supporting the amendment legislation that we have in front of us. We are supporting the amendment legislation because there has been a stuff-up here and it has to be fixed. Essentially, the bill is amending the retrospective application of the 2016 legislation so that all relevant child sex offenders will be registerable under the Act as intended. Specifically, the bill states: “The Act was intended to provide retrospective provisions that, at the commencement of the Act, would provide for registration of all offenders subject to sentences of imprisonment or post-sentence orders relating to qualifying offences, and those yet to be sentenced when the Act came into force, who would have been registrable offenders if they had been convicted after the commencement of the Act.” The additional groups that have been added are “child sex offenders serving short-term sentences (2 years or less imprisonment) who had reached their statutory release date before 14 October 2016”—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): Order! I am going to interrupt the member. Reading the explanatory note of the bill is actually not part of the debate.

CARMEL SEPULONI: OK, sorry—I was leading somewhere, Mr Assistant Speaker. Most notably, on the additional groups that I was touching on, it appears that the National Government failed—in the original legislation—to include many people who were sentenced before the Act came into place, and any child sex offender who was no longer serving their sentence but still subject to release conditions. Release conditions are things like residential restrictions, not being able to go near certain places or associate with certain people, or being able to work only in certain areas—essentially, the conditions that serious sex offenders are on for most, if not all, of their life post-release from prison.

We do support this amendment legislation. I have to reiterate some of the frustrations that the previous speaker—that being Jan Logie—did discuss. The original legislation caused frustrations for many of us in the House because of the fact that we did feel that resource could be spent better in other places to actually address what the legislation’s intention is, which is managing the risk posed by serious child sex offenders and protecting our children from harm. We did feel that $146 million over 10 years could have been spent in better places.

But today we are dealing with an amendment bill. Going back to my original point, I just want to state that we would not be in this position if the Government had sent this bill to the correct select committee rather than sending it to the Social Services Committee, which was not the appropriate place for it to be considered in the first place. And so here we are, back in the House less than 6 months later, making amendments because of mistakes in the bill that were overlooked. Thank you.

IAN McKELVIE (National—Rangitīkei): Well, we do go around the garden on this thing, do we not? It is a pretty simple issue. Of course, the Minister, when she introduced this amendment bill this afternoon, stated that there are no changes to the intention of the original legislation. That is quite clearly the case. We are putting some amendments through because the interpretation of the intention was not necessarily how we wanted it to be. I think that is very simple. It could have been picked up by any member of the Social Services Committee—or, in fact, in the House during the Committee stage or during the readings of the legislation—so I think it is very unfair to blame the Government for that when everyone had the opportunity to have a look at the issue that has now arisen. I have got a great deal of pleasure in commending this amendment bill to the House, and may it get through very quickly.

POTO WILLIAMS (Labour—Christchurch East): I spoke on the original legislation when it came to the House, and I can recall the fulsome debates that we had—and some of them have been relitigated in the House tonight. But there was lots of debate around the necessity for a register and the cost, and, as parties, we were able to articulate our particular positions and why we thought it was important or not to have a sex offender register.

I also recall that, at the time, many of us were quoting a very real experience that was occurring in our community, in that there was a sex offender who had been released into the Māngere area. This was used as an example, to demonstrate the absolute heightened sense of fear and insecurity that those parents felt about the location of that person within their community—within the vicinity, I think, of a school or a preschool at the time.

I bring this up because there is nothing that is more important to us, as members of Parliament, than ensuring the safety of our people. Public safety has got to be one of the most paramount areas of concern to us, and the safety of children is at the top of that particular list. We must ensure that we debate these matters to the satisfaction of the people of New Zealand, so that they feel comfortable and confident that their legislators are getting this absolutely right.

We have heard that the primary legislation as it was passed has meant that there are, in effect, potentially 107 sex offenders who are not eligible to be on the sex offender register. That must cause a great deal of anxiety for some communities—those communities that expressed concern during the discussion of the primary piece of legislation—and we cannot ignore those concerns. We cannot dismiss them, despite the fact that we are back in the House to fix that up, because it actually speaks to the original angst that sat behind the legislation and was expressed by many parties in the House.

So what is it that we are actually doing here today? We are here to fix up that piece of legislation, to incorporate those people who were originally missed out of the original legislation—those sex offenders serving a qualifying sentence who are still subject to conditions or requirements relating to that sentence or were yet to be sentenced for a qualifying offence under the Act. The date of the Act—14 October 2016—is an important feature of that because there were people who were sentenced prior to that date and people who were sentenced after that date who were not captured by the original legislation, which is why we are here today fixing this up. So I just want to reiterate my first point, which is that this is about public safety and ensuring that we capture those 107 offenders who are not currently on the legislation, as we are required to do.

The second point I want to make is that we have argued and debated already in this first reading about why we are actually here in the first place fixing up Government legislation, and whether the Social Services Committee was the most appropriate place for the legislation to be examined. That may or may not be the case, but it does speak to the requirement that we have to examine very closely each and every word, nuance, and piece of text that this legislation is seeking to correct, because it could have the impact of detaining somebody—you know, restricting somebody’s freedom, restricting their ability to be active in the community, as this piece of legislation will do.

So we must actually call upon ourselves to examine how we examine legislation, whether it is in the select committee process or when we are examining legislation as part of the Committee of the whole House. We should actually take some responsibility to ensure that we look at legislation really closely—that is our job—but it also speaks to the suitability for the Minister for Social Development actually being responsible for this piece of legislation, because the original primary legislation actually had three components to it. Not only was it about social development but it was also about the sharing of information between Housing New Zealand and the Ministry of Social Development, and it was also about the impacts of justice and the requirements for the police to monitor people who are on the register. So my point in that is that there were three primary agencies who were involved in the development of the legislation, and I do agree that perhaps the examination should have gone to the Justice and Electoral Committee or to the Law and Order Committee. There is a significant aspect of the bill that sat in that jurisdiction, but there were also the implications around social development and housing within it.

I just want to finish by making a point about urgency. Now that we are in urgency, wanting to correct this piece of legislation, we should actually take the time to make sure that we get this piece of legislation absolutely right. I know there was some talk about truncating the process. We will not be able to actually allow members of the public to examine this. I guess, in many ways, that is kind of appropriate, but I just want to go back to my previous point—that in the examination of the primary legislation something was missed. Not only was it missed, not only are we doing a tidy-up but we are actually inserting clauses that were missed completely. So it is absolutely critical that we take the time during the Committee of the whole House on this piece of legislation to make sure that we get everything in there that we should, so that we are not coming back here with other people—107 sex offenders; I find that number actually quite staggering considering the requirement of the primary legislation. But I am hopeful that we will actually examine this legislation fully and that we are not having to come back and do another fix-up in the future.

SARAH DOWIE (National—Invercargill): I rise in full support of this amendment bill, which is clarifying this House’s intent when it passed the parent Act—the Child Protection (Child Sex Offender Government Agency Registration) Act—and so we should take urgency to correct it. It was always this House’s intent that all sex offenders, where there are conditions to their probation, be included in the Act. This is a public safety bill. The protection of children from these predators is of the utmost importance. Therefore, we must take the time to clarify this House’s intention that those who had already been released from prison and were subject to release conditions when the original Act came into force should be on the register.

Further, this bill clarifies that those who were convicted of a qualifying offence before the original Act came into force but were not yet sentenced should be included on the register. That is so that the specialist register team can keep an eye on those offenders and can monitor their whereabouts, so that we can understand what they are doing.

As a colleague opposite said, this also acts as a deterrent to those child sex offenders when they are based in the community. I took the opportunity to visit Community Probation and Psychological Services, and I talked to some of the probation officers to hear some of their experiences in dealing with those offenders. That was certainly one of the messages that came through—that those offenders feel, after being monitored, that they have a conscience on their shoulders. They are aware that they must stay within the conditions that they are given on their probation, and that, therefore, acts as a deterrent.

As I said before, preventing the harming of children is of the utmost importance, and, therefore, we should take the time to clarify the parent Act. We should take the time to make very clear to the public what we intended: to keep those predators on a register so that they can be monitored. With that, I commend this bill to the House.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the Child Protection (Child Sex Offender Government Agency Registration) Amendment Bill be now read a first time.

Ayes 106

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

Noes 14

Green Party 14.

Bill read a first time.

Second Reading

Hon NICKY WAGNER (Minister of Customs) on behalf of the Minister of Police: I move, That the Child Protection (Child Sex Offender Government Agency Registration) Amendment Bill be now read a second time. The aims of this bill have been well outlined in the first reading, but I will briefly speak to them again. It became apparent in operationalising the Child Protection (Child Sex Offender Government Agency Registration) Act that a small group of offenders whom it was intended to cover may not be able to be put on the register.

I want to make it clear that everyone convicted of a qualifying offence and sentenced to imprisonment since the Act came into force on 14 October last year has been put on the register. This bill only relates to a very small group who, when the Act came into force, were on release conditions or had been convicted but not sentenced. We believe that the public expects that these offenders would be covered by the register, so we are acting with urgency to make Parliament’s intentions clear and remove any doubt that these people are subject to registration.

This bill amends the principal Act to reflect the ongoing retrospective policy intent of the legislation. It is a straightforward amendment. It clarifies those subject to registration under the Act so as to ensure that the original policy intent of the legislation is given effect. I commend the bill to the House.

STUART NASH (Labour—Napier): It was interesting that the Minister, the Hon Nicky Wagner, sort of downplayed what we have here. The Minister who spoke just then said that this is a small change, it is no big deal, and there is nothing to see here—move on. If that is the case, why are we passing the Child Protection (Child Sex Offender Government Agency Registration) Amendment Bill under extreme urgency? As I think I said last time, the last time I remember a bill being passed under urgency in one sitting was when we passed the increases in excise tax on tobacco because we knew the consequences of not doing so would result in market manipulation.

This bill is being passed under urgency, in one sitting, in one go because it is not an inconsequential amendment to an Act; it is absolutely serious. The fact that it has gone from the Hon Anne Tolley through to the Deputy Prime Minister just shows how serious this is. The fact that a number of Government MPs have actually lauded the Minister—and I accept that fact, and I will as well—for saying that as soon as she found out about this she brought this amendment bill to the House because it was so serious. Let us not downplay what we are trying to achieve here. The Minister is a very experienced and capable politician. She knows that what we are doing here is absolutely representing what our communities want to see. There was a fundamental mistake in the original bill that was before this House less than 6 months ago.

The original Act talks about conditional release. As a consequence of that terminology, which is throughout the Act—“conditional release”—it meant that three different types of offenders actually did not come under the auspices of this Act, when they were supposed to. So what we have had to do is change the term “conditional release” in this bill to “release conditions”. So what happened is that “conditional release” meant that if a person had been convicted and had served their statutory prison term before the bill received the Royal assent, they would not be subject to the provisions within the Act.

What we have had to do is say: “Wow, we got this wrong—fundamentally got this wrong.” There is a group of people—and it does not matter whether it is two, 20, 62, or however many; the Minister has outlined that it is over 60—who are not covered by this Act when, in fact, they should be. So throughout this bill the term “conditional release” has been replaced with “release conditions”. What that actually means is that people whose statutory prison sentence expired before the original bill received the Royal assent on 14 October 2016 but who were released on release conditions still come under this bill.

The reason this is being rushed through is that this is the will of the community. No one wants to see, hear about, or know that there are convicted child sex offenders in our community who may not be being monitored. The Green MP Jan Logie stood up and gave a passionate speech around the fact that this is not good and we have not got the evidence. I would disagree with that. I would say that maybe as we assess the impact of this bill, we will develop a data set of evidence that says it is the right thing to do. Maybe we will find out it is not. But what I think we need to do is put processes in place that seek to protect the most vulnerable in our community, and that is our children. That is why Labour is supporting this bill. It is not saying that this amendment bill is the be-all and end-all, because it absolutely is not. It is not saying that we cannot do more as parliamentarians, because absolutely we can. In fact, mental health, no matter what guise it comes under, has been absolutely neglected by this Government. A total of 8,500 prisoners who have an existing mental health issue enter our prison system every single year.

The fact that we are actually debating an amendment bill less than 6 months after the original bill came to this House is just sloppy—it is sloppy. We are taking 6 hours, or however many hours it will take, to pass this bill through the House when we could be debating other stuff, which is, for some people, more important. This is important, obviously, but all this remedial legislation—all this amendment stuff that we are continually debating in this house because of sloppy process—is not right. In fact, I actually think it fails the expectation of what New Zealanders expect of their MPs in Parliament. They do not expect taxpayer money to be spent doing this when it should have been done right in the first place.

I just want to reiterate that we are supporting this bill—Labour does support this bill. We just wish that we were not here debating this, because it should have been done properly the first time. A number of other speakers have outlined a different process that perhaps should have been followed. We are all wise in hindsight, but, again, this is not rocket science. A bill like this that was put up by the Minister of Police should have gone to either the Law and Order Committee or the Justice and Electoral Committee, where officials with the competencies of understanding the complexity of this sort of legislation reside. Instead it went to a select committee that a number of my colleagues and other members have highlighted perhaps did not have the competencies to understand that the legal term “conditional release” did not actually meet the statutory requirement of the bill. So we are back here. Again, this is not rocket science; this is just really sloppy process.

We are supporting this bill with no ifs or buts, but I just hope that in the future the Government starts getting this sort of thing right. I have no appetite for coming here debating a bill that I spoke on 6 months ago that should be out in the community. The community should be safe. The Act should be out there being implemented in a way that we intended 6 months ago. Thank you very much.

KANWALJIT SINGH BAKSHI (National): Thank you, Mr Speaker, for the opportunity to speak at the second reading of the Child Protection (Child Sex Offender Government Agency Registration) Amendment Bill. The previous speaker, Stuart Nash, mentioned that the Government is trying to downplay the importance of this bill. We are not. We understand the importance, and that is why the Minister, the Hon Paula Bennett, brought this bill forward under urgency. We want to ensure that our community is safe and people feel that safety is the priority for this Government.

The two things that this bill has got—the amendments that are in this bill—are that prisoners or convicts who are released on condition will become subject to this bill. What are examples of the conditions? If a convict is released on the condition of attending counselling, if he is going for counselling he is subject to come under this register and his information will be available on the register. The second amendment is that he should not be allowed to have access to children under the age of 16. If the conditions are on his release order, then he becomes subject to this legislation and his information—all the details—is available on that register.

The second clarification that this bill will be making is that if a convict is convicted but has not been sentenced then this register will also hold his information so that the agencies, whether it is Police or Corrections, can have direct access to that information. The previous condition that I mentioned, the first one, will bring 107 more people on to the register, and the 67 convicts who are yet to be sentenced will also be part of this register.

It is very important that the Government is trying to ensure the safety of the community, and this bill, in urgency, will ensure that those errors that have been made will be fixed. This bill went through the robust process of the Social Services Committee. These errors were left out, unfortunately, but today we are fixing them. I commend this bill to the House.

LOUISA WALL (Labour—Manurewa): Tēnā koe e Te Māngai o Te Whare. It is my pleasure to speak on the second reading of the Child Protection (Child Sex Offender Government Agency Registration) Amendment Bill. I did speak on the primary piece of legislation, and I note that the primary piece of legislation was passed on 8 September 2016. So it has not been that long a period of time before we have had to come and seek a remedy of the House—amendment legislation that is incredibly important. It is important whom this law applies to, and that is the essence of why we are here today.

The essence of whom this bill applies to ensures that all those who have committed sex offences—and, actually, the justification for this bill on 15 September 2015, when the Minister introduced the bill to the House, was that in 2014 alone we had 455 offenders who were convicted of child sex offences and, of those, 307 were sentenced to imprisonment, and 294 offenders were released from prison back into the community. So this amendment bill actually now clarifies whom that primary piece of legislation applies to. The reason I read those numbers out is that they are not insignificant, and if we do not get it right in terms of whom the law applies to, then, actually, we do not have a register.

It seems that 107 people who should be on a register are not. The reason I have highlighted that is that the principal legislation was very clear about the requirements of people who were sex offenders—what they had to do. I am going to read out some of that, because they had to, within 72 hours of being released from prison, go to the police and tell the police where they lived, where they worked, what memberships they had, and what their car registration was, and they had to provide all their contact information to the police.

So what this legislation is admitting is that the people whose names should be on the register are not, because we stuffed up the primary piece of legislation. So I think it is incredibly important to note some of the rationale for the legislation, which is about protecting children and mitigating risk. The whole reason we are having a register is to make sure that people who have offended do not offend again.

In fact, the requirements around those offenders are quite—for some of them they are on the register for life. If you have committed a class 1 offence, you are on that register for life. If you have committed a class 2 offence, you are on the register for 15 years. If you are on a class 3, you are on for 8 years. In the Committee stage debate I am going to ask the Minister how many of those 171 people who are not on the register fall into each of those categories—because that is why we have the piece of legislation. That is why we have invested, as a Parliament, $146 million over 10 years to make sure that we address the issue of sex offences against our children.

This piece of legislation is ensuring—and I want to do a little bit of reading, because I think people need to know that what the original bill failed to do to was include many people who were sentenced before the Act came into place on 8 September—or I think it was—

Hon Member: 14 October.

LOUISA WALL: —14 October 2016: any child offender who was no longer serving their sentence and was still subject to release conditions, and any person released from prison where the sentencing judge had put conditions on their sentence. Those conditions were about where they could live, not being able to go near certain places, and not associating with certain people or working in certain areas. We have completely undermined the whole integrity of the legislation by excluding, at this point in time, 107 people. So we are here to rectify this mistake by the Government.

I know a lot of people have talked about the fact that the bill went to the wrong select committee. I want to actually highlight the fact that we are here under urgency and this Government is wanting us to pass this piece of legislation by the end of the day. Where is the due process in that? There is none, and the reality is that we are going to support the legislation because we have to, otherwise those 107 people do not have to comply with the law. They do not have to register, and they do not have to be monitored.

The other intention of the legislation, in establishing the child sex offender register, was about enhancing the communication between agencies. I can actually, to some degree, see why it did go to the Social Services Committee, because two of those agencies are the Ministry of Social Development and Housing New Zealand. The other two are Police and Corrections. This is supposed to be a collaboration across the public sector under the guise of mitigating risk and protecting our children.

I stand here not as a member of the Social Services Committee, which heard the primary piece of legislation—and I again want to reiterate that it is not going to a select committee. No select committee is going to scrutinise this particular bill that we are debating, this amendment bill, which is why, I think, some of us who were involved in the process—because I certainly partook in the Committee stage debate—are highlighting and remembering the 2-year process that we went through to get to where we are today, and why some of us are actually incredibly irate that we have had to fix this stuff-up, this bungle by one Minister and, now, this bill is being introduced to the House under another Minister, which for all intents and purposes would have gone to either the Justice and Electoral Committee, of which I am a member, or the Law and Order Committee.

So I really do not want to highlight anything else, other than that whom this law applies to is incredibly important and that if we do not get it right, then it actually undermines the whole integrity of this piece of legislation. As a Parliament it is great that we can come together and actually resolve the issue, but I do have to say the Government should really look at itself, because our resources, and the time of this Parliament, could be spent debating so many other things. Thank you.

MAUREEN PUGH (National): I rise again in support of the Child Protection (Child Sex Offender Government Agency Registration) Amendment Bill, now in its second reading this afternoon, just to clarify that this bill does not actually introduce new policy. It is simply clarifying and giving effect to the original policy intent of the legislation that was passed last year. There has been some confusion about two aspects of the original bill, which has allowed some offenders who should have been on the child sex offender register to have been removed from it.

The two compartments are those who have been convicted and subject to release conditions—there are 107 of those offenders who have been taken off the register as a result of that confusion—and, also, those who were convicted but not yet sentenced. Of those, there are 67 offenders who qualify in that category. So the intent of this amendment is to clarify for all concerned that all of those offenders should be on the register and will indeed be on the register.

This Government has invested half a billion dollars in its Safer Communities package and part of that includes 74 additional specialist investigators who are targeting the serious offending against our children and our most vulnerable people, and that includes sexual assault and family violence. So this bill clarifies the intent of the original policy and I have pleasure in commending it to the House.

DAVID CLENDON (Green): A couple of speakers have just made the point that this bill seeks to clarify the scope of the retrospective provisions of the primary legislation, and indeed it does that. In so doing, it will increase the number of people who will be subject to the provisions of this bill—the very onerous provisions of this bill. So the reality is that this will increase the blanket nature of the legislation, if you like. More people will be captured by it.

The bill also, in the explanatory note to the amendment bill we are debating now, makes the point that it creates an information stream platform, so that personal information—a great deal of personal information drilling down even to people’s phone numbers, the name of their IT suppliers, and other matters that we would normally consider private—will be available on this register. There are a number of organisations to whom this register will be available: primarily, Police, Corrections, the Ministry of Social Development (MSD), and the Housing New Zealand Corporation.

It is concerning also that there is a sort of catch-all phrase in the primary legislation that says that all of that information, which will now be gathered about more people than was happening up until the passing of this bill, will be available to people for reasons other than the original purpose of this Act if, in the best judgment of some qualified person, it is appropriate to do that in the interests of public safety. There is no definition either in this new amendment or in the primary legislation about what public safety looks like.

The point I would make is that there are a large number of people who will have access to the information, and we are told there will be over 100 people who will be newly admitted to that rather unfortunate roll-call of people who will be named and have their information on this register. I think we can be reasonably assured that Police and Corrections have a bit of a track record in keeping confidential information confidential. It is probably imperfect; few systems, few organisations are 100 percent effective in keeping confidential information private. But I have to say, equally, that those two organisations do it as a matter of course—it is part of their core business, if you like.

The Ministry of Social Development: to some extent, yes, it is always going to have access to people’s private data—quite intimate information, one could say, about incomes, health statuses perhaps, and all the rest of it. It has perhaps not quite as good a record of keeping that information secure. When we get to the Housing New Zealand Corporation I suspect that there is no culture in that organisation of particularly protecting people’s information, people’s data, and we are talking about very, very detailed information about people—just about every aspect of a person’s life once they are added to this register—and of course under this bill there will be more people in that situation.

The likelihood of leaks is almost 100 percent. It is almost inevitable. We did a quick calculation—assisted, as I recall, by the now Hon Alfred Ngaro, the member who gave us some useful numbers—that indicated that in MSD alone something in excess of 10,000 people potentially could have access to this information, and Police and Corrections of course have very large staffs. It is almost inevitable that the information will leak. The consequence of that is significant. We know that not only the offenders themselves then become subject to condemnation through to, potentially, physical violence in the community but, sadly, so too do their families, who are tarred with that unfortunate brush, even in situations where families are doing their very best to take responsibility for their family member who has offended, who are working very hard with that person to get them back, to prevent any further behaviours of the sort that got them into trouble in the first place—trying to redeem them, trying to rehabilitate them.

Nevertheless, when this information almost inevitably leaks, the impact on those families will be significant. Children at school and women and men just going about their daily business in the community, be it shopping or as members of sports teams—whatever it might be; expanding the scope of this legislation, which, effectively, is what this amendment bill does, simply means there will be that many more people and their families subject, potentially, to that form of abuse in the community, unfortunately, and that is not a happy situation. That is not based on supposition; we know from experience internationally, anywhere and everywhere these registers have been incorporated. In some countries, in fact, they are public registers. Mostly there is an attempt to keep them private but, in reality, the contents inevitably do leak and that is a very unfortunate outcome for those people who are subject to them.

The matter of cost has been touched on. Again, with the expansion of the catchment, if you like, the increase through this amendment of the number of people who will be subject to this legislation—it is more and more of the justice dollar that is being spent on, we are told, proactively monitoring these people. There is really nothing in there that is likely to deter, in fact. We know from all the evidence that the best way to spend the dollar in that area—in that justice sector; specifically in the management of sex offenders—is in treatment programmes. That is simply the reality. The amount of money we were given a year or so ago was to the tune of slightly under $150 million as a cost of establishing and running this register. That is an enormous amount of money put alongside the—I will not say trivial—very small amounts of funding and often insecure funding sources that are available for agencies endeavouring to deliver the sort of treatment to offenders that is likely to deter their reoffending and to get them back into our society with a very low-risk, and even, ultimately, perhaps, a zero-risk, profile.

So the so-called clarification of the scope of the retrospective application of this Act will actually increase the mischief—in the way we see it—that potentially will, and very likely will, directly result from the application of this bill, from the provisions of the primary legislation and of this new proposed amendment. Thank you.

DENIS O’ROURKE (NZ First): I want to look, in this second reading speech, a little more into the detail of the bill, but, before doing so, I would like to comment on a couple of things that we have heard the Green Party MPs talk about. I appreciate their point of view. I think it is a point of view that they are entitled to have. It is not one that we in New Zealand First agree with, but they are certainly entitled to it. I think that they have stated very well why they are opposed to this bill, and I want to respond to only two aspects of that.

One is that as I listened, particularly to what Mr Clendon said, it seemed to me that there was an insufficient appreciation that the people we are dealing with here are not normal, ordinary, everyday people. They are people with problems; they are people who need to be dealt with differently from other people for that reason. I think that, by implication, what the Green MPs seem to be saying is that the standards that apply to the community generally must be maintained in every respect in terms of those people who are in that position. I do not think that is actually possible. They are people with significant problems. They are people who need monitoring and who need support, and if we do not do that, I think it is not going to be good either for them or for the potential danger that they represent to public safety. I think that we all do understand what public safety means in this context; I think we understand that very well. That is one thing.

The other thing I want to comment on is that if there is no register, then I do not see how it is possible that those people can continue to be identified for the purposes of monitoring. I would agree with one thing that Mr Clendon said, which is that we should be concentrating on treatment for those people. I do not disagree with that; I think that is fine, but I also think that those who are living in the community certainly need monitoring as well. But without a register you cannot actually do anything much at all. I think that it is good, basic common sense. There is a need to have basic information. Who these people are and what their circumstances are is necessary information, if we are actually going to have a chance of doing anything at all in this area.

I want to move on, as I said, to some of the detail of the bill. It is true that it is not just a correction; it is an extension of the terms of the original legislation to a wider group of people. I particularly want to refer to clause 7, which replaces clause 1 of schedule 1. New clause 1(1) of schedule 1 “extends the retroactive application of the Act to persons whose sentence expiry date has passed (in relation to a sentence of imprisonment for a qualifying offence) but who are still subject to release conditions”. I refer in particular to new clause 1(1)(b), which says: “This clause applies to a person who, on 14 October 2016, is, in respect of a qualifying offence,— … (b) serving, on parole or on release from custody on release conditions, the sentence of imprisonment that was imposed for that offence;”. That is what was not in the original legislation, and those people—probably a relatively small number in relation to the whole—will now be included.

I also wanted to refer to paragraph (e)—so, just reading new clause 1(1) again—“This clause applies to a person who, on 14 October 2016, is, in respect of qualifying offence,— … (e) no longer serving the sentence of imprisonment that was imposed for that offence, but still subject to release conditions following the sentence expiry date of that sentence.” So these people would still be subject to conditions. Obviously, if there are going to be conditions, they have to be monitored, and, if they have to be monitored, it seems to me that there has to be a register; otherwise, the whole thrust of the legislation really does not make sense.

Furthermore, we see that new clause 1(3) “makes the same clarification in relation to corresponding registrable offenders under section 8.” If you look at section 8, which is amended by clause—I am just looking for that; just give me a moment there. Section 8—yes. [Interruption] No, I am just getting the right page. Anyway, section 8—here it is—clarifies that “the definition of corresponding registrable offender turns on sentencing or being required to report, not on conviction”, and that it is the conviction that is the precondition. I think that is a very important change. That is a clarification, but it also does extend the number of people to whom this particular legislation will apply.

I think that when you do actually look at the detail, you can see that this bill really is essential. Otherwise, there are, in fact, potentially three gaps where people would fall through the cracks, and that is not what was intended in the original legislation. We are not here to debate the merits of the original legislation—we are here to debate this bill and whether it does what it is claimed to do. I think it does. I think the clauses that I have read out demonstrate how there are gaps and how this particular bill plugs those gaps and fixes the legislation.

Although it is a bit sad that we have not had the time to put this through a select committee process, it does not really take very long when you read it—it is a relatively small bill—to see what it will do and why it is necessary, if, in fact, the whole legislation is really required in the first place. We in New Zealand First, as I said in my first reading speech, do believe in this legislation, and, therefore, we do think it is most important that this amending bill be passed tonight, because it is urgent, it does need to be done quickly, and those gaps do need to be filled. For those reasons, again, New Zealand First will have no hesitation in voting for the bill.

JONATHAN YOUNG (National—New Plymouth): I just want to acknowledge the previous speaker. I think he has a good grasp of the intent of the purpose of this bill. I cannot quite understand, and still do not, why the Green Party has objections to it. Just briefly, how the register works: there are 1,659 people on the register as at 25 January this year, so there are a substantial number of people whom this applies to. However, there are 107 child sex offenders who ought to be on this register, as intended by the legislation, but are not. That is a substantial number of people, and this bill is to ensure that those who are intended to be on the register are.

By gathering information, authorities are able to keep track of child sex offenders while also being alerted to any changes in their circumstances. Agencies continually gather updated personal information, which can then be assessed and analysed to determine whether reoffending is more likely to take place, so that the necessary action can be taken. This is all intended to be preventative, not punitive. It is to protect communities and also to put the necessary support around those sex offenders who have come out of prison or who may be, in fact, on a non-custodial sentence.

All registered child sex offenders are required to report to the police within 72 hours of their release from prison, or after receiving a non-custodial sentence if directed to register by a judge. They need to provide a range of information including fingerprints, photographs, aliases, addresses, workplace and employer, car registration, internet details, and passport details.

The register is not open to the public, but in some cases where there is a threat to the safety of children, information may be released to a third party, such as the parent or guardian of the child, or a teacher or caregiver responsible for a child. The reason why it is not made public is that a public register would increase the risk of vigilantism and have the potential to drive offenders underground, where authorities would have no information on them and would not be able to manage and assess their risk.

As I said before in my first reading speech, this is one of the most complex areas of justice regarding our communities, and I believe that this bill lands it in the right place, and we are ensuring that.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): This is a split call, and I am calling Jan Logie—5 minutes.

JAN LOGIE (Green): I rise to take another short call on this amendment bill. In my first speech I outlined some of our concerns with the initial legislation. I will try to keep this speech a little bit more focused on this bill, while addressing some of the views that have been brought up by other members. What we are being told is that this bill is to clarify the original intent of the legislation and that as it was drafted there has been some ambiguity over three different categories of child sex offenders: those serving short-term sentences who have reached their statutory release date before 14 October and had a sentence expiry date after the 14th and were subject to release conditions, offenders on long-term or short-term sentences of imprisonment that reach their expiry date before 14 October 2016 and were on release conditions at that time, and child sex offenders who were convicted of a qualifying offence before 14 October and sentenced to prison after the 14th or sentenced after the 14th to a non-custodial sentence and ordered by the court to be placed on the register. We are told that it is about the intent.

I did not sit on the initial select committee, but I did follow this quite closely, and I also have not actually heard exactly why we need to be passing this bill under urgency. I understand the fact that we would not want to be wasting more of Parliament’s time on something that has so recently been covered in a select committee and that so much resource went to, but I am not actually, still, quite sure of the urgency. If it is a matter that some people have been on the register where, legally, there was no justification or legal grounds for them to be on that register, and it is this House protecting the Government from appeals on that basis and possible calls for compensation, then I would be interested in hearing that, or if it is a matter of making sure that the time of the House is spent efficiently, then I would also like to hear a very clear rationale for that.

It has been raised by other members that it is possibly a result of the legislation having been sent to the Social Services Committee that we are back dealing with this. There were some questions at the time as to why this did not go to the Law and Order Committee, where there is a certain expertise around sentencing and those related issues. My understanding was that it went to the Social Services Committee because we had done the inquiry into specialist services for sexual violence, which the Greens had initiated. That certainly gave us a lot of information about what we need to do as a society to address sexual violence and to reduce the level of offending in our country, but I would say to this House that a sex offender register was not anywhere in those discussions. Nobody was suggesting it as a good idea, at all, in that very in-depth inquiry, which had almost a thousand submissions. So the Greens have opposed the initial legislation, and we continue to oppose it because this is an extension of that initial legislation.

I would just like to address specifically one of the points made by a previous member from New Zealand First who was saying that we in the Greens do not seem to recognise the potential danger of child sex offenders and the fact that they are not normal and that they do need monitoring. I think that there is a very real danger in that kind of statement of creating the sense, again, that all child sex offenders are of the same type and are not rehabilitatable, and that actually flies in the face of all the evidence. There are very different categories of offenders, and the more we create a stigma and create them as “other”, then, actually, the less likely it is that people will come forward voluntarily to get help. We know that that is actually what we need to be driving towards, because so few cases make it to court, so it is a problem.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): I call Jenny Salesa—5 minutes.

JENNY SALESA (Labour—Manukau East): Thank you for this opportunity to make a speech on the Child Protection (Child Sex Offender Government Agency Registration) Amendment Bill. I think you will find agreement from most members of this House, because protecting our children is absolutely the right thing for all of us to be doing. As parents and as caregivers—as a mother of two young daughters—we usually do whatever it takes to protect our children. Indeed, it is crucial to manage any risks posed to all of our children, especially risks posed by convicted child sex offenders. This bill we are debating today is supposed to manage the risks and harm that might possibly befall our young children in the community—risks that might be posed by convicted child sex offenders who have finished their sentences, as well as those who are serving their time out in the community.

We know from coverage in the media that there have been many, many cases where convicted child sex offenders are sent out into the community, and some of them—in South Auckland and Māngere, specifically—have been placed right opposite schools. There are some out in my area, as well, who have been placed right next door to various families.

It is unfortunate that this simple measure with such a large impact has been botched up and we are here today debating this bill in urgency in order to ensure that the law works properly. Due to faulty drafting, the principal Act, which was passed in October of 2016, has meant that some of the offenders who were meant to actually be captured by the register may not be registrable, which is why we are debating this under urgency. Labour does not have a problem with Government agencies sharing information. However, we do have a problem with shoddy legislation like this, which requires urgent fix-ups. It is what we are having to spend a few hours today debating.

One of the non-governmental agencies—just yesterday, actually—referred to my office for me to go and check out a boarding house. This is a boarding house that is not even, in my opinion, safe to walk into. You walk up to the front door and you cannot even walk up and knock on the front door, because the front door itself has been taken down and made into a plank so that it is safe for you to walk into the building. These are the sorts of boarding houses that a lot of our convicted folks are sent out to. There are seven different individuals living in this particular place, not just in the house but in sheds outside, as well as in caravans.

Labour supports this bill because it is absolutely the right thing to do. However, we want to make it absolutely clear that mistakes in drafting legislation such as this—potentially very serious ones—are not OK, and the public should be made aware of that. Thank you.

IAN McKELVIE (National—Rangitīkei): My very brief contribution to the second reading of this bill will primarily concern the need for some urgency around correcting, I suppose, mistakes that from time to time occur in the drafting of legislation anywhere. That is not unusual—well, I suppose it is comparatively unusual, but it is certainly not completely unusual for that sort of thing to have happened in this House over the last many, many years. But the need for some urgency in correcting this, in my view, relates to the fact that when you have got a piece of legislation that is intended to deal with a set of circumstances and it does not do it, then it is urgent that we recover that position, and that is, in fact, what this bill is doing. It is a very simple piece of legislation. It does not change the intent of the policy or the intent of the legislation—well, it does change the intent of the legislation somewhat, but I think it is a common-sense bit of legislation. I commend it to the House.

CHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka): I am very happy to rise and say that I do support the legislative provisions of this bill. I do not support them going through all stages under urgency today. It is important to remember that the provisions of this bill apply retrospectively. They would continue to apply retrospectively whether the bill is passed today, whether the bill is passed in 3 or 4 weeks’ time, or whether the bill is passed in 6 months’ time. Is there a degree of urgency to ensure the law operates as intended? Yes, there is. But that does not prevent the bill from being given the scrutiny that it deserves so that we do not end up back here again in another few months to amend another mistake.

Lack of scrutiny and Parliament not doing its job appropriately is why we end up with so much legislation to fix up mistakes that were unintended. The original bill clearly did not get the scrutiny that it deserved and, therefore, we are back here amending the legislation, and we are amending it by not giving the amendment the scrutiny that it deserves. I think—

Hon Ruth Dyson: So what’s likely to happen?

CHRIS HIPKINS: So what is likely to happen? We could well end up back here again.

The important thing to remember, as I said, is that this legislation will apply retrospectively. So let us say that today the Government introduced it for its first reading and said that there is a degree of urgency to get this legislation in so that the original law could work as intended, and the Parliament, through its processes, as it has in the past, agreed to a very shortened select committee process so that the bill could be adequately scrutinised—let us give it 2 weeks—and the bill then came back to the House after 2 weeks and went through the remaining stages of a second reading, a Committee stage, and a third reading, in accordance with the regular processes of the House. It would make no difference whatsoever to when the bill would take effect from, because it is retrospective legislation. But it would mean that it got some proper scrutiny so that we minimise the chances that we would be back here again, doing this all over again.

The problem with rushed legislation is that when you have only a few hours to look at it and decide which way you are going to go on it, and pick up any errors that might be in it, you do not know what you do not know and therefore we are going to vote in favour of this bill because we support the intent of it, and we support what we have been told about what it will do. But we actually, as parliamentarians, cannot say, hand on heart, that we have had time to consider all of the ins and outs and all of the implications and get all of the feedback from the people who might work with this piece of legislation, to ensure that it does do what it is intended to do.

So this amendment, to fix up a mistake in a primary Act, or a primary bill, is now going through even less scrutiny than the bill with the mistake in it went through. So what is to say we are not going to end up creating more problems? There is no guarantee of that.

I think this bill should go through, but it should not go through under the process that the Government is pushing it through. I think it says everything about this bill that the Minister who was in charge of the original bill, Anne Tolley, is not in charge of this bill and is not speaking on this bill to fix it up the mistake that she made in the original legislation.

I think that the mistakes made by the Government and the Government’s desire to get those out of the way and avoid embarrassment as quickly as possible are not good reasons for truncating the parliamentary process. If this bill is as uncontroversial and as simple as the Government claims it is, then it would sail through a regular process without too much difficulty. But it does not need to be going through under urgency, because the urgency will have absolutely no impact on the practical effect of the bill because the provisions in it are retrospective.

Retrospective legislation is something that I also have some uncomfortableness with, but in this case I think it is justified because it is about making sure that information that the Government already holds on offences that have already taken place and have already been appropriately dealt with is taken into consideration, to keep children safe.

Ultimately, on the balance of weighing up everything, I would say we should certainly err on the side of doing things that are going to keep children safe. I do not think that children will be any less safe as a result of this bill being properly scrutinised by a select committee over a period of a couple of weeks than they would be if this bill goes through under urgency today. I support the bill, I support the provisions in the bill, but I do not support the process the Government is using to get this bill pushed through the House.

BARBARA KURIGER (National—Taranaki - King Country): This is just a short call on the Child Protection (Child Sex Offender Government Agency Registration) Amendment Bill. The amendments are being introduced today to make it clear that the registration requirements apply to all child sex offenders who were intended to be on the register when it came into force on 14 October 2016. It is about protecting children from harm. It is my pleasure to commend this bill to the House.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the Child Protection (Child Sex Offender Government Agency Registration) Amendment Bill be now read a second time.

Ayes 106

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

Noes 14

Green Party 14.

Bill read a second time.

In Committee

CARMEL SEPULONI (Junior Whip—Labour): I seek leave to take all provisions as one broad-ranging debate.

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

Parts 1 and 2, and clauses 1 to 3

POTO WILLIAMS (Labour—Christchurch East): I am pleased to take a call in this Committee of the whole House on the amendment bill to correct a piece of legislation that was passed only in October of last year.

I have got a specific question that I would like to ask the Minister in the chair, the Hon Paula Bennett, and that question is: will this amendment actually correct the legislation so that the 107 offenders who have been excluded by the original primary legislation will now be captured by the amendment? Will they now actually become eligible for the sex offender register? Why I ask that question is that during the first and second readings of this amendment bill we were very clear that we were concerned that we had to come back to amend the piece of legislation so soon after it was originally adopted by the House. There were some concerns that the original promoter of the bill and the original select committee were not entirely appropriate and perhaps equipped to deal with the technical aspects of the legislation, given that some very smart legal people have, since the introduction of the primary legislation, managed to find this loophole and, I presume, managed to get the people whom they were representing off the register or to become ineligible to be part of the register. So I am really hoping that the Minister will be able to answer that question.

We are very concerned about the truncated nature of the process, in that we want to make sure that we get this amendment absolutely right. The primary role of legislators of course is around public safety, and the safety of our children is absolutely paramount, and the child sex offenders register has some real resonance in the community. Many parents expressed some real concern, particularly during the debate on the primary legislation, and their fears could be allayed by the introduction of the register. Then we find that no sooner has the legislation come into force, we have found some fault with it.

We would want to ensure that we get it right. It is right and proper that we are in urgency to conduct this amendment, but we want to ensure that we can allay the fears of members of the public, parents in particular, and particularly those of, I think, Hutt South and Māngere, who expressed concerns when sex offenders were released into their communities—that they would be monitored appropriately.

We know that in the primary legislation there were certain conditions with regard to the release of sex offenders. But I would like to be assured, if the Minister has got the information, that this will make sure that those 107 offenders who were excluded from the primary legislation, due to the technicality around release conditions and conditional release and the date of sentencing—that this issue will now be resolved and they will actually be eligible to be part of the register. Thank you.

Hon PAULA BENNETT (Minister of Police): Thank you to that member, Poto Williams. The Police have informed me that the 107 will be on the register within 48 hours of this bill passing through; hence the urgency for tonight. I heard previous speakers talking about processing, about whether or not this should have gone to select committee. I actually considered that a lot because I do respect the process of this House and the process of all MPs and the public getting to look at legislation. It was because I am not changing the intent of the legislation at all. That was debated somewhat, and I get that you have got a slightly different argument, in that you are saying that, actually, it just gives it that level of scrutiny. But I felt that it had been right through that. Trust me, this is one mistake—this is not a Minister’s finest moment, to have to be standing up in the Chamber and changing something.

The reason that we are back here so quickly after the legislation had been passed and the Act put in place is purely because of that retrospectivity. So you will not be back again, because it is that one particular, if you like, unique group that is causing the problems for them being put on to the register—that being around that retrospectivity. So everybody who has committed these offences and been sentenced since 14 October is on the register. I am horrified to have to say that it is hundreds of people. So they are on the register and they are going through all of that process. There is this group that has been questioned, they were questioned legally, and it came down to technical wording. As I say, they will definitely be put on to the register. That is the whole purpose of us being here.

To be quite frank with the Committee, I got advice that said I did not have to do this—I could have left them off the register, if you like. It was my opinion as Minister—and I do want to clarify, actually, while I am there, as well, that this has been passed to the Police from the Ministry of Social Development because that is the best place for the register to sit and for it to be owned; hence me being the Minister fronting up today to do this.

But it was absolutely, in my opinion, the intent of this Parliament—and as a consequence of that, the intent of the public—that those 107 are on the register. So there was no question for me about coming here and fronting up and getting that fixed, so that they have the extra monitoring that goes along with being on the register. That is why we are here today. That is why I am putting the bill through under urgency. That is why I did choose not to go to select committee, because I think—well, I know that we are not changing the intent, and, as such, I did not think it needed that level of debate, and that this would do.

CARMEL SEPULONI (Labour—Kelston): I will take just a really short call because I have a couple of questions for the Minister too. The Minister has just said that the register is best placed with her ministry and what her portfolio overlooks—so the Justice and Electoral Committee?

Poto Williams: It went to the Social Services Committee.

CARMEL SEPULONI: No, but it is with the Justice and Electoral Committee now. So she is saying that this register is best placed with the Justice and Electoral Committee. I just want to know when the Government gained that realisation, because, I mean, the whole original legislation went through the Social Services Committee. I would also be really interested to hear from Minister Tolley—given that she was responsible for seeing the original legislation through—to find out what the reasons were for the fact that there were oversights with regard to the original legislation, and now we are back here less than 6 months after it was introduced to amend that. I would like to know from Minister Tolley why that is the case, rather than the Minister now who is taking over.

When was the realisation gained? Was it gained once the mistakes were discovered—that perhaps the Social Services Committee was not the best place? Because it really did take the Government quite a while to work that one out. And yes, definitely, I would like to see Minister Tolley in the chair as well to respond to some of the questions here, given that she was responsible for the original legislation. So will we be seeing Minister Tolley in the chair tonight? That would be, I think, very worthwhile for this Committee of the whole House.

Hon RUTH DYSON (Labour—Port Hills): I share the frustration that has been expressed by my colleagues, not in terms of the substance of the original legislation, although it is very contentious as you are dealing with a series of finely balanced arguments in terms of the registration of child sex offenders. But that is not the argument that we are having now—that legislation has passed. The problem with it was that it was not done in a careful and considered way. I am not surprised that Minister Tolley is not taking a call, or has not taken a call so far, in this part of the debate, because I think she will be feeling pretty—

Carmel Sepuloni: Embarrassed.

Hon RUTH DYSON: Embarrassed I think would be a fair word. The fact that she has got the Hon Paula Bennett to front up on her behalf is very interesting, but the fact is undeniable that, actually, it was shonky work, it was careless work, and the Social Services Committee was not supported well enough by the Minister to get this critical bit of information right.

Instead of fixing it in a proper way and instead of allowing due process so that it could go to the select committee, and members of the select committee could hear advice from the officials, who are the ones who have no doubt picked up this error, and members of the public, perhaps, could have an opportunity to have a say—it is not on the original policy intent; it is just fixing a flaw, fixing a mistake, in the legislation.

We could have, of course, as one of my colleagues mentioned earlier, put the implementation date from the time of the introduction of the bill so that the consideration at select committee and proper rigour of parliamentary scrutiny would not have impacted the implementation date. The outcome would have been exactly the same and what we were trying to achieve would have been exactly the same, but two other things would have happened—if the Minister and her colleagues had agreed to a proper process.

The first is that we would have had time to consider the concern and the wording and the proposed fix properly, instead of the whole process being done in one go. No members of the public have been able to speak to us and there was very limited opportunity to get the officials to be able to respond. It is entirely at the whim of the Minister, who is not often inclined to get on her feet and take a call and answer questions from members during the Committee process—I have noticed that; she just closes down pretty well. So our access to the actual people who know what they are talking about, the advisers on this bill, is totally denied, except at the discretion of the Minister.

The second thing that would have been achieved if a proper process had been undertaken is that Parliament would have been shown the respect that, I feel, is due. Members of Parliament would have been able to contribute to this legislation in the manner that is ordinarily the case. The only reason for taking something through all stages under urgency is if somebody is going to gain from it by having advanced notice—a personal benefit, which we would not consider appropriate—or if the intention of the legislation could be undermined unless it was taken through all stages under urgency. Neither of those fit the bill. As I said, the implementation of the legislation that we are considering now could have been from the date of introduction, and we still could have taken it through a proper process.

I remember a former Minister of Health taking legislation through all stages under urgency in this way. That bill was even worse than this one. That bill was to—

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Order!

Hon RUTH DYSON: —make sure that a narrow group of family caregivers received payment.

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Order! Back to this bill.

Hon RUTH DYSON: I am giving an example of when urgency is actually needed, which it clearly is not for this legislation.

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): No, no, I just ask the member to concentrate on the content of the amendment, and not bring in other bills, which, although they may be interesting, are not part of what we are debating.

Hon RUTH DYSON: Thank you, Mr Chairperson—extraordinarily competent guidance. Even though this is a wide-ranging debate, it is clearly not that wide ranging. The point that I was making was that using the process allowed by Parliament to put a bill through all stages in one go should be saved for cases when it is actually necessary, not when it is convenient for the Minister to sweep it under the table, to not allow proper process, to deny members of Parliament access to answers to their questions from officials, which every member of Parliament knows is a vital part that we normally do at a select committee. So although I support the outcome of this, I certainly do not support the process.

DAVID CLENDON (Green): I will take just a short call on this. It occurs to me, in part following from a previous speaker, that the work we are seeking to do in this Committee of the whole House to interrogate the actual detail of this legislation is exactly the sort of work that should, and ought to, be done at a select committee. Perhaps I was not listening carefully enough, but I have not heard a compelling reason about the haste for this legislation.

People may not appreciate that the first Opposition parties saw of this bill was at around 10.30 this morning. Immediately after question time this afternoon we were obliged to debate it to endeavour to make some sort of useful and positive contribution to what is not an overly complicated bill, but I think the point needs to be made that this should be following a proper process, and I have heard no compelling reason for the urgency that has been applied. The fact that we are correcting a mistake—a serious mistake, apparently—made in the primary legislation and are doing it under urgency is almost guaranteed to compound the mistake. Sir Geoffrey Palmer quite recently made the point that—in fact, he expressed the view that this Parliament passes too much legislation and that, therefore, it is done in haste and, therefore, errors are likely to occur.

To come to some of the detail, Part 2, particularly, of the bill talks about retrospective application, and it talks about the people, the individuals, to whom these clauses will apply. Specifically, it seeks to capture those who were in a particular set of circumstances on 14 October 2016, whether they were serving a sentence for a qualifying offence, they were on parole subject to some release conditions, or, indeed, they were subject to an extended supervision order or an interim supervision order, or even those few cases where they were subject to a public protection order. So what we are talking about here, effectively, is a class of persons—a group of people.

Again, as I have referred to in the earlier readings, this is a very blanket sort of catch-all approach. It does not get down to the individual offenders. It does not consider individual risk profiles of individual offenders, and, to us, that is fundamentally wrong. The fact that people have committed a particular offence certainly is an indicator that they are capable of committing that offence and that they may be capable of committing that offence again, but it makes absolutely no differentiation. It is a fact that person X was convicted on a particular day of a particular offence. They served a sentence or are in the process of serving one. Therefore, they are deemed to be at risk of reoffending and, therefore, they must appear on this register, which has significant implications for their future—for their options in life, frankly.

We would put it that a much better amendment to this bill would be to revert to what was proposed in the course of developing the primary legislation, which was that, yes, undoubtedly, there are individual people who, at the completion of their sentence, are still deemed to be people at high risk of reoffending and who therefore create a risk in the community to our most precious—to our children. Those are the people whom we need to have some security around. Those are the people who ought to be on a form of register so that we can keep a very, very close eye on those people. But, unfortunately, by establishing these classes of people, this amendment bill sort of perpetuates the notion that a person who has committed a particular offence is therefore almost certain to reoffend, and therefore must be subject to the provisions of this register, which are intrusive.

Would it not make a great deal more sense to establish—if one must—a register, but have people put on that register only if, in the judgment of a judge or, indeed, of the Parole Board, at the completion of their sentence those people still constitute a risk? These provisions are saying, effectively, that we are expressing a view that whatever might have happened in the course of that person’s sentence and whatever rehabilitative or whatever treatment programme they have been to, we are assuming that they are actually not working. Nevertheless, these people still represent a very high level of risk and, therefore, must by default be put on to this register, with its very, very intrusive provisions in terms of people’s lives.

KELVIN DAVIS (Labour—Te Tai Tokerau): I agree entirely with the member from the Green Party in that we were given this bill early this morning and we have had little opportunity to really digest what these changes to the legislation mean. I have got the Act here, and I am reading section 8 of that Act. It says: “A corresponding registrable offender is a person who has been convicted of a corresponding offence in a foreign jurisdiction and,—(a) in respect of that offence, has been sentenced to imprisonment; or (b) as a consequence, has been required to report”—and it goes on. That has now been changed to say a corresponding registrable offender is a person “who, as a consequence of a conviction in a foreign jurisdiction for a corresponding offence,” and “has been sentenced to imprisonment; or (b) … has been required to report in that jurisdiction information”—it goes on.

Really, we have not had time to sit down and really work out exactly what the difference is between the Act as it stands and the changes that are being recommended here. There is wordsmithing, there is a change of verbs and adverbs and all sorts, but, really, no one has had an opportunity, certainly not from the Opposition side of the House, to sit down and digest what these changes actually mean and whether they are actually going to address the problem that we are trying to solve. We really do not know. We have not been able to really sit down in our party, and those of us talking on this debate asked: what does this actually mean, and are we going to address the actual problem?

If I take section 9 of the Act, it says—this is “Court may make registration order”—“(1) If a court convicts a person of a qualifying offence and imposes a non-custodial sentence in respect of that offence, the court may order that the person must be placed on the register and must comply with the reporting obligations of this Act.” That is going to be changed to: “If a court imposes on a person a non-custodial sentence in respect of a conviction for a qualifying offence, the court may order that the person must be placed on the register and must comply with the reporting obligations of this Act.” Really, again, it is just another case of moving words around on the page, but are they actually going to make a difference, and what difference is that all going to make?

In Part 2, the new provisions replace the term “conditional release” with “release conditions”. How that actually escaped the attention of everybody when the Act was passed is quite amazing. I mean, “conditional release” means release with certain circumstances before you can be released. “Release conditions” is something totally different. In my understanding, they are the conditions that somebody has imposed on them after they have been released.

It goes on to clarify that the Act applies to persons released from prison but yet to reach their sentence expiry date. We just have not had time to digest what it actually means. I think it does a disservice to the House that we are going through under urgency trying to work out exactly what on earth it is that we are trying to change. We all agree that we want to keep children safe, but I think, just as a matter of respect—because we do support the bill—we should have just been given a bit more opportunity and a bit more notice that this was going to come up so that we could actually get in behind it. We probably would have tried to truncate the whole process, but, because of the lack of respect towards the Opposition, we are just saying: “Well, hang on. We need to give this the attention, and we need to go through all the stages that we are going through in urgency here.”

This should never have got to this stage. It should have been dealt with the first time that the legislation went through the House. Child sex offenders—it is too serious an issue for us to make the mistake first time around. Hopefully, we will not come back in another 6 months and try to change something again because we have not had the opportunity to sort it out this time.

POTO WILLIAMS (Labour—Christchurch East): I too express my colleagues’ concern for the lack of time to actually fully understand the implications of this amendment bill—I presume this is the feeling that my colleagues have. We were led to believe that the bill was actually minor and technical, in that it was about the sentencing date and also about the phrase “release conditions” as opposed to “conditional release”, and, my colleague Kelvin Davis has already explained, the interpretation of those particular phrases. But when you look through the legislation, Part 1 and Part 2, you actually see that there is a little bit more going on than just those two things that we were led to believe we were tidying up.

We have got amendments in clause 5, which clarify the definition of “corresponding registrable offender”.

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

POTO WILLIAMS: Before we broke for dinner, I was talking about the Opposition having received the bill at kind of fairly short notice, and the idea that there were actually a couple of things that we needed to fix up in the primary legislation, principally the difference between “release conditions” and “conditional release”, and the whole expiry date for sentencing. But then we got the bill and see that there is a whole lot more that we need to actually consider. So I am a little concerned that we are actually being told that we are kind of making small but useful amendments to ensure we capture the 107 who are not currently eligible to be on the child sex offender register but yet, when we look through this, actually there is quite a bit of work that we are fixing up here.

I think I want to concur with my colleague Kelvin Davis when he said that perhaps we should have been given a little bit more time to actually examine this fully. When I have a look, I see that not only are we looking at release conditions and sentence expiry date in clause 4, but then we are also looking at who is a corresponding registrable offender, and whom the court may take a registration order from. We are also looking at the retrospective application of the legislation. Then further on in Part 2, I think, we are also looking at reporting obligations and various other applications. So this is actually quite significant.

When we think about the Social Services Committee’s process around this, the select committee was looking at things like “Is it appropriate to actually have people on a sex offender register?”. They were looking at vastly different requirements to what we are now considering. So, yes, I do agree that the Minister of Police is now responsible for this piece of legislation, but it is quite a different beast from the original piece of legislation that came before the select committee.

I am concerned that we actually are not going to be given sufficient time to examine the implications of this fully, and I would actually like it if the Minister has a few minutes just to perhaps give me some comfort that the particular amendments, particularly those that apply to Part 2, because it is quite a lengthy part of the bill—that actually we are going to be satisfied that we have got this absolutely right. I know I did make a plea in my previous call on this, but I am looking for some comfort that we are going to be absolutely sure that we do get everything we need tidied up for this, and I am sure the Minister has got some information that she can provide to the Committee on this. Thank you.

CLARE CURRAN (Labour—Dunedin South): So I have a couple of questions for the Minister in the chair, because I am quite confused about some of the time lines relating to the changes in this bill that is before us today that we are now in Committee on, under urgency, which is essentially to fix up some gaffes in the drafting of the legislation that passed in October last year. On the record, Labour is supporting this bill. We supported the bill in October. We can see the logic for it and the importance of it. But when you have to come back—just how many months after—about 4 or 5 months later and correct some quite significant holes in a piece of legislation, then you have got to expect to answer some questions about how that came about.

My first set of questions is around the definition of “conditional release” or “release conditions”. I do not know whether the Minister has answered this already, because I note that she has, and it has been good that she has, got on her feet early on and actually provided some explanation. My question is, how it was that what seems to be a really quite standard definition—because this bill is actually inserting definitions from the Parole Act, so it is a definition that already exists in the Parole Act 2002, into this legislation—as I understand it, got missed. Was it missed by the Ministry of Social Development officials or whoever was legally advising them on what needed to be in the bill? How is it that a critical definition like that could be misconstrued or written wrongly or whatever?

I do not understand, in a ministry as big as that, how that is possible and how there was not another pair of eyes, or lots of other pairs of eyes, dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s on this legislation. It really does raise questions around whether it was rushed through too quickly or whether there was not the right expertise being provided. So what I ask the Minister is: has that situation been remedied? Is there an assurance that can be given to the Committee that the expertise on legislation like this does reside within the ministry and within the Minister’s office in order to ensure that the time of the House and taxpayers’ money is not wasted in this way—in having to do some quite fundamental changes to a piece of legislation? I can hear you argue: “Well, why do you not just approve it, tick the box, and let us all get on with it?”. The fact is, and as my colleague Chris Hipkins outlined, I think, in the second reading, the purpose of the Opposition is to point out these problems with legislation drafting and how the Government simply is not doing its job properly in drafting legislation and ensuring that it is correct legislation.

Here we have urgency again with a piece of legislation that is correcting an original piece of legislation. So I would ask the Minister, if she can, to provide an assurance to the Committee on that, because I think it is pretty important. After all, as a previous speaker on the National side of the Chamber said earlier on, there are currently 1,659 sex offenders on this register and 107 who ought to be there but are not, who are not captured by this legislation because of the holes in it, and that is quite significant.

For the public listening, it is important that they realise that that is why a piece of legislation is going through under urgency. It is quite a serious issue that just definitional problems—defining a clause incorrectly—can result in such a major impact. [Bell rung] Mr Chair.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Chester Borrows): Before I give the member the call, and she is certainly entitled to another call, I just want to make the point that we are looking for some new material here. The fact that every speaker is getting up and repeating the same points over and over again does not actually add weight to anything or expand the gravitas of what we are discussing. So, yes, the member will get another call, and I will call her shortly, but she should bear in mind that repeating the same things that every other member has said is not necessarily a call in this stage.

CLARE CURRAN: Thank you, Mr Chair. My second question relates to the changes in clause 5, which rewords section 8 of the Act to clarify who a “corresponding registrable offender” is, concerning conviction in a foreign jurisdiction. My question to the Minister on that is whether this relates directly to policy changes made by the Government, I think at the end of 2015 or beginning of 2016, around the deportation [to New Zealand] of Kiwis who have committed offences and how this Government treats them. If it does relate to that—I want to know whether this change that is being made in the legislation today relates to those changes that were made between the New Zealand and Australian regimes—then why was that not sorted out when the legislation was drafted in October last year?

There was a gap there of—and I just had a quick look on the “Googleiser” at when those big debates were happening around the Kiwis being deported from Australia. Sort of around February was when things were pretty hot. I know it went back further than that, but even if you are generous enough to say February last year, that is around 9 months’ difference between February and October for there to be input into the drafting of legislation that would get this right. And, too, it does not seem like a really complicated change is being posed today in this legislation. Why was it, then, that this could not have been got right, back in October last year?

Clause 5 in the legislation that we are looking at today amends section 8. It replaces “who has been convicted of a corresponding offence in a foreign jurisdiction and,” with “who, as a consequence of a conviction in a foreign jurisdiction for a corresponding offence,”. What I would like the Minister to clarify is what has brought that about. What is the need for that particular change, and what has been the problem in that October legislation that has had an impact? Has that related to some of those 107 people who have not been caught by that primary legislation—have they ended up being caught up in that clause not being properly defined?

Those are just some of the changes that are being proposed in this piece of legislation going through under urgency. I think it is fair to reiterate that although Labour does support the legislation, we are deeply concerned about the need for urgency under these circumstances. If these changes are so fundamental in terms of the definitions and the impact of them, they should go to a select committee and we should be able to ask officials these questions. We should be able to get a bit deeper into why on earth this has happened—what has created the fundamental flaws in the drafting of legislation, and whether there is a more systemic problem that we need to be worried about and that the public needs to be worried about.

LOUISA WALL (Labour—Manurewa): I actually want to follow on from my colleague Clare Curran and really focus on clause 5, “Section 8 amended”, because I am really—

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Chester Borrows): Which she has just been talking about.

LOUISA WALL: Yes, but I am actually interested in how many of the 107 people that this legislation is now relevant to—because we want them captured so that we can list them on a sex offender register—have come from overseas jurisdictions. I am also interested in the number of people who are class 1 offenders. Class 1 offenders, as we know, are those who will be on the register for 8 years. They are enabling offences, but they are also individuals with non-custodial sentences where a judge has ordered that they be monitored and added to the register.

I think that we all should know who these people are. I also think that we should know what they have done. That is what the classes actually do. They are tiered. Class 2 offenders are people who have committed indecent assault, and they have to be on the register for 15 years. Then class 3 offenders whom we would want to see on this register have committed sexual violation and have had sexual connection, which means that they are on the register for life. I think that we are all entitled to know, given that the Committee is in urgency, how many are within those classes, and how many are coming from overseas, as my colleague Clare Curran highlighted. I would also like to know, actually, what regions these 107 people have come from.

At the moment those people are not monitored by anybody, because there is no requirement for them to go on the register—and that was the fundamental purpose of the primary piece of legislation. When people were released from prison, or if they had received a non-custodial sentence and had conditions, within 72 hours—and the Minister can correct me if I am wrong—of that release, or at the direction of a judge, or on arrival in New Zealand they were to alert the police to their address, where they were working, what memberships or clubs they had, what car registration they had, and all of their contact information, because this is about monitoring where these people are in our community so that we can mitigate risk and make sure that the community is safe. What I know is that if they did not do that we actually have penalties in the legislation. They can go to jail for 1 to 2 years or, if they tell lies, they can be fined up to $4,000.

Given that the Committee is in urgency because there has been a mistake with the primary piece of legislation, and this is amendment legislation that we have been told as of today is relevant to 107 people who have committed sex offences in New Zealand, I think New Zealanders deserve to know where these people are, and, in fact, if they are not on a register, then what monitoring is being undertaken by Corrections and by the police.

The other entities involved in this cross-Government initiative were Housing New Zealand and the Ministry of Social Development. As I explained earlier, I can see why the Minister for Social Development, based on that, introduced the primary piece of legislation, and why it has now been handed to the Minister of Police, but given this is the only scrutiny available to the public and to the Opposition on this piece of legislation, I actually think it is not unreasonable for the Minister of Police to answer those questions.

In saying all of that, we support the legislation. We support the legislation because we also support the register. Why do we support the register? Because we do not want people who have committed sex offences to repeat that offending. The whole intention of the primary legislation and the amendment legislation is to protect our children, to protect our families, to protect our communities, and also, to some degree, to ensure that those offenders do not reoffend. We want to be reassured that they are placed in contexts that are going to enable their rehabilitation and their future participation in society.

What we are not reassured by, and what we know today, is that there are 107 people whom we should be monitoring, whose whereabouts everybody should know, but we do not know where they are because they are not required to go on the register. I would also like to know, based on the 72-hour notification period, when these 107 people are going to be required to register. Is it when the legislation gets the Royal assent? What is going to happen to these people once this legislation is passed, which we hope will be tonight? Thank you.

Hon PAULA BENNETT (Minister of Police): I am going to respect that the member previously speaking, Louisa Wall, has not listened to all of the debate. I mean that in the context where we have already stated quite clearly that they are being monitored. I just want to be really clear with the Committee and really clear with the public that all 107 have absolutely been monitored by both Corrections and the police, depending on the circumstances of their release conditions, because that is how it is done.

Their release conditions are not based on the class of their offence but on their risk assessment. That is for a number of reasons—so whether it is around rehabilitation. Of course their actual offence is taken into consideration when those release conditions are met.

There is absolutely no doubt that the register obviously, and part of the main reason for it, does impose other conditions. Quite frankly, that is why we are here right now, because from 14 October everyone is on the register and is being monitored like that. As I said previously, it was completely the intention of Parliament that those 107 would be on the register. There are some sections in the Act, as people can see, where they have to let the police know whether, for example, they are moving house. I can tell you that Police and Corrections have been monitoring all of them; they know where they are. They are doing it as closely to the register as they can, without quite having that.

I just think we have to be careful that we are not being overly alarming for the public out there, who, quite rightly, should be worried about people with these kinds of offences behind them. I want to absolutely assure the Committee that these offenders are being monitored. The other thing is that none of the 107 are deportees; all of them have got convictions from within New Zealand.

As far as clause 5, which amends section 8, is concerned and the work that is going on there, this stuff is pretty technical. Once we are changing one clause within it, that being that main clause where we are absolutely clarifying the difference between the definition relying on the point of sentencing and not the point of conviction, because that is the retrospective part of the legislation that has caused this problem, that there is one particular quite defined group—well, actually three groups because they are slightly different, which is what makes it complicated. Once we changed one, we then had to go through and make sure that obviously the whole amendment bill fits with that one original clause that we are clarifying for the purposes, to make sure that we are doing what we intended. I think that answers the questions.

KELVIN DAVIS (Labour—Te Tai Tokerau): I have got questions as well—and I would just like them clarified—around clause 5, in terms of a corresponding registrable offender. It is talking about people who have been in the detention centres and have been sent back. I do not want to buy into that hysteria that they are all murderers and rapists—we know that was overblown—but there will be in that group some people who were child sex offenders.

I am just trying to work my way through these additional groups—to just give an example, the child sex offenders serving short-term sentences of 2 years’ imprisonment or less who had reached their statutory release date before 14 October 2016. I am talking about child sex offenders who were in detention centres who may have been out of prison for 1 or 2 years and been kept in detention. The question is, will those offenders who have been deported but who have spent 2 or 3 years in detention centres after their sentence in, say, Australia—will they still be captured by this, or is there some gap there?

It is a genuine question. I am just really not quite sure exactly whether they do fit into this, so that is just a question for the Minister. I see her shaking her head, but I just do not want any person whom we think should be eligible to go on the register to miss out because of that gap in time after the end of their sentence in Australia, which was the time they spent in detention centres—and, technically, they were free people; just “freely detained”, I guess, are the words—before coming back here.

Hon PAULA BENNETT (Minister of Police): As I previously stated, none of the 107 are deportees from overseas—none of them.

SUE MORONEY (Labour): Thank you very much for the first opportunity to make a contribution to the Child Protection (Child Sex Offender Government Agency Registration) Amendment Bill. I want to confine my debating points mostly to the title, commencement, and principal Act part of this legislation, because I do find it deeply ironic that here we are under urgency debating and trying to address and fix up a mistake that was made almost certainly because the Act that we are amending was debated under urgency at the time. I do think that it is timely to remind the Government how many times the Opposition has cautioned the Government on moving on these matters in urgency, because we do need proper scrutiny of these bills. The fact that we are back here so quickly to amend this underscores, I think, that point.

In referring to the title, the Act is the Child Protection (Child Sex Offender Government Agency Registration) Amendment Act 2017. Yet the commencement clause says: “This Act is taken to have come into force on 14 October 2016.” That is very unusual wording. Because of the mistake that has been made, we now have this very odd occurrence that hardly ever happens in this Parliament where we are doing a retrospective fix up. We are applying that fix up, or the closing of this so-called loophole, that has allowed, or made the provision for, up to 107 people, I think, who should have been captured by the original legislation to be on the register. In fact, there was a loophole that saw they were not on the register.

I am interested to know from the Minister of Police how it came to the Minister’s attention that this loophole existed. What were the circumstances that actually brought this to her attention, that this was, in fact, a loophole that existed? I think that for Parliament to understand all the detail of that would allow us to properly scrutinise whether what has been proposed here actually does address the issue. I am interested to know how it was that we came to learn that 107 people who should have been on the register were not. What gave rise to that set of circumstances? Who reported that? How did we come to learn that this was an issue? Specifically, what was the action that came to the Minister’s attention that caused the Minister to realise that an Act that had been passed in October last year was going to need to be amended under urgency on this day in 2017?

I certainly feel uncomfortable with the idea that we are being asked to fix up a loophole without understanding the context of that. I am trying to imagine in my mind how we get to know that there are people missing from the register. Who reports that? How do we understand how the Minister came to uncover this mistake? I also would like to know whether the Minister acted at the earliest occasion. When did the Minister learn that this was a problem? What was the date that the Minister first had this reported to her? Who was it reported by? How was it described to her? Did she take action at the earliest possible opportunity to actually remedy this issue?

As I said, we are now in a position in this Parliament of agreeing to—as I think every party does in this debate—a commencement clause that is highly, highly unusual in a parliamentary context. I think I have only ever seen that type of commencement clause worded in that way when we have been debating taxation legislation—legislation that, for reasons that I think everyone understands, it is important that people do not get a heads-up about before the legislation changes. That is normally the only time that we are actually asked to consider that type of commencement clause. But today we are being asked, because a mistake was made in October last year, to agree to a commencement clause that says the Act is taken to have come into force on 14 October 2016, yet we are not debating it until today.

Hon RUTH DYSON (Labour—Port Hills): I say sorry to my friend and colleague Kelvin Davis, and I hope that you are able to take the opportunity to have another call shortly. Can I just briefly reiterate the points that my colleague Sue Moroney has made, and that my colleague Clare Curran made before that, and say to the Minister in the chair, the Hon Paula Bennett, that it is immensely frustrating when we are considering a bill through all stages under urgency that we do not have any access to members of the public who want to make a contribution. We have no access to the people who actually know what they are doing, who are the official advisers on this legislation.

The Minister is standing between Parliament and information, and I do not think that is acceptable. We do not have access directly to the advisers ourselves, so when members ask genuine questions—and it is my view that they have; this is legislation that we are supporting—then I think that they are entitled to answers. It is easy for the Minister to do. She does not have to know the answer; she just has to ask someone who is seated on the bench. She does not even have to understand the points that are being asked about.

When this bill was originally described, I understood that it was quite narrow and that there was just one provision that had been misinterpreted or was open to potential misinterpretation by lawyers or people who are implementing the law. Therefore, 107 people who were intended to be covered by the registry were likely to not be covered by the registry. If you look at the provisions further in the bill, in Part 2, the bill does appear to go a lot wider than that, and it is on this point that I would like to get the Minister’s comments.

In Part 2 it talks about those very people—the ones who were missed out because the definition was not clear enough. It was a bit of shonky work done by one of the Minister’s colleagues, the Hon Anne Tolley—not done carefully enough. So now Minister Bennett is obviously having to pick up the brush pan and sweep up after her. For example, clause 2(1) in Part 2, which amends schedule 1, has a very specific description of the notification procedures that the chief executive of the Department of Corrections has to go through in order to notify these people who are covered by the registry. So it says they have to be notified as soon as practicable of the penalties or the provisions in the legislation if the chief executive does not make all practicable moves in order to give them this notification. But is this replicated in the earlier legislation? Is this exactly the same and, in that case, why would we not just say in an amendment that the notification provisions, as outlined in the primary legislation, are duplicated for these people under this special legislation that is extending to these 107 people? Why does the whole procedure have to be written out again? It does not make sense.

What we should actually be doing is comparing, word for word, this Part 2 with the primary legislation and seeing whether there is any difference, because we know that if there is any difference in the actual wording of the notification procedures, then somebody will challenge it—somebody will challenge it. The last thing that this Parliament should want is for a procedure set up so that people can be monitored and protected better—people who are offenders can be monitored, and people who are in our communities can be better protected. The last thing we want is to be driving more mistakes through this House, under urgency, through all stages.

We are only debating this now because of the mistakes of the Hon Anne Tolley, which she made only 6 months ago—not even that; 5 months ago. Here we are fixing that up, and yet we are using exactly the same procedure, which is most likely to end in further mistakes being made.

Members of the public may have their own views of select committees, but I know that if select committees operate properly they can detect a large number of errors, and party members can work constructively across political boundaries to correct those errors and make better legislation at the end of it. We have not had that opportunity. We still have not found out what actually caused the original problem. The Minister has been asked several times, but flatly refuses to take a call and answer that, and is blocking this Parliament’s access to the advisers. I think it is a shame. On an issue as serious as this, we should be taken more seriously.

Hon PAULA BENNETT (Minister of Police): Just in response to one part of the member’s question, it went through Cabinet yesterday—just to be clear—and I actually rang Labour as soon as I could afterwards. I actually went straight back to my office and rang the spokesperson. I offered him a briefing by officials and was told that Labour did not want one.

DAVID CLENDON (Green): Can I just briefly refer to Minister Paula Bennett’s answers that she gave just now. I am sure the Labour Party was very pleased if, in fact, it did receive this bill yesterday. There are other parties in this House that take an interest in the proceedings of the House. I do wonder why one party is favoured over another in terms of having been given access to the bill. We saw this bill for the first time about mid-morning—10.30, perhaps—this morning. I do wonder why the same courtesy is not extended to every party, because we all have an equal role and an equal right to represent the point of view of the people who put us in this place.

If I may, I just want to refer to clause 6 of the amendment bill, which amends section 9 of the primary legislation. I observed the Chair’s comments earlier about Groundhog Day—not wanting to hear repetitive comments—and I apologise if the point has been made, but I am not sure that it has. I struggle to see anything in the first part of clause 6 that is anything other than wordsmithing, and I wonder why we are in the House under urgency—chewing up time on a Tuesday evening, essentially—for wordsmithing.

If I may refer to section 9 of the primary legislation that we are amending, section 9(1) says: “If a court convicts a person of a qualifying offence and imposes a non-custodial sentence in respect of that offence, the court may order that the person must be placed on the register … comply with reporting obligations”, etc., and then the rest of the section goes on to talk about the consequence of that. The amendment being offered to us in clause 6 of the bill says that we will replace the words “convicts a person of a qualifying offence and imposes a non-custodial sentence in respect of that offence” with the words “imposes on a person a non-custodial sentence in respect of a conviction for a qualifying offence”.

I have read those two phrases. I have tried to sort of unpick them and rearrange them, and I fail to see any material difference in the wording of them. Both require that both conditions pertain—that a conviction and a sentence must have been determined for the offence. It is not a matter of at what point this requirement, or opportunity, to put somebody on a register kicks in—is it after the sentencing or after the conviction? In both versions the court must have done both—convicted and sentenced a person—before the court has the option of putting them on the register.

So I am just really puzzled as to why what appears to me, after reading it numerous times, to be purely wordsmithing—I fail to see any material difference in those two phrases, with the new phrase replacing the old. The question I ask is, why? What is the material outcome? What is the actual difference in terms of how this bill will be understood or implemented?

The other point in clause 6 of the bill inserts—again, into section 9 of the primary legislation—the statement that “(1A) For the purposes of subsection (1), the date on which the person was charged with the offence is irrelevant.” I am not sure what mischief that is putting right. Again, where in the bill is it implicit or explicit that the date on which a charge was applied has any relevance to the decision of the court as to whether or not a person ought to be placed on this register?

So those are the two questions, I guess. Why are we simply wordsmithing under urgency, and what is the relevance? What is the mischief, or the absence, the lack, or the shortcoming, in the primary legislation that the new section 9(1A)—this reference to the date of a charge and the relevance of that—is applied to? Thank you.

KELVIN DAVIS (Labour—Te Tai Tokerau): I do not want to labour this point, but I guess this is the purpose of having an actual debate. Minister Paula Bennett’s reply to my question, saying that none of the 107 people this applies to are returning offenders—that was exactly my point. There have been over 660 offenders return from Australia. Are you saying, Minister, that none of those 660 are returning sex offenders, or are you saying that none of them qualify to be on this list? My question is, really, should there be some?

If they have committed child sex offences in Australia, finished their prison sentence, spent a couple of years in a detention centre, then come over here, should they be on this register or is that a gap, is that a loophole? I am not asking it to be a smart alec; I am just wondering whether there is actually a loophole there. Should some of those 660 people who have returned actually qualify for this or are we letting in child sex offenders who should be on the register? That is really the question. Is there a gap?

We debated the returning offenders legislation, I think, in November 2015. I think the bill was enacted in February of last year. Are there gaps? Are there offenders from Australia, and will there be offenders from Australia who in the future may need to go on the register if they had committed the offence here, but because of the length of time they have been in detention centres and all that sort of stuff, does it create a gap, does it create a loophole? That is my genuine question to the Minister—is that something that needs to be considered? Is that something that needs to be patched up at this stage? So I will just leave that question there. Kia ora.

Hon PAULA BENNETT (Minister of Police): Outside of those 107, because, as I have been quite clear, that is actually what the bill is about today—it is retrospective for that particular group. But, out of respect for the member Kelvin Davis’ quite serious question, a period in a detention centre in Australia is irrelevant. What would be relevant in the case of a corresponding registrable offender is their conviction for a corresponding offence and whether they have been sentenced overseas to imprisonment or required to report to a corresponding register overseas. So that is what the relevant clauses would be.

The police do share information with police in Australia, of course, and it goes both ways so that if there are those who need to be monitored or are considerably alarming to the public, then they will often share release conditions and make sure that there is monitoring in that way.

SUE MORONEY (Labour): First of all, I would like to just come back to the theme of retrospective legislation, because it occurs to me as I have listened more and more to the debate, I wonder, if this is about child sex offenders being on a register, why on earth—and I just cannot get my head around this—we would need that to be retrospective. They have not been on the register since 14 October. Why would we make it retrospective that people who have not been on the register will, what, be deemed to be on the register for that period? What does that trigger is what I need to know, because if they were not on the register for that period, surely all that Parliament should really be fixing up is the loophole, because they were people who were intended to be on the register. Surely we just make that from today’s date or the date that the Act comes into being. What is the purpose of them having retrospectively been on a register that they were never on? I cannot understand the point of that.

My understanding of the register was so that people in the community would become aware of where these people were and they would ensure that the community was kept safe because of that. But these 107 people have not been on the register for that period. I do not understand what the intent is of retrospectively saying they are deemed to have been on the register since 14 October. What possible purpose could that actually have for the community, if they have not already been on the register? I really fail to understand what it is that we are doing retrospectively here.

Is there some other consequence that I am not aware of with the primary legislation? Does it mean that they come off the register after a certain period of time? Is that why we are making it retrospective, so that they can come off the register early or earlier than if we just re-enacted this from today? I really do—and it is a serious question that I am asking here for the Minister to explain. Why is it that we are retrospectively putting these people on a register given that the community’s knowledge of them being on the register can never be retrospective, because they were never on the register at that time? So why are we making it retrospective? What are the series of actions that that puts into place—what are the consequences that that brings about?

I am also curious, given the Minister’s answer to my colleague Kelvin Davis’ question about people who have been deported from Australia. She has been very clear—and I thank her for that, because that is the one bit of clarity that we have—that none of these 107 people are people who have been deported from Australia under that very odd regime that was brought in last year, or I think it might have been the year before now, actually, and most of them were coming back, as we heard, around about February last year.

So if none of those people are these 107 people, then I need to understand why in clause 5 we are amending section 8 of the original legislation to replace this phrase “who has been convicted of a corresponding offence in a foreign jurisdiction, and” with these following words: “who, as a consequence of a conviction in a foreign jurisdiction for a corresponding offence,”. I assumed that that was covering off the situation where a person is in the situation where they had been convicted in Australia, they had done their time in jail, and then they had been into a detention centre—I understood that that change in that phrase was to cover their situation. That is what it sounds like to me, because it has changed from saying “who has been convicted of a corresponding offence in a foreign jurisdiction” to “who, as a consequence of a conviction”, which I thought, it seemed obvious—well, I thought it was obvious, I assumed it was talking about that detention period. However, the Minister is telling us that this loophole does not apply to any of those people. None of the 107 people who should have been on the register but were not because of what we are trying to fix up today are in fact those people.

So I am now very confused about why we are doing clause 5 at all. Why are we amending that phrase about people being “convicted of a corresponding offence in a foreign jurisdiction” and replacing it with “who, as a consequence of a conviction in a foreign jurisdiction for a corresponding offence,” being a corresponding registrable offender?

POTO WILLIAMS (Labour—Christchurch East): Look, I just want to take perhaps a short call on this because I do want to reinforce the argument I have been running all evening on this bill on whether we have actually got this bill right, whether we have taken the opportunity to really craft the most appropriate and effective amendment that we can. I look at the departmental disclosure statement and see that there have been various people—I think this is the right departmental disclosure statement; is that right? Is that the same? Yes, it is, OK.

So the Department of Corrections has been consulted and supports the draft of the bill, but the following other agencies have been consulted on the draft bill: the Ministry of Justice, Treasury, Accident Compensation Corporation, Crown Law, Ministry of Education, etc., etc. There is a whole list of agencies and organisations that have been consulted on the draft of the bill. Then I also see the proposed amendment in the name of the Minister replacing “October” with “October 2016” in clause 7, which inserts new clause 1(2)(b) of Schedule 1. So even though this bill has been given some thorough scrutiny because we have come back to amend a couple of clauses, even today at 5.34 p.m. we find another error. So, Minister, I would like to know whether you are completely satisfied that that this is the last error that you will find or whether we actually should take the time to scrutinise this properly—

Clare Curran: Send it to a select committee.

POTO WILLIAMS: Yes, and as my colleague says, perhaps we should send it to a select committee and actually do what we should do, which is look at this piece of legislation to make sure we actually get it completely right.

We have been arguing this point since we started this process earlier this afternoon and I am starting to be a little uncomfortable about what else we might uncover, or we may pass this piece of legislation—in fact, we probably will within the next hour or so. Unless we take the time to make sure that we get this absolutely right, we will be committing yet another session of Parliament to correct an amendment on an amendment.

So how many amendments do we have to make until we get this absolutely right? I cannot stress enough that the community—the public of New Zealand—wants us to get this absolutely right. We support this legislation, but we want to make sure that the legislation is sound because of the impact it has on our children and the impact that it will have on the public of New Zealand’s trust and confidence in the House of Parliament to actually write appropriate legislation. So, Minister, I would welcome your view on this. You have been very generous in providing answers to questions as we have gone through this process—and that is rightly so, because, obviously, there are other matters that need to be corrected, as we have been examining this legislation. I do want to thank you for providing this proposed amendment to the amendment—

Sue Moroney: Ha, ha! Amendment to the amendment.

POTO WILLIAMS: Yes, I know. This is a very serious matter. We could laugh about this—but this is very serious—that we cannot even get the date right, when the two primary reasons that we are coming here are to ensure that we include the right people on the register and that it is retrospective to the correct date, which is October 2016. So thank you for the amendment that you are proposing, Minister. I would hope that this is the last change that we have to make, but I am, on behalf of the people of New Zealand, starting to lose a bit of confidence that we have actually got it right. Thank you very much.

Hon RUTH DYSON (Labour—Port Hills): It does not seem to have registered with members of the National Government that putting stuff through all stages under urgency is very bad practice. At 4.30 p.m. this afternoon, part-way through the second reading of a bill that is now going to go through Committee stage and a third reading, the Minister, Paula Bennett, tabled an amendment. I think there are still quite a few people who are shaking their heads and saying: “This is really important. We want to get it right. How can we have confidence that we have got it right when the process is so rushed?”. I want to ask a question about an entirely new matter—

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Chester Borrows): Good!

Hon RUTH DYSON: It is in—I think you should try to restrain your excitement at that possibility, Mr Chairman, if I may be so bold as to give you advice.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Chester Borrows): Well, I have been calling for it since about 7.40 p.m.

Hon RUTH DYSON: We all live in hope. In Part 2, new clause 2 of Schedule 1, “Notices to be given”, the chief executive of the Department of Corrections is now required under this amendment legislation, as soon as practicable, after 14 October last year—so the chief executive is a bit slow off the mark—to give written notice to every registrable offender. Given that these people are now being put on the register retrospectively, and are then deemed to have been on it since 14 October, what I want to know is, what if they have breached one of those conditions between 14 October—when they are, in theory, on the register—and today, when they are actually on the register? How does that merger of real-world and retrospective theoretical behaviour merge? So suppose that a person on 17 October did something that they are not permitted to do on the register—so on 17 October last year in the real world, when there were not on the register and the chief executive had not applied and given them notice and put them on it—and they broke the rules of being on the register. Now, tomorrow, the chief executive is going to put them on the register and deem them to have been on it from 14 October last year, what happens to their breach on 17 October? I had better ask the Minister because I cannot ask the officials. I want to know, Minister, is that person really going to have breached the provisions of the register on 17 October, or in November, or in December, or January? Simon Bridges—he used to be regarded as having a sharp legal mind; not so much these days. The Hon Amy Adams is pretty good with the law. Here are two lawyers, in their previous lives, who might be able to give us advice. Retrospective legislation—

Hon Simon Bridges: Are you paying by the minute?

Hon RUTH DYSON: Ha! I will pay you what you are worth. You will owe me by the end of the session, Minister—you will owe me by the end of the session.

Hon Amy Adams: Highly unlikely, Ruth—highly unlikely.

Hon RUTH DYSON: Yes, he would. So I would like to know about this provision in Part 2, new clause 2(1)(a) and (b) of Schedule 1, and then clause 2(2) in the same vein, where the commissioner has to give written notice to every registrable offender. They have reporting obligations, they have penalties for failing to comply with them, and they have a set of criteria around a condition, really, of them being on the register. What happens if they have already breached it without being on it, and then later tonight we are going to put them on it? It is a really Mickey Mouse set up—actually, if the Chairman was not in the chair’s seat, he would be another person with a trained legal brain—

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Chester Borrows): Of course, he cannot be brought into the debate, unfortunately.

Hon RUTH DYSON: —whom I could seek advice from. But, unfortunately, I cannot bring him into the debate—

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Chester Borrows): He has got a lot to say, though.

Hon RUTH DYSON: —but I might wait until later in the evening. But, you know, any of these members are welcome to make a contribution. That is the final question that I have that I would really like answered, but I just want to reiterate to the Minister that it is not really acceptable, as a proper process of Parliament, for her to stand between us and advice. Every time she has taken a call—generous description by my colleague Poto Williams, who praised her responses; I thought they were woefully inadequate, to be frank. Sometimes she did not even acknowledge or answer a question. [Interruption] Pardon? Take a call, Minister. Show us you can do it, and this time, answer the questions that have been posed to you for the last hour. Just answer the questions and then we can move on to having some confidence that this bill that we are putting through retrospectively will not be another shonky mistake.

Hon PAULA BENNETT (Minister of Police): The Chief Executive of the Department of Corrections has already given notice to offenders, as it mirrors provisions in the principal Act. These offenders were in prison at 14 October 2016, and that is the difference.

CLARE CURRAN (Labour—Dunedin South): I would like to refer to clause 3, and also new clause 1(3) of amended schedule 1 set out in clause 7 in Part 2. My first question to the Minister of Police relates to the unusual circumstances—and I will not dwell on this, because I know that it has been referenced before—but the unusual circumstances of having to amend a principal Act within 5 months of it being enacted, and in quite an important way. I can see that law schools around the country will be paying attention to this piece of legislation, or this amendment tonight, and, actually, it will probably end up being taught in courses and classes as being—

Hon Simon Bridges: Oh, I doubt that—I doubt that very much.

CLARE CURRAN: Well, with respect to the Minister over there, he would say that.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Chester Borrows): Order! I just wonder whether the member would mind getting quickly to the new point she is making about the point that has already been reiterated.

CLARE CURRAN: Well, the question is: how many times has this Parliament, under this Government, had to make amendments to primary legislation within a year—well within 6 months—of it actually being enacted? That is my first question, and I can see this being taught as what not to do as legislators.

My second question goes to new clause 1(3) of amended schedule 1 as set out in clause 7 in Part 2, which actually provides a lot more detail than previously, as I understand it, on the reporting obligations of offenders. What my question goes to is this: if this clause does not relate to deportees from Australia, and the 107 people who have fallen outside of the original legislation; and if they are not deportees, given that new clause 1(3) of amended schedule 1 relates to “a person who—(a) was convicted before 14 October 2016 of a corresponding offence in a foreign jurisdiction; and (b) as a consequence of that conviction, … (i) was … sentenced to imprisonment; or (ii) was … required to report in that jurisdiction information about [themselves] to [somebody] performing functions substantially similar to those of the Commissioner under this Act,” etc., “or (iii) was … deported from that jurisdiction.”, who does this clause apply to?

I think that is a really valid question—who—because I have been sitting here racking my brains. If we need to insert this subclause, it must apply to some people. It must apply to people who have committed offences in another jurisdiction and who are now in our jurisdiction—am I correct?

Hon Member: Yes.

CLARE CURRAN: So if that logic plays out—and it refers in new clause 1(3)(b)(iii) of schedule 1 to “was or is deported from that jurisdiction.”—then, clearly, deportees come in somewhere. And if they are not deportees from Australia, then where are they deportees from, and how have they been excluded from the primary legislation?

I know that the Minister has given some assurances around monitoring to the Committee during the debate, and I thank her for that and that is reassuring, but I think that what we now need to know is some information, clearly without identifying people, about what jurisdictions we are talking about and how this came to be. What has actually sparked the concern and the need to insert this clause into the legislation? I think this is really important, and I hope the Minister can answer.

MATT DOOCEY (National—Waimakariri): I move, That the question be now put.

Motion agreed to.

The question was put that the following amendment in the name of the Hon Paula Bennett to clause 7 be agreed to:

in new clause 1(2)(b) of schedule 1, replace “October,” with “October 2016,”.

Amendment agreed to.

A party vote was called for on the question, That Parts 1 and 2 and clauses 1 to 3 as amended be agreed to.

Ayes 106

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

Noes 14

Green Party 14.

Parts 1 and 2 and clauses 1 to 3 as amended agreed to.

Bill reported with amendment.

Report adopted.

Third Reading

Hon PAULA BENNETT (Minister of Police): I move, That the Child Protection (Child Sex Offender Government Agency Registration) Amendment Bill be now read a third time. It is never ideal to have to put a bill through under urgency, but it is vital that we put child safety first. That is what this bill does, and it is heartening to see that most of Parliament actually supports us in trying to do this today.

The aims of this bill have been well outlined today, but I will speak briefly about them again. It has become apparent in operationalising the Child Protection (Child Sex Offender Government Agency Registration) Act that a small group of offenders whom it was intended would be covered may not be able to be put on the register. I want to make it clear that everyone convicted of a qualifying offence and sentenced to imprisonment since this Act came into force on 14 October last year has been put on the register. This bill relates only to a relatively small group—but I think any number would be significant—who, when the Act came into force, were on release conditions or who had been convicted but not sentenced, and in that respect it was retrospective.

We believe that the public expects these offenders to be covered by the register, so we are acting with urgency to make Parliament’s intention clear and to remove any doubt that these people are subject to registration and, as such, subject to monitoring at a different level, which goes through when they are on the register.

This amendment bill amends the principal Act to reflect the original retrospective policy intent of the legislation. It was intended that the retrospective provisions of the Act would apply to all child sex offenders who had been released from prison and who were subject to release conditions under Department of Corrections oversight. It was also intended to include all of those child sex offenders who had been convicted of a qualifying offence prior to the Act coming into force, but who had not yet been sentenced.

This is a straightforward amendment that clarifies those subject to registration under the Act so as to ensure that the original policy intent of the legislation is given effect to. I commend this bill to the House.

KELVIN DAVIS (Labour—Te Tai Tokerau): The Labour Party—let us get it out there from the start—does support this bill. We will do whatever we can to protect children from sex offenders. But our concerns still remain about why we are back in the House now, just 6 months after the initial Act was passed. We believe that is unacceptable. We also believe the time frame that we were given to respond to the amendments is unacceptable.

But, that said, it is important—I agree with the Minister of Police—that we do sort this out, although the debate in the Committee stage did leave a few unanswered questions. I would just like to thank my colleagues for posing those questions, because it is our job to hold the Government to account, and there are some questions as to why we are standing here now, in urgency, debating this.

As the Minister said, the bill relates to a relatively small number of offenders, and, again, I agree with her. Any number of child sex offenders is a number that is too big. But we are talking about 107 offenders, I believe, who sort of slipped through the gaps that the original legislation left, and we are now closing those gaps up. Some of the questions that we had during the Committee stage of this bill—and the Minister said this is about release conditions, and yet the words “release conditions” were left out of the original bill.

For those people who are listening, release conditions and standard release conditions in the Parole Act of 2002 are, for example, offenders reporting in person to probation officers in the probation area where the offender resides, or an offender notifying probation officers of his or her residential address. They are not to move to new residential addresses without prior written consent. If they do move, the offender must report to a probation officer in the new probation area not later than 72 hours after the offender’s arrival. The offender may not reside at an address that a probation officer has directed the offender not to reside at. They must not engage, or continue to engage, in any employment or occupation in which the probation officer has directed the offender not to engage in or continue to engage in, and they are not to associate with specific people or classes or people such as gang members. So those are just examples of the standard release conditions, for those people who are listening in to the debate. But the point is that something as essential as identifying the release conditions should have been included in the original legislation in the first instance. It is not something that we should be debating at this stage. It is quite fundamental, you would think, to have been included the first time around.

There is also a bit of a gap between the convictions of these offenders and the sentencing. As we know, a conviction happens first. There might be a gap of a few weeks or months before an offender is sentenced. It sounds like that gap was another loophole that people slipped through.

Then there was the issue of “conditional release” compared with “release conditions”. I have already spoken about release conditions, which are something that an offender has upon release from prison—the conditions that they must adhere to. This is a different situation from conditional release. Conditional release, to me, assumes something that is going to happen before they are released.

As Clare Curran first raised—she spoke about corresponding registrable offenders; in other words, people who have been convicted of an offence in an overseas jurisdiction. We have a couple of clauses dedicated to these corresponding registrable offenders. Clause 5, which amends section 8, is one of them, and clause 7 in Part 2, which amends schedule 1 of the principal Act by adding new clause 1(3). There are a couple of clauses dedicated to these corresponding registrable offenders—people who have committed offences overseas, and yet, when I asked the Minister in the Committee stage whether there were any people who had been convicted of child sex crimes over in Australia, had spent time in detention centres, and had been deported to New Zealand, the answer was that none of the 107 people whom we are talking about in this debate were convicted overseas.

It begs the question as to why there are a couple of clauses dedicated to something that does not exist. So what is the problem that we are trying to solve? There does not appear to be a problem, but it has been thrown in here anyway, and yet, when we tried to get an answer to those questions, the Minister did not reply. She said that this does not apply to any people deported from Australia. That is the exact question we are asking. Why have people been missed out? Why are there these two clauses dedicated to a problem that does not exist? It raises the question again about how the Government got this part wrong? Maybe there is an answer, and maybe in this third reading some of the Government members will stand up and explain to us why we are debating clauses that are irrelevant and that do not apply to any people.

It is right that this bill is going through the House. It is also right that the Opposition parties around the House challenge the Government on this—firstly, on why it got it wrong in the first place, just 6 months ago. What was the situation that made the Government realise that we need to fix something? Why is it that we are trying to fix some problems that do not exist? It calls into question what is going wrong over there, on the Government side. Oh, no offence to my colleague Nathan Guy, who has just walked in.

What is happening here, that we are having this debate now under urgency? What are the problems, in terms of the corresponding registrable offenders, that we are trying to fix? We understand that there were gaps. There were these 107 people who sort of slipped through that little window. As I said earlier, or as has been said through the debate, there are three groups of people whom this actually applies to. I will just read out who those three groups are: child sex offenders serving short-term sentences of 2 years or less imprisonment, who had reached their statutory release date before 14 October 2016, had a sentence expiry date after 14 October 2016, and were subject to release conditions at 14 October 2016. That is one group.

The next group is child sex offenders on long-term or short-term sentences of imprisonment, who reached their sentence expiry date before 14 October 2016 and were on release conditions at 14 October 2016. The third group is child sex offenders who have been convicted of a qualifying offence before 14 October 2016 and were sentenced to imprisonment after 14 October 2016, or were sentenced after 14 October 2016 to a non-custodial sentence and ordered by the court to be placed on the register.

To those people listening out there, it all seems just a bit too technical and jargony, but I guess the reality is that we have to keep our children safe from people. Offenders will be on a register, and they will have to provide the Police and the Department of Corrections with access to personal information that allows those organisations to proactively monitor an individual child sex offender’s risk of offending while in the community, and act accordingly to address that risk.

The Labour Party agrees that that needs to be done. We do not like the process by which it has been done. We do not like the bungling of the 14 October 2016 legislation, but we are glad and are happy to take our part in making sure this legislation hopefully is right this time around. Kia ora.

KANWALJIT SINGH BAKSHI (National): Thank you for the opportunity to stand in support of the third reading of the Child Protection (Child Sex Offender Government Agency Registration) Amendment Bill. It has been said time and again that the main intent of this legislation is to ensure that we protect our children from child sex offenders. As at 25 January this year, there were 1,659 people on the register that has information about these people. By gathering this information, authorities are able to keep track of child sex offenders while also being alert to any changes in their circumstances. Agencies continually gather and update the personal information of such people, which can be assessed and analysed to determine whether reoffending is more likely to take place, so that the necessary action can be taken.

We want to ensure that our communities feel safe and that there should not be reoffending. All registered child sex offenders are required to report to the police within 72 hours of their release from prison, or after receiving a non-custodial sentence if directed to be registered by a judge. They need to provide a range of information, including fingerprints, photographs, address, workplace, employer, car registration number, internet details, and passport details. All this information is registered in this register so that a track can be kept of these offenders—so that we can ensure that our society feels safe.

The register is held in a secure database, so it is not publicly accessible information. It has to be protected, and the things that are on the register are safeguarded by this. We also want to ensure that when any of the information of these people is changed, they have to inform the police within 48 hours, and some of the information is updated so that the agencies are aware of the change in circumstances of such offenders.

It is important that we should have legislation that is up to date, and this legislation is being rectified after some errors were made earlier. I commend this bill to the House.

POTO WILLIAMS (Labour—Christchurch East): When we first started the first reading of this piece of legislation earlier this afternoon, I started my contribution by saying that, for me, it was a matter of public safety. As legislators and members of Parliament, our primary duty is to ensure that our people are safe, and, actually, we have a real duty to ensure that our children are paramount within that. I was concerned and troubled that an amendment bill had come to the House to fix up the primary legislation, and the primary legislation was enacting a child sex offenders register. It caused me some alarm that we did not get that primary piece of legislation correct in the first place and that in the intervening months—it has not been a huge amount of time—it has allowed 107 sex offenders to not be eligible to go on the register. For me, that was hugely concerning.

During the passage of this bill under urgency, we have learnt that there have been other errors. There have been omissions, and there have been very pointed questions posed by members of the Opposition to examine and to make sure that we actually get this amendment right, so that we actually can feel comfortable that we are addressing what we need to do.

I recall that at the time we were debating the primary legislation there were a couple of cases where families were absolutely beside themselves because they had convicted sex offenders in their area. They knew about them, and they were in areas where they were close to children. Those families were looking to us to provide them with some comfort, because there can be nothing more distressing than being in fear for the safety of your kids.

So, during the passage of this legislation under urgency in the House—which we have also questioned; the need for urgency—it has become apparent that throughout the passage of this amendment bill through the House there have been some problems with process. There have been some issues with definition and there have been some concerns about policy, and, unfortunately, I do not feel that all of these concerns have been addressed adequately. However, we are required to support this bill because we want those 107 child sex offenders currently not eligible to be on the register to actually be on the register. We also want to ensure that others who may fall into the gap that is created by those issues with sentencing dates and the phrase “release conditions”, as opposed to “conditional release”, which was in the original legislation—that those issues are tidied up so that we actually have a piece of legislation that functions well, to ensure that those people who are required to be on the register are on the register.

But I am not comfortable that we have got it completely right, because even in my last contribution in the Committee of the whole House, I discovered that the Minister, at 5.34 p.m. this afternoon, was making an amendment to the proposed amendment because we have not even got the date of sentencing correct. We have it in the legislation—in the amendment—as “October” when it should read “October 2016”. So I am not comfortable that we have actually done everything we can, and I have been expressing this view through all of the calls that I have made in this House.

Urgency is required for a purpose, yes, and I believe that it is useful and right that we use urgency when it is required. But, in this particular case, I think that we should have allowed for some further examination. We should have allowed for a select committee process, we should have allowed for submissions to be made, and we should have allowed for some examination and questions to officials, which did not occur in the first select committee stage, because it might have been that the Social Services Committee was not the most appropriate committee to review the primary legislation. Those are the arguments that have been traversed across the House this evening.

I do not want to hold up the passage of this bill, but I did want to continue to register my concern that we may not have got this entirely right. Urgency should be used for an appropriate purpose, but I am not sure it was entirely appropriate in this case. I hope we have got it right, because, actually, the safety of our kids is the most important job that we can do. Thank you.

MAUREEN PUGH (National): I rise in support of the Child Protection (Child Sex Offender Government Agency Registration) Amendment Bill in its third reading here tonight. Tonight we have heard quite a bit of debate and criticism of the Government’s handling of this bill, but I would just like to remind the House that when the bill was going through the select committee stage, members of other parties were present as well. We all received the draft report and the tracked report, and we all approved, in the Social Services Committee, the final report, which led to the passage of the legislation.

The bill tonight—the amendment bill—is simply adding clarity to some wording that was in the legislation. It does two things. It clarifies that those people who were released from prison but who were subject to release conditions—and those conditions could be that they attend counselling or that they are not able to be alone with a child under 16—are to be captured by this register. It is also clarified, in this amendment bill, that all offenders who were sentenced after the commencement of the Act but who had been convicted prior to the commencement of the Act are also captured in this legislation. There are 67 offenders who qualify for that.

This is a sensible amendment bill. We stand in support of it, and I have pleasure in commending it to the House.

DAVID CLENDON (Green): At 5 to 9 on a Tuesday evening, this House sort of lives up to its one-time reputation as the fastest legislature in the West. It has been significantly less than 12 hours since we first saw this bill. It will pass, and then only requires Royal assent to become law. We think that that is unfortunate. Having said that, I must comment on the tone of this debate this afternoon—albeit it is unfortunate we could not have a real debate, including a select committee hearing, public input, and all of those good things—but it has been respectful and I contrast that, having earlier today read the Hansard, with when the principal legislation was debated in this House.

There were rather some unfortunate, and one would even say objectionable, comments made at that point about the position of various parties, not least of all the Greens. I am pleased to say that although the Greens’ position has been critiqued—I see the Hon Judith Collins assuring us that it was not her. I will not go there, but thank you for that reassurance. Today the Greens’ position has certainly been critiqued—that is fine; we take that on board—but it has been a moderately respectful debate, and I think that is a good thing.

This bill that is about to be passed corrects problems—it corrects mistakes that were made—and, indeed, it almost made another mistake, but that was caught at the last minute, literally. But we believe that it is correcting a primary piece of legislation that is fundamentally flawed. We believe that because—the point I have made earlier in the debate—this is a one-size-fits-all approach. It is a blanket approach to say that every single person who has been convicted and sentenced to a particular class of offending is forever doomed—or, at least, doomed for a very long time—to be tarred with that brush. It has been called a predictive model—that is to say that this person has been convicted of an offence of this nature, therefore they are almost certain to reoffend and we must impose these very intrusive restrictions on them.

I recall—again, I was reminded reading the Hansard today—that it was referred to by one submitter as “correctional quackery”, which is to say it is a practice in corrections that is based, really, on quackery. It is not actually evidence based or substantive. There is no proof that this is the appropriate way. When the original Act, the primary legislation, was passed not all that long ago, the Law Society made a very strong submission that the purpose of the bill—the outcomes that we are all pursuing—is about the safety of children. Nobody can argue with that as a purpose, as an aspiration, but we could achieve that much, much better and at much less cost by creating an opportunity for the parole board and judges to determine, at the completion of a person’s sentence, that they are still representing or constituting a serious risk to children in the community and, therefore, should be subject to some form of very intensive supervision, which could even include a register of the sort that we currently have.

But it is this blanket approach, which is not really backing Corrections, is it? Saying that a person can be convicted, serve a sentence, undertake rehabilitation treatment, but nevertheless we are saying “Well, that’s going to fail.” before they have even begun. It is suggesting that no matter what progress a person might make when they are being treated—and often these people might be sentenced to quite long terms of imprisonment—no matter what Corrections or anybody else might do with those people, and no matter what efforts are made to change their behaviour, they are, nevertheless, not going to be trustworthy on the day they leave prison. So we do think that it is a wrong approach. It is misguided. In our view, the principal legislation is fundamentally flawed, and this process we have been through today to correct errors in it does very little to improve on that. It simply broadens the scope. It increases the number of people who will be immediately subject to the conditions of the bill and placed on the register.

The final comment I would make is about the privacy concerns we have expressed through this debate and indeed in the original debate on the principal legislation. The Privacy Commissioner at the time made a very strong submission saying that the procedural and governance safeguards for information-sharing arrangements were inadequate. The Privacy Commissioner made a number of recommendations, most of which were not picked up and incorporated into the bill, and we are quite convinced that (a) the protections built into the legislation are weak in themselves, and it is almost inevitable—in fact, I would say it is inevitable—that details of individuals who are named on this register will eventually leak. That will have serious negative consequences for them and probably even more so for their families. I have made the point earlier. The families of people who are associated with people whose names appear on the register—when, inevitably, those are leaked, because you have literally tens of thousands of people who will have access to this register—will suffer as well, and we think that is unreasonable. So we are continuing to oppose this legislation. Thank you.

DENIS O’ROURKE (NZ First): New Zealand First has an absolutely zero-tolerance approach when it comes to sex offenders. That is why we supported the original legislation and why we will support this amendment bill. Registration of offenders can, we think, make a worthwhile contribution, and even if it was only to be effective to a relatively small degree, it would still be legislation and an amendment that would be worth having. So we think that we have got to do all that we possibly can to minimise the effects of child sex offending in the community, and a system of monitoring is essential in order to achieve that. If we are going to have a system of monitoring, it is also essential to have a system of registration, and that, in fact, is what this bill sets out to do.

In fact, this particular bill applies only to amend the retrospective application of the principal Act, and actually it does extend its purpose. One of the speakers opposite said that it was only a clarification. It is not, actually. It does, in fact, extend the scope of the legislation so that all child sex offenders will be registrable, as was intended under the principal Act.

Under that Act, it was intended that registration would be for all offenders subject to imprisonment, and it was intended to include those yet to be sentenced when the Act came into force who would have been registrable offenders had they been convicted after the commencement of the Act. So, actually, it is an extension over the original legislation, but it was intended in the original legislation, so I think this amendment is consistent with that original legislation. Some groups would, otherwise, fall outside the scope of the Act, and they would number, we are told, something in the vicinity of 130 individuals. That is a very significant number of people who should be under the Act to be left out. It is a hole that needs to be plugged, and it needs to be done urgently.

So, for those reasons, we in New Zealand First certainly do want this amendment bill to correct that defect. We think it is important that child sex offenders who are serving a qualifying sentence or who are still subject to conditions or requirements relating to a sentence or who were yet to be sentenced for a qualifying offence when the Act came into force must go on the register, and that is what this amendment bill will actually achieve. It is essential for those reasons.

I want to particularly comment on the Greens’ position, because it is a bit different from ours. We respect their position. However, we believe that the reduction of offending, and the monitoring of it to prevent reoffending—and that is the ultimate objective—has an importance far above the incursion into the privacy rights of the individuals concerned. So it is a matter of what is the predominant interest? We feel that the public interest in protecting children against child sex offenders is by far the predominant consideration, and the relatively minor reduction in the privacy of individuals—even if it does mean, in practice, that some names get out into the public arena—is still not as great as the need to protect children against those offenders.

We think it is a balancing act, but this bill achieves the right balance. It is not a public process, even if, in effect, it is likely that there will be some leaking of names. I do not disagree with that—that is quite likely. But I do say, once again, that the need to protect children against sex offenders—and, therefore, that they should be monitored and, therefore, that they need to be registered—is the predominant consideration. So, for all of those reasons, New Zealand First will continue to support the bill and vote in favour.

JONATHAN YOUNG (National—New Plymouth): I am very pleased to stand in support of this bill, and I do agree with the previous speaker, Denis O’Rourke, that this bill does strike the right balance. It is important to understand that children in our society are treasures—they are taonga—and we must do everything we can to protect them in their innocence, in order to ensure that they grow up healthy and successful.

One side of this bill that I think can be overlooked is the fact that when sex offenders are registered and monitored by Corrections and by a dedicated unit of the police, what that does is maintain accountability. What that actually does is give them a greater incentive to live an overcoming life, which, in the final analysis, protects their freedom. We have got to see that a bill like this, which the Green Party may say sounds Draconian, actually balances the freedoms of people in the best way possible. But we on this side stand on the side of the innocents and the young. We say that, given the balance of rights, it leans their way, obviously. I am very happy to stand and support this bill in the House.

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

JAN LOGIE (Green): I will take a brief call, again to express the Green Party’s opposition to this bill. Just to correct the assertion of the previous speaker, Jonathan Young, that, for us, our opposition is based on the belief that we think this is too Draconian—that is not at the heart of our opposition. The heart of our opposition is that we want our resources going to things that are going to be effective. We oppose window dressing and political grandstanding at the expense of solutions that we know will work. We do not support money going towards something that has no evidence base when we desperately need it going into treatment and prevention services. So that is at the heart of our opposition.

But to this specific bill, I do also just want to recap the process that we have had so far, which also goes to our opposition. The legislation was introduced and sent initially to the Social Services Committee, which does not have a background in dealing with—or does not deal with every day—law and order issues. I think it was sent to us because we had done the inquiry into funding for specialist sexual violence support services. We had about a thousand submissions through that inquiry, and we considered the range of issues around sexual violence that we needed to consider as a country. This was not anything that was mentioned at all in that process, and that needs to be restated.

At the end of that select committee process, the legislation came back to the House and was passed with our opposition, which was based on the evidence. Now, about 5 months later, we have legislation back in this House that extends the initial legislation and also seeks to apparently clarify mistakes that were made in that initial drafting. I think that is a concern. We also understand that there was a Supplementary Order Paper for this bill, but have not seen it. My understanding is that it does not seem to be up on the website, and that, again, is also a concern for us—that a Supplementary Order Paper has been added to a piece of legislation at that stage and not everyone has seen it, and yet we are about to pass this legislation.

I want to thank the Minister of Police for taking the chair during the Committee stage to answer questions, but I will point out that there are several questions that were asked by this side of the House that still remain unanswered. One of them is: why is this legislation retrospective? If we have been told that these people whom this is now being extended to cover were not actually put on a register in the interim, what is the need for the retrospectivity in this legislation? That is an unanswered question. We have not, to my mind, been told why this needs to pass under urgency, and we asked the very clear question. We also have not had explained to us how the sentence “imposes on a person a non-custodial sentence in respect of a conviction for a qualifying offence” is actually any different from the sentence “convicts a person of a qualifying offence and imposes a non-custodial sentence in respect of that offence”. This bill is seeking to change language when actually none of us have heard any explanation for how it is at all different. So it is a bit worrying that we are passing this under urgency, without proper scrutiny, and the questions remain.

This legislation has a clause in it that, supposedly, clarifies that the date on which a person is charged is irrelevant. Again, I cannot see, actually, how it would have been considered relevant and why that is needed. We have not been given examples of that. So these questions remain. They have not been answered by the Minister, and this House is about to pass a piece of legislation that we have no sense of comfort has been properly thought through. It is, to me, a real shame that Parliament has wasted time on something that is, in effect, window dressing, and is again passing legislation under urgency with questions—significant questions—remaining.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): The member mentioned a Supplementary Order Paper that was not on the website. It was a tabled amendment, and tabled amendments do not go on the website. I call Carmel Sepuloni—5 minutes.

CARMEL SEPULONI (Labour—Kelston): We are supporting this bill, just like we supported the original bill, but I do need to state really clearly again that we did have some major reservations about the original bill. We supported the bill in the end because of the fact that it was agencies that would have access to the data. We were really concerned during the process that the public would have access to it. We were not convinced entirely that it would have the impact that the Government had set out, because the evidence that we had set before the select committee did not really support to any great extent that it would have the impact. We were really concerned about the amount of money that needs to go into this—it is $146 million over 10 years—and we knew that we had different organisations that work with people who are victims of sexual abuse come through telling us that, actually, this money could be better invested in different places. But, in the end, we got a point where it is one measure. It is not necessarily the most effective measure, it is not necessarily one that we would have prioritised over anything else, but it was one measure that was set up to manage the risk posed by serious child sex offenders, and so we did support it.

It is disappointing now to see, though, that here we are less than 6 months later back in the House having to amend the bill because there were things that were overlooked and now there are changes that have to be made. Going back to a point I made earlier in the night, one of the reasons why we have to question why it may have happened is that this bill, which now has been put forward by the Minister of Police, was originally put up by the Minister for Social Development and was sent to the Social Services Committee. We questioned that decision at the time and really had to question whether or not that was the place for this bill. Now to hear in the chair tonight the Minister of Police saying that she has taken over this bill because the sex offenders’ register sits better with her ministry makes us throw our hands up because we tried to say that over a year ago when it was sent to the Social Services Committee. So we have to wonder at what point the Government worked out that this was the better place for this bill and this issue to be situated.

Also, I am a little bit concerned that we are hearing nothing from the Minister for Social Development, who was responsible for seeing this bill through, and now here it is back. We would think that, actually, the Minister for Social Development would be standing up in this House and explaining to the House and to the public how we got to this point, why these things were overlooked in the process, and why, less than 6 months after the bill was passed, we are back in the House having to amend it because some serious oversights have now been found.

I do not have much to say about this bill except for the fact that, yes, we will support it because it is important that the amendments are made, but the mistakes should not have been made in the first place, and the Government is responsible for that because it made the decision to send it to a select committee that it was not suited to. We made that point right at the beginning of the process. The Government now acknowledges that, with Paula Bennett saying that this is better situated with her in her ministry. So, yes, we will be supporting it, but, as I said, the Government has made an absolute mess of this. It will not be the first thing that it has made a mess of, but it has made a mess of this, and it needs to be very careful in the future about which committees it sends things to, and needs to just make sure that the correct process is followed the whole way through so that we do not end up having to waste the time of the House and the time of the public by having amendments made to legislation within 6 months of it being passed. Thank you.

IAN McKELVIE (National—Rangitīkei): There is no doubt that there is universal agreement on one thing in this House tonight, and that is—

Kris Faafoi: Yeah, it’s sloppy.

IAN McKELVIE: I was thinking that this bill could have been referred to the Primary Production Committee. That would have solved the problem. We all agree that one of the top priorities for this Parliament is protecting our children from harm.

This Government has, in its time in Government, made many changes to the law and order sector, and every little change makes a difference. This amendment bill, which is fixing a bill that was designed to establish a child sex offender register, is a really important piece of legislation for this House. It is an important little piece of legislation in the law and order tool kit. I have a great deal of pleasure in commending it to the House.

PEENI HENARE (Labour—Tāmaki Makaurau): Tēnā koe e Te Māngai o Te Whare, kia ora tātou katoa. This is not the first time I have taken a call in this House to amend either a technical mishap or a minor oversight, something that was missed when the original bill was going through. So I rise to take a call on the Child Protection (Child Sex Offender Government Agency Registration) Amendment Bill in its third reading. I agree with many of the members of this House—with all of the members of this House—in our concern for the public safety of our tamariki and our families throughout Aotearoa New Zealand. It is in this vein that we in the Labour Party will be supporting this bill.

My colleagues have mentioned our disappointment in having to come back and revisit something so important, something that I know my colleagues—in particular Aupito William Sio, in Māngere, South Auckland—have been dealing with in their communities around the place, the monitoring of sex offenders and, more importantly, the kind of resources that are available to ensure that it is done effectively. In that vein, any information sharing between ministries of the Crown—between any agency or local organisation—that will ensure the safety of our communities is a good move. It is a step in the right direction. In this particular instance, the New Zealand Police and the Department of Corrections will have that ability to share information to make sure that those people in our communities will be kept safe and, of course, that those offenders who require such strict supervision are able to have that service afforded to them to keep them safe and, of course, to keep the community they live in safe.

One of the key parts I noticed in a report from the police was about proactively being able to monitor—proactively being able to do that. I wonder, in much of the debate that has taken place over the past few months about resource and capacity—and I have said this before in the House around bills of this nature, whereby we are asking the question of whether or not the kinds of resources that we expect for such an important job are made available to the ministries, to the departments, and to the services we expect such high levels of monitoring and high levels of service from. Funding cuts, cuts in police numbers—these are issues that have happened within the time frame from when the Act was first passed to this point in time this evening. So these are all concerns that we do have and that have been raised and, I think, for the most part, adequately answered given the truncated time frame for this particular bill. We want to also reiterate our concern around the democratic process, which is about making sure that all of those stakeholders who do have a part to play in this particular bill are heard from.

Without going on too much longer, we want to see this type of bill enacted as soon as possible to keep our communities safe. We want to make sure that that happens, obviously, as soon as possible, because managing the risk posed by serious child sex offenders by providing Government agencies with the information and the tools is very important. It is important to the Labour Party, I am sure it is important to all parties across the House, and, more importantly, to the communities where our people reside. I think about the community of Tāmaki Makaurau. I think about the high-density population. I think about the proximity of community members within their community. There is going to come a point in time when we are seriously going to have to consider the best way of dealing with serial sex offenders and serious sex offenders. This particular bill is a step in the right direction. We support this in its third reading, and I want to commend this bill to the House. Kia ora.

BRETT HUDSON (National): I rise in support of the Child Protection (Child Sex Offender Government Agency Registration) Amendment Bill in this, its third reading. It has been canvassed quite strongly today that when the principal Act was passed last year, it was the intention of Parliament that it would apply to all child sex offenders who had been released from prison and were subject to release conditions at the time the Act came into force. It was also the intention of Parliament that it would apply to child sex offenders who had been convicted of a qualifying offence but who had not been sentenced at the date the Act came into force.

Unfortunately, as the Act has been operationalised, concerns have been raised that perhaps the wording of the law did not give the true effect to that intent, and so we find ourselves here today as a result of 107 offenders having been taken off the register who were intended to be on it. It is important to note that they have been under monitoring conditions by police and Corrections, but they would have and will have additional monitoring should this bill pass into law. This amendment bill will confirm that these child sex offenders should be on the register, and I commend it to the House.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the Child Protection (Child Sex Offender Government Agency Registration) Amendment Bill be now read a third time.

Ayes 106

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

Noes 14

Green Party 14.

Bill read a third time.

Bills

Appropriation (2015/16 Confirmation and Validation) Bill

Second Reading

Hon JUDITH COLLINS (Minister of Revenue) on behalf of the Minister of Finance: I move, That the Appropriation (2015/16 Confirmation and Validation) Bill be now read a second time.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the Appropriation (2015/16 Confirmation and Validation) Bill be now read a second time.

Ayes 94

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

Noes 26

Green Party 14; New Zealand First 12.

Bill read a second time.

Bills

Taxation (Annual Rates for 2016-17, Closely Held Companies, and Remedial Matters) Bill

Second Reading

Hon JUDITH COLLINS (Minister of Revenue): I move, That the Taxation (Annual Rates for 2016-17, Closely Held Companies, and Remedial Matters) Bill be now read a second time. This technical tax bill continues the Government’s focus on improving, strengthening, and updating our tax rules so that they continue to work well for taxpayers and for the Government. This is a large and challenging tax bill. Many of the measures it proposes are complex and address the more technical parts of our tax rules, and have, in the main, been welcomed by the private sector. The private sector is generally supportive because it recognises that we need to ensure that the tax rules continue to be fit for purpose. Tax rules must be responsive to change, they must work well in practice, and compliance costs must be minimised. The Government believes that these principles are vital for the health of our tax system by promoting voluntary compliance and, ultimately, contributing to a stronger economy.

There are four main groups of changes in this bill. To recap briefly, the first group of proposals are intended to simplify the look-through company rules and the dividend rules as they apply to closely held companies in order to reduce compliance costs for these taxpayers. Although closely held companies typically have just a few shareholders, they are a significant proportion of the total number of companies in New Zealand. Look-through companies are, in the same way as a partnership of individuals, looked through for tax purposes. Income and expenditure is attributed back to owners and taxed at their personal tax rates rather than at the company tax rate. It is important that the tax rules apply as intended and that tax, as far as possible, has little impact on a business owner’s decision making. Therefore, the proposals in this bill aim to ensure that the decision to convert a small business to a company is not driven by tax considerations.

The proposed measures aim to simplify the current rules to reduce compliance costs and ensure that the rules remain robust and true to their intended purpose. They include addressing a number of complexities raised through consultation with the private sector, as well as proposals to tighten the eligibility rules for an entity electing to become a look-through company. The result will be a much more workable set of rules, and the removal of some areas of overreach will make the outcomes fairer for taxpayers.

In its consideration of the bill, the Finance and Expenditure Committee made an important recommendation to include a transitional rule for look-through companies. This rule allows those companies that will lose their look-through status as a result of the changes to the eligibility criteria to be able to transition to ordinary companies without immediate tax consequences. This change will further improve the fairness of the rules.

The second group of measures aims to bolster the rules around the tax treatment of interest earned in New Zealand by foreign lenders. Changes are therefore proposed to the non-resident withholding tax and approved issuer levy rules. They ensure these taxes apply consistently to transactions that are similar in economic substance. They include changes to the non-resident withholding tax rules to ensure they apply as intended to related-party debt, or arrangements that are equivalent to related-party debt, and correcting anomalies relating to branch structures, which can be used to remove the requirement to withhold non-resident withholding tax or pay the approved issuer levy.

The third group of measures proposes various amendments to fine-tune the GST rules and ensure they continue to work as intended. They include taxpayer-friendly changes, such as enabling businesses to deduct GST associated with the costs of raising capital, and allowing partially exempt businesses to use an alternative apportionment method. There are also changes to fine-tune the rules around the zero-rating of services provided in connection with land in New Zealand.

Finally, the fourth group of changes proposes a large number of mainly technical amendments. Although mostly remedial in nature, these measures are considered by the private sector to be of major importance to make sure the tax rules work well in practice. They form part of the Government’s ongoing work to ensure that the tax rules are clear and apply as intended, and that they do not impose unnecessary compliance costs on taxpayers.

The bill also includes a number of taxpayer-friendly measures to promote greater fairness and certainty in the tax rules. Proposed changes to the debt remission rules, for example, address a problem that can arise under the current rules when a debt is remitted between associated parties. Debt remission refers to the extinguishing of a borrower’s or debtor’s liability by a creditor. The reduction of the liability is treated as taxable income because it increases the wealth of the debtor. But when the creditor is associated with the debtor, the creditor is denied a bad debt deduction, resulting in income to the borrower but no deduction to the creditor. The bill proposes to correct this asymmetric result by treating the debt as being fully repaid when a debt is remitted between related or associated parties. The proposed changes follow consultation with the private sector in February last year and are part of the Government’s efforts to ensure fairness across the tax system.

I would like to thank the Finance and Expenditure Committee for simplifying and clarifying the legislation that codifies these rules. This will be welcome news for group companies in corporate New Zealand as well as smaller mum and dad partnerships or businesses.

Other changes proposed in the bill include amendments to improve the consistency of income tax legislation with insolvency law, correct an overreach of the current land tainting rules affecting council-controlled organisations, ensure that the tax pooling and life insurance business rules work as intended, and ensure that the Working for Families tax credit rules work correctly.

Fourteen charities are to be added to the list of donee organisations with overseas purposes in schedule 32 of the Income Tax Act 2007, which means donors to those charities will be eligible for tax benefits on their donations from 1 April 2016.

Finally, the bill sets the annual rate of income tax for the 2016-17 tax year. Many of the measures proposed in this bill have been developed through open consultation with the general public and private sector groups. This is a particular strength of our tax system and helps to ensure that tax and social policy changes are well thought through and that they will work well in practice. Further amendments have been recommended by the Finance and Expenditure Committee, and for these I acknowledge and thank the committee members for their close attention to the technical detail of this complex bill. Briefly, those recommendations include amendments to simplify or clarify the original purposes, where this is possible. The result will be greater coherence across proposed changes and reduced compliance costs for taxpayers where possible.

I would like to thank submitters whose feedback was considered by the Finance and Expenditure Committee. The bill has been improved by that feedback. In addition, I wish to advise that I shall introduce Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) 261 at the Committee of the whole House stage. This SOP will introduce practical measures that will provide relief for people affected by the recent Kaikōura earthquake and subsequent aftershocks. It will ensure that businesses are not faced with an unexpected tax liability as a result of receiving replacement insurance proceeds on destroyed capital assets. This rollover relief, in effect, replicates a measure that the Government provided for Canterbury businesses. The SOP will also contain a number of changes of a consequential remedial nature to ensure the legislation operates as it is intended.

I think it is fair to say that we live in a very dynamic period of technology-driven change. Every day there are constant challenges and opportunities to manage our affairs and do business differently. It is important that our tax system remains current and in tune with these changes. At the same time the tax system must be, and be perceived by New Zealanders to be, fair and coherent. The proposals in this bill have been developed with those very important objectives in mind. I commend the Taxation (Annual Rates for 2016-17, Closely Held Companies, and Remedial Matters) Bill to the House.

MICHAEL WOOD (Labour—Mt Roskill): I rise to speak to the Taxation (Annual Rates for 2016-17, Closely Held Companies, and Remedial Matters) Bill, and I rise to confirm Labour’s support for the bill to progress. We acknowledge the work that the Minister of Revenue has done on it. I think the Minister could have pepped up her speech, actually. It is a good bill, but I have heard more passion in old episodes of George & Mildred than in that speech.

I am a relatively new member and I was not present for the select committee hearings on this bill, but I have consulted colleagues, read submissions, and read through some of Hansard’s most gripping pages ever to get to grips with the intent of this bill and its delivery mechanisms and, as I say, the Labour Party supports it. Before going into detail, though, I do want to comment on the sheer volume of tax bills that the House, the tax community, and the broader public are having to consider at the moment. Often these bills are very weighty. As the Minister commented, this is a big bill, something like 400 pages, and there is a lot of technical detail. This is a matter that has been commented on by submitters to the Finance and Expenditure Committee, and on this side of the House we would like some serious consideration to be given to better process for tax legislation to be compiled and to make its way through the legislative process. We benefit from the input of the tax community and the public. Let us not wear them out.

On the process front, it is also appropriate to point out that one of the most important aspects of this bill, not commented on by the Minister, is the setting of income tax rates for the coming year. We are running perilously close to the cut-off date for being able to implement those rates in the new financial year. Colleagues more experienced than me have commented that this is the latest that they recall the annual rates being set. In this case there will not be a crisis—the Government will not be shut down—but running the process this late does create real risks for the smooth running of government, and we should ensure that it is done in a more organised fashion in future years.

Befitting of its size, and despite the fact that it is a very detailed and technical bill in some ways, this is also an important bill. Aside from setting those annual tax rates, it provides for some important changes to ensure the ongoing integrity of our tax system. It has something for everyone. There is stuff about the aircraft overhaul expenses, which I think have been a singular achievement of Mr David Seymour and something he can take back to the people of Epsom. Horse racing, gold, and silver are all covered by this bill, and what that speaks to is the way that the tax system touches on every aspect of our economic lives.

That is what makes it extra important that our tax system has integrity, that it is clear, that it is not open to abuse, and that it does not get caught and bogged down in litigation. As one of the overviews of the bill says, it aims for the tax treatment of alternative forms of income and expenditure to be as even as possible. That is something that we on this side of the House support, and, in fact, we want that principle to be extended in the future to ensure that across our whole tax system we achieve balance.

Having affirmed the importance of tax rates being set for the new financial year, I do want to reflect that we on this side of the House view it as a missed opportunity to ensure that our tax system is fair, progressive, and driving the kind of productive economy that we would all like to see in New Zealand. This bill simply rolls over existing rates when what we actually need is a more fundamental review of our tax system to ensure that it is modern, fit for purpose, and balanced. While we wait with trepidation for possible Government announcements about tax changes in the Budget, and while there is a degree of political interest in whether the former Prime Minister’s north of $3 billion of tax cuts are still on the agenda or whether it is the new Prime Minister’s less cloud-bouncy approach that prevails, it is Labour’s belief that we need a proper review of the system to ensure that tax is applied fairly across taxpayers and our economy and that everyone pays their fair share.

Chris Bishop: What does that mean?

MICHAEL WOOD: Just rolling over the rates or changing a few thresholds does not achieve that. It means doing better than we are doing now, Mr Bishop.

In considering the existing rates, we might also reflect on the fact that these rates came in as a result of the 2010 tax switch overseen by Mr English, which resulted in 40 percent of the net benefit of that package going to the top 10 percent of earners. That was not an equitable outcome, and any future changes to tax rates need to do a much better job of ensuring that New Zealanders who really need an income boost receive one. Our tax system is important to how we incentivise growth and investment in our economy, and it is also important in ensuring fair distributional outcomes. That is what Labour will push for as we review those tax rates in the future.

I now want to move on to some of the other changes proposed in the bill. I am going to focus particularly on the aspects relating to closely held companies, and I am sure my colleagues will cover others. In doing so, I do want to acknowledge the work of the Finance and Expenditure Committee in smoothing out some of the changes that were originally proposed in this area and dealing with the sensible submissions of submitters.

Probably the most substantial area of change does relate to look-through companies (LTCs), which the Minister referenced. Look-through companies are a legitimate form of business partnership, but it is also clear that they have been the target of some sharp and aggressive tax practice. So it is appropriate that we examine the structure to ensure that it is meeting its intended objectives and not those of people and organisations who would simply use them to minimise legitimate tax obligations. Look-through companies comprise a large number of active companies in New Zealand. They are companies whose shareholders elect—as the name would suggest—to be looked through for tax purposes. The expenditure, income, and resultant tax obligations flow through to shareholders, who are then taxed at their marginal rate, and, of course, on the other side, losses can also be offset. Particularly for sole traders looking to expand without more convoluted company structures, they can be a useful vehicle for bringing in additional business partners.

Essentially, the bill tightens the criteria for companies electing to become LTCs with measures including a stronger set of rules around the five counted owners test to ensure that those benefiting from distributions are actually captured within that test instead of various financial mechanisms meaning that there are potentially far more beneficiaries than might otherwise be seen to be the case.

Amongst this and other changes, which will have the likely effect of reducing the number of LTCs, the Finance and Expenditure Committee has worked hard to ensure that there is a fair transition regime for those whose circumstances may be affected by the passage of the bill. For those LTCs who lose their status in the ensuing tax year, a new transitional rule is proposed that enables tax book values to be rolled over to the new ordinary company to ensure that there is no unintended tax impact from that changeover. That is a sensible change proposed by the committee, which we support.

The committee was also very keen to ensure that charities and Māori authorities that have used LTCs are not unfairly disadvantaged by the proposed changes, which, to most intents and purposes, do remove the right of charities and Māori authorities to use LTCs. A grandparenting arrangement was originally proposed for Māori authorities. However, the select committee determined that that wording needed to be tightened so that only interests acquired before the 3 May 2016 grandparenting date are allowed, whereas the original wording of the bill captured only the need for an LTC to be established before that date and not interests that might come into it afterwards. This is a tidy-up that I believe meets the original intent of the bill and Labour supports.

There have also been some concerns from charities that have to some small degree legitimately used LTCs for certain activities and would be disadvantaged by the original proposal to simply end the right of charities to own LTCs. The committee has suggested—very pragmatically, in my view—that a grandparenting provision aligned to that of Māori authorities should apply.

Finally, I want to turn to Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) 261 tabled by the Minister about depreciation roll-over relief for quake victims. Clearly, those in the upper South Island and the greater Wellington region with destroyed assets who receive the small solace of some depreciation recovery should not then face a tax disadvantage. So it is only fair and sensible as proposed by the SOP, that this obligation can be deferred while people and business owners move their way through that rebuild process.

As I say, Labour, through its work on the select committee, is satisfied that this bill is moving us in the right direction. We have a fundamental belief that further work is needed on the integrity of our tax system to make sure that everyone is paying their fair share and to make sure that the system is balanced across our whole economy. But we have no hesitation in supporting the positive changes that are included in this tax bill and we look forward to further stages of this debate. Thank you.

CHRIS BISHOP (National): It is a pleasure to take a call on this bill. The Minister of Revenue has outlined in quite some detail for the House the various technical measures that the bill does—and it is a good bill—and I just want to, in my remarks, address four points to add to what the Minister has said.

The first is just to respond to what has just come before from Michael Wood about the volume of tax legislation that the House is considering. This has been, I have got to say, a puzzling theme of Labour members’ remarks on tax bills recently, because the New Zealand Parliament does not actually sit that much, as Sir Geoffrey Palmer has pointed out most recently. The New Zealand Parliament does not sit that much, our select committees do not sit that much, and, actually, the job of the Finance and Expenditure Committee, which I have the great privilege to chair, is to examine bills put before the Parliament by the Government. Actually, there is nothing more constitutionally important than the proper scrutiny by Parliament of the appropriations that the Government wishes to raise, and, obviously, raise through revenue and through the taxation system.

So I find the complaints about the volume of legislation a bit strange, because the Labour Party called for the Shewan inquiry into the taxation system after the Mossack Fonseca issue was raised. We had the inquiry, and then the Government very quickly legislated, so it cannot be complaining about that piece of legislation.

The Labour Party and the Green Party have spent a lot of time talking about so-called multinational company tax evasion, profit shifting, and things like that, and, actually, there is a reasonable amount of agreement on that across the House. The Government is acting, and there has been legislation, or parts of legislation, to do with that. So we have legislated in relation to that, or at least started the process of it. Then another piece of legislation that has come before the House recently is to do with making it easier for small businesses to pay provisional tax. Actually, the Labour Party likes to stand up all the time and claim that that is its policy, so when the Government introduced a bill to give effect to that, you know, it cannot really complain about that. So I am just left puzzling: what is the Labour Party’s complaint about the volume of tax legislation, other than the fact that it does not want to do any work? So that is the first point—that is the first point. That was my crescendo to that point.

The second point is to praise the Minister’s Supplementary Order Paper 261 about the effect of the Kaikōura earthquakes, making sure that we do not confer any unexpected tax liability on businesses affected by that. So I just want to say that that is a strong move.

Stuart Smith: Excellent—it’s excellent.

CHRIS BISHOP: That is right. My good colleague Stuart Smith, the MP for Kaikōura, says to me that it is an excellent move, and if he takes a call I am sure he will praise it to the ends as well.

The third point I want to make is, again, to just respond to Michael Wood about the idea that this bill is a missed opportunity. The Labour Party members like to say this quite a bit about tax legislation, as well. It has been a constant theme running through their speeches most recently. They always say we need a fundamental review of the tax system—OK, I do not really agree, but fair enough—and it needs to be fairer, more progressive, and modern. Well, we are modernising the tax system, and I think there is actually a degree of cross-party consensus on that, and we are putting through the Business Transformation programme through the IRD.

So what does fair and more progressive mean? Actually, what they mean by that is higher taxes and new taxes. That is what they mean—they just do not want to say so. That is what you do when you are in Opposition. When you do not want to promise something that you know will not be popular, you do a review—or, at least, you promise a review—and you say the right things in order to give effect, in order to give the indication that you are tilting one way or another. It cannot be capital gains taxes, because Grant Robertson and Andrew Little ruled that out, and they keep ruling it out, so we know that it will mean higher taxes. Actually, the Labour Party should be upfront with New Zealanders about its policy. Rather than just saying: “We want to do a review to make it fairer and more progressive—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): Order! We are on this bill.

CHRIS BISHOP: Very good, thank you. I acknowledge that.

The fourth point I want to make is—

Grant Robertson: What was the third?

CHRIS BISHOP: The third point was about the missed opportunity that you claim this bill is. The fourth point is about the bill’s addition to the schedule of the Income Tax Act in relation to giving charities tax relief. I have got to say—I do have to say—that it is ridiculous that we have to legislate in order to confer tax benefits on a particular subset of charities. I have said this before in the Parliament: I think there has got to be a simpler way of adding charities that are subject to income tax relief to the list and giving them tax relief, and there has got to be an easier way of removing the charities that are not subject to it any more.

For example, in reading the background to the bill, there is a particular trust—I think it is some trust in Auckland—that has been wound up and, therefore, is no longer eligible to be classed as a charity for the purposes of tax. There has got to be a better way for Parliament to deal with these organisations than the IRD having to, every year, collate through the system all the charities that should be added to the list and all the charities that should be removed from the list. There has got to be a simpler way, whether it is by ministerial fiat or whether it is by the officials doing it, or something. I just make that point again, that I think we have got to get a better way of doing that. I just think it is silly that we have to keep turning up in Parliament every year to do this. So, with those four remarks on this very important piece of legislation, I commend it to the House.

GRANT ROBERTSON (Labour—Wellington Central): I am a little bit disappointed after that contribution from Chris Bishop, because colleagues on this side of the House will know that when the National Government was rejigging its Cabinet, I was on “team Bishop”. I was saying that Chris Bishop deserves to be in Cabinet well ahead of David Bennett—well ahead of David Bennett. I was there backing Chris Bishop, and then he gets up tonight and does a speech like that—he does a speech like that. I have got to say, David Bennett would have probably been able to do that better, and that must be a crushing blow to hear those words said. In fact, I never thought I would say those words in this House.

But I do want to respond to one of Mr Bishop’s points, which was his short constitutional law lecture that he delivered us on behalf of Geoffrey Palmer, when he was wondering why the Labour Party and Michael Wood had expressed concern about the conveyer belt of tax legislation that we have been witnessing in the House in the last couple of years. I just want to make the point to Mr Bishop that this bill is in fact the bill where we had the moment of confusion when submitters were coming into the Finance and Expenditure Committee not sure which of the two tax bills that were in front of the committee they were there to submit on. That is the situation we found ourselves in in the committee. That is why Michael Wood has raised this issue, and the Labour Party will continue to raise the issue that we believe there can be a much more streamlined approach to the way that taxation amendment bills come up.

We have had the example in the last bill—which I know you will allow me to speak about just briefly, Mr Assistant Speaker—where the bill itself was amending a piece of legislation we had passed in the House only a few months earlier. That is not a good way to make tax law—and it is not the fault of the officials, necessarily. They have a work programme, which the Minister of Revenue approves, that they work to and that comes forward. It is, however, the responsibility of those who manage the House to make sure that this comes up in a way that is sensible and that allows members of the public to make the kinds of submissions that we want them to make.

I am going to speak—and I imagine I will get interrupted in the middle of the speech, so I want to save some of the really exciting stuff around closely held companies and aircraft overhaul expenses, which I know is one of Mr Bayly’s life passions and which he will no doubt speak about when he gets up. But I want to cover a couple of matters this evening, if I can, and one I do want to get out is my support, also, for the Minister’s Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) 261, around the depreciation rollover for businesses affected by the quakes, as Mr Bishop said, to avoid them having any unnecessary tax obligations. This is important. A number of businesses and business owners have been affected in this way, both in Kaikōura and here in Wellington.

But I also want to throw my support behind Ron Mark’s SOP 260, which actually takes the Minister’s SOP a step forward and says: let us actually do something now to enable those people who know they need to strengthen their buildings and who want to strengthen their buildings but are finding it financially difficult to do so. Mr Mark has proposed tax deductibility measures, and that will work for some people. But, personally, I would go further and say we actually also need to look at how we help those people who are owners of apartments in residential buildings who have been affected in the same way, either through the tax system or through some kind of low-interest or no-interest loan facility.

Right across New Zealand but especially in places like Wellington, we have people who live in buildings who are not rich or wealthy. They happen to own an apartment or a flat in a building that is earthquake-prone. They want to do the strengthening. Their bodies corporate cannot borrow money as a group—they themselves are struggling. We need to do the right thing by those people. They are not asking for a handout; they are just asking for some assistance to get the work done and get it done now. I implore the Government to take on the very good things that it has done here in terms of businesses affected by the quake, and to take on Mr Mark’s SOP. Let us have a package that gets the earthquake-strengthening work done as soon as possible.

The other matter I want to just cover tonight is the question of rates. Again, to help Mr Bishop out a little here, this is the time when we set the annual rates. It is a bit late in the day, it would be fair to say, for the 2016-17 year. You know, taxpayers right across New Zealand have actually been paying their tax, presumably, hoping the Government would actually pass the rates, but it has left it pretty late, and it has left it very late to the point where we might have some other announcements that might change the tax rates coming our way.

I challenge the Government speakers opposite to be up front with us. If David Bennett was here, he might know already what those tax rates are. But I want to know from the Government what is actually going to happen in terms of tax rates. These will be one of the shortest-term sets of tax rates ever passed in this House, I venture to suggest, because when it comes to Budget time, we know the Government is not going to be able to resist the old tax cut dance in election year. Throw something out there—despite the fact it has created a massive deficit in infrastructure and social spending, throw out the tax cuts. Make sure that the public think that there is a chance here that they will get something from it.

I endorse what my colleague Michael Wood has said. What the tax system needs in New Zealand is a thorough, far-reaching review. We have reached the point now where we have huge inequalities in our country, particularly in terms of wealth. The owners of assets—that is where inequality is now residing, and in our tax system we need to take another look at that to make sure that we actually achieve the Minister’s goal of fairness, which she said was the bedrock of the tax system. Right now, today, as we set—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): I am sorry to interrupt the honourable member. The time has come for me to leave the Chair.

Debate interrupted.

The House adjourned at 10 p.m.