Wednesday, 22 March 2017

WEDNESDAY, 22 MARCH 2017

WEDNESDAY, 22 MARCH 2017

Mr Speaker took the Chair at 2 p.m.

Prayers.

Points of Order

Crown Minerals (Export of Water and Royalties for the Regions) Amendment Bill—Leave for Introduction and Setting Down as Members’ Order of the Day No. 1

DENIS O’ROURKE (NZ First): I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I seek leave to introduce the Crown Minerals (Export of Water and Royalties for the Regions) Amendment Bill, a member’s bill in my name to make water extracted or taken as drinking water for export a mineral for the purposes of the Crown Minerals Act, as well as giving effect to royalties for the regions to ensure that at least 25 percent of any minerals royalty goes back to the regions it was extracted from, and for the bill to be set down as members’ order of the day No. 1.

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

Oral Questions

Questions to Ministers

Economy—Diversification, Resilience, and Trade

1. CHRIS BISHOP (National) to the Minister of Finance: What impact is trade diversification having on the resilience of the economy?

Hon STEVEN JOYCE (Minister of Finance): New Zealand’s increasing trade diversification has been highlighted through the recent increase in overall exports, from $67.5 billion 2 years ago to over $70 billion now, despite a $3.5 billion fall in dairy exports over that period. Since 2007, since the figures for both goods and services exports have been available, there has been good growth in exports across a diverse range of sectors. Although dairy exports have increased 49 percent since that time, 10 years ago, international education has increased by 70 percent, commercial services by 54 percent, and tourism by 32 percent. Exports of both fruit and wine have more than doubled. This increasing diversity adds to the resilience of the New Zealand economy.

Chris Bishop: How has the destination of New Zealand’s export trade changed over time?

Hon STEVEN JOYCE: A key part of the economy’s resilience is the increased diversification of New Zealand’s trade destinations. Back 50 years ago, less than 30 percent of our goods exports went into Asia; whereas, in the last 2 years, this has increased to nearly 60 percent, with a significant shift occurring over the last decade. The most obvious example of this shift is the expansion in our trade with China, which has moved from being our fifth- to our second-largest export destination over the last decade. But other countries have also grown significantly in importance as well, such as India, from 17th to seventh; Hong Kong, from 15th to 10th; and the United Arab Emirates, which has moved from 21st to 16th.

Chris Bishop: What has been the impact of growing trade with China?

Hon STEVEN JOYCE: As I noted in my previous answer, China has moved from being our fifth- to our second-largest export destination since 2007. Exports of goods and services to China have more than quintupled over this time, from $3 billion to $12.3 billion. Although this has been driven significantly by primary sector exports, there has been a strong growth in services trade, and as shown by the increasing interest in New Zealand from Chinese tourists, this growth should continue. It is very valuable, particularly in regional New Zealand. The Government has worked hard to foster a strong relationship with China, and the visit of Premier Li Keqiang next week is an opportunity to further strengthen that relationship.

Ron Mark: How on earth can he have such a rose-tinted view of our economy when manufacturing is in the doldrums, we are importing unskilled migrants as workers, and merchandise trade exports have fallen by a massive $725 million in the past year alone?

Hon STEVEN JOYCE: I think the member has obviously got out on the wrong side of bed today. The New Zealand economy, Mr Mark, is one of the fastest growing in the OECD right now, which is a tribute to New Zealand exporters, particularly in regional New Zealand and places like the Bay of Plenty, with the kiwi fruit, and like Hawke’s Bay, with its apple industry and the wine industry, and the growth in the meat industry—further opportunities there. A big part of it is the relationship with China, which this Government is proud of fostering, and that has seen very big increases in exports from the regions and incomes to the regions.

Chris Bishop: What risks may impact on New Zealand’s ongoing trade success?

Hon Simon Bridges: The Opposition.

Hon STEVEN JOYCE: Well, apart from Mr Mark, for most of the post - World War II period, global trade has risen roughly twice as fast as global growth as a whole and has actually driven global growth. This has slowed a lot since the global financial crisis, and recent OECD data suggests that trade growth is now slower than global growth. In this context, New Zealand exporters have done particularly well, and although the value of our exports is growing, it remains a tough operating environment for exporters. Trade disruption and protectionism propose further risks to our success, and that is why this Government will stay at the absolute forefront in advocating for free and fair trade.

Defence Force—Afghan Civilian Deaths Allegations in Hit & Run

2. METIRIA TUREI (Co-Leader—Green) to the Prime Minister: Tu ai a ia i runga i te mana o ngā whakataunga katoa o tāna Kāwanatanga?

[Does he stand by all of his Government’s decisions?]

Rt Hon BILL ENGLISH (Prime Minister): Yes.

Metiria Turei: Does he stand by his Government’s refusal to commit to an inquiry into the allegations contained in the Hit & Run book, including the allegation of the killing of children in Afghanistan by New Zealand forces; if so, why?

Rt Hon BILL ENGLISH: At this stage we have not seen sufficient evidence that has been substantiated from a book published less than 24 hours ago in circumstances that you would have to describe as, at least partially, politically motivated, to warrant an inquiry. However, I have sought briefings from officials and will seek more such briefings.

Metiria Turei: Even if the Prime Minister does think that this book is politically motivated, does he not agree that the allegations are serious enough to warrant a full investigation to maintain the reputation and integrity of the New Zealand Defence Force?

Rt Hon BILL ENGLISH: I think that although the allegations are certainly of a serious nature, that simply means that the requirement for substantiation is all the greater, and I note that even the authors are somewhat conditional about the way in which they make a whole range of allegations.

Metiria Turei: Is the Prime Minister concerned about the potential that the conduct of the New Zealand Defence Force in Afghanistan could be investigated by the International Criminal Court?

Rt Hon BILL ENGLISH: No, and I must say that we are proud of our defence forces and their service overseas, which includes the loss of 10 lives in Afghanistan. In the interests of New Zealand playing its part in securing international order, there is no suggestion in the book—there is certainly no suggestion in the briefings that I have seen or the inquiries that have already been covered—that New Zealand defence personnel have done anything other than observe the rules of engagement in a professional manner.

Metiria Turei: Is the Prime Minister not taking seriously the possibility that the International Criminal Court could investigate the New Zealand Defence Force for the alleged killing of civilians, including children, in Afghanistan and a possible Government cover-up?

Rt Hon BILL ENGLISH: Who knows whether that is technically possible or not. Our concern in the first instance is to ensure that New Zealand defence personnel have acted and behaved to the standards that we would expect of them. I can only repeat that the book very recently published does not yet appear to have substantiated enough or any of the allegations to warrant an inquiry. However, we will continue to get briefings.

Metiria Turei: Does the Prime Minister not agree that the allegations in the book of the killing of civilians, including children, by the New Zealand Defence Force, the Special Air Service, must be taken seriously enough to warrant an inquiry into those allegations, if only to disprove them?

Rt Hon BILL ENGLISH: Well, we are simply not going to be rushed into such a serious undertaking. I think the member should just review the standards that she is applying. We would certainly not conduct an inquiry simply on the basis of disproving unsubstantiated allegations.

Defence Force—Afghan Civilian Deaths Allegations in Hit & Run

3. ANDREW LITTLE (Leader of the Opposition) to the Prime Minister: Will he commission an independent inquiry into the allegations made in the book Hit & Run?

Rt Hon BILL ENGLISH (Prime Minister): Not at this stage. The book came out less than 24 hours ago, and as I have said, the Government will not be rushed into an independent inquiry. I have had an initial briefing from the New Zealand Defence Force (NZDF) about the incident and the inquiries that have already taken place. I have also been briefed on some aspects of the allegations. On the face of it, the allegations are difficult to substantiate. I will discuss these matters further with the Minister of Defence and Chief of Defence Force when they return from Iraq, where New Zealand has a significant number of serving Defence Force personnel. In the interim I have asked for some written advice from the NZDF.

Andrew Little: Given the high regard with which New Zealanders hold their Defence Force, and from the advice he has received, can he be sure that no civilians were killed or injured in the NZ SAS raids in Khak Khuday Dad and Naik in August 2010?

Rt Hon BILL ENGLISH: I have asked that question. The New Zealand Defence Force stands by the release that it put out last night—that is, that on the basis of independent investigation by the Afghan Government and the coalition forces back in 2011, they believe that New Zealand Defence Force personnel conducted themselves according to the rules of engagement and that civilian casualties have not been substantiated.

Ron Mark: Are we seriously suggesting that Lieutenant General Rt Hon Sir Jerry Mateparae GNZM, QSO, and Knight of the Order of St John would have approved of the killing of innocent civilians by soldiers under his command and would have been complicit in a cover-up?

Rt Hon BILL ENGLISH: Certainly the Government is not suggesting that. The authors of the book seem to be implying it, but it would be fair to say they have not been able to substantiate that kind of allegation.

Andrew Little: Based on the advice he has received, does he know whether New Zealand personnel made any requests during the raids for fire support from the US Apache helicopters that are alleged to have killed and injured civilians on that day?

Rt Hon BILL ENGLISH: Again, we will be asking for more written advice following on from the briefing today, but I think there has been a series of press releases, actually, that have outlined the fact that American helicopters were involved in the operation.

Andrew Little: Based on the advice he has received, does he know whether New Zealand personnel shot the two people found dead, allegedly from gunshot wounds, near the SAS position?

Rt Hon BILL ENGLISH: Again, I would not want to comment in detail on that matter. However, I have been reassured that, in participating in the action, New Zealand Defence Force personnel did follow the rules of engagement in the way that would be expected, and I think both the Parliament and the general public need to understand there is close legal scrutiny of the planning of these operations and in review of them.

Andrew Little: Based on the advice he has received, does he know whether New Zealand SAS personnel returned to the two villages to destroy the same houses they targeted in the initial raid; if so, does he know the objective behind that decision?

Rt Hon BILL ENGLISH: I have not received any advice on that matter.

Andrew Little: Based on the advice he has received, does he know whether New Zealand SAS personnel were aware that Qari Miraj was likely to be tortured when he was handed over to the Afghan National Directorate of Security; if so, why did they hand him over?

Rt Hon BILL ENGLISH: Again, I have not had any advice on that particular matter. The SAS is deployed subject to very well defined terms of engagement. We expect them at all times to stick to those terms of engagement, even when they are in very stressful situations. The advice I have had so far indicates that is exactly what they have done.

Andrew Little: In light of his answers on these important questions and the risk these allegations pose to the reputation of New Zealand’s Defence Force, is it not right to commission an independent inquiry to reassure the public about our soldiers’ conduct?

Rt Hon BILL ENGLISH: As I have said, we are not going to be rushed into such an inquiry on the basis of a book launched yesterday in a manner that you would have to describe, at least, as partially politically motivated. As I said to the co-leader of the Greens, rebutting allegations that may or may not be substantiated—and, in this case, have not been substantiated—is not a good reason to embark on such a serious type of inquiry.

Police—Applicant Numbers

4. KANWALJIT SINGH BAKSHI (National) to the Minister of Police: What update can she give about the number of people who want to join the Police?

Hon PAULA BENNETT (Minister of Police): Earlier this year the Prime Minister announced funding for an extra 1,125 police staff, including 880 sworn officers. As a result, we will need more than a thousand new recruits. I am happy to report that the number of people applying to join the police has hit a new high in 2017, following a successful summer recruitment campaign. In January and February 1,351 people applied to join the police, twice the number of applications as in the same period in 2016.

Kanwaljit Singh Bakshi: What reports has she seen about the number of women who want to join the police?

Hon PAULA BENNETT: As the Minister of Police, but also as the Minister for Women, it is great to see that there has been a 61 percent increase in the number of women who were interested in becoming cops in January and February this year, compared with the same time last year, and as the commissioner’s goal is to get 50 percent of the police sworn policewomen, I think that is a great start.

Kanwaljit Singh Bakshi: When will the first of the 880 new police be out on the beat?

Hon PAULA BENNETT: The Police College is currently preparing to train an average of 220 additional police per year over the next 4 years. They will double the size of most recruit wings—

Chris Hipkins: For some time next decade.

Hon PAULA BENNETT: —from 40 to 80 recruits. The first recruits will be training in July this year, you will be pleased to know, Mr Hipkins, and be out patrolling by November. We have made a commitment that once all the new police are in place, 95 percent of New Zealanders will be within 25 kilometres of a patrolling police officer 24 hours a day.

Ron Mark: Will the Minister tell the House why people are joining the police at a time when you are cutting commercial vehicle investigation unit staff by 26, highway patrol staff by 90; and how would it affect your recruiting if the media gag that has been placed on the 200-odd staff who, we have been told, are going to be laid off by July was lifted?

Hon PAULA BENNETT: Well, it is the commissioner who moves police around from road policing and into general, and that is what they are doing. There are changes that are happening, and you can see that with the technology that there is now in road policing, in particular, as that increases there will be some changes there. But what I can assure that member is that there will be more police on the beat by the end of this year.

Freshwater Management—Commercial Water User Charge

James Shaw: Before I begin I would like to wish the Minister a very happy World Water Day.

5. JAMES SHAW (Co-Leader—Green) to the Minister for the Environment: Does he agree with the OECD that there are “significant management issues in relation to the availability, demand, and distribution of freshwater resources” in parts of New Zealand?

Hon Dr NICK SMITH (Minister for the Environment): The same best wishes to the member. Yes, and that is why our Government has introduced national metering requirements; the first in New Zealand national policy statement on fresh water; requirements on councils to set minimum flows in our rivers and limit nitrates, phosphorus, ammonia, and algae; and it is also why this Government has increased by sixfold the funding for clean-ups, now over $450 million. Our latest steps are to require regional councils to improve the swimmability of New Zealand waterways by 1,000 kilometres each year to achieve 90 percent of lakes and rivers by 2040.

James Shaw: Why is he delaying a decision until after the election on pricing the commercial use of water, when the OECD said yesterday that water limits have already been surpassed in some regions of New Zealand?

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: Because the pricing of water is a complex issue. For instance, the level that is proposed of 10c a litre would impose a cost of $600 billion on the agriculture industry, which would wipe it out. That is why we say this needs to be done in a considered way, and that is why we have referred it to the technical advisory group.

James Shaw: Does he agree with the simple principle that if a business profits from the extraction of water it should pay for that water?

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: I remind the member that New Zealand extracts only 2 percent of its total water resource, and so any pricing regime actually needs to be developed quite carefully, or we have the capacity to do significant economic damage to key sectors like agriculture that earn this country a great deal of its export earnings.

Scott Simpson: How does this 2017 OECD environmental review compare with the review made back in 2007 on the issue of fresh water?

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: The 2007 review was very critical of New Zealand’s freshwater management, saying at the time there was no national policy statement, there were no national environment standards, and that only two out of our 16 regional councils had water management plans. The latest report states that the national policy statement is a welcome step towards addressing water quality and quantity challenges and fills a longstanding gap. The report also highlights the success of the cap-and-trade project on Lake Taupō, describing it as world leading. It also notes that all but one of our regional councils now have a water plan.

James Shaw: Can he explain how 100-year-old, pristine deep-aquifer water is any different from other resources that the Government already charges companies to extract, like oil, gas, sand, or even gravel?

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: The substantive difference is that resources like coal, ironsand, and gravel are limited resources. Actually, New Zealand has 500 trillion litres of water—new water—every single year. We use only 2 percent of that. If you take an area like water consents, only a very small portion of that which is consented is actually used.

James Shaw: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I was asking about pristine 100-year-old deep-aquifer water, not the amount of water that falls out of the sky.

Mr SPEAKER: I know the member mentioned that in the question, but the essence of the question is why treat water differently from oil, sand, or gravel. The Minister addressed that very definitely.

James Shaw: Is he concerned about the potential for a gold rush of consents for freshwater extraction, while he delays making a decision about the possibility of introducing a commercial water user charge?

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: No, I am not concerned with a gold rush. I note that last year the actual amount of bottled water exports dropped by 10 percent. I also note that the Green Party made a big deal at the weekend of a consent granted on the West Coast for water bottling. The consent was granted in 1991. It has not been taken up in 25 years, suggesting that this “immediate crisis” is not quite what the Green Party presents.

Housing Market—Commentary and Affordability

6. PHIL TWYFORD (Labour—Te Atatū) to the Minister for Building and Construction: Does he accept the finding of the periodical The Economist, that New Zealand has the most unaffordable housing in the developed world?

Hon Dr NICK SMITH (Minister for Building and Construction): No, and that is not what The Economist said. Furthermore, the report is based on 6-month-old data, and Auckland house prices have dropped 8 percent since then.

Phil Twyford: Does he accept that, according to The Economist, New Zealand has had the highest rise in house prices, costs the most against the average person’s income, and now has the biggest difference between house prices and rents?

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: I also note that New Zealand has had the strongest economic growth, some of the lowest levels of unemployment, and some of the strongest population growth. I would also note that the OECD report actually notes that house prices in countries such as Australia, in major cities, have actually grown faster than they have in New Zealand.

Phil Twyford: Does he accept the glowing accolades of the property speculators, who made an average profit of $70,000 per house flipping Auckland houses last year and who say that he is doing a great job on the housing portfolio?

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: Every time I hear the member saying that a Labour Government is going to stop speculators, I have to ask the question why and how—[Interruption]—how—because anybody who pretends that they can prevent speculation is dreaming.

Phil Twyford: When the former Prime Minister John Key told him to supercharge the housing market when he appointed him to fix the housing crisis in January 2013, why did he take him literally and drive up the median house price to median income ratio from 6.7 times to 10 times, and run up a 40,000 dwelling deficit?

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: When I became the building and construction Minister, New Zealand was building 13,000 houses per year. New Zealand is now building 30,000 houses a year. I challenge the member to find any 4-year period where house construction has grown so quickly.

Joanne Hayes: What recommendations has The Economist made about how to improve long-term housing affordability?

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: The Economist has noted that the worst house prices exist in cities with the tightest land regulation, and has strongly advocated policies that reduce the time and cost of consenting new housing developments. That is exactly what this Government is doing with its resource management amendment bill, which is being so strongly opposed by members opposite—showing that they are part of the problem, not part of the solution.

Phil Twyford: Is he surprised that Hugh Pavletich, the co-author of the Demographia report on housing affordability—whose foreword to that report was contributed by the current Prime Minister only a few years ago—describes him, the Minister, as a blundering incompetent?

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: I am used to all sorts of personal abuse. I just get on with doing my job and focusing on the issues that matter.

Phil Twyford: Can he answer this question, which was posed by the Dominion Post: “Nearly everyone can see the problem, from the teachers who can’t afford a house in Auckland, to the employers calling for a huge public house-building programme … Why can’t the Government see it?”

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: This Government has done more in the reform of the housing market than any Government in living memory. That is why I am proud of our record. Whether it has been the generous HomeStart support, the Housing Infrastructure Fund, the changes to the Resource Management Act, or the changes in the Auckland Unitary Plan—it is those sorts of substantive reforms that will make the difference.

Ron Mark: Noting that the only winners in his comprehensive housing plan are speculators and foreigners, why will he not admit that his comprehensive housing plan is nothing short of a “Nick-tastrophe”?

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: I look at the 20,000 New Zealanders who picked up a KiwiSaver HomeStart grant—the most generous support that Government has provided. I look at the doubling in the amount of funds withdrawn from KiwiSaver by those who are buying houses. I look at the 30,000 houses per year that are being built—more than double than when I became Minister. I simply challenge the member: find me a period where house construction has grown so quickly. [Interruption]

Mr SPEAKER: Order! [Interruption] Order! Mr Faafoi.

Trade—International Developments

7. TODD MULLER (National—Bay of Plenty) to the Minister of Trade: What recent announcements has he made on New Zealand’s trade interests?

Hon TODD McCLAY (Minister of Trade): A fortnight ago, with the EU Commissioner for Trade, Cecilia Malmström, I announced that New Zealand and the European Union have concluded scoping discussions towards a free-trade agreement (FTA) with the EU, and that both sides will now seek mandates to launch negotiations. New Zealand and the European Union both recognise there are substantial benefits to be gained from free trade, and we are now one step closer to a high-quality comprehensive FTA that can deliver great outcomes for our citizens. Two-way trade between the EU and New Zealand sits at around $20 billion.

Todd Muller: What announcements have been made on advancing New Zealand’s trade relationship with the United Kingdom?

Hon TODD McCLAY: Two weeks ago I met with the British trade secretary, Liam Fox, in London. Secretary Fox indicated that New Zealand, along with Australia, will be the first countries to negotiate new free trade agreements with the United Kingdom as soon as it is in a position to do so. This is excellent news for New Zealand exporters to the UK, with current two-way trade sitting at around NZ$5 billion.

Todd Muller: What opportunities has the Minister identified on improving trade with Latin American countries?

Hon TODD McCLAY: Last week I was in Chile and met with the Pacific Alliance countries. The Pacific Alliance will offer associate membership of the alliance as a precursor to trade negotiations with selected countries. This is a significant development, and I expect New Zealand to be one of the first countries to start negotiations with that trading bloc. The prospects of a high-quality and comprehensive trade deal for New Zealand with the Pacific Alliance have now increased significantly.

Todd Muller: What statements has the Minister seen on the future of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP)?

Hon TODD McCLAY: Last week TPP Ministers met in Chile to discuss ways forward for the agreement. We made a firm commitment to collaborate in keeping markets open to the free flow of goods and services and investment, advancing regional economic integration, and strengthening the rules-based international trading system across the Asia-Pacific. We have agreed that high-level officials will meet to consider options for next steps. It is too early to know what the outcome of these discussions might be, but the New Zealand Government will continue to fight for better access for our exporters in overseas markets.

Schools, Buildings—Funding and Timing

8. CHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka) to the Associate Minister of Education: What is the total number of schools that have been identified as requiring significant property assistance that could not be met from their direct 5-year agreement funding allocation, and how many of those schools have received assistance, to date?

Hon NIKKI KAYE (Associate Minister of Education): I have defined “significant property assistance” as those undergoing major redevelopments, those in the Christchurch schools rebuild programme, and those receiving weathertightness funding. I am advised that all of these schools add up to 926. In terms of those that have received assistance, I am advised that all have received some form of assistance. In terms of the Christchurch schools rebuild programme, of the 115 the plan is publicly available and they are in some form of either construction or being delivered or in design. In terms of the major redevelopment programmes, a number have been delivered or in design and construction. In terms of the weathertightness programme, of the 840, I am advised the majority are being delivered. There is a group for which we are undertaking further inspections and working with the school to determine the appropriate remedial works.

Chris Hipkins: How much was the fiscal gap between forecast school infrastructure spend over the next 10 years and the needs identified as calculated by officials back in 2014, and why 3 years later does she continue to refuse to release that information?

Hon NIKKI KAYE: I am not sure what report the member is referring to, but what I can say to the member is that we have now done condition assessments of every school in New Zealand, which we did not have under the last Labour Government. What I can say to the member is that that has told us the scale of the issue and we have undertaken a range of programmes that we have funded to deal with those issues. We have spent over $400 million on weathertightness. We have now spent over half a billion on major redevelopments. We have spent hundreds of millions on growth. The other way that I would answer the question is that I am confident that with all of the programmes and funding that we have put in place, we will be able to address the legacy issues separate to the 5-yearly agreement (5YA) funding.

Chris Hipkins: Based on those condition assessments, what is the difference between the total cost of the work required and the current forecast expenditure?

Hon NIKKI KAYE: I think I have already answered that in my previous answer. What I have said is we have 5YA funding and we now have a range of pots of funding that we are confident will address those major legacy issues, from weathertightness—also earthquake strengthening—to some of the roll growth issues that we have got on top of 5YA. So I am confident that with our forecast expenditure over a period of time and what we have spent already, we will be able to address those legacy issues.

Chris Hipkins: Based on that information, how long will it be before those 926 schools are brought up to standard?

Hon NIKKI KAYE: It varies, depending on the programme, and I would just encourage the member to get up to speed with some of our programmes. The Christchurch schools rebuild (CSR) programme is a 10-year, publicly available document—that is that plan. In terms of the major redevelopments, I would have to go and check, but, as I have said, they are all funded so it just depends how long they take. Some of them—for instance, Western Springs College—will take a number of years. In terms of the leaky building programme, I think I have already answered a parliamentary question to the member previously, in, I think—not that I am remembering my parliamentary questions for several years—2016, which said it was a 6-year programme.

Chris Hipkins: What is the latest date that she expects the 18 percent of schools that have been identified as “poor” or “very poor” in their condition to be brought up to standard?

Hon NIKKI KAYE: Again, I would have to go and check the definitions that he is using, but on the three programmes that I have mentioned, you know, the leaky building project was 6 years as of 2016, the CSR programme was 10 years, and the major redevelopments programme I would expect would not be any longer than 6 years.

Chris Hipkins: Is she saying that within 6 years all schools that have been identified as below standard will be brought up to standard?

Hon NIKKI KAYE: Sorry, I could not actually hear his—

Mr SPEAKER: I will ask for the question to be repeated.

Chris Hipkins: Is she saying that within 6 years, all of those schools that have been identified as below standard will be brought up to standard?

Hon NIKKI KAYE: I have to go and check the exact dates of the programmes and I would want to check the exact dates of some of those redevelopments, because some of them have not started yet, but it is my expectation—and I will go and check—that it would be between 6 to 8 years that we would have those three programmes delivered.

Primary Sector—Project Funding Announcements

9. IAN McKELVIE (National—Rangitīkei) to the Minister for Primary Industries: What recent announcements has he made on how the Government is supporting growth in the primary sector?

Hon NATHAN GUY (Minister for Primary Industries): Recently I announced two Sustainable Farming Fund projects aimed at the better use of irrigation. The first project is led by Irrigation New Zealand, and will identify the benefits of irrigation good management practices and the barriers to taking up new technology. The second project looks at the positive effects of irrigation on the water-holding capacity of soils in Canterbury. A report by the New Zealand Institute of Economic Research found that irrigation contributes $2.2 billion to the national economy, and this has the potential to increase further, of course, in a sustainable way.

Ian McKelvie: What specific announcements has he made about support to combat animal and horticultural disease?

Hon NATHAN GUY: Of course, we cannot grow our primary sector without protecting it as well. That is why I have announced $1.2 million of funding for three projects to combat animal and horticulture diseases. The first project will look at facial eczema and develop guidance on how to best monitor and manage the disease. The second project looks at helping track and control bovine viral diarrhoea, which affects around 80 percent of New Zealand’s dairy and beef herds, and it is estimated to cost dairy farmers around $100 million a year. The third project aims to reduce infection in potato seed tubers, increase the yield, and reduce the use of agrichemicals.

Youth Justice—Youth Court Age

10. DARROCH BALL (NZ First) to the Minister for Social Development: Does she stand by all her statements?

Hon ANNE TOLLEY (Minister for Social Development): Yes, in the context in which they were made.

Darroch Ball: Does she stand by her statement “… the research tells us dealing with 17-year-olds in the youth justice system offers us the best opportunity to break that cycle of reoffending and help these people grow into responsible adults.”; if so, why?

Hon ANNE TOLLEY: Yes.

Darroch Ball: How can she sign off on a change in the Youth Court age when, in the evidence she provided, it contradicts what she has stated—for example, “transfer of juveniles originally arrested for property crimes was associated with a decrease in reoffending compared with juveniles initially arrested for similar crimes and retained in the juvenile system”, that limitations “cannot be accounted for by statistical models”, and that other important factors “are not able to be accounted for in this analysis”?

Hon ANNE TOLLEY: Because the evidence is very clear that by intervening early in a young offender’s life, we have a much better chance of supporting them to live very successful lives, and the statistics are very clear that the interventions at that very early stage see not only a reduction in the amount of reoffending for most of those youth but also a reduction in the types of offending they are taking part in. Many youth make mistakes, but the purpose of the youth justice system is to keep them out of the criminal system, to make them aware of the effect of their actions on the victims, and also to help and support them to live much more successful lives.

Darroch Ball: Is it not a fact that the Minister has not even read the research she has signed off on, because if she had, she would have seen that it states: “It would be justifiable to conclude that diversion is no more effective than the traditional justice system.”, that limitations “cannot be accounted for by these statistical models”, and that other important factors “are not able to be accounted for in this analysis”?

Hon ANNE TOLLEY: I do not have that piece of research in front of me. What I can say is that there is much evidence available that shows the effectiveness of early intervention in young people’s lives. That is a particular piece of research. There are numerous pieces of research that show it.

Darroch Ball: Instead of using contradictory and mixed evidence, at best, why does she not just listen to the Police Association, which has said today that there will not be a decrease in reoffending if the Youth Court age includes 17-year-olds and that it will, in fact, likely increase reoffending?

Hon ANNE TOLLEY: I think that if you are going to quote organisations in the House, you need to quote them correctly—that is our expectation.

Darroch Ball: I just did.

Hon ANNE TOLLEY: No. My understanding is that the association is saying that that would be the effect if there were not adequate resources put into supporting those young people. And that is what this Government intends to do.

Schools, Buildings—Investment

11. MATT DOOCEY (National—Waimakariri) to the Associate Minister of Education: What recent reports has she received regarding school property?

Hon NIKKI KAYE (Associate Minister of Education): I am pleased to confirm I recently had an update on this Government’s investment in school property. Over the last 8 years, there has been more than $5 billion in funding committed towards school infrastructure, which is the largest investment ever by any Government. In that time we have built over 30 new schools. In the last few years we have moved on more than 30 major redevelopments, worth close to half a billion dollars. Since 2014 we have spent around $300 million on additional classrooms to help schools manage growth. This is a Government that is building for growth, improving the quality of our schools, and ensuring all students have somewhere safe and healthy to learn.

Matt Doocey: What updates has the Minister received about progress on the Christchurch schools rebuild programme?

Hon NIKKI KAYE: In November 2013 the Government committed $1.137 billion in capital funding over 10 years to rejuvenate the education network in greater Christchurch. I can confirm that the programme is proceeding on schedule and within budget. It comprises a total of 115 schools: 13 to be built on new sites, 10 to be built on existing sites, 34 schools to be fully redeveloped, and 58 to be moderately redeveloped. To date, 10 schools are complete, 24 are in construction, 46 are in design, and 35 are in the programme. This includes the stunning new Lemonwood Grove School, opened just last Friday by the Prime Minister, me, and the hard-working local Selwyn MP, the Hon Amy Adams.

Jonathan Young: What recent announcements has the Minister made regarding school property in New Plymouth?

Hon NIKKI KAYE: On Monday I announced that $3.6 million in property projects are now under way in New Plymouth. This includes a new $2 million learning support centre for students with special education needs at Spotswood College and $1.6 million at Te Pi’ipi’inga Kakano Mai Rangiatea for four extra classrooms to meet roll growth. I would like to thank that member for attending the sod turnings on behalf of myself and for his dedicated advocacy for the educational needs in the New Plymouth area. This investment is part of a $12 million commitment since 2016 that we have made to New Plymouth to support school redevelopments and growth.

Maternity Services—Funding and Midwife Numbers

12. Dr DAVID CLARK (Labour—Dunedin North) to the Minister of Health: Is he confident that new mothers are being supported in public hospitals?

Hon NICKY WAGNER (Associate Minister of Health) on behalf of the Minister of Health: Yes, absolutely. Our Government prioritises the health of mothers and babies, but as always in health, we are keen to continue to improve our services, to meet the expectations of every new mother.

Dr David Clark: Is he confident that the district health boards (DHBs) have enough funding to ensure that there are enough midwives rostered on in the weekends or after hours in hospitals, when new mothers like Mary-Lou Harris, who experienced complications at birth, are left unsupported overnight and feel unsafe because nurses are too overstretched on wards?

Hon NICKY WAGNER: Yes, we are. There are 1,377 midwives working in DHBs across the country, and that is a record. There are 2,980 more midwives working in our health system. The ministry is aware that there are some urban DHBs that experience difficulty recruiting sufficient midwives, but this is a distribution issue rather than an issue of short supply. The ministry has a number of initiatives to support local midwives and new graduate midwives, through voluntary bonding and locum support. We are also successfully recruiting overseas.

Dr David Clark: Does he accept responsibility for the fall since 2013 in the number of midwives per capita employed by DHBs under his watch?

Hon NICKY WAGNER: I know that the member is new to health, but he may not have heard what I said. There are 1,377 midwives working in DHBs, and a record 2,980 working in our health system. [Interruption]

Mr SPEAKER: Order! Supplementary question, Dr David Clark.

Dr David Clark: I will just recover, after that put-down. Give me a minute to compose myself, please.

Mr SPEAKER: If the member needs time to take a spell, we will be moving on.

Dr David Clark: Does he think it is acceptable that new mother Lisa Calino, who needed to go to the bathroom and had just had a caesarean, was told by a nurse that she had to move and put her son back in the cot herself, because the nurse on call said: “You’ll have to do that. We are understaffed.”?

Hon NICKY WAGNER: I am always very sorry to hear that circumstances are such that our healthcare has not met the expectations of all mothers. But I would like to report what the norm is. Our survey says that 85 percent of new mothers report that they are satisfied or very satisfied with their time in labour and birth, and 90 percent of new mothers said that they were confident or very confident in the skills of the care that they are getting in hospital, and 80 percent of them were satisfied or very satisfied with the overall care that they received after the birth. So I am very sorry for your patient, but that is not the norm.

Dr David Clark: What outcomes has Health Workforce New Zealand’s midwifery strategic advisory group delivered in light of the comment of the chief executive of the New Zealand College of Midwives, who sits on that group, that “We just meet. That’s all we do. Nothing happens.”?

Hon NICKY WAGNER: I am very sorry to hear that comment. They tell me that they are working very hard and delivering better health for mothers and babies, and certainly we are resourcing them to do so.

Dr David Clark: What responsibility does he take for the significant funding problem that sees the Waikato District Health Board 22 full-time midwives down and Capital and Coast District Health Board nine midwives down, and that sees DHBs like Waikato expected to make savings in nurse vacancies to manage its deficit, and is he confident that all funds allocated to DHBs for maternity services are entirely being spent on maternity services and not being used to fund other overstretched services?

Hon NICKY WAGNER: Yes. We are sure that they are using their money for maternity services, because we are prioritising the health of mothers and babies. What is more, the member—[Interruption]—I know he is new to health—is absolutely wrong when he says that we have had less funding, because we have increased our funding by $4.3 billion. We have moved it from $11.8 billion to $16.1 billion, which is the most money that has ever been spent on health, and certainly we are right behind mothers and their babies.

Urgent Debates Declined

Defence Force—Afghan Civilian Deaths Allegations in Hit & Run

Mr SPEAKER: I have received a letter from Metiria Turei seeking to debate under Standing Order 389 the allegations made about the New Zealand Defence Force in the book Hit & Run. An urgent debate is a way of holding the Government to account for a particular case of recent occurrence for which it is responsible. There have been a number of rulings by previous Speakers dealing with allegations. It has been held that allegations can never constitute a particular case of recent occurrence, and I refer members to Speakers’ ruling 212/3 and 212/4. The application is declined.

General Debate

General Debate

Mr SPEAKER: Would some honourable member care to move that the House take note of miscellaneous business.

Hon PAULA BENNETT (Deputy Prime Minister): Yes, I would love to move that we move into the general debate. I move, That the House take note of miscellaneous business. Today what I am going to do is contrast National’s announcements with the announcements that Labour has made this year, so that is what we are going to do. Here is a quick snapshot. The quick snapshot is that ours is going to be a very long list, and Labour’s big announcement this year is that it is putting one Māori whom those members do not particularly like on the list, and the ones that they do like are not going on the list. So that is pretty much Labour’s announcement for the year.

Rt Hon Bill English: Dealt to them.

Hon PAULA BENNETT: They dealt to the—

Rt Hon Bill English: No, they asked for it. They asked for it.

Hon PAULA BENNETT: Oh, they asked for it—of course they did. So it is one rule for one and another rule for others, so it is good. Yes, you go out there and fight for your seat. Do not worry about the Māori vote and the party vote. That is how it goes. That is good. I look forward to other members in the Labour Party making announcements that they are also not standing on the list because they do not see that.

I must say, just personally, I cannot help but have a moment to reflect on John Key because this is kind of his day, I have to say, and it is a bit of a privilege to speak in the general debate and just to get to put it on the record, actually, in Hansard. As that comes, I just want to say, at a personal level, a genuine thankyou to him for the opportunities and support that he gave. I personally needed both.

Then I also want to say, from the National Party, thank you very, very, very much to John Key for his leadership, and—[Interruption] Yes, we do feel that. Then I want to say, on behalf of New Zealanders, just thanks for your unrelenting belief in New Zealand and New Zealanders, thanks for your optimism, and thanks for pushing us and believing in New Zealanders. Thanks for the confidence that you gave to us as a country. Thanks for the place that you gave us in the world, and you made us believe in ourselves and where we fit in the world a lot better.

There are things that I particularly remember. I know that when I was the Minister for Social Development, I literally used to get phone calls from John Key at all sorts of times and hours. They would be saying: “I have just met someone in ‘x’ mall or in ‘x’ situation, and they are going through this. Would you mind following up and making sure that they’re getting all of their entitlements? Would you check that there is something that they can get connected to?”. So he actually took a personal interest in New Zealanders, as well. And I can see lots of people nodding because they will have had similar phone calls in their time, either as a constituent MP—“This is happening. I have heard this while I have been out and about, and would you do something?”.

I particularly remember a teen mum in the South Island who met him, and he got into dad mode—which is what I like to call it—and really spoke to her about what she could do and the sorts of opportunities that she had. She then wrote to him a few weeks later and said that he had given her confidence in herself and in what she could do. She was going off the benefit, she was putting it on her family, she had got a job, and she saw a future.

I remember randomly bumping into a relatively young sports star and I got talking to them off the record, and they started saying that John had actually helped them with career advice. He had sat there and said that “When the sport is over, you need to have something else.” I just went—man, that man just went beyond the job of a Prime Minister at times and actually reached out at every chance that he could. I just want to say that I am really proud to have been one of his members of Parliament and, on behalf of New Zealand, I want that on record.

Let us go to the long list of achievements, because there is this really long list of not only achievements—

Rt Hon Bill English: One minute—go fast.

Hon PAULA BENNETT: —but, more than that, we have got what we have done. Here we go, in 54 seconds, Prime Minister, we have got the police announcement of 1,125 more police; ultra-fast broadband in 151 towns and 45 suburban areas, world-class fibre is coming your way; superannuation—you made the call, Prime Minister, to say: “Let’s raise the age in 20 years’ time.” Something had to be done.

I have seen Nathan Guy’s note. The Kapiti Expressway—$630 million, 4 months early, ladies and gentlemen, and 18 kilometres long. Nathan Guy got on his bike, and the Prime Minister got on his too. They rode it, they saw it, and they believed in it. Thank you, Simon Bridges.

Actually, thank you, Amy Adams, for your announcement this year on the historical homosexual convictions, which will be wiped. Thank you to the Government, business, and unions for working, for the first time, through pay equity with the joint working group. That is a huge one. Thanks for the $5.5 million extra in tourism infrastructure. Thank you—the list goes on.

Mr SPEAKER: Order! The member’s—

Hon PAULA BENNETT: —regarding the Domestic Violence Act. The list is long. On this side are the ones with announcements. Sorry? Members opposite have nothing to say.

RON MARK (Deputy Leader—NZ First): Well, what a weekend we have had, with youths running riot in Kaikohe, 27 burglaries and theft ex-vehicle in the Carterton district—

Darroch Ball: How many?

RON MARK: —27—on Saturday night, and this on a backdrop of a Government that has been telling everybody that crime, and particularly youth crime, is under control and reducing. Then on Tuesday, 21 March the youth crime statistics were finally out, telling the truth.

We in this House have been subjected to 3 years of statistics manipulation by a Government trying desperately to convince the nation and convince every person who has had their house burgled and who has witnessed assault on the streets and the sorts of things that our Indian dairy shop owners are being subjected to in Auckland, time and time again—to the point now that they are suggesting they should have firearms to defend themselves; I have never ever heard of that in New Zealand before—that crime is on the decrease. I find it quite bizarre. I am sorry for the media up there—how short their memories are.

New Zealand First sits here and watches this debacle. Watching Labour and National arguing over crime is like watching two drunks fighting over a half-empty gin bottle full of law and order policy. See, the truth is that when we start talking youth crime and gangs, there is only one party in this House that has been consistent, year after year after year, and that is New Zealand First.

So, in answer to Mr Nash’s questions over there, on 29 March, which piece of legislation did we try to introduce? New Zealand First’s Young Offenders (Serious Crimes) Bill. On 21 May 2008 who voted it down? Labour and National. Who is it that specifically, every time we tried to table the anti – gang organised crime bill to outlaw gangs, denied New Zealand First the opportunity to table that bill? Labour. Time and time and time again, it denied us—Labour—and who went out there with a proposed law change to raise the age of criminal responsibility? Actually, it was Labour. When was that? 2008. Who then said they would oppose it and that you would have to be dumb—you would have to be dumb—

Darroch Ball: National—bunch of wussies.

RON MARK: —to pass such legislation? National. And who said you would have to be dumb? Judith Collins. Who else had a comment? I am looking at my colleague Darroch Ball, who is all over this like a rash.

Who else said it? Anne Tolley. Anne Tolley said, as recently as April 2016: “However, in a Cabinet paper, Social Development Minister Anne Tolley said she did not recommend lifting the age, saying it might send a signal the government did not take offending by children seriously.” Who now has got a bill in a select committee to raise the age of criminal responsibility, totally contrary to all the election promises in 2008?

Mind you, this is the same party that was going to put young offenders into boot camps. Who did that? Well, National promised it. Did it do it? No, it did not. Now we have this bizarre situation where the new deputy leader of the Labour Party, Jacinda Ardern, coupled up with her National Government mates, is attacking Darroch Ball in a select committee for daring to oppose this absurd law of raising the age of criminal responsibility.

New Zealand sees right through this claptrap and this game between those two parties, which are becoming known as “Pepsi” and “Coke”—“Pepsi” and “Coke”. Red and blue, there is nothing new—they are both the same. One says one thing, the other speaks against it, and then, when it comes to the time they are in Government, they break their promises. They go back on their word.

Youth crime is at a high, once again, and the only thing we know that is consistent is that the one party that has advocated sensible law changes, and will continue to do that, is New Zealand First. Those two parties consistently oppose New Zealand First’s attempts to eliminate gangs—to eliminate gangs—and to hold youth offenders accountable. We will not deviate from that. All we will ask is that the media, for once, do some homework, back check, and check the veracity and, actually, the integrity of what these two old hack parties are selling them.

Hon TODD McCLAY (Minister of Trade): I want to congratulate Ron Mark on a very good speech—one of the best speeches I have ever heard him make in this House. I think the only way it could have been better is if it were delivered by Shane Jones—only 6 months to wait for that.

We have a new Prime Minister and a new Deputy Prime Minister who are in touch with New Zealanders and who are working hard and who are every day going out to make the lives of Kiwis up and down the country, in all walks of life, better. The National caucus is in tune with the voting public, because we selected very easily a new leader and a new deputy, and the poll results show that the public prefers our leader as Prime Minister and then our deputy below that.

We now also have a new deputy leader of the Labour Party. Andrew Little and Jacinda Ardern are the dream team. Finally, after 8½ years in Opposition, the Labour caucus is on the same page as the voting public, because the Labour caucus, too, prefers Jacinda Ardern as Prime Minister over Andrew Little. There are only 6 months to go before she can be the leader of the Labour Party and the Leader of the Opposition, and I wish her all the luck in that.

This is an incredibly focused and hard-working Government. Across all portfolios we have Ministers with fresh ideas, with energy, who are working hard and engaging with New Zealanders and talking to them about the challenges they face and finding solutions with them to make their lives better and to make New Zealand better.

I want to talk for a moment just to the area of trade, which the Prime Minister has given me the honour of being responsible for. I have jotted down a list of all the engagements we have—the trade agreements we are negotiating or moving to negotiate—at the moment around the world. After 8½ years, what is the Government doing? Well, we had an announcement with the European Union 2 weeks ago. We have finished the scoping exercise, and I expect that New Zealand and the European Union will be given a mandate to launch a free-trade agreement (FTA) negotiation with the EU later this year. It is very important to us—$20 billion worth of two-way trade. All of our competitors, mainly, have deals already, so we will be levelling the playing field. We have also got an opportunity with the UK, when it is in a position to do so, to launch an FTA negotiation. It is extremely important post-Brexit that we secure ongoing preferential access to that important market for New Zealanders.

The Pacific Alliance has announced that it now wants to negotiate with the world, and New Zealand is on the top of its list of the countries it will choose to do a first deal with. We have got the ASEAN Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership negotiation, with ASEAN countries and six others. It is very important to us; it would be our first FTA with India. We are putting a lot of effort in there to level the playing field, to fight for rights on behalf of New Zealanders. We have had a China FTA in place for 8 years, which we announced last year is to be upgraded. Our two-way trade with China is $23 billion; we think we can improve that. It offers opportunities and delivers jobs in every part of the country—every part of the country and every region—as a result of that. India, with a billion people—we are negotiating with it. The Gulf Cooperation Council—we are starting to see progress there, and I believe there is an opportunity for us to finally put pen to paper and open up access into that important market for New Zealanders. Sri Lanka—we announced with it that we would like to have a look at a deal. It does not have many deals with the world, but we decided to sit down and see what can be done, again, to level the playing field to make it fairer for New Zealanders overseas.

And then the Trans-Pacific Partnership—whether or not there is a future for it is not clear, but we are going to work as hard as we can to make sure that New Zealanders have great access into those markets. It is far too soon to say that it is finished just because one country has decided that it does not want to be involved. Anything that gives New Zealanders better access to markets overseas, levels the playing field, and allows New Zealanders to compete more fairly—this Government will stand up on their behalf and fight for them overseas, for those rights, because if we will not do it, who will? The answer is nobody, because nobody owes New Zealand a living.

Finally, I want to recognise the fact that trade agreements open the door to opportunity. Whether Governments decide to walk through that door with their businesses and their exporters to make the most of the opportunity is a choice for all of them, but we need to recognise that there are many others that play an important part in that. Air New Zealand brings visitors to and from other countries here. From China we have record numbers of visitors coming on airplanes—more and more planes are good for our economy.

I want to recognise one company that has shown a lot of support to New Zealand over many years, and that is Emirates Airline. There are now five flights a day from Dubai to New Zealand, one of them direct, which means that there are more people flying here and more freight can go to this important market. It delivers for our economy and it is good for New Zealanders. This Government will continue to fight for the rights of New Zealanders for greater fairness overseas every day that we are in office. Thank you.

STUART NASH (Labour—Napier): The Deputy Prime Minister stood up and said: “Let me tell you about National’s announcements versus Labour’s announcements.” Well, she did not actually mention many at all because she talked about John Key the whole time, but let me actually put a little bit of reality into the situation, just in my portfolio area, to highlight Labour’s police announcements and National’s police announcements, and how this has played out. What it does is it is a fundamental illustration of Andrew Little’s leadership versus Bill English’s following.

Let me give you a little bit of history on this—a little bit of a time line. On 27 May 2016 the Minister of Police signed off on the Police’s 4-year strategic plan, which said no more police until at least 2020. A week later—a week later—Andrew Little showed leadership and said this was not acceptable, and started going hard on this folly. A week after that—the second week of June—the Minister announced she was working on a plan for more police. It took only a week of Andrew Little going hard on this before the Minister said “Shivers, maybe there is something in this.”—maybe there is something in this. In October last year—October last year—Andrew Little released Labour’s police policy, which said 1,000 more sworn officers in 3 years into the communities of New Zealand, because we understood the severity of this problem.

Still, National’s policy was no more police for 4 years. A mere 6 months after that utterance, the first policy that National released for the 2017 general election was more police. That is good to see, but what happened here is that Andrew showed leadership, was listening to the community, and came out with a policy. Six months after National said no more police, Bill English announced more police. That is not leadership; that is following. It is a classic case of following.

The reason for this is, at the moment we have got dairy owners who are talking about arming themselves. We have got 50 youths in Manurewa, fighting in public and knocking each other out with knives and batons and clubs. We have got youths in Kaikohe going hard and smashing up a petrol station. What we have got here is a very committed bunch of men and women in the police force, but a police force that has been underfunded now for 5 years. It is not sustainable, and the Minister of Police believes that just because she has made an announcement of 880 more police, that is good enough. Well, it is not.

The mayors of regional and provincial New Zealand held a conference last week, and the biggest issue that they said was facing their towns and cities is law and order and an increase in crime. This is not the fault of the good, hard-working men and women on the front line. They have said that they are committed to New Zealand Police, but over 50 percent of them said that they are not delivering on the promises made. What they need is more police on the front line. What we need to know, what those mayors need to know, and what the people of New Zealand need to know as well is: what is the plan? Where are they going? We have made a commitment that a decent chunk of our thousand more police are going into community policing. We need men and women on the front line, keeping our dairy owners safe, keeping the burglars out of our houses, solving crime, working with key stakeholders in our communities.

What we are seeing in Hawke’s Bay and in Napier is the community cops stretched even further. We are seeing burglaries increase by 22 percent, we are seeing P at epidemic proportions, and the police just do not have the numbers. And the Minister has the nerve to stand up and say: “Well, we’ve got this policy: 880 more over 4 years.” Well, it is not good enough. We now want to know what the plan is. Where are these officers going to go? Are they going to go into our regions? What is the Minister going to say to the provincial and the regional mayors when they say: “We’re at our wits’ end. We should not have to employ private security guards to keep our communities safe.”? But that is what is happening.

This is a classic policy announcement where Andrew Little showed absolute leadership. He showed that he had listened to our communities and he came out with a completely costed police policy. What did Bill English do? He followed. That contrasts to the extreme: a leader versus a follower. Andrew Little is a Prime Minister and Bill English is someone who cannot even come up with an original idea of his own. Thank you.

Hon ALFRED NGARO (Minister for Pacific Peoples): I have come to learn that in politics there are two things in which a politician in their role of responsibility has to do in the community and in Parliament—two words—trust and confidence. I have to say that as I have gone out and had the opportunity to be able to be a Minister, it is about asking the question in our community. We know that trust and confidence is there because now we are heading towards a fourth term.

Trust and confidence is represented and measured in a number of different ways. You can talk about the polls. Well, we will not talk about the polls too much, because they are not looking too flash on the other side, because consistently over a period of time those polls have continued to be on an average 46 percent, 47 percent, 48 percent—up there in that percentage, which is unheard of in most times under MMP. So you have to say to yourself that out in New Zealand, out in the regions, and out in the cities there is trust and confidence because the polls determine and show that fact as well. People know it, the Opposition knows it, and that is important.

That trust and confidence also began—and I want to acknowledge the Rt Hon John Key. There was the leadership that he had, which he has shown right throughout his time, which provided trust and confidence on the things that Kiwis value, the things that they regard as very important to them: their families, the health of their children, education, employment opportunities; the growing of an economy becomes critically important. Again, it is trust and confidence.

The media were asking: “What was the favourite moment that you had, or an occasion in which you saw that when the Rt Hon John Key spoke out it was important?”. I think, for me, I remember that out in west Auckland at the trust stadium, it was the state of the nation speech. When he spoke there he talked about his own story as a young man growing up in New Zealand, the challenges that his family faced, then growing up in a State house down in Christchurch. And the things that he was taught, the values that he had, were simply this: every child, every young person, every adult deserves the same opportunity as anyone else to succeed. That is what we have taken continually to the nation about trust and confidence, and the things that we believe that we can deliver.

So let us talk about some of those areas, around the Better Public Services (BPS). When I am out there in the community I say that the BPS is simply this: we as the Government are holding the mirror to ourselves. In other words, before we ask others to change, we need to say to ourselves: how do we hold ourselves to account? What are we willing to change in ourselves as a Government, as a department, in our role to publicly serve the needs of our communities? These are these Better Public Services targets.

One of them is in result area No. 1, welfare dependency. I am proud to say that we are unashamed of being able to say that we want to move people off dependency and into an opportunity for employment, into an opportunity for training, and for higher-skilled and higher-paid jobs as well. There were 8,000 fewer people on sole parent support from 2014 to 2016. That is trust and confidence that we can deliver on those targets that we have set for ourselves.

There was 10.3 percent of the working age population receiving a main benefit at the end of December 2016—the lowest proportion since 2007, before the global financial crisis. The number of people on main benefits has dropped by 57,000. That is worth saying again—57,000 since 2010. That has got to be the result that shows that the public has confidence in us to deliver.

Along with that, under one of my portfolios, the community and voluntary sector—it is not just about getting people into employment opportunities, but it is also about how we can also help them to look at an issue of social enterprise. It is about an opportunity where they can actually trial something—a hybrid between community and commercial—an opportunity to try their skills. Just today I was at Pomegranate Kitchen down in Wellington, where a group of migrant refugee women have come together and, along with support from Red Cross and others around them, have now begun to sort of show that their skills to be able to cook and manage that, provide catering services throughout the wider community, now giving them confidence and now a track record of employment. Again, social enterprise is one of the things that we are doing well.

One of the result areas is around rheumatic fever. We know that is a critical area of concern, especially for our Māori and Pacific communities—23 percent reduction in the national rate of rheumatic fever. What are we doing to achieve that—early screening in schools. We are making sure that housing, education, and health are collectively working together, making a difference to our communities. The immunisation rate is at 94 percent. Kiwis care about their kids. They want to make sure that they are cared for and they are immunised so they do not get sick and need those services. That is really important.

The last thing I will say in 10 seconds is about the “neets”—the young people not in education, employment, or training services. The number of 18-year-olds attaining NCEA level 2 is at 85 percent. That is a great result. Trust and confidence is what this Government has. Thank you.

CLARE CURRAN (Labour—Dunedin South): Wherever you go in New Zealand, whether it is Auckland, Palmerston North, Hamilton, Dunedin, or Invercargill, what people are looking for is leadership. They are looking for leadership, and they all care about similar things. They care about housing, they care about health, they care about jobs, they care about education, and, now, they care about water. They do not need the kind of “non-leadership” leadership that you are getting from Bill English—that “nothing to see here, move on” Bill English and his numpty Ministers like Nick Smith.

Take housing. It is out of control. We know it is out of control. First-home buyers are locked out of the market, thousands of people are homeless, homeownership is at its lowest level since 1951, and there is the continuing sell-off of State houses. The housing crisis is now reverberating in Dunedin: unaffordable rentals, people taking in lodgers, no emergency housing, and now people living in garages. Getting on the list for a State house is virtually impossible.

Yesterday a woman contacted my office in absolute distress. She is 61, she works part-time, and she suffers from anxiety. She is in a good place at the moment: her health is stable and she has lovingly cared for and maintained her State house for 36 years. Last Saturday she got a letter in the mail from Housing New Zealand saying that Quotable Value will be taking pictures of her house. She was concerned. She rang the 0800 number. She was told that, yes, her house was one of 6,000 that had been marked for sale. This has shaken her world. She lives in the house with a small poodle for company. She knows that finding affordable rentals with small dogs will be impossible. The house has had rails installed by the district health board (DHB) to aid access. I ask you, Mr Speaker, and I ask the Government members over there: what is the point of that?

Then there is health. In February 89-year-old Doreen was admitted to Dunedin Hospital and was put on the acute list for surgery to remove her gall bladder. For the next 4 days she was prepped for surgery every morning—4 days, every morning—and, at the end of each long day, no surgery and no food; only a sandwich at the end of the day. I think she got a meal once. One of those days she was wheeled down to the theatre, only to find that there was no doctor. There was no doctor. For each of those 4 long days, as I said, she received something to eat only at the end of the day. When she came in, she was sprightly. She lived alone, she could swim regularly, and she could walk around the ward. By the end of the fourth day she was very weak. She has had her surgery now. She is still recovering—she will take a long time to recover.

This Government has got no plan on improving health. It has cruelly cut $1.7 billion from the health system. Nearly 60,000 Kiwis have been declined first specialist appointments because DHBs are struggling. The Dunedin Hospital rebuild is going round and round in circles. It is the major issue on everybody’s mind in Dunedin. Constant delays have stretched the process out, and vague answers and broad themes presented by the DHB have done nothing to restore confidence. Our community deserves better. Jonathan Coleman, the current health Minister, is just sitting on his hands. The next health Minister, Michael Woodhouse, is likely to build a worm farm—he may even turn Dunedin Hospital into a worm farm.

My colleague David Clark has just presented a petition from more than 3,000 people to Parliament—on the steps of Parliament, just a few minutes ago—to begin asking the Government to begin the rebuild before the 2017 election.

Finally, there is Cadbury’s, a major multinational that has pulled out of Dunedin, where Cadbury’s has operated successfully for 80 years, with nearly 400 workers losing their jobs. It was the biggest private-sector employer in Dunedin. This is not because it was not profitable—it was—but it is a chess piece on a board for a big multinational to make even more profit elsewhere. In 2006 the Labour Government invested $2 million to keep Cadbury’s in Dunedin. What does Bill English do? He comes to Dunedin last Thursday and makes the observation: “Gee, that’s a huge thing for affected workers.” He is hands-off, disinterested, and kicking the can—not a leader.

Dr SHANE RETI (National—Whangarei): I want to speak today about regional growth and how Whangarei is growing—the population is increasing—the new population economy, and then a little bit on data. Whangarei is growing, the economy is growing, and a look at independent front-page newspaper headlines for any month will show this. Let us look at some of the front-page headlines for this month: Friday, 3 March, “Wellingtonians move north for stable ground.”; Saturday, 4 March, “State Highway 1 project will be biggest ever.”; Monday, 6 March, “mayors optimistic about growth.”; Thursday, 16 March, “Housing record $421,500—our highest median price ever.”; and just last Saturday, 22 March, “Chinese tourism surge on agenda.” Independent organisations are also telling us Whangarei is growing and the economy is growing.

In December last year Infometrics identified Marsden Point and One Tree Point as a future economic hub. Just last month the Maxim Institute identified Whangarei as one of seven areas close to Auckland with population growth through 2038 to 2043. Whangarei is growing and the new population brings a new economy. In the past 2 years Whangarei has probably grown by about 1,000 households. Each household has an average weekly expenditure of $1,000: housing, transport, energy, food, and accommodation. Over a year that is $52 million that has been cycled into the Whangarei economy through new population growth. Whangarei is growing.

With growth comes a need for infrastructure, and Whangarei is showing that infrastructure growth. There are new school buildings at Whangarei Girls’ High School, Pārua Bay School, Kamo Intermediate School, and Hora Hora Primary School. There is new roading—the Brynderwyns, Kensington roundabout, and the massive half-billion-dollar four-laning from Whangarei to Ruakākā roundabout. These are big roading projects that commuters see, but there are also smaller projects that smaller communities really notice. Tikipunga, Kauri, and Kaurihohore School are very pleased with the proposed safety improvement to the hairpin bend on Saleyards Road, just off State Highway 1, and we thank the New Zealand Transport Agency for this. The data is compelling: Whangarei is growing.

In a more global and general sense, it is data exploration that I want to briefly turn to. Over summer I read a fascinating article from the Smithsonian Institution looking at how data streams can be passed through a complex algorithm and turned into music. It actually passed 133 years of climate data through an algorithm and generated musical notes. I wondered what other data could be put through this, so I went online to the TV3 poll data and pulled the party vote data for Labour and New Zealand First and I ran it through this algorithm and created two music clips.

I listened closely to both of these clips, and I did not immediately recognise the melodies, so I played the clips through Shazam. Shazam is an application that recognises music and gives it a title. I was interested to know what titles it came up with. Unfortunately, there was no match, as both were fundamentally unintelligible and not of human origin. That was when I knew I was on to something. Not only was I mapping Labour and New Zealand First party vote data; I was also mapping their policies—unintelligible and not of human origin.

But I was not finished. I thought there has got to be some interpretation and some value to take from this. So without prefix, prelude, or prior knowledge, I sought the indulgence of an audience I was speaking to, to play the clips and do a little bit of mood analysis with a five-point Likert scale. It went like this: I said to them “I want to play this short music clip. When I’ve finished I’ll ask you to raise your hand across a five-point scale for what mood you associate—how does it make you feel?”. It went from happy, OK, neutral, anxious, or scared. I played the two clips and people raised their hands and expressed how they felt. The Labour music data—well, the room felt sort of neutral. It had no view either way and could take it or leave it—who cares. The music we played for New Zealand First data, however, had almost a complete majority in the room saying they felt scared.

In conclusion, is it not amazing how technology and a bit of applied science can so accurately describe the features of our Opposition colleagues—neutral and scary. With that, I leave the technology and corroboration of these findings in the hands of the House and the voters.

JAMES SHAW (Co-Leader—Green): I rise to advise the House that the report from Vivid Economics on New Zealand’s emissions mitigation potential has been completed and was released publicly yesterday. The report is entitled Net Zero in New Zealand: Scenarios to achieve domestic emissions neutrality in the second half of the century. It was commissioned by GLOBE New Zealand, a cross-party group of 35 MPs—one in four MPs in this House—drawn from every single political party represented. The group is chaired by my colleague Dr Kennedy Graham and has an executive committee composed of the Hon Peter Dunne, Marama Fox, Tracey Martin, Scott Simpson, and Dr Megan Woods.

In my first speech as co-leader of the Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand, I said that our climate cannot wait while politicians squabble over how to fix it. Let us build common cause on climate change. We should talk to each other rather than past each other and agree on an ambitious target that New Zealanders can be proud of. New Zealanders want their politicians to work together and act on common interest. Let us find common interest on climate change. That was my challenge to John Key back in the middle of 2014.

The debate has moved on. It is hard to imagine that only about 10 years ago a National Party MP was driving a tractor up the steps of Parliament to protest the idea that you would put a price on carbon pollution. There are four stages of the debate that countries pass through. The first is whether or not climate change is actually happening—people say it is not happening. The second stage is to say: “Well, if it is happening, it’s not us. It’s not humans.” The third stage is to say: “Well, if it is us, it’s actually not that bad.” The final stage is to say: “Well, if it is that bad, there’s nothing we can do about it.” Those are the four stages of climate denialism that we have been passing through over the course of the last 25 years in this country. Of course, the antidote to those is that it is happening, that it is us, that it is bad, and that we can do something about it. The report that was released yesterday shows that the debate has finally, finally, finally moved through all three of those first stages to the final stage of what we can do about it.

I would like to take a moment just to talk about the sort of non-partisan nature of the report and of the committee that has pulled it together. The Hon Paula Bennett, in her speech at the launch yesterday, said that Dr Kennedy Graham was a dog with a bone. I really want to acknowledge his leadership and his tenacity in pulling together that group of people—that committee of 35 members of Parliament who are concerned about climate change—and in commissioning what has been a very significant report.

I would also like to acknowledge the Hon Paula Bennett, because I have to say that without her acquiescence at the very least, it would not have been possible for National MPs to safely participate in that group. In fact, it was not until after she became the Minister that National MPs could join the GLOBE group. I recognised the political difficulty—the risk that some members of the House have had to take in order to be able to participate in a non-partisan cross-party parliamentary group on climate change. So I want to acknowledge her leadership in that role and, in particular, Scott Simpson, who has really led the National MPs on that committee in order to make it a truly cross-party, cross-Parliament committee. I also would like to acknowledge Vivid Economics and all of the officials, businesses, and NGOs that contributed to the report, because it is a substantial and substantive piece of work.

For half my life—more than half my entire life—we have been debating climate change. There have been reports and reports and reports, and targets that have been met, but New Zealand’s emissions have relentlessly climbed for decades, and they are still climbing. It is now time for us to move to action, and urgent action, if we are to prevent dangerous climate change. I welcome this report. It gives us an opportunity to debate what we do about it, and the time for that action is now.

BRETT HUDSON (National): Under National, we have an outward-looking Government—a Government that is focused on opportunities for all New Zealanders. No one has exemplified that more in the past 10 years than our former Prime Minister the Rt Hon John Key, a man who had the absolute confidence in New Zealanders to achieve what they set their minds to, and a man who was prepared to back them all the way. I, for one, feel privileged to have been able to serve in a caucus under his leadership. Like most of New Zealand, I will be looking forward to his final speech in this House, later this afternoon.

I am also privileged to be serving now under the leadership of the Rt Hon Bill English. It is actually interesting because we had a poll last night, and the reason National is sitting at 47 percent is that the public sees a seamless transition to new leadership that is equally focused on opportunities for New Zealanders and equally focused on the knowledge that in order to deliver for New Zealand, the Government must be outward-looking; it must be open to the world. Through trade, we create opportunities for New Zealanders. These are the things that help to contribute to a country that grows amongst the fastest in the OECD, that saw 130,000 jobs created over 12 months, and that was able to lift the average wage by $12,000 since this Government took office—and is forecast to raise it another $7,000 over the next 5 years. At that stage, the average wage will be $66,000 a year—it is, again, one of the highest in the OECD.

It is not just about jobs and incomes. Because trade that works is bilateral and bidirectional, it also offers greater choice and more affordable goods and services for New Zealanders here. Wait, there is more: it also opens New Zealand to foreign investment that lifts our capabilities, that creates even more jobs, and that helps to grow and strengthen economic diversity in New Zealand. Just this morning, Huawei announced a $400 million investment in New Zealand.

Todd Barclay: How much?

BRETT HUDSON: $400 million over 5 years—$400 million. Of that, $120 million will be in procurement from Kiwi companies. That alone is going to raise incomes and create jobs in New Zealand. But there is still more. It is going to help develop a New Zealand cloud data centre, one that will enable even greater cloud-based IT services not only to New Zealand customers but for New Zealand to sell to international customers, bringing even more income into the country. Ah! But there is still more: a local example here in Wellington. Huawei has said, in its announcement, that it is going to build an innovation lab at Victoria University in Wellington. What is more, it is going to open that lab in 2017. That is great for students in Wellington who are looking to expand their careers into a fast-growing area of the New Zealand economy.

You see, this sort of openness to the world opens up global opportunities for New Zealanders. That is why it is such a positive thing. But there is still more in the Huawei announcement. It also announced that it is going to expand the Seeds for the Future initiative, which will provide a further 100 places for ICT students around New Zealand, creating the skills to fuel the ICT engine and to fuel the strengthening of the diversity of the New Zealand economy. What does this stem from? It stems from a Government in a country that is open to the world, that acknowledges the benefit of free trade, and that looks to form bilateral relationships with countries around the world, because what is good for them can also be good for us and inevitably is.

Before I finish, I also want to acknowledge Huawei for another reason. It is also the principal sponsor, and a very loyal sponsor, of the Wellington Phoenix football club, a club that we treasure here in Wellington. It helps to show that although New Zealand is, rightfully, No. 1 in rugby, we can also build strength in other sports. You see that is another thing about this Government: we have a thought that you can walk and chew gum at the same time—that you can do more than one thing—and I thank Huawei for that sponsorship.

I would also note that this is good not only for New Zealand and Wellington, within Ōhāriu—an electorate that is No. 1 for internet connectivity and No. 1 for the highest proportion in the labour force—these announcements that lift incomes and creates jobs are as good for the people of Ōhāriu as they are for the people of New Zealand. I reiterate: they all stem from an ambitious Government that is aspirational for New Zealand and knows that it is by making connections with the rest of the world that we deliver prosperity for our people. Thank you.

POTO WILLIAMS (Labour—Christchurch East): Last Thursday, Rape Prevention Education and the Wellington Women’s Refuge had a small but very vocal rally out on the steps of Parliament. The women gathered there—and some men gathered there—because they were protesting the Ministry of Social Development’s desire to collect not just data but very personal information from clients of the sexual and family violence services. They argued that the collection of this data—this very personalised, individual data—actually runs the risk of clients not wanting to attend services, if that data may have the opportunity to be disclosed.

The Ministry of Social Development argues that good information leads to effective services for clients. But the argument that Rape Prevention Education and the Wellington Women’s Refuge made was why does that data need to be disaggregated? Why does that data need to be personalised to show that a service is effective? When I attended a meeting in Timaru a couple of weeks ago the Timaru Budget Advisory Service argued the same. It says that the people that attend services have very, very sensitive information, and they do not want to disclose that. The Government said that effective services—

Hon Jo Goodhew: They’re not being asked to disclose that. They’re only giving the same information you’d give to your school.

POTO WILLIAMS: —and programmes are due to data and data collection. The Government services say that services—

Hon Jo Goodhew: Don’t worry about giving it to the school.

POTO WILLIAMS: —are duplicated and ineffective. However, they have not been able to demonstrate that. If the member Jo Goodhew would like to actually take a call, she can actually get up and refute this. The community sector has said that it is prepared to hand over information if the Government can actually prove that this is actually going to be effective. The new data-collection system and many of the services that the Government is promoting are based on information it collects itself—not peer reviewed, not academically sound, not robust data—and yet Government programmes are provided on this basis. I see the Government has now gone quiet because that is absolutely the truth.

When you look at the information that is collected by the Ministry of Social Development on clients that it does not even fund—what is the point of that? What is the point of that? What is the point of collecting very personal information—because then what do you do with that? What you do is you track somebody through the Ministry of Social Development’s system.

Hon Jo Goodhew: You can’t do that.

Mr SPEAKER: Order!

POTO WILLIAMS: The Minister is saying that you cannot do that. However, what the Minister does know is that information is already collected on people who access services, not just by the Ministry of Social Development but the Inland Revenue Department, and that information is linked. The ministry would have you believe that that information is then anonymized. Well, how then are we able to track people through the services if it is then anonymized? I will go and access another service, and that piece of information will be added to the information already collected about me—that information will be added to the information already collected about me. So it is not cleaned and it is not anonymized; it is actually still live data attached to me as an individual. Not only that, but the Government also collects information about my children and my dependents.

There is an issue with this, and it is called the Privacy Act, and the codes that sit within the Privacy Act. One of the principles of that code is that I am aware of the information that is collected about me, I am aware of the purpose that that information is going to be used for, and I fully give consent for that. But there is also another principle that the information is collected from me directly as an individual, unless I give permission for someone else to pass that information on.

This is the sticking point that the Government now finds itself in, because there will be people who will say: “I do not give permission for my information to be passed on to the Ministry of Social Development.” The community sector needs to be celebrated for the work that it does supporting the people of this country—to keep them safe, to keep our kids in sport—and this Government is looking to undermine its effectiveness in our community, and I for one will not stand for it.

MAUREEN PUGH (National): As the National list MP based in West Coast - Tasman, I was overjoyed in January this year when I learnt that the top three fastest-growing regions for tourism were, in fact, Tasman, Northland, and the West Coast. Tourism employed over 180,000 people last year in this country. That is a staggering 7.5 percent of the total employment in this country and just shows that domestic and international tourism creates immense value for working New Zealanders. That is why this Government is investing heavily in the tourism sector. I can attest to the fact that the estimated tourism visitor expenditure in the West Coast region for that year was $283 million. That is 17 percent up on the previous year—

Brett Hudson: How much? 17?

MAUREEN PUGH: —17 percent up, to $283 million. We are now hosting 1.8 million guest nights a year, and that is in a population of around 30,000 people. We know that that is putting pressure on our smaller communities, so I was thrilled recently to host our Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Tourism, the Hon Paula Bennett, on a tour through the West Coast. We started in Westport, and we drove down to Reefton. We stopped in Greymouth and Hokitika. We stopped in Ross. We stopped in Harihari, Whataroa, Ōkārito, and Franz Josef. We took the Deputy Prime Minister to small rural areas where tourism is causing some pressures. The Minister has come back and released the Regional Mid-sized Tourism Facilities Grant Fund. As a result, this fund will be used by the small councils across the country to relieve the pressure that is being caused by this booming industry called tourism.

Grey District was a beneficiary of the last round of that funding, and it received a little under half a million dollars for a carpark and toilets in the Cobden and foreshore area. In the Buller District, they received just under $200,000, again, for a block of toilets originally intended for the Fox River area but unfortunately diverted into Springs Junction to relieve the pressure from the Kaikōura earthquake traffic.

In Budget 2016, $45 million of original funding was released to support the tourism industry in this country, and that just demonstrates what high-value visitors bring into the country, and our Government is supporting that. There was also an additional $130 million a year for Vote Tourism, and that is going to help manage other pressures on our infrastructure. There was another $8 million over 4 years for Tourism New Zealand so that it can continue to promote this country internationally, and new funding of $25 million over 4 years for the wonderful New Zealand Cycle Trail networks. I am pleased that we are home to several of the best of those cycle trails in the country. We have the Old Ghost Road Trail—

Hon Maggie Barry: Magnificent.

MAUREEN PUGH: It is indeed, Maggie.

Mr SPEAKER: Order!

MAUREEN PUGH: Minister Barry—ha, ha! We have the Kawatiri River Trail in Westport. We have the wonderful West Coast Wilderness Trail—all are recipients of significant Government funding to get those businesses and those trails established.

I would like to finish by making a point of thanking the former Prime Minister John Key. As we know, he gives his valedictory speech here today. He led New Zealand with dignity, with skill, and with compassion, and his legacy is a capable, tight-knit, forward-thinking team, and a country that leads the world in a range of measures. I wish John and Bronagh all the very best for their future, and thank them for their huge contribution to this country. Thank you.

DENIS O’ROURKE (NZ First): The National Government is clearly out of touch on the need to charge for export drinking water. It is all so clear that one Minister does not actually know what the other Minister is doing or thinks about the issue. On the one hand, we have got Nick Smith, who says it is not actually worth thinking about this issue at all, because the amounts involved are so small. He is just not interested. On the other hand, we have got Bill English, who says: “We’ll look into it. Because of the force of public opinion, we’ll look into it maybe, some time, never—probably never.”

In fact, the exporting of drinking water, both bottled and in bulk, is set to explode in this country. There is such a demand overseas for it that it is inevitable that it will happen. So Nick Smith’s disinterest and Bill English’s fob-off are totally unacceptable and just demonstrate yet another failure of leadership by those Ministers and by the National Government.

On the other hand, New Zealand First already has a bill, and here it is—right here, already drafted. The Government today refused leave for me to introduce that bill so that it can be read and considered—

Fletcher Tabuteau: That’s a shame.

DENIS O’ROURKE: —and that is a shame. It is a shame because whereas New Zealand First does know what to do about this issue, the National Government does not know what to do about the issue and, furthermore, does not really want to do anything about it at all. That is the truth.

Ron Mark: Well, Oravida exports it.

DENIS O’ROURKE: That is right. All that is actually needed, and what this bill does, is to make some simple amendments to the Crown Minerals Act. First of all, it inserts new section 10A, and this is what it would say: “Notwithstanding anything to the contrary in any Act, or in any Crown grant, certificate of title, or lease or Water Permit, any water extracted or taken as drinking water for export, either bottled or unbottled, will be considered a mineral for the purposes of this Act.” Then it goes on to insert a new Part 2 into that Act, which deals with the funds already being collected for regions arising from royalties on other minerals under that Act. So it would just add water to that list.

In particular, it adds another new section, 107, which says, amongst other things: “(2) The Minister must consult the region or regions concerned before determining the forecast royalty income for the financial year, being no less than 25% and no higher than 50%.” So that is the share that would go back to the regions. And then it goes on to say: “(3) In each financial year the Minister of Finance is to cause to be credited to the Funds, an amount being not less than 25% of the forecast royalty income for the financial year [concerned].” And then it also goes on to say, in new section 110: “(1) The Minister, with the Minister of Finance’s concurrence with the relevant regions, may authorise the expenditure of money standing to the credit of the Fund for the following purposes—(a) to provide infrastructure and/or services in a region; (b) to develop and broaden the economic base of a region; and (c) to maximise job creation and improve career opportunities in a region.” That is what they are asking for, and that is what needs to be done.

So, you see, it is actually so easy to do this. We in New Zealand First did this in the space of a few days; the Government could have done it easily by now but really just is not interested in doing so.

I want to stress one thing: apart from charging royalties for export drinking water, water must not otherwise be taxed or subjected to any charge beyond the recovery of capital and the operational cost, and that includes taking, storing, and reticulating water—and, of course, as I said, the operational costs of dealing with that. So here we differ from the Green Party, which wants to charge for all water. We do not agree with that; we say let us charge a royalty only for the exporting of drinking water, not domestic commercial users in New Zealand. So I want to make that distinction very, very clear because it is a very, very important distinction altogether. It is so easy to charge for export drinking water. Why is the Government not doing that right now?

The debate having concluded, the motion lapsed.

Bills

Student Loan Scheme (First Home Repayment Diversion) Amendment Bill

First Reading

Debate resumed from 8 March.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): Members, when we were last on the Student Loan Scheme (First Home Repayment Diversion) Amendment Bill, the next call was to be a Labour call of 5 minutes.

MICHAEL WOOD (Labour—Mt Roskill): I am very happy to rise to speak on the Student Loan Scheme (First Home Repayment Diversion) Amendment Bill and to confirm that Labour is very happy to support this bill through to select committee for further consideration. Why is that? It is because this bill is an honest attempt to deal with the biggest issue that young New Zealanders face in our country today, and that is the loss of the dream of one day being able to own their own home.

One of the reasons this bill in particular appeals to me is because I think of my own story. Back in the early 2000s, my wife and I, as a relatively young couple who were a few years out of university, did have the ability to make our start in life by purchasing our first home. It was a modest home in a modest part of my community in Mt Roskill. Back in the early 2000s, that was possible for a young couple who were on reasonable wages and who did a bit of saving—to get a foot on the property ladder and to put roots down in the community. But what we know, and what every New Zealander who is watching this debate knows as well, is that increasingly that dream of homeownership is out of reach. We can consider some of the statistics that point to this. We know the stories, but let us be very clear about this.

In New Zealand today, we have the lowest rate of homeownership since 1951, since Sidney Holland sat in this Chamber and spoke as the Prime Minister of New Zealand—since Sidney Holland was the Prime Minister, in the year of the great Waterfront lockout and strike. We have not had homeownership so low since that time. It simply is not good enough. The fact is that from that time onwards, both National and Labour Governments, until this National Government, supported that dream of homeownership—supported the dream of the great Kiwi property-owning democracy, in which everyone had a stake.

What I have learnt out of homeownership is that it brings stability to communities. When people can settle down and when they can put roots down into a community, they can give back. They can look forward to the future and think about their kid going to the local school. They can join local groups and make a contribution. They can make friends and neighbours. We build stronger communities when we have high rates of homeownership. It is not just about the individuals; it is about the kinds of communities that we want in New Zealand. But with the lowest rate of homeownership since 1951, which has happened on this Government’s watch, we have lost that.

It is particularly acute when it comes to the dreams of our young people. Back in 1991, 50 percent of under-40-year-olds in New Zealand were able to own their own home. That figure has halved, to 25 percent, and in Auckland it is just 20 percent.

When the Labour Party sees this bill from Mr Hughes and the Green Party, it sees, as I say, an honest attempt to deal with this incredibly serious issue. We believe that this entire House should, in good faith, pick up any attempt to deal with this housing crisis and give it the full weight of its consideration. This should not be about politics between parties in this House; this should be about the obligation that we owe to every single young New Zealander to give them a decent shot at homeownership.

Jono Naylor: To pay for their house?

MICHAEL WOOD: And, of course, there is some noise from the other side of this House. It is very comfortable for members of this House—including me—who start on a salary of $140,000 a year. But when we are talking about young New Zealanders just out of university—young New Zealanders who want to get their first home in Auckland when we have got suburbs across Auckland where the average price is a million dollars a year—we should be looking at every single avenue we have got to support them.

The bill is a relatively simple one. It picks up the model of the student loan holiday that we currently have if young New Zealanders with a student loan are travelling overseas, and it gives the opportunity to divert those student loan repayments into a separate account that can be used only for the purposes of a home deposit. It is relatively simple in its nature. There are potentially some issues in respect of tax treatment that need to be explored, the Labour Party believes, but a select committee is the place to do that, and this House, as I say, should have the focus on this housing issue to send it to a select committee to allow those issues to be explored.

In the previous speeches from the Government—the one previous speech we have had—we did not actually hear much about the housing issue, which is the driver of this bill. We heard about some of the support that we give to students currently. I just encourage members opposite to home in on that housing issue, which we hear the Government cares about. Here is a chance to do something about it. Let us send the bill to a select committee and continue the debate. Thank you.

TODD BARCLAY (National—Clutha-Southland): It is actually a privilege to speak in opposition to the Student Loan Scheme (First Home Repayment Diversion) Amendment Bill. The ironic thing is that I am probably the only member close enough to it to remember what it was like to have a student loan and go through the process of purchasing their first home, and I can assure you that—

Chris Bishop: Hey, hey, hey!

TODD BARCLAY: Oh, Mr Bishop, as well—sorry. But one thing I wanted to talk a little bit about is that this so-called housing crisis that exists, which the Opposition is upon every day in this House and every day out in the community, is very centralised into a couple of aspects of New Zealand that are experiencing high growth.

If you look at what is happening in places like Gore and Balclutha in Southland and on the West Coast and in other parts of New Zealand where there are plentiful jobs, great study opportunities, and really good lifestyle opportunities to start and bring up a young family, the people there do not see that as a housing crisis at all. The average house price in Gore at the moment is $201,000, the average house price in Clutha is $175,000, and the average house price in Queenstown is $900,000, but there are choices for people to go where the jobs are and to go where the study opportunities are. We talk to the Opposition members here about the trade-off that they say there is around getting a student loan and buying your first home. You can study at Southern Institute of Technology under a zero fees scheme and implement a deposit on your first home.

I suppose the point to talk about here—the point to consider and the reason why I oppose the bill—is that it is expensive and it is completely unnecessary, but also there is a lot of statistical research that has been demonstrated to show that the motivations behind the Green Party’s bill are not actually realised. So the presence of the size of a student loan does not appear to affect the probability of a couple having a mortgage. The presence of a student loan has no effect on a mortgage size; nor does the presence or the size of a student loan appear to reduce the number of children a couple has.

When you look at the contribution that the Government makes into subsidising and paying for the cost of study, the Government puts about $4 billion a year into tertiary education funding. Already, 28 percent of tertiary education funding goes to supporting students through their studies, including nearly half a billion dollars that goes into student allowances. The share of the full cost of tertiary education study per student over the duration of their lifetime is about 82 percent covered by the Government.

As a young New Zealander who has recently—not too recently, mind you—completed their studies and purchased their first home, I have got to say that the one motivation that I had to continue with my studies and to make sure I tried to do a good job, to the best of my ability, was the fact that I knew that my parents had made a contribution towards my studies and also that I would be having to pay a lot of that back myself. I think that if you are just getting everything for free, then what is the motivation to do well and to succeed and to get good results and good qualifications?

The other thing, looking at people in my position and students around my age, is that when you finish your study—the thought process that I went through was I wanted to pay off my student loan and then I wanted to embark on going into my first home. I think the pressure on young people to try to do both while they are trying to build a career, trying to build a reputation around the qualifications they have got if they have studied, and trying to look for and pay for a first home is an incredible amount of pressure, and I do not think that there would be many young people who actually want to try to duck-shove the cost burden of paying off their student loan even further just so that they can get into their first home.

I think that, at a fundamental level, what the Greens are proposing in this bill is jiggery-pokery. It is moving one level of debt from one column into another, and if you are a student, you are still going to have to pay it back by one means or another. That is the thing. I think that when you look at the fact that 10 percent of your salary is deducted to pay off your student loan, if you have that paused momentarily while you are generating a deposit for your first home and then that is automatically applied again, that is a significant cost burden, and it has high levels of cost burden on a new graduate trying to budget.

So these are the reasons why I oppose this bill, notwithstanding the fact that I am probably better placed to speak to it than some of the other members who are likely to be speaking following me—not to be making ageist comments or anything like that. But I thank you for the opportunity to make this contribution.

DARROCH BALL (NZ First): It is a pleasure to rise on behalf of New Zealand First to speak to the Student Loan Scheme (First Home Repayment Diversion) Amendment Bill. I am speaking on behalf of Tracey Martin.

First of all, we will not be supporting this bill for some very good, sound reasons, and I will get to those in a moment. The first thing—I think, the major one—that I have noticed sitting here just today is that all of the speakers are not really speaking too much about student loans themselves; they are speaking about the problem that they are trying to address, which is homeownership. I think that the main issue with this bill is that it is trying to address an issue by shifting debt through the student loan system, and New Zealand First does not agree with that. This bill is really not about student loans; it is about three things: it is about investment in young people, it is about the principles of the different parties here in this House, and it is about what we do for the overwhelming problems, challenges, and impossibilities that our young people face due to this mismanagement of the country by the National Government currently.

The first thing I want to talk about is investment. New Zealand First’s point of view is that we need to invest 100 percent in our young people, and we need to invest 100 percent in our young students. The problem with this bill is that it is not about 100 percent investment. What it does is it acknowledges a problem. We have heard the different speeches in the House today and previously and acknowledge the huge issue—it is a huge issue. I think it was mentioned in the House today that Auckland has got the highest affordability rate for houses in the world. So that is an issue, and we do need to address it. But this is not the way to do it.

Not only that, this is reacting to that problem. What New Zealand First believes in is not reactive policy but proactive policy. Unfortunately, what this means for the Greens is that they are showing that they have given up on the 100 percent investment in our young people. What will suffice for the Greens at the moment is a half-pie, ka pai solution. [Interruption] Half-pie is not ka pai.

The fact is that if we did not have a housing crisis, if we did not have a housing affordability crisis, this bill would not exist. That is the essence of the issue and the essence of why New Zealand First will not be supporting this concept. What we need to do instead is sort out the problem. We need to sort out that problem first—the housing issue and the housing affordability issue—and not create more debt for our young people. In essence, this is what this concept does. It delays the payment of debt, it deflects the payment of debt, and, more importantly, it just moves that debt around. It is not addressing the problem.

The second thing I want to talk about is the foundation principles of all the parties here. I know there are some people who are listening who might question whether the National Party does have principles, because they change so often. But New Zealand First certainly does have 15 fundamental foundation principles. We have had them for 24 years, and they have never changed. We have copped a lot of flak from all the different parties in this House about our standing up for our principles and maintaining those principles. The one that I am talking about is that education is an investment.

I would just like to read out our principle: “Money spent on education will be treated as an investment, not as expenditure. Educational advancement is both in the national and in the individual interest. Educational investment is critical for economic and social recovery.”

New Zealand First will not be supporting this bill, because, no matter what anyone says and no matter how much criticism we get from anybody or any party in this House, we stand by our principles. We stand by the fact that education is an investment. That is why we have got the Up Front Investment Tertiary Policy that Tracey Martin has put forward. We believe it is a social contract between the Government and the students. We want those students educated, we want those students skilled, and we invest in them 100 percent. What we want back is a skills debt to this country. That is what we believe is the solution to this problem—not just shifting the debt. That is why we will not be supporting this bill. Thank you.

Hon JO GOODHEW (National—Rangitata): I find myself in the unusual position of largely agreeing with the previous speaker, Darroch Ball. Putting that aside, National will be opposing this bill. I want to cover off on a few of the really important points we need to consider when we think about this.

This bill is seeking to solve a problem, but I think this is the wrong solution to that. There are other solutions that they should be looking at. That problem is around homeownership. I personally, and the National Government, do not believe that student loans are the issue at the heart of this. As the previous speaker said, this will simply move the debt around.

Keeping in mind what we have in terms of the settings for student loans, currently 731,000 people have a student loan—731,000 New Zealanders have a student loan; that is at 30 June 2016—and 40,000 students pay one off, every year. So 40,000 New Zealanders manage it and get on with their lives. At the same time, those 731,000 New Zealanders are investing in their future. They are investing in having a higher income, a sensible investment, and at the same time the taxpayer is investing in them, with some 82 percent of the cost of their tertiary education being met by the taxpayers of New Zealand. Remember too that 40 percent of the cost of those loans—the New Zealand taxpayers’ investment in these young people or people who have a student loan—is written off. That is quite high, but it is a good investment, in my view.

I have a personal interest in this: my husband and I have three daughters, all with student loans. They are paying them off. They have good jobs. They know that they have invested, as did we in assisting them a little bit, in their future. Their future will mean that they can manage their debt. One day they will have their own homes.

Since student loans came into being, half a million people have paid them off in full. I say that to keep in context the commentary about those borrowers who end up in bankruptcy. Those very same borrowers—and we are talking about 544, in the year to June 2016, ending in bankruptcy—also have significant other debt. It is not just their student loan.

In essence, the next thing I want to cover off on is the important part, about young people determining how they are going to spend their time in training and whether they will pick up a student loan. When I was overseas last week, at the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women, I was talking about various tools that New Zealand uses to help young people to choose the right occupation, to improve their economic independence.

This was a particular opportunity for me to share some really great things that are happening here in New Zealand. One of the things that I shared was the Occupation Outlook app 2017, which is the updated one. Today it has been quite topical, talking about midwives. A young person wanting to be a midwife can look at that app and discover that their income is going to be high, that fees to train are in the upper quartile of fees, that job prospects are projected to increase, but that they are still quite good right now.

So what I am saying, in essence, is that when a young person decides that in life they want to have a good job, they want to have their own home, and they want to have a bright future, then they will structure the time they spend and the investment they make in getting extra training, taking a student loan on board. But, in fact, that planning, to have a good income, will reap the rewards for them. As I have said, 40,000 New Zealanders pay off their student loan every single year—half a million since student loans were introduced.

We must not forget that the New Zealand taxpayer is significantly investing in these young people—largely young people—who are going to university or other tertiary institutions and taking out a student loan. This bill is a solution but not to this particular problem. This bill would simply mean that young people would park their debt in a place and then have to go back to it later. This is not going to solve any of the issues for young people looking to invest in a home, and therefore National will not be supporting it.

PHIL TWYFORD (Labour—Te Atatū): Labour is supporting this bill, and I want to thank Gareth Hughes and the Greens for approaching the problem of the housing crisis with a constructive, problem-solving attitude, because it is more than the National Government members can find in themselves after 8 years in Government. They have stood by and watched the dream of affordable homeownership come crashing down around the ears of Generation X and Generation Y.

We have the lowest rate of homeownership in the world. We have the most unaffordable housing in the world, according to The Economist magazine. That is an absolute disgrace, and this National Government has done nothing about it. It has been happy while our country’s biggest city turns into a speculator’s paradise, and only this morning did we see on the front page of the New Zealand Herald the fact that people are flipping houses at a rate of 300 a year, making an average of $70,000 profit on each one. There was one case in South Auckland last year where someone flicked off a house on the same day it was bought and made a million dollars’ profit on the resale. As if we needed any more evidence that National’s housing policy has failed. So at least the Greens have come to this House trying to offer some kind of solution.

When my wife and I bought our first home, in 1989, it cost us the equivalent of three times—three times—our household income. And that was the average at that time in the 1980s in Auckland. For Generation X and Generation Y—for our son, who is 27, and his friends’ generation—they face a median house price in Auckland that is 10 times the median household income. Housing has become three times less affordable now than it was 30 years ago, and this National Government has no interest in doing anything about it.

There was a really interesting story, actually, in the Sydney Morning Herald a couple of days ago. Paul Keating, the former Australian Prime Minister, gave a stonkingly good response to the announcement by the Australian Federal Government about an increase in homeowner subsidies.

Chris Bishop: What a great Prime Minister.

PHIL TWYFORD: And he was really having a go. I agree; Paul Keating is one of the giants of our time. And he was ripping into the Liberals in Australia for wanting to crack open superannuation savings, basically, and for allowing young people to take away their future savings and their future opportunities because the housing market had been allowed to spin so badly out of control. And Australia faces many of the same problems we do.

Keating’s speech underlined, for me, the importance of a Government that is willing to tackle the structural causes of a housing crisis, and that is not this National Government. It refused to do anything about tackling speculators. It has quite happily fallen—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): Order! I have not heard “student loan scheme” mentioned in over 2½ minutes. I am not part of Generation X or Y, and I would actually like to hear something about what the actual subject is about, and the substantive nature of what this bill is about, which is the student loan scheme. Tying it into housing is what it is about, but how about mentioning the student loan scheme as well?

PHIL TWYFORD: Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker. The Student Loan Scheme (First Home Repayment Diversion) Amendment Bill—although we are supporting it to select committee, there is no doubt that it does fall into the category of policies that do not address the structural causes of the housing crisis. We need a Government that is actually willing to build houses, that will rewrite and reform the rules around renting, and that will actually genuinely reform the restrictive planning rules that choke off the supply of affordable housing. We need those things, because without them, Generation X and Generation Y will be forever condemned to a life of being tenants in their own land, something the former Prime Minister said would never happen.

Until we get a Government, later this year, that will make those reforms, that has the political courage to actually bust the monopolies and the rorts and the vested interests and actually fix the housing crisis and restore affordable homeownership—until we have that—then people are always going to be forced into a position where they have to bring these kinds of policy responses to the crisis.

We support this bill to select committee because we think it is worth debating these issues. It is not perfect. There are lots of issues that would need proper scrutiny at select committee. But we applaud the Greens for at least making constructive—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): I am sorry to interrupt the honourable member. His time has expired.

DAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): Well, what I take from that speech by Phil Twyford is that the Labour Party does not really support this bill at all, because he did not talk about it at all.

I recently heard from some medical experts who have found a cure for voting for the Green Party, and it is called economic literacy. Every time you get a bill from the Green Party—and particularly from Gareth Hughes—it is economically illiterate. The last time he brought a bill to this House it was to set the price and set feed-in tariffs for solar electricity and, as it was explained in the House at the time, there are two ways to set a price wrong: too low or too high. Either way, you alienate either producers or consumers from the market, and end up with less of what you actually want.

This particular bill has even more economic problems than even that one. One of the most simple problems is: who will it benefit? Cui bono? Well, people who will benefit most from this bill are people who have the largest student loans—probably the people, statistically and, sadly, who went to the best schools and then got the most subsidies when they were at university. And now the Green Party—the champion of the poor; the friend of the working man—wants to give even more taxpayer dollars in the form of subsidies to some of the most privileged people in New Zealand society to get on the home ladder. What about all the working class and poor people who have not had the benefit of a tertiary education and cannot benefit from this particular scheme? What is wrong with the world when the ACT Party has to stand up for the working man because the Green Party cannot do it and the Labour Party did not mention them either?

Not only is this bill privileging but, to a large extent, it is self-defeating, because even though these people are going to get some measure of taxpayer money paying the interest on their loan while they are saving for their mortgage, what they are going to discover—and this is the kicker for people who think that there might be something in it for them—is that when they go to the bank to get a mortgage, the first thing the bank is going to ask is: “Do you still have a student loan?”. And if the answer is “Yes.”, then it is going to be so much more demanding on the terms of borrowing and the interest rate that can be secured. This is what I mean by economic literacy in the Green Party. Even when it tries to help people—even when it tries to help the wrong people—it cannot figure out how the economics actually work.

But I do want to say something about the structure of the housing market, and I regret that Phil Twyford beat me to it, because former Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating in his lovely Australian politician way said that allowing people to put more of their savings in, and creating policies that encourage young people to put more of their equity into the housing market, was ripping the backside out of Australian public policy. National, sadly, has done that with KiwiSaver HomeStart—making people put more of their superannuation savings into a housing market it thinks is overheated—and yet this bill is more of exactly that. It leaves people in a position where their net amount of debt in the housing market is greater than it would have been had they focused on paying off their student loan first. We are actually subsidising people to be in a worse financial position and more dependent upon a housing market that is overheated than they would be otherwise.

This bill is a failure on so many counts. It tries to help the wrong people, it is self-defeating in trying to help them, but it is worse than that, because there are real structural problems with the housing market and, as we heard from Phil Twyford and we hear frequently from the Minister for Building and Housing, or housing or social housing or whatever Nick Smith is these days, it is the restrictions upon land that you are allowed to build upon, put in place by restrictive land-use planning, that has driven up the price of housing for my generation, for Millennials, for Generation X and Y—whatever we are calling ourselves these days, and I am sorry to hear, Mr Assistant Speaker, that you are not one of us; it did come as a bit of a surprise.

The fact of the matter is that it is land-use restriction and urban planning that has driven up house prices in every Western city that has tried them—and which party in this House is most in favour of smart growth, urban density, urban containment, and the kinds of restrictions that have pushed up the price of housing for a whole generation? Can you believe it? It is the economic illiterates in the Green Party.

So the ACT Party proudly opposes this bill. It is inequitable, it is ineffective, and it misses the real structural problems in the housing market, which need to be addressed, and not only is the Green Party the last party to address them but, actually, it has an ideology that makes them worse. I really hope that Gareth Hughes does not get a bill drawn again, because it cannot possibly be worse—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): Order! The member’s time has expired.

GRANT ROBERTSON (Labour—Wellington Central): Well, that is quite rich, is it not—a lecture on economic illiteracy coming from the party that has driven trickle-down economics down the throats of New Zealanders since the mid-1990s despite its demonstrable failure, the fact that it has increased inequality, and the fact that we have got huge debt in this country. David Seymour is the person who can tell us about a flawed economic ideology that he and 0.1 percent of the population are clinging on to. That is what David Seymour can tell us about.

I am from Generation X. Kris Faafoi cruelly suggested that you may be from Generation A, Mr Assistant Speaker, which I think is very unfair. As a representative here of Generation X, I can say that Generation X was the generation that copped the beginning of having to deal with user-pays education. We are the generation that copped the beginning of that, and now, if the National Government has its way, we are the generation that cops the beginning of having to increase the age at which we are eligible for New Zealand superannuation. Generation X and Y do find themselves in the unique position in New Zealand of actually having enormous debt saddled on them simply for going on and getting their education.

I want to say to David Seymour that his criticism of the bill around whom it is helping shows just how out of touch he is. If he thinks that the only people with student loans are some kind of rich medical graduates or dental graduates, he is wrong. People with student loans include plumbers. People with student loans include carpenters. These are people who go and get their certificates at polytechnics, and they have student loans. So Mr Seymour might like to think that every student in New Zealand is a university student, but they are not; they are actually people who are trying to contribute to New Zealand and contribute to their own further advancement through education.

This bill is the intersection of the National Government’s failure. It is the intersection of a housing market completely out of control, with the worst homeownership rates since 1961, and with average house prices around New Zealand increasing by 15 and 20 percent. That is why it says in the title, for the benefit of Mr Muller, “First Home Repayment”; it is both—student loans and housing.

This is the intersection of the failure of National to address the housing crisis and its complete disinterest in the importance of education and training to New Zealand’s future development, because that is an investment. Everyone on that side of the House wants to call it a cost. That is the only way they can conceive of education—as a cost. It is not; it is an investment for all New Zealanders, and that is why the Labour Party is proposing 3 years’ free post-secondary school training and education, because we believe that every New Zealander should have the right to be able to take their education on and do the learning for life that we need in the future of work that we are facing up to. The current Government has sat on its hands in this area. It has not increased the amount of support that is available for students, it has let fees increase, and it has put more costs on to students. Those graduates are now coming out with massive loans and are facing a housing market that the National Government has let go out of control. It is the intersection of failure of this Government.

I congratulate Gareth Hughes on having drafted this bill. As my colleague Phil Twyford said, there are some issues with it, and it is a similar issue to the one with—[Interruption] There are some issues with it. It is similar to the one with KiwiSaver, where, actually, we are moving an ambulance around at the bottom of the cliff. That is what we are doing. We are saying to those young people: “This is how we are going to support you to be able to afford your entry to a first home.” But we think it is worthy of consideration. We think it is worthy of discussion; otherwise, all we have is David Seymour criticising—not a constructive idea, not a proposal to actually say: “How will we make housing more affordable? How will we reduce the cost of education?”.

So we welcome the opportunity to have this discussion, to openly and honestly say to Generations X and Y that we realise they have been hard done by and we want to do something about it. From the Labour Party’s point of view, our priority is to address the structural issues in the housing market to make sure that we both increase the supply of affordable housing through the KiwiBuild programme and crack down on speculators and, on the education side of this message, make sure that we reduce the debt burden on students and graduates by getting 3 years’ free tertiary education and training. If we get that package up, we will make housing more affordable, but in the meantime, we can support this bill to facilitate a good discussion.

TODD MULLER (National—Bay of Plenty): It is great to be able to stand and speak against the Student Loan Scheme (First Home Repayment Diversion) Amendment Bill here this afternoon. Firstly, I just have some comments on the speeches that we have heard here today. Grant Robertson, who has quickly left the Chamber—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): Order! You cannot mention the absence of a member.

TODD MULLER: He was just a bit too quick, Mr Assistant Speaker. I have not seen Grant Robertson that animated since he was the Otago student union president. He sits across the other side of the House and tries to take on the Government in the finance portfolio and barely creates a ripple, but when it comes to issues with respect to student loans and the history of his involvement in the education sector, he cannot help himself. He has a particular view that somehow the scheme is flawed. He fought against it when he was a young student president. He has not let it go; it has formed his political perspective regardless of the outcomes in terms of participation and the effect that it has in enabling people in this country to be successful—that is irrelevant from Grant Robertson’s perspective.

It was very nice to hear Phil Twyford reference the bill for 25 seconds. Ultimately, the Labour Party view is that this bill will not do anything to impact in any way the structural challenges that we are addressing with respect to housing challenges, particularly in the high-growth communities. It was quite a shock to hear Darroch Ball from New Zealand First. I think it is the first time in this House that I have said “Hear, hear!”. It was great to hear his rational perspective.

Clayton Mitchell: I thought you were more intelligent!

TODD MULLER: It was quite extraordinary. From the Labour Party perspective—and we heard it from Michael Woods—the view is that somehow they want to position themselves as being fiscally responsible, but they are constantly supporting these Green Party ideas, which is more money, more spending, and a constant call on the State.

Let us just have a look at some of the actual cost implications of this bill. Let us assume that there is wide take-up—100 percent take-up—and the diversion period is for just 5 years. The annual operating cost of this proposal is $80 million to $200 million, plus the one-off impairment cost of about $1.2 billion. The annual operation cost is as much as $200 million. This is, yet again, an example of a party and an Opposition group that holds the view that the way we resolve issues in this country is just to throw more and more money on it.

I think David Seymour’s deconstruction of this bill is probably the best that I have heard in recent times. It does not work. It adds cost to the individual, because it is a debt that is deferred. [Interruption] Gareth Hughes, the debt is a debt; you actually have to pay it off. That is the deal. You actually cannot contract yourself out of that obligation. It is a very generous obligation that we have in place; 82 percent of the cost is covered by the taxpayer. This is a student loan scheme that is seen as one of the most generous in the world. It has facilitated extraordinary outcomes for New Zealand in the 25 years—25 years—now that this has been in place. It has worked extremely well.

There is this view that somehow—

Hon Member: Rubbish!

TODD MULLER: It is not rubbish. There is this view that somehow having this debt has impacted homeownership. But a study from Victoria University of Wellington, looking at household wealth in New Zealand, and the Institute for Governance and Policy Studies reached the following conclusions—very explicit—that the presence and size of a student loan did not appear to affect the probability of a couple having a mortgage at all. The presence of a student loan had no effect on mortgage size, the loan size had only a very minor weak effect on the size of the mortgage, and it absolutely had no effect on the couple’s decisions with respect to children. It is seen by those who are entering our tertiary education sector as a very effective way of helping fund and facilitate them to a career that delivers better returns for them and their families. This is poorly thought-out legislation, and I am very comfortable to oppose it.

METIRIA TUREI (Co-Leader—Green) I speak on behalf of Gareth Hughes to the Student Loan Scheme (First Home Repayment Diversion) Amendment Bill, which is in his name, as he cannot be present today. I want to thank those parties that are supporting this bill. Labour and the Greens well understand the pressures that young families are facing every day in this simple task of finding a decent affordable home for them and their families to live in.

So this bill does make a very pragmatic proposal to the Chamber. That proposal is that we can give young families who have studied and obtained a loan and are now working the opportunity to choose, for a 5-year period, whether to save for a deposit for a house or to pay off their student loan. That is what we are doing here: a pragmatic option for young families that are right now struggling to pay off their student loans and to afford expensive, ever-increasing rents. Our bill just gives these young families the choice about what they want to do with that first 5 years after they finish their studies and are in the workforce.

Let us not forget that so many of these young people who come out of university, often with very, very high student loans, are young doctors, young nurses, builders, lawyers, and accountants—there is a wide range of people. These are people who are starting families. Many of them are partnered or are married. Many, many of them have children, and they are looking to provide security for themselves and their family as they start a new life after study in the workforce. We say we should give these young people and their families some flexibility in the repayment of their loans, just for a 5-year period, and just for the purpose of saving for a deposit, so that they can get a start, so they can build some security, and so they will know that when they start a new job and they send their kids to kindy, or to playcentre, or to school, they and their family are secure in a home that they can own. That is all that this bill is asking. It is not some radical reform, I agree—it is not radical reform here—it is an opportunity for young families to just get a start and have some choices in their life.

We know that homeownership rates in this country are the lowest that they have been in 66 years. How do we get to the situation where what used to be a minimum expectation—that a young family could get into a decent home to be able to start their life together, raise their children, and do good work—has now become so impossible for these young families in terms of simply starting with the basics: a decent job and a decent home? This bill will give those young families those choices.

So we urge members in the House to put aside their political assumptions—I understand there are bigger changes that we need to be making—and to put in their minds first and foremost those young families that we all talk to every day. Think about our own kids, who are in their 20s and who want to start their life, with a partner or without, but with their families and some security. Think about our own people whom we know and meet in our communities every day, who are desperate for some housing security so that they know that they can start a good life for their families. Let us just give them this choice so they can suspend their student loan repayments and save for a deposit for a home.

Let us not forget either that people are required to pay back their student loan when they earn just over $19,000 a year. So we are talking about very low-income people, often, who are really struggling to pay their student loan, to pay the costs of going to work, to keep their families well, and to be able to afford expensive rents. Let us give these families a break. Let us give these young families the same chances that we had to be able to live a decent life, take care of our kids, and have affordable, decent, secure housing. That is the job of this Parliament: to take care of those families and to do what we can to give them more choices.

So I urge the House to support this legislation—at least to select committee, so we can have the debate about the costs—and to put our young families first, please. Thank you.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the Student Loan Scheme (First Home Repayment Diversion) Amendment Bill be now read a first time.

Ayes 48

New Zealand Labour 32; Green Party 14; Māori Party 2.

Noes 73

New Zealand National 59; New Zealand First 12; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.

Motion not agreed to.

Bills

Employment Relations (Allowing Higher Earners to Contract Out of Personal Grievance Provisions) Amendment Bill

First Reading

SCOTT SIMPSON (National—Coromandel): I move, That the Employment Relations (Allowing Higher Earners to Contract Out of Personal Grievance Provisions) Amendment Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee to consider the bill. The title of this bill is long and a bit cumbersome but it neatly and appropriately sums up the intention and the purpose of the bill. This is a bill that will seek to allow high-income earners an opportunity to contract out of the existing provisions of Part 9 of the Employment Relations Act. So for employees who are earning more than $150,000 a year, this will be of great interest. This bill would insert a new section 102A into the principal Act, allowing that non-compulsorily and by mutual agreement, and, following the receipt of independent written legal advice, a contracting out of the provisions of the principal Act could occur.

A casual observer might ask, well, why an employee would want to do that and what might be gained. The benefits to an employer are pretty obvious, but why would a high-income earning employee want to enter into such an arrangement? Well, the answer to that is simply that being able to terminate an individual employment agreement with certainty, on mutually agreed terms, is of business and commercial value to that employer. That certainty of the ability to end an employment agreement without the threat of a personal grievance sword of Damocles hanging over the head of the employer has value, and that value is something that the employee can turn to their own advantage.

What we are actually talking about here is severance—severance payments. There is nothing new or unusual about severance payments being negotiated. In fact, many senior executives negotiate them already. They are quite commonplace. Usually they reflect the nature of the role and the likelihood of it having a finite term. We are not talking, here, about people who generally are entering into career employment designed for a working lifetime. Senior executives are often employed on the basis of a certain job being done and completed, and, then, once that job has been done and completed, knowing full well that the terms of their employment will come to an end. Equally, businesses sometimes want to restructure. They want to rearrange their business affairs, and senior executives will negotiate a severance package that takes that into account—that applies that kind of expectation and eventuality. Employers accept that and that they will then include, as part of the employment package, a pre-negotiated, pre-agreed exiting arrangement on terms that are mutually agreed and, often, very generous.

The problem, then, is that having negotiated a severance package, the prospect and the potential of a personal grievance action still hangs over the head of the employer because of the provisions of Part 9 of the principal Act. My bill seeks to give employees the ability to agree to contract out of Part 9 should they wish, and the price they extract from an employer for doing so will obviously be a more generous severance package than would otherwise have been negotiated. If the employee decides not to contract out, then the provisions of the principal Act remain in place. But for the employer, the incentive is then to be generous with the severance arrangements or run the risk that the employee will not opt out, in which case the employer is still likely to be suffering the threat and risk of a personal grievance.

That certainty has real value to both the employer and the employee. It is a negotiated arrangement—non-compulsory, not mandatory, but a negotiated, agreed arrangement between two consenting parties. If someone is sufficiently skilled to command a salary of $150,000 or more, he or she is not so vulnerable that they need to be protected from even their own employment agreement. Well-paid chief executive officers (CEOs) and senior executives are very capable of agreeing and bargaining for themselves.

Under current law they have the automatic right to challenge a severance payment, the same as everyone else. Currently a senior employee whose contract was terminated would be paid out the remainder of the contract, and often that is generous and large. But the employee is then also free to take out a personal grievance, which could be seen to be excessive. Often, in the real world, an employer will provide a golden handshake to avoid the mere threat of a personal grievance. I do not think that is fair and I do not think that this bill provides any kind of encumbrance that would be negatively impacting on employees should they choose to take it up. But that certainty in advance of a finite severance package has value both to an employee and an employer.

So this bill will protect businesses from being taken advantage of by costly personal grievance claims that negate the previously agreed severance arrangements. There is another obvious benefit to taxpayers in this bill. If high earners are able to sort things out for themselves—and, in my view, they should—then there are obvious benefits in not clogging up our employment courts or mediators.

There are a couple of things that I want to make clear at the first reading. First, there is no compulsion here. Just because an employee has a gross income of more than $150,000 a year, it does not mean that there is an automatic opt-out provision. Contracting out could occur only if the parties agree and if it relates to an individual agreement. The negotiated agreement must be in writing and signed by both parties. Further, it must be witnessed by a lawyer and the employee must have the independent legal advice provided to them prior to that signing and witnessing by the lawyer. So this bill does not go as far as the situation in Australia where under their Fair Work Act their unfair dismissal rules simply do not apply to people who earn above their high-income threshold, which is currently about A$140,000.

It is worth noting that for the purposes and objectives of this bill, nominating a salary or income threshold is more effective than nominating an employee title such as chief executive or chief financial officer or CEO or something like that. That would create legal uncertainty and, of course, it would be very easy to avoid and get around.

I hope that this bill will be sent to the select committee. That being the case, there is an area that does need the attention of the select committee and it relates to adding in protection for employees, no matter how high their gross earnings are, from situations that might simply be regarded as those of a bad employer, such as discrimination, sexual or racial harassment, or where the employer fails to comply with their legal obligations. I believe those protections can and should be inserted at the select committee.

I would like to acknowledge the Hon Paul Goldsmith, who was the original author of this bill and had it placed in the ballot. He was motivated to do so following conversations with employers, with business organisations, and with high-income earners. At the time when the bill went into the ballot it was met with wide and popular acclaim. The then chief executive of Business New Zealand, Phil O’Reilly, was quoted as saying: “Excluding higher-paid employees from personal grievances would help focus employment law provisions on those who had most need of employment protection,”. He went on to say: “and [that] would help reduce the number of personal grievance cases clogging up the legal system.” Kim Campbell, chief executive of the Employers and Manufacturers Association was reported as saying: “This bill will give employers and the staff earning over $150,000 a year the ability to make their own arrangements should they fall out. High earners should be allowed to sort things out amongst themselves and at their own expense.”

Most informative was the then Labour Party spokesperson, one Andrew Little, MP, and he said that it was the sort of thing that a Labour-led Government would be keen to look at, especially for chief executives, and, subject to a discussion about threshold, he went on to say that he agreed with the bill in principle and “thought it was something that Labour would support to the select committee”.

This is a good bill. It is a bill that I think is deserving of time and consideration by a select committee. I know that if it goes to a select committee it will get some tweaking and some improvement, and I thoroughly and heartily commend it to the House.

IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY (Labour—Palmerston North): Well, if any member of the House was considering voting against this legislation but was not quite sure whether they should or not, I think that speech will pretty much have done it. If that was an effort to encourage members of Parliament to vote in favour of this bill, from the member in charge of this bill, Scott Simpson, then I think if anybody needs to be let go from the National Government, it is probably Scott Simpson.

It is true that Andrew Little said that there was some merit to the ideas behind this bill, but actually I think the reason why Scott Simpson’s first reading speech was so underwhelming is that he realised when he inherited the bill and actually looked at it closely that he has inherited one dog of a bill. We cannot vote for this bill for a variety of reasons, but principally because it is incredibly poorly drafted, ill-conceived, poorly thought through, and very poorly drafted.

As Scott Simpson said, what it allows is for employers and employees to contract out of Part 9 of the Employment Relations Act. If you would listen to Mr Simpson, you would think that just means that an employee could not take a personal grievance for unjustified dismissal. Let us actually have a look at Part 9, because Part 9 does an awful lot more than that. Let us look at section 103, which relates to personal grievance. It says that an employee may take a personal grievance because they have a claim that the employee has been unjustifiably dismissed. I think that is the bit that Mr Simpson wants us to think about when he is talking about this bill. But then it also goes on to say that an employee may take a personal grievance if they have been discriminated against in the employee’s employment, or if they have been sexually harassed, or if they have been racially harassed, or if they have been subject to duress in relation to their membership or non-membership of a union. So Mr Simpson wants people to be able to contract out of basic human rights in the workplace. I say that it does not matter how much you earn, it does not matter what position you hold in a company, you should be entitled to your basic human rights.

Let us look at what else Mr Simpson would like employees to be able to contract out of. Let us look at further tests for discrimination. Section 104 says that “an employee is discriminated against in [their] employment if the employee’s employer or a representative of that employer, by reason directly or indirectly of any of the prohibited grounds of discrimination specified in section 105, or involvement in the activities of a union in terms of section 107,— … (b) dismisses that employee or subjects that employee to any detriment, in circumstances in which other employees employed by that employer on work of that description are not or would not be dismissed or subjected to such detriment;”.

In other words, if they are discriminated against in some way under any of the following: because of their sex—so an employer could suddenly decide that he does not want to employ women any more, so a woman who is subject to the provisions of this bill could be dismissed without any recourse. Because of their marital status—so some weird employer could decide that they do not want to employ unmarried people or married people, or they might not like people in same-sex marriages, and, in fact, sexual orientation is one of the grounds in section 105. Religious belief, ethical belief, colour, race, ethnic or national origins, disability, age, political opinion, employment status, family status, or, as I said earlier, sexual orientation—so Mr Scott, again, would have people contract out of their right not to be discriminated against on those grounds. Again, that is a massive breach of people’s fundamental human rights. I just think that Mr Simpson and whoever drafted this bill—it was not Mr Simpson; he inherited this bill—simply did not think through the implications of this legislation.

Part 9 of the Act goes on to deal with all sorts of other matters to do with how to raise a personal grievance: how to define sexual or racial harassment and a range of other things that are all eliminated in the event that someone takes up the opportunity to contract out of it. As Mr Simpson said, that then raises the question of what it would take to get someone to contract out of their basic human rights. Reading the commentary from the likes of the Employers and Manufacturers Association and Business New Zealand after this bill was first submitted to the ballot, you would think that this bill was actually going to be the end of golden handshakes. Well, it might be the end of golden handshakes and the replacement of them with the platinum handshake, because, let us be honest, anybody who is earning $150,000 or more—notwithstanding the fact that that threshold is far too low because it captures a lot of middle-management people in a lot of organisations—anybody contracting out at that rate or more is going to extract a very high price for contracting out of their fundamental human rights.

We could actually end up with one rule for ordinary working people, who are only able to get the kind of compensation levels that are accepted in employment agreement disputes—which are actually pretty capped and are not as out of control as some people would like us to think—and then there are the folks who contract out of the provisions of Part 9, who will be able to extract an enormous price. Of course, because of the type of people we are talking about here, I think a lot of employers will be quite happy to give not the golden handshake but the platinum handshake to people who want to engage in this.

I think this is a bill with a solution looking for a problem. As Mr Simpson said, people can already negotiate severance payments in the event that they do not want to go through the full Employment Relations Authority process or go to the Employment Court. So that option is already available to people, but they cannot be unjustifiably dismissed because of their sexual orientation, or their marital status, or their race, or their colour, or their ethnicity, or a whole host of other basic human needs. So, yes, you can negotiate a severance package if the employer just wants to quickly see you out the door because they are restructuring, or because they are not satisfied with the way you are doing your job, or your leadership in the organisation is detrimental to the employment of other people. If that is the case, then a payment can already be made, and out the door that person goes. This is basically saying: “We want to have that payment built into the contract at the beginning, and we want to probably increase that payment to convince people to take up the opportunity to contract out of Part 9.”

I just think this is so poorly thought through, so poorly drafted, and I am afraid, Mr Simpson—I know Mr Simpson said: “Oh look, I’d like the select committee to tidy up a few edges here.” It is not the edges; it is actually the core of this bill. This bill is fundamentally flawed—irrevocably flawed—and I think it would be a waste of the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee’s time to try to tidy up this poorly drafted, poorly thought through bill. I suggest to Mr Simpson that if he is genuinely passionate about this—which I doubt, given the enthusiasm that he displayed in his first reading speech—he go back to the drawing board and think this through. Actually, if he wants the support of Opposition parties, if he actually wants to talk through something that might actually work, give us a call. I have not heard from Mr Simpson about this bill. I do not know that any of my colleagues have heard from Mr Simpson about this bill. So if Mr Simpson actually wants to get support to put a bill like this through, then talk to members opposite and actually seek support for it. It is a dog of a bill, and we cannot support it.

JONATHAN YOUNG (National—New Plymouth): I am very pleased to stand in support of this bill, as Andrew Little is as well. I believe that, as the previous speaker, Iain Lees-Galloway, has said, there is an opportunity for the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee to do some fine work in bringing some additions, adjustments, and perhaps some improvements to this bill. Then the people of New Zealand will see the great work this Parliament can do if we work together.

One thing to say in terms of the aspect of human rights, which the member raised: we do have a letter from the Ministry of Justice, from the chief legal counsel, who stated that they have considered whether the Employment Relations (Allowing Higher Earners to Contract Out of Personal Grievance Provisions) Amendment Bill, in the name of Scott Simpson, is consistent with the rights and freedoms affirmed in the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990. They did state the comment that if the option is taken—and it is an option; it is not mandatory like the Australians have made this same provision in their law—whatever the employee and the employer have agreed to concerning the application of personal grievance provisions in their employment contract stands, provided specified conditions are met: “We have concluded that the Bill appears to be consistent with the rights and freedoms affirmed in the Bill of Rights Act.”

So what the select committee will be able to do is dig deeper and find out what those specified conditions are to ensure that the rights and the freedoms of New Zealanders are maintained while at the same time giving this provision in the employment Act. We understand and know that people in the market place and people in the political sphere, including the previous speaker’s leader, state that this is a sensible and useful proposal that would save taxpayers money and help free up court time, especially for those people who desperately need it, those people who find that employment exploitation happens in their lives—some of the people whom I know that member advocates for. Business New Zealand said the exclusion makes sense. The then CEO Phil O’Reilly said that currently a senior employee on a fixed-term contract whose contract was terminated would be paid out the remainder of the contract and would also be free to take up a personal grievance, which could be seen as excessive.

We are living in a period of time where employment law, employment contracts, are changing around the face of the world. It is important for us to consider these things and to be adaptive. Certainly, it is important that we understand that the idea of fixed-term contracts is happening more and more in the workplace, in the market place. In fact, the OECD said that there is a more intensive use of fixed contracts, and this provision in the law would apply particularly to that. It says that young workers have a twice-higher risk of leaving their job than older workers, but they also have a higher probability of finding a job when out of employment. This higher rotation rate is likely to be related to young workers trying to find the best match for their career development, but it is also because of a more intensive use of fixed-term contracts. What this bill does is give greater certainty to the employer and employee relationship. It is optional. It is it an opt-in provision, so that an employer and an employee can know what will occur if that employment relationship terminates.

Let me just finish in these next 30 seconds with a quote from Mr Blair Scotland, Principal at Dundas Street Employment Lawyers in Wellington. He said this: “If you think about it from an employee/employers’ perspective, if I’m the CEO of a company and I have a falling out with the directors, I really don’t want to harm my future employment prospects by splashing that out across the countryside. Likewise, if you’re the board of a company and you don’t like your CEO, if you treat that person poorly and it gets made public, how difficult is it going to be for you to recruit someone of a similar quality or better quality to come into your organisation …”.

DENISE ROCHE (Green): I am rising to take the first call for the Greens on this very poorly thought-out bill, the Employment Relations (Allowing Higher Earners to Contract Out of Personal Grievance Provisions) Amendment Bill, in the name of the member Scott Simpson. I have to feel sorry for that member, because he inherited it from the Hon Paul Goldsmith, who had originally drafted it. As many of us who have spent time with Mr Goldsmith know, he has a very strong ideological stance, which takes him as far right as you can possibly get.

This bill allows employees who earn over $150,000 gross to voluntarily opt out of being able to take a personal grievance. We are opposed to this bill because not only is it badly thought-out, not only is it badly drafted, and not only does it breach the human rights of anybody who opts in to doing this but, actually, it is also a very slippery slope, in terms of what is natural justice and how natural justice is implied in the employment relations system.

This bill allows a worker who is on $150,000 or more to agree with their employer, at the start of their employment, that they will not be able to take a personal grievance. What that means is that they then have to get independent legal advice to do that. Then they have to sign away the right to take a personal grievance. I would like to remind the House that a personal grievance is not just for an unjustified dismissal; a personal grievance is a grievance where an employee has been sexually harassed in the workplace, has been racially harassed in the workplace, has been subject to duress about joining or not joining a union, or has had their health and safety breached by the employer. These are reasons for taking a personal grievance. The worker on $150,000 or more—if they are earning that—can opt out of that, but they do have to get independent legal advice first.

I do not know if the rest of this side of the House actually understands what happens when you apply for a job and get a job and negotiate an employment contract, but the power does not rest with the employee. The power rests with the employer. This is why it says in the actual purpose of the original Employment Relations Act that that is why we have it—because of the power imbalance between employer and employee. So I believe that this opt-out provision will be one of those things where it is just basically said, “Yeah, you can do this and we want you do this.” but it will become, in a situation where the employer wants it, part of the general provisions of the agreement as it is. This whole idea that there will be no compulsion is a rort—it is unlikely to happen.

The sponsor of this bill, Mr Simpson, has already signalled that there needs to be some amendments made to it, which highlights the fact that this bill is badly drafted and badly thought-out. I do not believe that it can actually stand the scrutiny that it needs to have during the select committee process. I believe that it is an incredible waste of the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee’s time to present this bill to it when, in fact, there are not that many people who will actually be affected by this bill.

My understanding—and we have looked at the research—is that there are about 48,000 people to whom this bill will apply. That is around about 1 percent—or less than 1 percent—of the workforce, that this bill will apply to. And I am just wondering: is it worth the House’s time? Is it worth the time of the select committee to actually create a bill that needs work—admittedly; the sponsor says it needs to be amended—and actually only applies to 1 percent of the working population, and breaches basic human rights. I think it is a complete waste of time and should be thrown out of the House immediately. We will be opposing it.

Dr PARMJEET PARMAR (National): I am taking this call to support the Employment Relations (Allowing Higher Earners to Contract Out of Personal Grievance Provisions) Amendment Bill in the name of Scott Simpson. Actually, I want to congratulate Scott Simpson on his bill being drawn from the ballot. This bill, in the name of Scott Simpson, is to amend the Employment Relations Act 2000 to allow employees earning more than $150,000 as their annual gross salary to contract out of personal grievance provisions.

The personal grievance provisions in this bill can override all other agreements that the two parties might have entered into—that is the employer and the employee. Sharing my experience—before getting into Parliament I had the opportunity to work on both sides, as an employee and then later as an employer. From my very first employment, all I remember is the excitement of getting that employment agreement. All I looked at in the employment agreement was the number of hours and my job description. I have to say that when moving from one employment to another employment I was very lucky because there was no situation where I had to go back and look into my employment agreement to clarify the terms and conditions. I do not know whether it was just my luck or whether, unknowingly, I was wisely picking my employers.

Then later on, as an employer, I had the opportunity to work with very, very hard-working people. It was then when I realised the importance of having a really good employment agreement. It is always good to specify things in the employment agreement, and leaving very little to be interpreted later on. Employers can foresee some things that employees cannot. Employers know whether they are going to downsize their business in 3 years’ or 5 years’ time, whether they are going to upgrade the technology, or whether there is going to be a change of location, because that could create an inconvenience for employees. So there are a lot of things that employers can see but employees cannot, and it is really good to specify them in an employment agreement. We also know that if there is no employment agreement, the minimum employment standards still apply.

But this bill is special. This bill is to amend section 102 in Part 9 of the Employment Relations Act. Section 102 provides that “An employee who believes that he or she has a personal grievance may pursue that grievance under this Act.” Section 103, after that, lists possible reasons that could provide grounds for personal grievance. As we have heard from previous speakers, they include unjustifiable dismissal; unjustifiable action of the employer; any form of discrimination, which could be racial or sexual; constraints due to membership or non-membership of a union or employees’ organisation; and, non-compliance with the Act or various parts of the Act by the employer. What this bill does is it provides another option by adding another section, which is new section 102A. This is to allow employees who earn more than $150,000 as their annual gross salary to contract out of Part 9.

The logic behind this is that people—those who earn more than $150,000—cannot be forced into signing something. This will not be taken lightly. As we have heard from the member in charge of this bill, Scott Simpson, this kind of an agreement will be entered into in the presence of a lawyer. It will be witnessed by a lawyer, so this is not going to be taken lightly. This is about providing another option to employers and employees.

The other important thing is that this will be for individual employment agreements. It will be only for individual employment agreements that employees will be able to contract out of Part 9 of the Employment Relations Act 2000. It is not for collective employment agreements. I support this bill and commend it to the House. Thank you.

CLAYTON MITCHELL (NZ First): It is a great pleasure to stand on behalf of New Zealand First to strongly, and I underline that—strongly—oppose this bill moving forward through the House. “Hello, Dotcom.”—that was the first thing that jumped into my mind when I read this bill. “Is this member serious?”—was what came to mind. This is a shameful indictment on the fact that this member over here believes that this is in some way going to benefit New Zealanders. This is not going to benefit New Zealanders. This is going to benefit one group of people, and that is the employers.

It is an absolute schmozzle. I do not know where this crap got dreamed up from, but I think it has come out of the multinational conglomerates’ handbook, because they are the only people who are going to make any sense of it and who will receive any benefit from it. I see this as being fascism, at its absolute best, and I think it is a disgrace. Any party that supports it moving forward in this House should be ashamed of itself, because that is exactly what it is—it is dictatorial.

Who is this bill going to benefit? I just said it before; it is not going to be of benefit to the workers. It is not going to be of benefit for the executives and the corporates. Government employees are going to have some serious problems. Council staff and executive leadership teams in the territorial authorities are all going to suffer at the hands of big-money, big-city business, which is going to dictate the terms on contracts when it is sitting down for them. This member, Scott Simpson, talks about the real world, but it does not look like he has got any experience in the real world.

How it normally works is the employer has the weight of control. The balance is in the employment contract. An employer who is sitting down to discuss the terms of a contract with an employee will simply say to them: “If you are successful with your application, how would you feel about removing your ability to put a personal grievance towards the company?”. Of course if that person wants the job, they are going to agree to the terms, and it is farcical to think that that person can then go and get independent advice, which they pay for themselves and which they steer their lawyer into giving them the outcome that they want, to make sure that they get that job—to give them the advice that they want to get so they can get that job.

If you are talking about fairness and equity in an employment arrangement, what differential is there with a person that is on a lower-earning income and somebody that is on a higher-earning income? You have jumped to a conclusion. You have made a huge assumption that just because you are a higher earner, you have got more power, or more gumption, in your mind to fight your corner.

Well, you need to spend some time—I have to say, Mr Simpson—in our select committee when we talked about the zero-hour contracts. We had professional, highly qualified, highly skilled people coming in and discussing their problems. They were forced into signing contracts that they could not otherwise not sign, or fail to get their jobs, or lose the opportunity to get their jobs. In fact, I will give you an example: we had a very intelligent woman who was a lawyer, who was given a contract to sign, a zero-hour work contract. It was a “take it or leave it” opportunity that she signed because she was a solo mother, qualified as a lawyer, a hard-working, intellectual person who got herself into a situation because the employer demanded it of her.

This bill is fascist. We should not be allowing it to move through this House. It is exactly the sort of thing that erodes away the very fibre of our employment relations that we have built up over years. I think we have some serious concerns. This is an indictment on this Government.

The other part that I would like to bring to the attention of the House is the fact that if an employee gets to a situation where they sign themselves into that contract, to make sure that they get that job available to them, the first thing that the employer has the power, again, to do is enforce the 90-day work trial. Now all of a sudden if they want to sign into that contract and have the ability to take a personal grievance against the person for a range of reasons—sexual harassment, sexual preference, whether they are married, whether they have got children, and all the sorts of things that bad employers would use against an employee—they would have that ability. And if they do not sign that contract, despite them giving them the job, after 90 days they can just say: “Sorry, we don’t need you anymore.” There are no excuses, just “See you later, but next time, make sure that you take away that provision.”

This is disgraceful, and I absolutely would stand by the fact that any party that supports this just shows how fascist and out of touch they clearly are, like this Government and like this bill has shown here today. Thank you.

PAUL FOSTER-BELL (National): E Te Mana Whakawā Tuarua, tēnā koe. Tēnā koutou katoa e ngā mema o Te Whare. I take great pleasure in supporting the Employment Relations (Allowing Higher Earners to Contract Out of Personal Grievance Provisions) Amendment Bill in this first reading debate, as has been introduced by my friend and colleague the honourable member for Coromandel, Scott Simpson. It is a very sensible bill and it is quite extraordinary in my view that it has elicited such extraordinary caterwaulings from members of the Opposition.

We have had argumentum ad Hitlerum from the New Zealand First party, which, perhaps, best personifies some of those arguments, I would have thought. We have had an extraordinary backflip, such an extraordinary backflip, from Mr Iain Lees-Galloway that I think he will have to take some physiotherapy, given that he has completely contorted his position around Mr Little’s early support for these sensible and actually relatively small amendments that have been introduced in this bill. And, again, we have had a contribution from the Green Party, which is extraordinary in that the member, Denise Roche, who is obviously against this bill, is clearly quite unfamiliar with—[Interruption]

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): Can we just calm things down. It is very difficult to hear. Allow the member to have his say.

PAUL FOSTER-BELL: —against some of the provisions in this bill but has, clearly, very little knowledge of this area.

This bill brings an ability for employees to contract out voluntarily. I would personally be opposed to anything that cemented in a systematic violation of human rights. If an employee had been discriminated against on the basis of their gender or race or sexuality, I would personally have some very grave concerns if remedies were not left in place for that person. So I was delighted to hear from the member Scott Simpson that such remedies are going to be sought to be introduced during the select committee process.

Also I would note the advice on the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act from the Attorney-General’s office where it was made clear that people are opting out. They are contracting out of the provisions that exist under section 9 of the Employment Relations Act 2000. So I think this is a very sensible set of measures. We are talking about some of the best paid and, indeed, the most privileged employees in New Zealand. I would like to quote a couple of very prominent luminaries who have looked at these matters before.

Back in 2010 personal grievances were being discussed by the Government. The then Prime Minister, the Rt Hon John Key, made the very sensible observation that he shared the concern from many quarters about the fairness and consistency of personal grievance claims and also the then Minister of Labour—a very fine Minister of Labour, the Hon Kate Wilkinson—said that there were some high-paid employees who knew their way around the procedures so well that whatever the merits of the case an employee will pay out.

So I think we are talking about people where there is less of a power-imbalance situation, rather than lower-paid employees. We are talking about employees who can take on the very best legal advice, and, in fact, this bill would obligate them to seek legal advice before agreeing to opt out of the personal grievance provisions of an employment case.

So I think that, for all of these reasons, this is a very sensible bill and it really is extraordinary to have the debate reduced to the level that Clayton Mitchell took it to. Argumentum ad Hitlerum in this Parliament should be reserved for Acts that do actually impede upon the basic rights of New Zealanders and throwing insults around like that in this House, actually, not only debases that member and his party but should be reserved for the very serious issues where human rights are being violated and not a bill like this, which brings in choices and options for some of the highest-paid, most privileged New Zealanders, who have access to appropriate legal counsel before they make those decisions. So for these reasons I support this bill. It is a very sensible measure and I commend it to the House.

SUE MORONEY (Labour): I rise to add my voice to the growing chorus of opposition to this poorly drafted and ridiculous bill, which purports to actually improve employment relations, but we know, because of whom National chose to debate this bill, that they are not serious about it at all. Of all the MPs—of all the MPs—they could have chosen to get up and speak about employment relations, Paul Foster-Bell, with his well-documented high staff turnover, must have been one of the poorest choices that they could have made. Oh, there could have been Todd Barclay, I guess, but he comes second—maybe—to Paul Foster-Bell. But I think that underlines the way in which this Government has no regard for workers’ rights, does not understand what is important about having fair and decent and honest employment policies, and their involvement in this debate is set to underline that.

I want to ask the question: what is it that the National Government has against workers and their rights at work, and why it is that they are picking out this particular group to alienate? This is normally, after all, the group of workers whom the National Party would want to cosy up to. Those earning over $150,000 are the ones they would normally want to protect, so who are they after here? Well, I am on the select committee that I expect will probably hear this bill if it gets through its first reading. On that select committee, quite recently, we have been hearing about the plight of whistleblowers in the Public Service, and I think that they are going to be under serious threat by a bill of this nature.

In the Ministry of Transport, where a very large and serious fraud was committed against the New Zealand taxpayer, it was the public servants who stood up for the rights of the taxpayer. It was the public servants, some of whom would have been getting paid more than $150,000, who did the right thing, who went and reported the breaches that were being made by one of their senior colleagues, a general manager, second only to the CEO. She was defrauding the New Zealand public, and many of her colleagues reported her. They reported her non-compliance, and some of those people would have been earning over $150,000.

Those whistleblowers—those people—are the people whom we need to protect. They are the public servants who are there to protect the public’s interest. Because I can see that, at the outset, it might seem OK if you have been offered a senior role at, say, a ministry like the Ministry of Transport to actually sign away your rights to a personal grievance. But, then, what if you are the whistleblower who acts in the public’s interest and then gets dealt to as a result of that? That is exactly what may have occurred in the Ministry of Transport; if only the Minister of Transport would have an inquiry and find out whether exactly it did happen or not.

But that is a very real example of the people who will be disenfranchised by this legislation. They are the very people whom we want to have security in their jobs and whom we want to be brave and whistle-blow when there are frauds of that nature being committed in places like the Ministry of Transport. We do not want them to have given away their basic rights to be protected at work if they are having to be put in a position, as these staff members were, of having to go and report against a senior colleague.

We want, and the New Zealand taxpayer needs, people like that to have the full force of the law and the Government backing them to go and make those valid and just complaints. I think that this is one of the targets of this particular law. It is that sort of culture that has developed more and more under this Government, of bullying at work. Bullying in the workplace is not just meted out to those on the lowest incomes; it is quite frequently meted out to people on higher incomes as well, and it must stop.

Finally, I want to say how disturbed I am that the National Government would want to bargain away people’s rights to prevent sexual harassment in the workplace, and if it thinks that sexual harassment happens only to low-paid people then it is completely out of touch with what is happening in the modern workplace.

Mr SPEAKER: This debate is interrupted, and in accordance with the determination of the Business Committee, I call on the Rt Hon John Key to make his valedictory statement.

Debate interrupted.

Valedictory Statements

Valedictory Statements

Rt Hon JOHN KEY (National—Helensville): I rise to address this House for the very last time. It has been a huge privilege to have served the people of Helensville as their member of Parliament and, of course, the people of New Zealand as their Prime Minister. Even though it was 15 years ago—the time has passed—when I first came here, in many ways it feels not that long ago that I rose to speak for the very first time, with all the emotions this House can invoke: excitement, trepidation, fear, and hope. This place is like no other. It is all-consuming, life changing, mostly powerful, occasionally trivial, but never boring. What happens here matters a great deal to the lives of millions of Kiwis, who every day trust us, as politicians, to get it right on their behalf.

I came here on a different path from many who had come before me. I had not been a member of my party’s youth wing. In fact, I had not been that involved with the National Party at all prior to throwing my hat in the ring for the selection for the Helensville seat, although I had always been a National supporter, and proud of it. I had not come here from a life of politics and protest. In fact, I came here from Wall Street.

But long before Wall Street, my political views had been shaped by my Austrian Jewish mother, Ruth, who single-handedly raised me and my sisters in the now-infamous State house at 19 Hollyford Ave, Christchurch. My mother was a no-nonsense woman who refused to take no for an answer. She would not accept failure. She was an immensely hard worker, firstly as a night porter in the Clarendon Hotel so that she could earn money while our family slept. Then, for many years, she worked as a cleaner, and, even in retirement, as a volunteer.

She was often abrupt. While I was at high school, I had a weekend job in some stables, and I remember coming home one day at the age of 15 to tell Mum I had this brilliant idea: I was leaving school to train racehorses. “No.”, she said. “Shall we talk about it?”, I enquired. “No.”, she said. “Not even the pros and cons?”, I suggested. “No,” she said, “you’re going to university to study accounting.” That was it. To Mum, no meant no. I do not think she would have lasted very long in coalition Government, but that is by the by.

Not that she was always lost for words. One day, early on in my first job, I bounced a cheque. The bank manager aired a view on that, but he was a novice. He should have taken lessons from Mum. As I said, she was often abrupt, but that day she was in full flight. She had worked hard all of her adult life to make sure she paid her bills on time, and she expected her three children to do the same.

By nature, I am a pragmatist, not an ideologue. That is because, in my experience, most people just want results that work. Some people have said that my pragmatism indicates a lack of a clear set of principles. I do not think that is true. It is just that my principles derive mostly from the values and ethics instilled in me by my upbringing, rather than by the “Politics 101” textbook.

Once, when I was about 12, I rather thoughtlessly asked my mother over dinner why everyone else had nicer things than we did—why they had a better house than we had, and how come they went on more holidays and to more exciting places. For a moment, Mum was quite taken aback. “I’m doing my best for you.”, she said. “I may not be able to give you what some other kids have, but I can give you my love and I can give you determination. I can give you the belief that through your own actions and your own hard work, you can make your life better.” I never forgot that night, and I never will. And, of course, she was right. Mum taught me the things that allowed me to succeed and which I think are echoed by so many Kiwi parents—that you get out of life what you put in to it, that hard work can create opportunities. And that you really can change your own life, not by wishing it was different but by working to make it different.

I have brought to politics an unshakeable belief that, regardless of our circumstances, most of us share the same aspirations: we want our children to be fulfilled and we want them to do better than we have. To most of us, what matters more than anything else are the health, welfare, and happiness of those people about whom we care most. In the end, Mum did not leave me any money, our holidays were always pretty basic, and the house we lived in for a long time was owned by the State Advances Corporation. But, truthfully, she left me the most important gift of all: the determination to succeed and the work ethic to make it happen.

As I am sure all of us here can attest, life in Parliament is odd. Our job is a mix of community worker, public speaker, local advocate, legislator, and policy maker. We face a glaring spotlight, relentless scrutiny, and the possibility every 3 years of being turfed out regardless of how hard we have worked, and we all spend long and lonely nights away from our families, who in turn spend many nights without us.

I recall early on as an MP being asked to address a visiting class of 6- or 7-year-old children from Bill English’s electorate of Clutha-Southland. “What on earth should I tell them?”, I thought as I wandered down to meet them. Anyway, I babbled on for about 15 minutes about the importance of democracy and the place of Parliament in our society, then I opened for questions. A little girl immediately put up her hand. “Excellent.”, I thought. “Yes, dear?”, I said. “Do you have a dog?”, she said. It was an early lesson in adjusting for my audience and to appreciate that people from Southland get to the point quickly.

When I first came here, like all of us, I was an eager backbencher with much to learn. I remember walking out of the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee with Roger Sowry, who was an experienced MP, and so I started asking him a million questions. He gave me what I thought was great advice. “John,” he said, “every moment you get, go to the House and watch the politicians who are good in the Chamber—not necessarily the ones you agree with or whom you want to be friends with, but those who can move the place with the power of their argument. Don’t stay in your office or go drinking. You’re here to learn.” It was good advice, and I followed it. Every chance I had, I came down and watched Michael Cullen, Richard Prebble, Winston Peters, Rodney Hide, Bill English, Simon Power, and Gerry Brownlee. Roger also gave me another lesson in the peculiarities of the place when he added, in the very next breath: “And by the way, John, just because I talk to you, it doesn’t mean I like you.”

Working with constituents has been an important part of my life as an MP. One day a father wrote to me to say that his son had gone off the rails and, among other things, had been stealing cars and racing them around the streets. The father was convinced that life in the military would sort out his son, but the army had declined to take up the opportunity of enlisting the boy, so the father wanted some help on how his son might reapply. My secretary got his request and wrote an email to me, pointing out in no uncertain terms that if the little toe-rag was not such a drop kick and stopped nicking other people’s property, the army might just consider his request. Except, in one of those instances we all fear, she accidentally hit “Reply” instead of “Forward”, and so sent her forthright views straight to the father.

I was at the time in the middle of being interviewed by Radio New Zealand when she realised her mistake and burst into my office, close to tears, with her mea culpa. At that point, I decided either I was calling the father or the press gallery was, and in all probability both of us were, so I had better get on with it. It is fair to say the conversation started a little frostily, but the upshot was that I wrote a few letters and, in the end, the army took the boy on. The last I heard, he was doing pretty well. That experience also made me an early convert to the good that the Limited Service Volunteer scheme can do to help some kids get back on the rails and see that they have a useful future.

I became Prime Minister in 2008. It is an incredible privilege to lead your country, but when I arrived on the ninth floor, New Zealand was in recession, unemployment was rising, finance companies were falling over, and the global financial crisis (GFC) was hitting.

Early on, we decided to hold the Job Summit. For the first time, we got the Government, unions, and the private sector all together to nut out some solutions, and although the 9-day fortnight and various other policies were a more effective response to the GFC, the Job Summit became the birthplace of the successful national cycleway scheme. Who would have believed that someone who loves golf and who had not been on a bike since my last one was flogged from Jellie Park when I was 15 would, all of a sudden, become a national advocate for off-road cycling? It is fair to say that the Minister of Finance was a tad sceptical that this was a good use of $50 million of taxpayer money, but I am proud to say that in January of this year alone, more than a million people used the cycleways. They have become a great earner. And the good news is that even Bill English was converted, once he realised you could get a trim soy latte in Dipton.

I am immensely proud of the achievements made by the Government that I led. Our economic reforms: the 90-day trial periods ensure that young, and sometimes marginalised, Kiwis get a shot at proving their worth to an employer. There is the huge investment in infrastructure and, in particular, the roll-out of ultra-fast broadband. There is our support of the film industry, without which The Hobbit movies would have been made in London.

I am proud to have led a Government that balanced the books and that gave parents better information about the progress their child is making. There are the vastly improved health services, ensuring children under the age of 13 can go to the doctor for free, and the fully funded Herceptin for women diagnosed with breast cancer. It is a Government that put more police on the street and lifted benefits in real terms for the first time in 43 years. It is an administration with the ambition to make New Zealand predator-free by 2050, and one that advanced our trade agenda. I am also proud that so many Treaty settlements were completed, because apart from acknowledging past wrongs, they reflect the same aspirations we all share of improving our independence, creating opportunities, and providing our kids with a chance to better their lives.

In politics, disappointments are inevitable. It is futile to relitigate the flag debate here—well, I could start. However—

Grant Robertson: Go on.

Rt Hon JOHN KEY: —yeah, go on; give it a go—I will always hold the view that a fresh, new flag, without the Union Jack on it, would have been one more step towards New Zealand’s growing profile, reputation, and uniqueness on the world stage.

For the most part, as a liberal MP, I feel I got my voting record right, although I regret voting against civil unions. I was pleased that Louisa Wall’s bill for gay marriage was drawn, and I am glad I supported it.

I regret that the Trans-Pacific Partnership did not get over the line. Trade has helped lift millions of people in the world out of poverty. On a local level, we want Kiwi businesses, large or small, to have opportunities to compete with others from around the world on the same terms and for the same rewards.

I hope that one day the Kermadecs will be an ocean sanctuary so that long after we are all gone, it remains pristine and untouched.

As Prime Minister, I got to travel to many interesting places and promote New Zealand’s case and profile with many world leaders. A perennial favourite for the media were the silly shirts of the ASEAN and APEC summits. Those outfits might be OK for Justin Trudeau and Barack Obama, but as recent photos of me in my togs in Hawaii can attest, I am neither. So, on many occasions, I felt responsible for mangling not only the local language but the national costume as well.

It is fair to say my natural enthusiasm means I have had a few problems with handshakes over the years. I hate to think how many three-way handshake selfies I have done, but they sure make O-Week go quickly. The ASEAN summit features a rather odd, cross-handed handshake known as the ASEAN way. I remember, on one occasion, after a photo in front of the world’s media, the then Philippines leader, President Aquino, leaning over to me and saying: “John, if that’s the ASEAN way, I’d hate to see what the other way looks like.” I felt like replying: “Ring Richie McCaw.”

Getting to go to some of the most iconic places in the world as Prime Minister has left memories I will never forget, and getting to share them with Bronagh, Stephie, and Max made them even more special. From Balmoral to Chequers, we saw it all. I will never forget taking the kids, when they were quite young, to China. The last time I had been there was as a businessman, so when I went back as Prime Minister, I asked whether, over the weekend, I might go to a couple of places to allow the kids to see some of the most famous sites, like Tiananmen Square and the Great Wall. Our Chinese hosts kindly agreed. As we were approaching both sites, I said to Max: “Best to stay close or maybe even hold my hand, because there’ll be more people around you than you’ve ever seen in your entire life.” When we arrived, Max looked out of the car window, looked at me, and said: “Where is everyone?”. I took one look and realised that the entire Tiananmen Square had been emptied in the middle of the day so that my kids could get to see it, and when we arrived at the Wall, we were the only people on it for 5 miles in each direction. You sure get some cool photos when you are Prime Minister.

One time, I was at the Pacific Islands Forum in the Marshall Islands, and when the summit finished we had some downtime before leaving, so I hatched a plan to go tuna fishing. The trouble was, I was due to get an important phone call from the then British Prime Minister, my friend David Cameron, about the atrocities taking place in Libya and to talk about why Britain was taking military action. “No worries,” someone said, “we have the satellite phone.” So we headed out to sea, and just as I had hooked a big one and was hauling it on board, the phone rang. I handed the rod to my diplomatic protection officer, who found some implement to finish off the tuna, which was flapping mightily in the boat. It is fair to say there was a huge amount of noise in the background, and Cameron, who was used to taking calls on secure phones and in quiet offices, said to me: “What the hell is going on there?”. “Oh,” I said, “don’t be alarmed. It’s just that we’re on a fishing boat about a mile out to sea in the Marshall Islands, and I’ve landed a big tuna.” There was this long silence, and then he wistfully said: “God, I wish I ran a small country.”

One of the unexpected parts of Government was dealing with tragedy and disaster. When the first Canterbury earthquake happened, I had just landed in Christchurch to see the damage for myself when I received a text from the department informing me that a skydiving plane had crashed at Fox Glacier, killing all nine people on board. That tragic and sudden loss of life put into perspective the terrible damage I was seeing around me in Christchurch. Bad as the earthquake had been, at least it had not claimed any lives.

That all changed on the afternoon of 22 February 2011. We felt that quake so strongly in the Beehive that we thought it must have been centred near us. But moments later my Chief of Staff, Wayne Eagleson, came in and said: “That wasn’t Wellington. That was Christchurch.” I arrived in Latimer Square to the sound of sirens blaring and the air full of smoke from the burning CTV building. The media was reporting 12 dead, but the police commander told me that the number was 65 and rising. “How sure are you?”, I asked him. “Very sure.”, he said. “We’ve counted at least 65 body bags, and they’re only the ones that we’ve managed to get to so far.” The Christchurch earthquakes really hit home to me. It was my home town, and the death toll was so high. Right then, New Zealand seemed a particularly vulnerable and fragile place.

Time and again we have seen that the answer to nature’s devastation is people’s resolve. Standing behind Christchurch was hugely important for my Government and, indeed, for this Parliament as a whole. Gerry Brownlee deserves a lot of credit for dealing with the situation, which was without precedent. It was Gerry who knew we had to establish a red zone, buy the 10,000 homes we did, support the small businesses, and pass the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority legislation. In my view, Christchurch and New Zealand owe Gerry a huge debt of gratitude for putting in place the mechanisms that allowed New Zealand to literally save a city.

I will also never forget the Pike River mine disaster. As the full gravity of the situation became clear, I flew to Greymouth. The impact that event had, and continues to have, on the small community of the West Coast is profound. It also had a far-reaching impact on New Zealand’s workplace health and safety laws. No one should leave home to go to work and never return.

One thing that maybe is not well known is that 5 days after the initial explosion, the Mines Rescue Trust had decided it was safe to re-enter the mine. That Wednesday I was receiving regular briefings on the planned re-entry, so when the phone rang I thought it was to inform me they had gone in. Instead, I learnt that a massive explosion had occurred. Had those rescuers been in the mine, they too would have perished. Let me say to those families directly affected by the disaster that I sincerely wish you could have been provided with the closure you deserve, but I can honestly say I never, in my time as Prime Minister, saw a credible and safe plan to achieve that.

A responsible country must sometimes stand alongside others to try to create a less violent and more stable world, but the risks and costs can be high. As Prime Minister, I was ultimately responsible for committing New Zealand troops overseas. The burden of doing so weighs heavily on any leader, and no news grieved me more than the loss of our troops in the course of duty that happened in my time. My heart continues to go out to the Defence families for their sacrifice, and on this, my final day in this House, I want to again salute the bravery and commitment of those who have died serving their country in our national interests.

New Zealanders can be rightfully proud of the men and women of our armed services. They are professional, dedicated, and highly regarded around the world. In my time as Prime Minister, I had quite a lot to do with them, and in particular I want to thank the air force personnel who flew and supported the 757s, the King Airs, the Hercules, and the helicopters that took me safely around New Zealand and the world. In particular, I want to thank the crew that landed the 757 in Sao Paulo, Brazil in the worst electrical storm I have ever seen. I owe you a beer.

The truth is my confidence in the air force and the SAS grew so much that late last year I decided to tag along on an SAS training day to do a parachute jump from Whenuapai, in my electorate. Needless to say, my office was a touch nervous about the jump, and the kitchen cabinet did not find out until the day before. Anyway, I jumped from 12,000 feet, and sometime after 7 a.m., when I was on the ground again, I rang Bronagh, buzzing with excitement, to declare I was alive and well. I then texted Bill English. I kept it short. “I’m alive.”, I said. His reply was even shorter: “Bugger!”. One minute later, I got another text from him: “Going to give it another go?”. It was at that point I decided he was just a little bit more ambitious than he was letting on.

Bill—Prime Minister—can I acknowledge and thank you for a decade of service as the most loyal, capable, and perceptive deputy a leader could ever have asked for. I believe you will prove to be a highly successful Prime Minister of this country, which you know and understand so well. Bronagh and I wish you and Mary all the very best.

To my former caucus and Cabinet colleagues, I am proud to have worked alongside each and every one of you. It has been an honour to lead you. You have been, and continue to be, an amazing, tight, and loyal team, and every day your cohesion helps to provide New Zealand with great stability and a hugely competent Government.

Although I am trying not to single out individuals, I do have to mention Steven Joyce. Not only did he mastermind three election victories but throughout my entire time as Prime Minister he was a close adviser on almost everything that was going on. We constantly talked about the events of the day and how we should tackle and explain them.

To our support partners—ACT, United Future, and the Māori Party—thank you for your crucial part in providing our country with strong, diverse, and stable government.

In my time, I was surrounded by hugely loyal, longstanding, and talented staff. There are just so many people to thank, so please forgive me for any omissions, but I am extremely grateful to all those who worked so hard, sometimes through nights that never ended.

Wayne Eagleson, my Chief of Staff for a decade—Wayne, your dedication, ability, and good sense under pressure are second to none.

My press team, so ably led by Kevin Taylor, Kelly Boxall, Sia Aston, and Julie Ash, who tried so hard to keep me out of trouble and only sometimes succeeded.

My policy advisers, including the most brilliant Grant Johnston—or “Boff”, as we all know him—Paula Oliver, Phil de Joux, Sarah Boyle, Nicola Willis, Jane Fraser-Jones, Cameron Burrows, James Christmas, Josh Cameron, and Craig Howie.

The people who kept my life and travel organised, including Emma Holmes, Susan Tomlinson, Rachel Beauchamp, Jane Nixon, Danny Coe, Laura Malcolm, Becky Mackay, and Libby O’Brien.

My electoral agents, without whose incredible commitment the people of Helensville would have suffered: Genelle Bailey, Heather Hitchings, Mel McDonald, and Jenny Collins.

The party presidents I worked under, Judy Kirk and Peter Goodfellow, and my electorate chairs Tom Grace, Stephen McElrea, and Stephen Franklin.

My department, the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, so ably led by Andrew Kibblewhite, and before him Sir Maarten Wevers.

My tourism and intelligence officials, and my foreign policy advisers—all truly gifted: Tony Lynch, Ian King, and Taha McPherson.

I also want to thank you, Mr Speaker, and the Speakers who have preceded you, the VIP Transport Service, the wonderful Margaret Smith from Premier House, and all the other staff of the complex, who serve the people of New Zealand so well.

To the press gallery: a free press is essential for a democracy. Thank you for your dedication and commitment to your craft.

To the Diplomatic Protection Squad (DPS), whose tasks were many and varied—keeping me safe was the major one, but also finding the five things I left behind every day, including my wallet, was another. Maybe your role in our lives is best summed up by our son, Max, who said: “It seemed weird when they arrived, and it seems weirder now they’ve gone.” You guys were great. I will lose a lot more golf balls now that you are not around. But I am happy to say that not everything you did required 21st century policing. For example, the first death threat I got as Prime Minister, and I kid you not—one of those milestones that goes with the job—was from a not-very-bright guy who faxed it from his house, not realising his phone number was on the fax. I think my secretary had solved it before the DPS even got to it.

I leave having made some great friends in and out of this place, and many of them are here today. Thank you for being alongside me and keeping it real. And to Eric, Rhys, and David, thanks for getting my handicap down.

I have been touched by the warmth and kindness many Kiwis showed me and my family while I was Prime Minister. It has been a privilege to have met so many of you.

Last but not least, to my family. To my sisters, Sue and Liz: thanks for all the encouragement, support, and laughs. Max and Stephie, I hope you know that I was proud of being the 38th Prime Minister of New Zealand, but Mum and I are prouder still of being your parents. Stephie, you have grown into a beautiful and talented young woman. May you always retain the passion to create the best you can. Max, you have had to grow up under a lot of pressure, in a harsh spotlight. But the world is your oyster. You are a fine young man. You have great insights. Always trust them.

Finally, Bronagh, when you said yes to marrying me, 32 years ago, I am guessing you did not think our family home would sometimes be surrounded by protesters and that we would have armed police in the living room. When I came into Parliament, I was told that if you have a good marriage, it will survive; if you do not, it will not last. Our marriage has not only survived but I think it has grown stronger over these amazing years. Your endless sacrifice, your willingness to let me follow my dreams, and your utter loyalty make any words I choose here hopelessly inadequate. I love you and I thank you.

And so, Mr Speaker, my time here is done. I take away many memories of this most remarkable place. I would like to think I leave having made a positive difference to the country, and that is satisfying. I have few regrets in my life, but one is that Mum did not live to see how it all turned out. I hope that she would have been proud. So that is it. It has been a privilege, an honour, and a blast. Goodbye, and good luck.

Waiata

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

Bills

Employment Relations (Allowing Higher Earners to Contract Out of Personal Grievance Provisions) Amendment Bill

First Reading

Debate resumed.

Dr JIAN YANG (National): I rise to support the bill. The bill proposes a new section 102A, which allows high earners the option to contract out of Part 9 of the current Employment Relations Act.

As a new immigrant from China, where we had socialism, everyone was equal, and everyone earned a similar salary, and coming to New Zealand, I often find it hard to believe that those golden handshake deals involve so much money—a huge amount of money. I thought it would be very challenging to all businesses. This bill will help to protect businesses. Basically, this bill will help to protect businesses from being taken advantage of by costly personal grievance claims that negate their employment agreement.

When you have a business you want to employ a CEO, and then you find it is hard to get rid of the CEO because they would demand a lot of money, through personal grievance claims. In the end the business will have to basically pay out to resolve the issue because they may find it even more costly to go through the courts. So this bill will, in that sense, help reduce the risk and protect businesses.

The current Employment Relations Act includes personal grievance provisions that override any contract that has been entered into by the parties. These provisions were supposed to protect vulnerable workers, and it is necessary to be there to protect those people. But when you come to CEOs, those high earners, you will find that they are more capable of negotiating good deals, and, therefore, it makes more sense to give them the option to contract out of Part 9 of this particular Act. So this is the idea of the bill.

My understanding is that when the bill was first drawn Labour was supportive of it. I understand that Andrew Little agreed with the bill in principle and thought Labour would support it to select committee. So that was the original plan. But then, of course, now obviously we can see that Labour and parties on the other side are opposing this bill. It is a bit surprising. The Employers and Manufacturers Association has made it clear that they will support the bill because the bill will save taxpayers money and help free up court time. They believe it is a useful, sensible proposal.

This bill will provide certainty to many businesses because they understand that they would be able to basically end the contract without being charged this huge amount of money, and also because we believe it is a good deal because it is optional. It is not compulsory. People can negotiate, and you should trust these people—they can earn so much money. We believe they are capable of negotiating for themselves.

So this is another reason why we believe that this bill is a good bill. It basically will help business people to employ people, with the certainty of the outcome, with the certainty of not being charged or sued for any personal grievance claims, and that it will be easier for business people to make decisions to hire CEOs or high earners. So it is important for us to understand that this bill, firstly, will protect businesses; secondly, it will provide certainty to our businesses; and, thirdly, it is optional. It is not compulsory. It can be negotiated. So this bill, we believe, will be able to increase our productivity and give more certainty to our businesses. Thank you.

CATHERINE DELAHUNTY (Green): Tēnā koe, Mr Assistant Speaker. Tēnā koutou Te Whare mō tēnei wā. I just want to start by saying that members’ bills are certainly a mixed bag. Some of them remind me of the Ōtara Millionaires Club—“How Bizarre”. Some of them are ridiculous. For example, the lost luggage bill was ridiculous, and the medals and decorations bill is pretty marginal, but this one is ridiculous and insidious, whereas some members’ bills are just ridiculous. So this one is actually insidious as well as ridiculous, which is a sad achievement on behalf—

Clayton Mitchell: Ridiculously insidious.

CATHERINE DELAHUNTY: Or ridiculously insidious, as the member says.

It is interesting why one would bother filling up the ballot biscuit tin with this kind of rubbish, because that is what this is. The bill is not just rather bizarre and ridiculous; it has the opportunity to undermine some important employment law and the important commitment to human rights in employment law, which is why I have called it insidious.

The bill is based on some really interesting assumptions. I think the last speaker was more honest than most in saying that it is really about saving money, from his point of view, and saving court time. If that is what is driving it—I think it is clear that it is also about helping the employer. So let us just be honest about this bill. It has got nothing to do with protecting human rights or creating options and choices for working people, and everything to do with making sure that employers can have more certainty and perhaps avoid the risk—protect themselves from being challenged about a personal grievance.

But, actually, that is not why we are here in this House. We are not here to protect people who are employing people. Even if those people are earning 150 grand, that does not mean they do not have their human rights as working people. It does not mean there is a level playing field either, so that when someone is employed they can be manipulated, under this bill, into getting a lawyer and signing a contract that takes away their right to take a personal grievance case. They may be either pressured or innocent enough to believe that sexual harassment could never happen to them. After all, they are earning, according to this bill, $150,000, so sexual harassment could never happen to them.

Racially charged discrimination—racism, as we should call it—that could never happen because I am earning all that money. But that is funny, because I am a parliamentarian earning more than that and I have still experienced discrimination and sexually discriminatory comments, even in this job. So do not tell me that people do not need their human rights just because they are earning that kind of money, and that having a contract that allows them to lose those rights is justifiable in any sense of the word, because it is not.

This is really a bad bill, really a waste of time, and it really reinforces a rather unpleasant meme because it is pretending to offer choice to people who are not on a level playing field. So it is pretty disappointing all round. Certainly the idea that power is equal, there is a level playing field, and that it is optional for that person—I am not going to use the word “bollocks” because I got told off by the Speaker and I am not allowed to use it. But really it is one of those examples of a bill that should not be in the ballot, should not have had the luck to have been selected from the ballot, does not need to be before the House, and it undermines really good relationships between employers and employees.

We have enough trouble without this kind of legislation. We have enough inequality in this country without this kind of legislation. We have enough duplicitous and manipulative statutes that no one understands, without pretending that this is in the interests of people to sign away their human rights. Why would somebody put it up? Why would anyone support it? No one has justified it. No one has marched on Parliament and called for it. There has been no petition. I bet the unions have not gone: “Yes, this is what we want.” No one wants it. It is just a waste of space, which poor Scott Simpson has inherited. We do not need it.

The Green Party is really, really proud to oppose the bill. The human rights of people in the workplace, no matter what they earn, must be protected, including their right to take a personal grievance, which, as we all know, is about a whole lot more than just their employment status. I am really proud of us for not supporting this bill. Thank you very much.

SCOTT SIMPSON (National—Coromandel): This has been a really interesting debate. It has been interesting because tonight of all nights—on a night when we heard a valedictory speech from a Prime Minister who has given us, as a nation, the pride and confidence to go bravely into the world full of our own faith and ability in ourselves—we have this delineation between those on this side of the House who want to give people choice, who have faith in people’s ability to make their own arrangements, and who have faith in their own ability to negotiate contracts, terms of engagement, and severance arrangements of their own free will, and those on the other side of the House; an Opposition that has resorted absolutely to type. Oh, no, no, no, we cannot have people making arrangements that they know best, that they want to enter into freely and of their own volition!

This bill actually represents a very clear delineation of the philosophical differences between a Government that is aspirational, that is confident, and that has people’s best interests at heart, and an Opposition that wants to be narky and snarky and say: “No, Government knows best. We do not believe that you are going to be big enough, bold enough, and brave enough to make your own employment arrangements.” This is the fundamental philosophical difference between an optimistic, positive, centre-right Government and an Opposition that wants to revert to big government, Government knows best, and “Let’s wait and let the legislators arrange all the conditions of our employment.”

This is a simple bill. It is not a radical bill. It is a simple little bill that gives people a right, should they choose, non-compulsorily, to come to an arrangement in terms of their own employment negotiation, that allows for a severance package to be negotiated favourably, in terms that are agreed between an employer and an employee. Then, when an employment situation ends, it provides certainty and confidence for both parties so that they can proceed to end their employment relation. The employee receives a severance package that has been pre-agreed and an employer has the confidence that they are not going to have the sword of Damocles of a personal grievance hanging above their head and an employee who might want to just say: “Well, there’s nothing that I’m going to lose by having a crack at clogging up the Employment Court system or a mediation process; I might as well have a go.” The employment agreement has actually been agreed prior to the termination, and this bill seeks to allow voluntarily, non-compulsorily, with the protections of legal advice, legal counsel, a situation where should the two parties agree, they can. Personally, I do not have a problem with that.

To hear the last speaker stand in this House and say that the motivation for legal reform in this Parliament should be protest is, I think, appalling. I know that that member comes from a Vietnam generation. She was born and raised with a protest banner, and she is proud of all that sort of stuff. But that is not the only method for legal reform in this Parliament, and, Lord, may it never be. There are people who want to have civilised, open, and free employment negotiations, and they want to make the most of those. Why should we as a Government and why should we as politicians get in the way of that?

In my introductory speech on this bill, I made it clear that I hope that some matters will be addressed at select committee. There is an easy and simple way to address the matters raised on the other side in terms of human rights and those employers—and there are some—who are just bad employers. Those provisions can easily and properly be included.

I want to conclude by reciting what Andrew Little said when this bill was drawn from the ballot. He said that it was the sort of thing a Labour-led Government would be keen to look at, especially for chief executives. He went on to say that subject to a discussion about the threshold, he agreed that the bill would, in principle, be a good one and he thought that Labour would support it to a select committee. I am very surprised that the Leader of the Opposition has flip-flopped again and they are not supporting it. This is a good bill. I commend it to the House.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the Employment Relations (Allowing Higher Earners to Contract Out of Personal Grievance Provisions) Amendment Bill be now read a first time.

Ayes 61

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

Noes 60

New Zealand Labour 32; Green Party 14; New Zealand First 12; Māori Party 2.

Bill read a first time.

Bill referred to the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee.

Bills

Public Finance (Sustainable Development Indicators) Amendment Bill

First Reading

JAMES SHAW (Co-Leader—Green): I move, That the Public Finance (Sustainable Development Indicators) Amendment Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Finance and Expenditure Committee to consider the bill. The saying goes that what gets measured gets managed. The purpose of this bill is to complement a traditional measure—gross domestic product—that has become highly synonymous with success with a series of other complementary measures to give ourselves a better picture of the health and wealth of our country. Gross domestic product is, shall we say, a highly problematic measure of success. It captures very little of what we value in life. It is a poor measure of well-being and, as The Economist magazine says, it is not even a reliable gauge of production.

This bill will bring some pretty uncontroversial environmental measures like air and water quality into the Public Finance Act and ensure that they are reported on regularly and are counted alongside more traditional fiscal and economic measures. The bill also requires the Minister of Finance to present the ecological footprint of New Zealand and the Human Development Index to the House of Representatives in relation to each financial year.

Before I expand on my comments in relation to the bill, I would like to acknowledge my colleague Dr Kennedy Graham. This bill was originally drafted by Dr Graham 6 years ago. He consulted widely with a vast network of contacts overseas as well as here in New Zealand, and he rewrote it a number of times based on submissions that he was receiving in the drafting phase. We hope that this can be voted on on a non-partisan basis and improved, in a similar light, through the select committee process.

Dr Graham did choose a set of indicators—as you have to if you are drafting something like this—that was based on an ecological footprint approach run by the World Resources Institute, but I want to acknowledge that there are a number of different systems that we could be using in relation to this. This is why we are asking for the House to send it to select committee, so that we can receive submissions and hear from businesses and academics and non-governmental organisations that are experienced at using sustainable development indicators in their work as to what the final shape of this bill should look like. So we are asking for the House to send it to the Finance and Expenditure Committee because it directly affects the Public Finance Act, and, obviously, the Finance and Expenditure Committee is responsible for that and it affects the nature of the work of the Minister of Finance.

The Minister of Finance will have responsibility for these new indicators, and I would like to lead an open and non-partisan process to take what we are starting here and make it suitable for a cross-party coalition. Yesterday, for example, the OECD presented us with another set of indicators. It has been doing some fantastic work on the effects of pollution and the running down of finite resources on gross domestic product, for example, in a way that we do not yet understand here. Treasury has been working for several years on a Living Standards Framework. That work is well advanced but has stalled, and so on. So we think that there is a decent body of work that we can draw on.

My career started in earnest at PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) in London, and my primary role there was to help to start the sustainable business services line. At the core of that was the proposition that we were offering to other businesses, other clients, on how to report on not just the financial health and well-being but a more balanced scorecard of the businesses’ state of affairs. That work was reasonably well advanced in the late 1990s, which is when I came to it. At that time, in the late 1990s, there were only a few large corporates like Shell that were actually using sustainable development indicators in part of their corporate reporting process. Each of the large consulting firms had their own proprietary systems for measuring this, which we felt was an absurd state of affairs, because it is not like each of the large firms had different accounting standards to measure the financial state of the firms. There was, obviously, a generally accepted set of accounting principles in the UK and around the world. So what we did was we got PwC and the other firms together with a series of non-governmental organisations and leading academic institutions into something called the Global Reporting Initiative.

The Global Reporting Initiative is now in about its 20th year. Its set of indicators that it has developed for how large companies are able to report on the impact that they have on the environment and on communities and on their workforce, alongside their financial stocks and flows—that work is now well progressed, and, in fact, very, very mainstream in the corporate reporting world. So in that sense what we are doing here with this bill is taking something that is well advanced in global corporate reporting and simply importing it in principle into how the Government would think about its own finances.

Many of the indicators and the data points that we are suggesting in this bill are already being gathered by the Ministry for the Environment (MFE), by Statistics New Zealand, and by other organisations. So people have asked me—given that MFE, for example, does gather some of this information already—why it should be imported into the Public Finance Act, and why the Minister of Finance should be given specific responsibility for reporting on New Zealand’s ecological stocks and flows alongside our financial stocks and flows. That is actually precisely the point. The Minister of Finance currently presents a fairly narrow sort of set of information that we tend to assume forms a view of the health and well-being of the country as a whole, but actually it is only a partial picture. Importing some of that information into the Public Finance Act and giving specific responsibilities to the Minister does mean that they build up a much more varied and nuanced view of how the country is going.

There are other countries that have shown quite a lot of leadership in questioning the overriding focus on gross domestic product alone as a measure of success. In 2004, China began adjusting gross domestic product for pollution, subtracting the damage that economic growth was doing to its air, its water, and its land, and, in that year alone, environmental damage, had it been accounted for, would have knocked 3 percent off China’s gross domestic product. The OECD found in 2006 that gross domestic product per capita remains critical for any assessment of well-being, but needs to be complemented with other measures to get a comprehensive picture of well-being. In 2008, the United States Government began funding the State of the USA project, designed to create a key national indicator system, following a period of rising GDP but, at the same time, falling personal incomes in the early 2000s.

In 2010, the United Kingdom, under David Cameron’s leadership, began to survey happiness alongside gross domestic product. The President of France, Nicolas Sarkozy, established a commission led by former chief economist of the World Bank Joseph Stiglitz to reconsider the way that prosperity is measured in France. They found that “new political narratives are necessary to identify where our societies should go”, and recommended a dashboard of measures to capture human welfare. Finally, The Economist magazine—that bastion of economic orthodoxy—came out last year saying that gross domestic product is increasingly a poor measure of prosperity, and it is not even a reliable gauge of production, given the major technological changes that have happened to our economy since gross domestic product was invented.

Our singular focus on GDP is distracting us from focusing on what really matters in life, and so I would like to end by quoting Robert F Kennedy, former senator of the United States of America in 1968. He was referring to gross national product, the predecessor of GDP. He said: “Our gross national product, now, is over $800 billion a year, but that gross national product—if we judge the United States of America by that—that gross national product counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. It counts special locks for our doors and the jails for the people who break them. It counts the destruction of the redwood and the loss of our natural wonder in the chaotic sprawl. It includes napalm and counts nuclear warheads and armoured cars for the police to fight the riots in our cities. … It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country, it measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile.” And so with that, I commend this bill to the House.

CHRIS BISHOP (National): Can I firstly just start by congratulating James Shaw on having this bill pulled from the ballot, and also Dr Graham on his bill. It is a good feeling, and I want to acknowledge the hard work. It is pretty obvious from reading the prefatory notes to the bill and the explanatory note that a lot of work has gone in over a long period of time. I know that it makes reference to the “Sarkozy Commission”, which was a while ago, although he had another tilt recently—it did not work out that well. But I just want to acknowledge the hard work.

Let me start at the outset of this speech, responding with the first speech for the Government, by saying that I agree that GDP is a flawed measurement of a country’s progress. I think that is broadly acknowledged now—

Ron Mark: Stop using it, then.

CHRIS BISHOP: —and, actually, Mr Shaw made mention of lots of different—Mr Tabuteau, “the Professor”, says: “Well, stop using it, then.” I am about to come to why—

Ron Mark: No, he didn’t. I did.

CHRIS BISHOP: Oh, sorry, it was that noted economic scholar Ron Mark. I am about to come to why we continue to use it. I think that is broadly acknowledged. Mr Shaw made mention of The Economist magazine and lots of other august international institutions, and, actually, the New Zealand Government itself recognises that. Treasury, for the last few years, has been developing the Living Standards Framework, which the boffins and people involved in that area get very excited about. I think it is sort of Economics 101, for the reasons that Mr Shaw said. You know, if there is an earthquake in a town and you rebuild the town, like what happened in Christchurch, GDP goes up, but have you actually improved the quality of life? Well, obviously not, because you have had a town destroyed and you have to rebuild it. At least, when you look at the numbers, it looks like things are getting better, but obviously you are just replacing lost wealth. You are replacing lost stock and lost GDP.

The reason we keep using GDP is that it is hard to find alternatives that encapsulate as much as GDP does. You can admit that GDP is a flawed mechanism, but you can also accept that it is something that has use and has value, and that is why, as a Government—that is why Governments around the world continue to use GDP.

Let me advance three reasons why I think this bill should fail tonight, and I want to advise the House that the National Party will be voting against it. Firstly, I think it is arguably unnecessary, and Mr Shaw actually made reference to a few reasons in his own speech as to why you could say that the bill is unnecessary. The Government actually already measures a lot of the things that Mr Shaw wants to measure. So if you look at schedule 1, which inserts new schedule 8, “National Sustainable Development Indicators”—there are seven indicators and then, I think, 38 across the seven sub-indicators—a lot of the stuff is already measured. We have been having a debate in the last few weeks about water, and there is a whole section, which is clause 4 of new schedule 8, about water indicators. Actually, the Government is strengthening the regime around water-quality testing and water indicators.

There are air and atmosphere indicators, biodiversity indicators, and energy use indicators, for example, in clause 6 of new schedule 8. The Ministry for Business, Innovation and Employment—the former Ministry of Economic Development and, before that, the Ministry of Energy, which has long departed—has regularly published statistics about the total primary energy supply per capita, energy intensity of the economy, and renewable energy as a proportion of total energy supply. That is well measured and has been for a large number of years. It is published in the New Zealand Energy Quarterly each quarter, and it is published in the annual publication put out by the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment.

That is before you even start to talk about the Environmental Reporting Act, which Parliament passed in 2015. It came into force last year. It is a very, very robust form of environmental reporting, with the measurements worked out by the Government Statistician and then audited by the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment. Actually, that filled a gap in New Zealand’s statistics regime, because New Zealand was the only country, I think, in the OECD to not have a robust, independent, separate environmental reporting regime. We had a bit of debate in the House around how robust it was and whether the Government Statistician should be involved, and things like that. Some members have different views, but I think, broadly, there was consensus that we came to about the right space on that—that it fills a need and that we have done it. We have got the OECD report card as well, which came out, I think, just a couple of days ago—or certainly this week—which measures a lot of the different things that the Green Party and James Shaw want to advise.

The first point is that a lot of this material is captured already, and it is published. Transparency is important, sunlight is the best disinfectant, and all those clichés. It is published. Mr Shaw made mention—he actually admitted all of this, but he said that we need to import it into the Public Finance Act. I have got to say that his reasons for why we need to import it into the Public Finance Act I found less than convincing. So I guess in one sense it puts it all in one space, and I suppose there are some advantages to having it all in one spot so that you can literally pick up a document and say “Here it all is in one space.”, rather than going from website to website and things like that. But that seems a reasonably flimsy reason to do something, I have got to say. So I think this is unnecessary.

The second reason I want to advance is that I do think some of what is being proposed to be included in the Public Finance Act is inappropriate, and I say that for two reasons. One is that there are too many. There are seven indicators with 38 or 39 sub-indicators, and then there are five or six—sorry, 10 principles. That is new schedule 9, inserted by schedule 2, and these are the “National Principles of Sustainable Development”. That is a lot to report on. I know that might sound like a trivial complaint, but, actually, I think when it comes to things like the framework that our public accounts system relies on, the framework by which the Government reports to the Parliament and seeks the appropriation of public money to run the Government, it is important that you keep those things as simple and as clear as possible, and there is just a lot of material. I think it would result in hopelessly confused reports. So that is the first reason about why it is inappropriate.

The second reason is that, in some ways, some of these indicators are really important, but some are, by comparison, trivial. I am not saying that they are unimportant; they are all important. Greenhouse gas intensity, native land cover, lake water quality—those are important but some are more important than others, but they are all treated the same in the bill and they would all be treated the same in the Act. So, for example, is it really true that packaging waste recycling, which is clause 7 of the sustainable development indicators—

Simon O’Connor: Which clause?

CHRIS BISHOP: Clause 7(3): “Packaging waste recycling.” So it is measuring on an annual basis the amount of packaging waste that is recycled. It is important, but is it really true to say that it is as important as, for example, lake water quality or groundwater quality? I think you could legitimately have a debate about that, but the point is that the bill proposes that they are, essentially, of the same value. I think that in some ways the bill proposes things that are really important and things that are trivial by comparison, and that is why I say that it is therefore inappropriate to have these things in the Public Finance Act.

The third thing that I would say is that I think it does in some ways undermine the purposes of the Public Finance Act. There are some highly political statements in these principles, particularly in the principles—highly political statements that both sides of the House, I think, would contest. And you only need to look at, for example, principle 4 in schedule 9, which is about precaution. There is this quite strange phrase here. I want to read it out: “Rejection of a lack of full scientific certainty as a reason for postponing measures to prevent the environmental degradation or restoration of ecosystems …” Quite apart from using about three negatives in the one phrase, the concept of the precautionary principle is one that is contested.

What this is actually saying is that we should not be too scared about a lack of scientific certainty as a reason for not doing things. Actually, usually it is the Green Party that advances the precautionary principle as a reason for not doing things. It says that the science is not clear on genetic modification, for example, even though we had an entire royal commission back in 2000 set up by the Clark administration to look into that, and it concluded that it was safe with safeguards. But the Greens say that we cannot do it—we cannot let GE into the environment. It says fracking is not safe, even though we had the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment do a full investigation. Steffan Browning has turned up, and we have Steffan, who says that homeopathy is something that we should do as a cure for Ebola, and things like that. So the Greens do not have a great record when it comes to science as a basis for rational public policy.

James Shaw: Oh, yes we do.

CHRIS BISHOP: I have just named three examples: fracking, genetic modification, and homeopathy. So I think it is highly contested, the idea of precaution, which is in principle 4. For those three reasons, the Government will not be voting for this bill.

MICHAEL WOOD (Labour—Mt Roskill): I am very pleased to rise and speak in support of the Public Finance (Sustainable Development Indicators) Amendment Bill. In opening my comments I do just want to pay tribute to Mr Shaw and the Green Party for putting this bill forward to the House, because I think it is a bill that focuses us on the future and the kind of country that we want to be. Mr Shaw very aptly made the point that unless we actually identify where we want to go, and unless we start measuring it, we are probably not going to get there, and we are certainly not going to develop the kinds of policies that we need.

Mr Shaw also put forward a quote that I am sure we might hear during other speeches during this debate, but I am going to repeat it. It is one from the great Robert Francis Kennedy: “GDP measures everything except that which makes life worthwhile.” Really, that goes to the core of the purpose of this bill. It is about amending the Public Finance Act, as we have heard, by putting forward sustainable development indicators into it and establishing a set of principles for what sustainable development actually means.

The core of Kennedy’s quote, I think, is very hard to argue against—and I would be surprised if any speaker in this House put forward arguments against it tonight—because what good is GDP if you cannot breathe the air around you? What good is GDP if you cannot swim in the rivers? What good is GDP if you are too scared to set foot outside your house because your community is not safe? What good is GDP if our schools and our hospitals and our community infrastructure are crumbling around us? What good is our GDP if we pass on environmental, social, and other deficits to future generations? What good is GDP if the country that we hand on to our kids and our grandkids is not as clean, is not as sustainable, is not as hopeful, and is not as good, in all of the ways that matter, as the one that we inherited? That is what this bill speaks to. It speaks to it by doing what we do in this House—by looking at legislation, by actually looking at how we make decisions.

I think the key point that Mr Bishop missed in some of his comments—and I want to address a couple of those now—is that what it actually does by putting these indicators into the Public Finance Act is give us a basis for making decisions that are not based just on that crude, simple measure of GDP. Mr Shaw spoke and in all of the notes in support of his bill, there is nothing to say that we should not be measuring GDP, as Mr Bishop suggested at one point; simply to say that that is not a sufficient way of measuring our success as a country. As Mr Shaw said, this is not something that is crazy and wild and out there. This is what the OECD is doing, this is what Canada is doing, and this is what the European Union is doing.

In my old union job—the biggest corporates in New Zealand, the Australian-owned banks, have corporate social responsibility programmes that do exactly what this bill attempts to do. I say that if Aussie-owned banks in New Zealand are up to these kinds of sustainability indicators, then why on earth would we as a country, and why on earth would this Government, not be prepared to measure ourselves against them?

The mechanisms in the bill are pretty simple—a set of sustainable development measures—and they are listed in the bill. Mr Bishop made the point that those could be contestable; they could be arguable. Maybe there are too many. Maybe there are some things in there that are extraneous and other things that would be more important. I thought Mr Bishop’s discussion on that was actually quite apt. It is exactly the kind of discussion that we should be having in the select committee on this bill. If we respect the underlying principles, as Mr Bishop seemed to indicate in the first half of his speech, then let us actually look at it properly and see if we can implement it in a way that works across this House.

I do want to note this document, which Mr Bishop, Mr Foss, and others in this House have explored in depth in the Finance and Expenditure Committee. It is a 2016 statement on long-term fiscal position. This is exactly the kind of stuff that Treasury—the grey men in suits—is saying is important as we plan policy for our future prosperity as a country. Putting these measures in the Public Finance Act, as the bill proposes, is about making them real, about giving them life, and about making this House accountable to those sorts of values, not just that crude and simplistic measure of GDP.

The Labour Party will be supporting this bill, and I challenge the members opposite: if you really are the pragmatic, modern, progressive conservatives that you claim to be, join with us in the select committee in making this bill work. Thank you.

Hon CRAIG FOSS (National—Tukituki): First of all, can I congratulate the member James Shaw on bringing the bill and using his experience in the private sector, and perhaps his experience, I think, in the Young Nats along the way somewhere, to try to apply some business-type, prudent principles to his passions for things environmental. I do admire him for that, and, in fact, the member—I am sure he does know there are many members on this side of the House who are of the centre-right, relatively conservative, who are also environmentalists. It is great to see the Greens finally trying to put up environmental-type proposals, rather than some of the other stuff that actually turns so much of the public off and scares the bejabers out of them, when most of us look to the Greens to come up with ideas in and around things environmental, and to look after our wonderful environment. So well done to that member on that basis.

I am very surprised that Labour is picking up on and supporting this, because, at the end of the day, as discussed in the previous speech, this is not a redefinition of GDP. GDP is simple. It is an economic measure of activity in an economy. What gets the attention is the change in GDP, actually; not GDP itself—quarterly, annually, whatever it might be. It does not actually pretend to be anything else, but it often gets misinterpreted as some kind of other index, noting that there are so many other indices and metrics out there from NGOs, from the OECD, from the World Bank—the Happiness Index, which someone mentioned earlier—as well as all the best places of doing business, etc. So there are plenty of alternatives out there, and even a New Zealand company or activity investing strongly in some environmental, sustainable something or other actually gets picked up by that measure of GDP, which does not pretend to be anything other than a black-and-white interpretation, a binary interpretation, of things that are going in the economy.

And, yes, it has evolved over the years—that is quite true—as a couple of other members have alluded to, but, for example, New Zealand is well down that track of recognising those other important criteria already. For example, when I was in my previous role as Minister of Statistics, we put in the Environmental Reporting Act. That should not be understated as to how important, how independent, and how transparent that is for reporting on the state of the key domains of the New Zealand environment.

I also note—I think it is in the lead-in to the bill there—that in Cabinet paper after Cabinet paper after Cabinet paper, if there are environmental issues or concerns, the Ministry for the Environment and the Minister will make a strong representation about whatever those issues are. It does not actually matter whether it is a fiscally large spending paper or some other type of policy, implementation, or a choice that Cabinet has to make. Running through it, there are Treasury reports, there are Attorney-General reports if necessary, and the Ministry for the Environment is already in there contributing to core legislation, core Cabinet decision-making, and, therefore, picking up things environmental.

One other thing that we must note, actually, is where the Public Finance Act came from. It came from some somewhat dubious activities in the late 1980s and early 1990s—I cannot remember which Budget; was it the 1990 Budget—where the public accounts were, let us say, grossly inflated at the time. The Public Finance Act was amended to give transparency and accountability of this Parliament to the Government of the day, whichever one it was, and it is longstanding.

So I am surprised, particularly at Labour members—I know they have their environmental interests and concerns, and I agree with those—trying to taint the Public Finance Act with other well-intended motivations. New Zealand needs to fund its way in the world as cheaply as possible. The moment the world sees us, well-intended or not, mucking around with the Public Finance Act, which has served this country and its population so very well over so many years—that would have a lot of unintended consequences.

So, as my colleague Mr Bishop noted, we are voting against this. I acknowledge, again, the intent and the work and the expertise of the member who is raising and sponsoring the bill here, but we cannot vote for it at its first reading in its current form. Thank you.

RON MARK (Deputy Leader—NZ First): It is my duty tonight to speak to the bill, and I am going to start by congratulating the member. I quite enjoy listening to the member James Shaw’s speeches so often in this House, but it is regretful that I have to tell him that New Zealand First will not be supporting this bill through this reading. I guess people will ask why. I am going to start by saying that we do not disagree with the concerns that other members of the House have in terms of the debate and the discussion as to whether GDP is an accurate measure of the health of the New Zealand economy.

I would do no better, I think, than to take a cue from Mr Bishop, who made quite a sarcastic comment—which is pretty normal, befitting him as his reputation is growing out there in the Hutt as being pretty sarcastic most of the time. But I take the quote from Albert Einstein. One of his greatest insights was that “no matter how, where, when or by whom it is measured, the speed of light in a vacuum is constant. Measurements of light’s price, though, are a different matter: they can tell completely different stories about [how they are made].” There is a lot more that was written from Albert Einstein’s conversation on that matter, in respect of GDP.

I would have to say that we do share the concerns of other parties in this House about the continued use of GDP as the be-all and end-all measuring stick and yardstick as to how the state of the economy sits. We would just point out a couple of things. GDP does not take into account the level of debt that a country has. For example, Japan has the fourth-highest GDP in the world, behind the EU, the US, and China, in that order, and yet it has the highest debt to GDP ratio in the world. Then you could talk about how the GDP also does not take into account the cost the country pays to service its debt. I am looking at the Italian Government, which is paying over 5.5 percent interest on 10-year bonds—eighth by GDP. Canada ranks ninth by GDP and has to pay just over 2 percent to borrow money for 2 years. GDP does not take into account the risk of public policy changing. It does not take into account the level of corruption in a country. We all know that in New Zealand the level of corruption is increasing, and yet this Government pays no mind to that matter at all, and will continue to tell us that everything in the country is rosy.

So although we have some empathy and sympathy for parties that would like to see a different measure and yardstick, we have to simply say that looking at this bill—and looking at clause 6 in particular, which introduces a range of indicators—all of this information is currently available. It is not really a case of changing the law; it is really a case of changing the Government. If this Government was to truly use the information that is before it right now, and if it was to look at the state of the well-being of people who are homeless, the state of the well-being of people who are having to hold down two or three jobs, and the state of the environment, it would be painting a completely different picture and it would give itself an “E” for effort and probably an “F” for failure in that respect.

We do wonder, if you were to introduce this legislation, how much time you would spend debating and discussing the state of the economy, as opposed to getting on and fixing it. Like a lot of things, we can sit here and pass legislation, and we can implement tougher, finer measures and methods through legislation as to how we better manage and control the economy in the interests of the well-being of the nation, but we actually think it is a lot simpler than that. The steps to take going forward are very pragmatic: to look at the number of unemployed, to look at the number of people working two to three jobs, to look at and recognise when you have a housing crisis, and to take active and proactive steps to address those issues.

Probably, if one is to measure the well-being of the economy of the nation, you would look at the well-being of people, and it does not take a brain surgeon or a rocket scientist to see and to know that people are not well in this nation. That is the core of the issue that the Government should be addressing.

ANDREW BAYLY (National—Hunua): It is a pleasure to be talking on this member’s bill. I too must congratulate the member James Shaw on putting this bill forward for discussion tonight. It is an interesting proposal and one that at first glance is very appealing. It has those elements of making sure that fiscal policy aligns clearly with environmental outcomes. At that level I think many people will share the view that this is prima facie something that is worthwhile pursuing. I think everyone in the House shares the same concern for the environment, and for making sure that we are protecting what we do in New Zealand and keeping it in trust for future generations. So at that point there is no discussion and, I believe, no disagreement.

What this bill does do, however, is that it starts to cut across and become almost a conflict between what you are trying to achieve from a financial perspective and what you are trying to achieve in a number of other areas—not only environmental but also social issues, and you can put population into that category, and demographic changes, right through to the whole range of different aspects that New Zealanders hold dear. I think the biggest issue, and the one that troubles me most about the bill, is the inherent conflict that it introduces, but, at the same time, there is almost a doubling up. What I mean by that last point is that when Treasury comes to do the financial forecast—and, obviously, we have all talked tonight about the different processes, and it is a very convoluted process for Government to first present the Budget and then to report back—the inherent assumptions that go to make those projections largely pick up many of the aspects that are included in this proposed bill.

For instance—I am just turning my mind to schedule 8 of the proposed bill—there is a list of aspects that have to be taken into account. Seven indicators, which, again, when you start to think about it—the first one is population indicators. By way of example, it talks about population size and growth, fertility rates, dependency ratios, ethnic diversity, and regional population change. So when the Budget comes to be made, obviously people have to have regard to what is happening with immigration and what is happening with fertility rates. Those assumptions are made, and we heard earlier—in fact, even the Opposition was talking earlier about the fact that Treasury does 40-year forecasts. So many of those factors actually inherently have to be assumed and taken into account when preparing those financial projections.

The other aspect that I just cannot link back to a financial concept is things like the biodiversity indicators. These are things like threatened species, distribution of native species, and area of native land cover, for instance. For me, of course, those are vitally important and, as I said before, we all believe those are vitally important in terms of maintaining them. But the issue is: how do you actually quantify that when you come to do a financial budget? At the end of the day you have got to have financial outcomes.

I think the mismatch with what is being proposed here is, essentially, around what we want to achieve as a nation, and what those high-level outcomes are that we are trying to do. So if you go back to a different form—what are those economic outputs, what are those financials? They all have a relationship. But to try to inject some of these issues into how you prepare a set of accounts—which is basically what a budget is—is a very, very difficult concept, and I think it will inherently lead to conflict.

I think many of these things are covered by a number of other Acts, and I have heard previous speakers talk about it. By way of example, the third category in the bill, “Air and atmosphere indicators”, is actually covered by the Environmental Reporting Act. Trying to make sure that we do not get to a point where we are getting conflicting information to help what we think is going to create a better Budget outcome, I do not believe is the best way to go about doing it. I think it is very important that we are clear about the assumptions, and they are built up looking at all these other aspects that are covered by various Acts to ultimately achieve a good Budget. This is what I think happens, and on that basis I cannot support the bill.

STUART NASH (Labour—Napier): I absolutely support this bill, and I reject the arguments put forward by the last speakers—the two National speakers actually, and New Zealand First. Let me outline the reasons for that. GDP is a very important measure—there is no doubt about that. Gross domestic product: it is the monetary value of all finished goods and services produced within a country’s borders within a specific period of time. It is a measurement of a nation’s overall economic activity. It is important, and no one denies this. I do not think there is any point or any appetite to change this or get rid of it. But, in the 21st century, the question is: is this the only measure we should be using?

In a country like New Zealand, which sells itself globally as clean, green, and “100% Pure”, our brand—our global brand, the thing that gives us a global competitive advantage—is about sustainability of the environment, of the economy, and of our communities. Should we not be trying to benchmark ourselves against others globally? Should this not be part of how we see ourselves and the success of the Government in delivering for all the people of New Zealand?

Sure, there may be measures that should or should not be in this bill—there is no doubt about that. But this is the role of a select committee and that is what we do with these bills. They are imperfect; we all acknowledge that. So we send them to a select committee and we get the experts—and we are not leading the way in this; so there are experts in this field—to submit to our select committee and say that this is what the bill would look like and this is how the law could be applied in a way that is meaningful and really works. This is why this sort of bill should absolutely go to a select committee. That is why I will always support this.

Let me give you a quote—we have heard a number of them tonight—“Sustainable development is the pathway to the future we want for all. It offers a framework to generate economic growth, achieve social justice, exercise environmental stewardship and strengthen governance.” Ban Ki-moon said that. Are these not the measures and aspirations that we all strive for no matter what our political colours may be or which parties we represent?

The only way, actually, to see whether Governments are delivering is to measure. I do not see this as a bill to hold this Government to account; I see this as a bill to hold all Governments to account. If this bill is passed, then the next Labour - Green Government, which is coming in in 6 months, will be held to account in the way that every single Government will be held to account.

The Public Finance Act came in in 1989. I bet that at the same time—and Mr Assistant Speaker Mallard is probably the only one who can clarify this—we were having these sorts of debates, when this bill came in. I bet there were MPs on both sides talking about transparency. Heaven forbid—why would we want transparency in the public accounts! But now the Public Finance Act is seen as an integral part not only of our Government but of democracy.

This bill will have its time; of that I have no doubt. If the Government is not going to support it and New Zealand First is not going to support it, it looks like it probably will not pass its first reading, but it will have its time—of that I have absolutely no doubt. I also believe that in 20 years’ time there will be MPs who will be standing here or who will be reading this or who will be presenting this day, either at Budget time or in parliamentary debates, and we will marvel at the fact that 20 years ago, in 2017, we were actually debating whether we needed these indicators or not. These will be so integral into how a Government measures its success and how the people out there measure a Government’s success that it will just be part of the norm.

I just think it is a shame that, in fact, we are not taking a lead—well, we are not, no; I am not even talking about taking a lead—and that we do not join the rest of the developed world and say: “You know what? These things are now important.” Sure, financial transparency is accountant. But I will support this bill, and I will always support bills like this, because I believe that a greater level of transparency and accountability in Government is vital if we as politicians and we as a Parliament are to win the respect and confidence of the people of New Zealand.

It is sad that this bill is not going to a select committee. It is a real shame, because its time is now, but it will have its time—of that I have no doubt, James. But I support this bill 100 percent. Thank you very much.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): Well, I am tempted to call Simon O’Connor; I am not quite sure what I should call him though.

Stuart Nash: Can we suggest something?

SIMON O’CONNOR (National—Tāmaki): Ha, ha! No. That could easily take up my 5 minutes, but it is probably not the indulgent way to take this.

I am opposing the bill tonight, not because of the principles behind it, but I am opposing it because I do not think that this is the right platform—nor in terms of what the last speaker, Stuart Nash, was saying around the use of select committees. I might touch on both those aspects. I do want to—as others have—acknowledge James Shaw for the work that he and, I understand, Kennedy Graham have put into this. I think, actually, what is being proposed here, as a concept, makes a lot of sense. I am sure if our former colleague Dr Cam Calder was here he would be agreeing. I know that at different party conferences he often spoke about the need to look at new indicators well beyond GDP. I do not profess to be an expert in this particular space, but even I can understand there is a lot more that we can measure to better understand how we engage not only with one another but with the environment at large.

I suppose my issue is I do not believe that the Public Finance Act is the place for this to occur. In some ways I think it is sort of a mismatch, which will not actually do any good either to the public finance approaches that this and previous Governments have taken and, I would argue, future Governments will take, and in some ways I do not think it will actually do any good for the environmental side either. The Public Finance Act—we have been given a little bit of history, I think, by Craig Foss a bit earlier on the reason the Act came about. It is fairly simple, in so far as it is around transparency and, importantly, it is around fiscal policy. It is really, in effect, about taxing and spending and debt—that is what it is about, the Act. It uses GDP—a crude model, if you will—to try to explain those things, but it is a crude model that is, I think, very sufficient for its purpose.

Importantly too, I think GDP as it stands, the measures as they stand, and the Act as it stands are well understood both within New Zealand and overseas, and that gives us some surety. I think when we turn, consequently, to schedules 8 and 9—I have them here—we end up with a number of indicators and subclauses. I think there are about 36 subclauses in schedule 8, which really does complicate things. It ultimately takes away from the initial and intention of the Public Finance Act and, if I want to be slightly conspiratorial, I think it would actually harm that transparency, as we all get a bit confused in and around numbers.

We want just some clear indicators from Government, regardless of whether it is the National Government now or the continuing National Government through 2017 to 2020, to know what is happening in that space. Environmentally, I think what the member is suggesting could well sit in its own piece of legislation. I know this Government has made some changes, in I think 2015, around environmental reporting. I think it was a really important step. I think it was the first Government to put such indicators in place. It is only a suggestion off the top of my head. I think what Mr Shaw is suggesting could well play into an Act like that.

Hon David Cunliffe: It’s unravelling.

SIMON O’CONNOR: Ha! Oh, dearie me—the last interjections from that member in the coming weeks. Ha! But use them while you can.

I think there is real positivity in what is being suggested here, to actually go into the Environmental Reporting Act. I think a lot of the elements we see are beneficial. I am conscious of the time though, and I want to add that I think one of the risks we have with these sorts of series of principles is that they can always be added to—some member earlier used the term “progressive”. It will be no surprise to some that I am not a great fan of progressivism as a philosophical concept, and the reason is that it picks winners and losers. I think there is a danger, as we end up with schedules like this, that we end up picking winning and losing concepts that make these de rigueur. I think that is unhelpful, and we have heard some feedback tonight with people critiquing some of these 36 indicators and saying “Well, that’s not in and that shouldn’t be in.”, and I think it ends up being quite wasteful.

That probably takes me to my final point that, As it is currently constructed in this bill, asking that the Minister of Finance be the one responsible to report on these would put him or her in direct conflict with the likes of the Government Statistician and Treasury, so I think there is a bit of a mismatch there.

Finally—which is now my third final point—I will come back to one of the first ones. I do not feel it is the place of select committees to do a lot of that work.

Hon David Cunliffe: Ha, ha!

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): Order!

SIMON O’CONNOR: Select committees are the place where the ideas are already well articulated and we move from there, and so I would disagree with some colleagues who are saying that here we float an idea and then select committees—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): Order! The member’s time has expired. The Hon David Cunliffe—again, I am tempted not to call the member, given those recent noises.

Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE (Labour—New Lynn): I do apologise for that spontaneous expression of mirth, but it has been quite amusing seeing members opposite—many of whom I certainly like as people—turning themselves inside out to find reasons to vote against motherhood, apple pie, and the environment. This bill is, quite frankly, beyond argument, common sense. Not only is it common sense but it actually represents what National members say they believe in. They say they are liberal conservatives. They say they have the environment at heart. They say they want to bring the environment and the economy closer together. Well, here is a bill that actually does that.

I commend the member who has introduced it—more on that in a second. Here is a bill that uses the Crown accounts, financial analysis, and objective data collection, not to pick winners and not to prescribe policy, but simply to provide a common data set that is fact-based. Who, actually, but Donald Trump could object to such a thing?

Distinguished members opposite have clearly been given very interesting riding instructions: “Please don’t dump too hard on the bill, because the Bluegreens will be upset. Make it sound like you like it, but then refuse to send it even as far as to a select committee, because we wouldn’t want you to actually engage in the substance lest some of it sneaks through.” It was actually Mr Foss—Craig Foss, bless him—who displayed the kind of honesty that has become his hallmark, to his detriment. He came to the punchline: “We do not want to get in the way of financial imperatives. We don’t want environmental indicators going anywhere near the Crown financial accounts.” That is the truth of it. It is the “Labour-lite” approach of giving half a loaf, like they did on paid parental leave, or the head in the sand defence, which is that if you do not measure it, it will not matter—like child poverty. Neither of those work in this case.

In this case we are at the nub of the argument: why would you want environmental indicators sitting alongside GDP? “We won’t do away with GDP; we’ve made that clear.” It is because if you think about GDP it does not tell you the whole story. The single biggest boost to New Zealand’s GDP in the last century was what—can members opposite say? The single biggest boost was not tourism, it was not dairy; it was the Christchurch earthquakes. There was a $30 billion GDP injection, but it is just that hundreds of people lost their lives and our second-biggest city was flattened. It was a disaster, but it was a huge GDP uptick. A war is a great GDP uptick, but it is nonsense to suggest that a war or an earthquake represents what is best in our lives. We need to balance raw GDP, which is simply a measure of turnover, with things that talk about quality and sustainability, and that integrate the long term and the short term.

With a little sense of déjà vu, if I can say to the member, when I was in my first term I negotiated a member’s bill called the Triple Bottom Line Reporting Bill. I was negotiating with the then Minister of Finance—the good member and Assistant Speaker, the Hon Trevor Mallard, was an Associate Minister of Finance—Dr Michael Cullen, who said: “Look, rather than put a complex member’s bill in front of the House, let’s, as a matter of policy, instruct Treasury to start working on these.” It has been pleasing to see a number of those pieces of work flow through to what has been listed in the bill as current products of Treasury and the department of statistics.

How bizarre it was to hear members opposite list amongst their reasons for paying lip-service to the bill—but not even supporting it to select committee—was that they did not think Treasury and the department of statistics were the right places to keep statistics. I beg your pardon? Motherhood, apple pie, and the environment, and members opposite pirouetting on the head of a pin to find reasons that sound nice but actually do harm, which is to vote against the environment and to vote against our children and our grandchildren, who will inherit the mess that members opposite, wittingly or unwittingly, are making worse. They are not using price mechanisms, they are not using objective data, they are not—to use the jargon of economics—internalising the externalities in the Crown accounts, and they are not living up to their own highest ideals of rational economic thought.

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

PAUL FOSTER-BELL (National): E Te Mana Whakawā Tuarua, tēnā koe. In making my brief contribution on this bill, the Public Finance (Sustainable Development Indicators) Amendment Bill, I want to first begin by congratulating the member James Shaw on bringing this well-intentioned bill before the House. Although I might not necessarily agree with the mechanism the member uses to try to implement the changes that he is wanting to bring about, I will none the less congratulate him on his noble intentions of improving and safeguarding and better reporting on the state of our environment. This is, I think, a positive intention. But a couple of the issues that I have around this bill—

Hon David Cunliffe: Send it to select committee—send it to select committee.

PAUL FOSTER-BELL: Actually, I would say to the former leader of the Labour Party Mr Cunliffe that it is not a select committee’s job to formulate legislation. Its job, he should know, is to review it, to amend it, and to improve it. When we are starting from a position of legislation that actually has some rather difficult inconsistencies and some unnecessary duplication, I do wonder whether it is beyond—in fact, I would posit that it is certainly beyond the scope and responsibility and domain of a select committee and the New Zealand Parliament to so extensively rewrite the legislation as to make it workable.

The inconsistencies that I want to refer to are around the roles of Ministers in departments. This bill envisages that the Minister of Finance is responsible for tabling indicators that are prepared by departments other than those for which he or she has responsibility—specifically, Statistics New Zealand and the Ministry for the Environment. This would be a rather strange departure from the usual pattern of ministerial accountability that is customary and normal in this House. But it would also require the Minister of Finance to explain how the principles of sustainable development have been incorporated into the economic and fiscal update, even though it is actually Treasury, rather than the Minister, that is responsible for the content of those economic and fiscal updates. So I think that is definitely problematic.

I think we have in this country a fine tradition of improving the fiscal responsibility and transparency of our public finances. This is something I am quite proud of, as a Kiwi and a strong supporter of Transparency International—as a member of our local branch of Transparency International. It is one of the things that allows us to achieve our status—as we have done—as the least corrupt country, certainly in terms of perception of Public Service corruption.

Hon Damien O’Connor: Well, we were.

PAUL FOSTER-BELL: No, we are the No. 1 least corrupt country in the world, in the latest Transparency International review of these things. I think the member is at least a year out of date in his facts, across the aisle there.

But the issue is that this bill does cut across the environmental reporting measures that this Government has already brought in and put into place. In 2015 we did pass the Environmental Reporting Act, which does back up our reputation—our “clean, green” brand—with authoritative and independent information on the state of our environment in New Zealand. This requires the Government Statistician to provide statistics that meet a very high quality of standards, and this independence is further strengthened by the role of the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment.

So I think that the measures the member is proposing, although well-intentioned, are unnecessary because they cut across that environmental reporting that we have already put into place. So although I support the concept of greater clarity and transparency around our environmental reporting in New Zealand, I think the bill is inconsistent in the way it proposes that Ministers would undertake their roles, and it is also unnecessary in light of the legislation that this Government has put forward.

This Government is deeply concerned about the state of our environment and is making many positive steps towards improving the state of the environment. Let us just reflect briefly on the goal to be predator-free by 2050, the creation of many new reserves, and all of these sorts of positive steps. I think this bill is unnecessary, and for these reasons I will oppose it and not commend it to the House.

JAMES SHAW (Co-Leader—Green): It has been fascinating, watching a number of members of the National Party speaking against something that the corporate sector has been engaged in for the last 25 years. In particular, people who have actually had some background in the corporate sector, like Andrew Bayly and Chris Bishop, as David Cunliffe said, contort themselves—pirouette—to find reasons for speaking against the bill when, in fact, they are quite well aware that the sector that they purport to represent has been doing this kind of thing for ever.

I am just going to rattle through some of the objections. One that was made is that it is unnecessary because we already measure some of these things. Government does not act in alignment. For example, on the one hand, we sign up to the Paris Agreement and say that we want to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions and, on the other, the Minister for natural resources opens up an enormous block area for oil and gas exploration that, if burned, would massively contribute to global warming. So the Government says one thing on the one hand, and then does precisely the opposite on the other.

One of the reasons why we want to have integrated reporting at the level of the Minister of Finance in the Public Finance Act is to create single-point accountability that joins up Government. The members from the National Party who have spoken against this bill have essentially been arguing against the notion of having a balanced scorecard—the notion that you would have a dashboard of indicators. It is sort of like saying: “I’m going to go driving, but the only indicator on my dashboard is going to be r.p.m.” Well, r.p.m. is not terribly helpful if you want to determine how fast you are driving, how safely you are driving, where the lights are, or anything like that. So they are saying that they want only one measure, and it is essentially what is going on under the hood.

One of the other objections was that there are too many indicators. As I have said, the reason why you have a select committee process at all is so that you can improve the bill. So I do not think it is terribly valid to say: “We think the bill is flawed. Therefore, it shouldn’t go to a select committee.” That is the whole point of having select committees.

I just want to touch briefly on some of the points around gross domestic product, because it does seem that there is actually unanimity across the House on the limitation of gross domestic product. Simon O’Connor did say that it is well understood. Actually, it is not well understood. When I was doing my Master’s programme, there was a guest speaker, Dr Bob Ayres from INSEAD, who is both a nuclear physicist and an economist, and he has looked at what gross domestic product is actually composed of. Actually, we know only about 45 percent of a GDP number in terms of direct causation—right? The remaining 55 percent of GDP is largely correlation. There is some stuff happening over here in the economy and the GDP number is this, and so we think probably there is some form of relationship, but we cannot say why exactly. So even GDP itself is actually poorly understood, let alone a very limited measure of anything.

All this bill does is improve our understanding of capital. So, as Stuart Nash said—I think he gave a really brilliant point—our natural capital is our greatest asset. Here in New Zealand, the country with tourism as its primary source of income—and its second-largest source of income comes from the primary industries, which take place in the environment—our natural capital is our greatest asset. So what we are suggesting is that the Minister of Finance simply understands and has, alongside our appreciation of financial capital, an appreciation of our natural capital. Having some kind of balance between those sorts of sets of indicators makes a lot of sense, especially for a country like New Zealand.

It is disappointing that despite agreement, apparently unanimously across the House, about the principles of this bill and the underlying flaws in the way that we currently measure things, New Zealand First and the National Party are going to vote against this bill—despite the fact that they basically completely agree with everything in it. So it is sad, but this is an idea whose time has come. The private sector has been doing this for decades, and we will get there. Parliament can be a place that considers good ideas.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the Public Finance (Sustainable Development Indicators) Amendment Bill be now read a first time.

Ayes 48

New Zealand Labour 32; Green Party 14; Māori Party 2.

Noes 73

New Zealand National 59; New Zealand First 12; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.

Motion not agreed to.

Bills

Broadcasting (Games of National Significance) Amendment Bill

First Reading

CLAYTON MITCHELL (NZ First): I move, That the Broadcasting (Games of National Significance) Amendment Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Commerce Committee to consider the bill. The bill amends the 1989 Broadcasting Act by inserting a number of small but significant subparts in sections 36 and 37. The most significant is new section 37(e), under the heading “(Promotion of New Zealand content in programming)”, which states: “ensure that the games of national significance listed in Schedule 1A are broadcast live and free-to-air.” This bill is about putting the best interests of New Zealanders first. It is about doing what is morally right, and it is about putting the needs of Kiwis above the wants of multinational companies’ profits and their controls.

This bill is in answer to a number of very simple questions. Should New Zealanders be able to watch sporting games of national significance live and free to air, like we once used to? Yes, absolutely we should. Should New Zealanders have the same opportunity to watch and enjoy live, free-to-air sport like they do in Australia, the UK, India, and Canada? Yes, why should we not? Should sports be available to watch only for people who can afford to pay for the Sky Sport subscription? Absolutely not, is the answer. Lastly, should Kiwis be expected to pay a billion dollars a year in taxes towards sports and recreation, and then pay again to watch sports games of national significance? Absolutely not. It does not make any sense. It is an outrage.

Hon Trevor Mallard: Did the member say “a billion”?

CLAYTON MITCHELL: $1 billion. The answers to these four questions will resonate with everyone in this House and back at home watching on Parliament TV, in one way or another. For New Zealand First, the answers to those questions are clear and concise.

Interestingly, Kiwis were polled through a number of mediums leading up to this debate, and 84 percent of people agree with this bill—for the member over there—and want to see it passed through this House. This is an important bill, and it is being read at an important time.

This bill is a demonstration of political parties that support all New Zealanders, fairly and equally. It is important because this is the year when the people of New Zealand will make a decision to oppose the establishment that is imposing globalist views, and to support a regime that is paternal and patriotic and that puts New Zealanders first. Democracy ensures that we answer to the people of New Zealand, and the people of New Zealand want to watch their Kiwi sporting heroes and heroines live and free to air.

Whether it be the Olympics or the Commonwealth Games, the Rugby World Cup or international netball, people have a birthright to see these games live and free to air. In New Zealand we have laws that recognise the importance of the history and culture of New Zealand—

Hon Trevor Mallard: Oh, don’t let the facts get in the road.

CLAYTON MITCHELL: —and those laws are there to protect and advance certain parts of those things. I look forward to your contribution, Mr Mallard. Sport is a vital part of New Zealand culture. It gives us pride and it inspires our young people to be the best they can be, Mr Mallard. Sport is the one part of our Kiwi culture that unites all of us as a country and as a people. Sport is colour-blind to race and ethnicity, and it does not differentiate between genders. Sport also plays a major role in our international cultural identity.

Hon Trevor Mallard: What nonsense. The member should talk to some sportspeople.

CLAYTON MITCHELL: Believe it or not, there are parts of the world that do not even know where New Zealand is on the map—like Trevor Mallard, obviously, does not—but they know the All Blacks, they know Lisa Carrington or Hamish Bond or Eric Murray, they know Valerie Adams, and they know the Black Sticks or Team New Zealand or John Walker or the Silver Ferns, or any one of the plethora of New Zealand’s sporting superstars. We are absolutely, positively a sporting nation.

We may be divided on our political views—I raise my eyes to you again, Mr Mallard—or generationally interested in different things. But we all come together on the sporting fields, waters, or courts, at club level and all the way to the highest levels of international competition.

Sport and healthy, honest competition brings Kiwis together. Look at the All Blacks, as one example. We have players of Māori, English, Tongan, Scottish, Samoan, Irish, Fijian, and French descent—nations that have long histories of fighting each other but come together as New Zealanders in the black jersey. Nothing brings people together, in shared celebration, like a sporting fixture. If you are Canadian, Australian, Indian, or British you can bring your neighbours together to celebrate, without having to pay an extra $1,000 - plus a year, Mr Mallard—just so you were listening—for Sky Sport subscriptions.

Their Governments have ensured that laws do not permit sports of national significance to be placed behind paywalls, like this Government does, out of view from people who cannot afford to subscribe to them. But if you are a New Zealander, you are out of luck. Why should Kiwis have to shell out an extra $1,000 - plus a year to watch Sky, when they have already spent $960 million investing into sports and recreation each year through their local taxes and central government taxes that we collect on their behalf? Put that in your pipe and smoke it.

We used to be able to watch top-level sports live and free to air because our taxes went in at the grassroots level, and laws ensured that no one was marginalised, forgotten, or disenfranchised.

Hon Trevor Mallard: What’s in the member’s pipe—some of that “northern green”?

CLAYTON MITCHELL: Keep smoking. We can all remember getting up early in the morning or being allowed to stay up extra late to watch the Olympics or the All Blacks playing overseas. I remember the excitement of watching John Walker winning gold at the 1976 Montreal Olympics. We had a little black and white TV, and I remember mum and dad being really excited. I did not quite know why—I was only 4 years old—but it was clearly enough of a big deal that it burnt into my brain.

How many families nowadays can say they have the same opportunity as we once did to enjoy great memorable sporting moments in time? I suggest it is just those fortunate enough to be able to afford Sky. For Kiwis, these days, finding out on the nightly news what has already happened is just not the same. Watching it live, in the moment, when you do not know the outcome, increases the chances of future sporting triumphs being burnt into the minds of future Kiwis. We take pride in our sporting successes. We know that when we line up against some of the biggest countries in the world, with the fairness of the same rules applying to everyone, and our bloody-minded determination and tenacity bringing home a victory, we all celebrate together. Why should anybody be denied this opportunity? How can any party member in their right mind put their hand on their heart and say that this bill is not good for New Zealanders?

Let us not forget that this Government does see the benefit in supporting New Zealand culture on television, by way of the Māori channel. This does come at a cost of around $55 million a year, but most Kiwis would agree that this channel is a great asset, supporting our language, Te Reo, and other culturally important programmes. The question is: why have we done that? Because it is important to New Zealanders.

Living an active lifestyle is important for our country. Participation in sport keeps us healthy and makes us less likely to require additional access to health services in the future. Participation in sport has the potential to save taxpayers’ money.

Hon Trevor Mallard: How does sitting on your couch help that?

CLAYTON MITCHELL: Unfortunately, we currently have declining rates of participation—something you know lots about, mate—around the country. I repeat what I said before. We have the highest obesity rates in children, and in some adults sitting over there, that we have ever seen. We have kids who, in the past, would have been outside, playing sport and aspiring to be like their favourite sports heroes or heroines. Running, jumping, swimming, kicking, passing, or shooting hoops is what we need our kids of this generation to be doing again.

A point: success breeds success. There is a phrase: if I can see it, I can be it. By not giving all of our young people the chance to see it, we are robbing them of the opportunity to foster and develop their own sense of self-belief. We are robbing them of the belief that they can be successful at the highest levels of whatever they are passionate about. So why would we stop them from seeing live, free-to-air sports?

I have heard Sky TV’s claim that it has spent $1 billion on securing broadcasting rights over the last decade, but there is no breakdown of that figure. There is no breakdown of which sports received those dollars, nor how much was spent on wining and dining and travelling around the world. But the New Zealand taxpayers spend nearly $1 billion every single year on sports and recreation, and then they are expected to cough up another $1,000 a year just for the privilege of having live sports, which they have got to pay for.

This bill is about Kiwis’ sporting games and events of New Zealand national significance. It is about Kiwi pride and it is about Kiwi passion. Some people, including the former Prime Minister, have made comments about this bill driving players overseas in search of more lucrative contracts. No, it does not. That is complete rubbish. In fact, international evidence suggests that absolutely the opposite occurs. This is nothing more than unsubstantiated nonsense and fearmongering. Look what Ben Smith and Israel Dagg turned down—lucrative international contracts—to be here and a part of our country, and to play for our team.

We commend this bill to the House. Thank you.

BRETT HUDSON (National): Today, of all days, I stand in opposition to this Broadcasting (Games of National Significance) Amendment Bill. Today, of all days, I want to start with a small saying of a truly great man—a great man whom we farewelled today, a man who had enormous aspirations for New Zealand and spent every day of his life in this Parliament striving to achieve them. He reminded us, day in and day out, that New Zealand is a small country at the bottom of the world and no one owes us a living.

What I heard before, from the speaker from New Zealand First, was about putting New Zealanders ahead of others, doing what is right, beating up the multinationals, our moral responsibilities—what he was talking about was a world that owes New Zealand a living. He was not talking about the context of these major sporting events of interest, other than in the context that the world owes us a living.

I want to make my contribution on a few areas. I want to start with the implications. Although we are going to oppose the bill, I do not necessarily want to spend 10 minutes berating the member or his arguments. Let us look at the elements of it. Firstly, what are the implications if we were to accept it—if we were to say: “Let’s pass this thing into law.”? First we have to look at what it takes to broadcast these games or these events. Well, it means that someone, some organisation or some nation, has to assemble a whole lot of capital equipment—whether it is cameras, broadcasting equipment, or personnel—and they have to ship it out to wherever the event is taking place. The All Blacks are playing Australia at the Westpac Stadium and someone has to send outside broadcasting equipment. This is stuff that costs seriously big money. They have got to send this stuff out there, and they have got to expend their capital to actually capture the game.

That is all well and good, if that is all you are doing. But if you are, say, a pay-per-view channel that has invested private capital in this stuff and you are sending it down there to give it away free to anyone, what does that do to your return on the business case—not only buying the equipment and covering the game but paying for the rights to cover that game in the very first place?

Hon Member: Tell us all what happened 30 years ago, then.

BRETT HUDSON: I will tell the member what happened a few years ago: we did not get live coverage of most games. I was young enough to watch this stuff, when Grahame Thorne had his perm, on national television. If we were lucky—if we were lucky—we got the games a couple of hours late, and the coverage was absolute rubbish, from maybe one or two camera angles. We have far better coverage of all sorts of sports in a world where we have competitive tensions and where companies are prepared to invest in the equipment to broadcast this stuff, and then compete for the rights to do so.

So what does it take? It takes a whole lot of equipment and personnel, an investment in that, to go and capture the event. So who is going to do it? Who is going to do it when you are not going to get paid for it—or you are going to get paid for it, but a lot less than what you would otherwise get, because who is going to pay for a pay subscription when Mr Mitchell over there has decided that you have got to give it away free to everyone in the house?

Firstly, who is going to go and watch the game at Wellington, when they can sit at home and watch it on telly? And secondly, which private entity is going to invest in that capital and those operations to actually capture it, when they are not going to get the revenue from it that they might otherwise expect if it was a truly competitive market?

This brings us to the point of who is actually paying for it. Who is paying for it? The reality is that someone has got to buy the rights to cover that match. Someone has got to have the equipment and the personnel to do it, and someone has got to actually broadcast it.

Mr Mitchell’s stuff, free to air, sounds really good, because it is “free”. Well, here is a lesson: nothing is free. Someone has got to pay for it. In this case, what he is really saying is that we are going to fork—he spent 10 minutes telling us how much we already spend. Well, now we have got to go into our pockets. Ma and pa taxpayer—we are going to go and dig into their pockets. As a Government, we are going to reach in and we are going to take a little bit more out to pay for this, because someone has got to pay for it. That could be justified if it was simply an objective basis for doing this.

The second point is, what do we display? What is genuinely of national significance? He has got a schedule in this bill, but you could look back. If you look back 50 years, what was significant in New Zealand sport then is not the same as what is significant today, and in 50 years’ time it will be different again. So who chooses? Who chooses? Well, his bill smells, reeks, of the very stuff that Friedrich Hayek warned us about decades ago: it is the central government. It is the central government that decides what is of importance to New Zealanders, what they should be allowed to see, when they can see it, which sports, and which matches! It decides what is important! Well, the reality is, that does not match up to New Zealanders’ expectations.

I do not expect the Government to fund what I am interested in. Although we treasure the All Blacks and we want to be No. 1 in rugby, if I had the choice, I would be saying: “Forget the rugby, show me Formula One Grand Prix live. I will stay up. I will watch the stuff.” I see technology, I see skill, and I see all the things I want to see in that event. But others would say it is not of national significance. So the best way to treat those discussions, those debates, is to let the market address it. As soon as you allow the Government to do it, you have got a bunch of people in seats like this saying what ma, pa, and the kids can watch. That is the New Zealand of the 1970s. That is a New Zealand where you used to have to apply to Treasury to get an overseas magazine subscription, because the Government did not think it was something you should be allowed to read without its permission. That is exactly what they are talking about.

Hon Trevor Mallard: That was the 80s. That was a National Government.

BRETT HUDSON: Norm Kirk as well, Trev. Do not forget Norm Kirk.

Then we have the impacts. We have the impacts. We should consider these things, because it is one thing to retreat to the 1970s and not be allowed to do anything—not only could you not get a magazine subscription but the only time you could visit a bank was when you were at work, which was a slight problem. You could not get money out because there was no such thing as an ATM. It was not a great New Zealand. They think it was great. It was not a great New Zealand.

But let us look at the impacts, because these are important. At the moment we have companies that invest in being able to cover these events, whether it is rugby, netball, cricket—the real big ones. Or whether it is tiddlywinks, Formula One Grand Prix, NASCAR—which has got to be, in my view, one of the least interesting and valuable sports on the planet, but, I tell you what, there are a lot of Americans who love that sport—American football, lacrosse, or Irish football. All of these sports people can test, and they are prepared to invest an amount of their money to get the rights to broadcast that.

Then look at how it impacts the sporting bodies. How does it impact them? Well, if you look at New Zealand Cricket and the New Zealand Rugby Union, the advice they have given me—and they have done this directly—over 40 percent of their revenues—

Simon O’Connor: How much?

BRETT HUDSON: —over 40 percent—are derived from broadcasting rights. So broadcasting companies are currently prepared to pay them significant amounts of money so that they can have the right to broadcast their content, if you will—their games, whether it is an All Blacks versus Australia game, whether it is a National Provincial Championship game, a provincial-level game, or any form at the grassroots. They are prepared to pay certain amounts of money to actually broadcast these events. What will happen to those revenues if, as per the schedule, which could change over time, so many of them have to be broadcast free to non-paying viewers? The thing is obvious. Those companies are not going to be prepared to pay anything like that amount of money for those rights. They are simply not going to do it.

So what are we left with? We are left with sporting bodies completely underfunded, not because anyone wants to cut their funding but because the market is not going to support it, because they are forced by the New Zealand First people to give it away for nothing.

Arguably—and I think it is an enormous stretch—you could say the market could sustain some of that, except you have to look at the true scope of new schedule 1A. It is not just the All Blacks versus the Wallabies, the Kiwis versus the Kangaroos, or the Silver Ferns. No. It is not just Commonwealth Games or Olympic Games. No. The most important part, and I will finish with this, is: “Any other sporting event funded by the Major Events Development Fund or any high performance New Zealand sportsperson who has received government funding for development and is participating …”. Basically, it is any event that anyone has ever had any public money for that would have to show everything free. No one would be prepared to pay for the broadcasting rights. It is a ridiculous bill. I oppose it.

Hon TREVOR MALLARD (Labour—Hutt South): I think it was St Bernard who said: “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.” I think that could well be the case with this particular bill. I will give the member credit. It is well intentioned, but it is very, very poorly thought through.

In Wainuiōmata there is no demand to return to the system where the rugby finishes on TV 20 minutes after it does live, because it has got ads all the way through. There is no demand in Wainuiōmata to go back to the system where the netball finishes quarter of an hour after the game finishes live, because of the ads that were through it. That is the past that members want to go back to.

Generally, the Labour Party and I support the principle of supporting first readings of members’ bills. We generally do it. But there is a higher value. The higher value is one of honesty, and that one of honesty is that a bill like this will never pass. It cannot pass. No Government is going to take $125 million a year, roughly, off sport in New Zealand. No Government—no Government—is going to take roughly $125 million, the sporting rights’ income, away from sports in New Zealand. No Government is going to be prepared to make that money up, because if you have got $125 million to spend on sport you are going to spend it on kids’ sport. If you have got $125 million to spend on broadcasting you will spend it on public broadcasting and improving broadcasting, not going back to something in the past.

It is a requirement on MPs to do some research, and the member who brought this bill in did not do the research. He should have talked to a few sports organisations. He should have talked to the netball school development people, who would lose their jobs if this bill went through because the funding would be cut. Professional sport would be damaged, and community sport would be damaged even worse.

I will give you an example from this bill, and that is of the person who, a decade ago, got $100 in development funding from the taxpayer and is now in an international wrestling meet in Kazakhstan. It is not broadcast in Kazakhstan but there is an obligation, under this bill, for New Zealand to send cameras there and to broadcast it back to New Zealand. The bill is really badly drafted, it is not thought through, and it is not planned.

I also want to say that this is a temporary issue. No one believes that the shape of broadcasting in New Zealand in a decade is going to be anything like it is now. Already, it is my understanding, about 40 percent of Kiwis have Netflix or something that is quite similar. People are getting things online, they are getting them in bite-size, and I am certain that the world will change, so that the sort of approach that the member is fighting against will not be there in a decade or so.

I want to ask the member to tell us who owns sport. Not a word. Not a response. Not a whisper. Well, I think that sports own sport, and the intellectual property, the things that they have developed, is something that they should be able to sell. It should not be confiscated by the Government. To the member who says that Kiwis cannot and do not watch sport, I invite him just to talk to a few. Talk to the people who cannot afford it but go to their rellies. They go to their neighbours, they go down to the sports clubs, and they go down to the pubs. They get together. They have a bit of community and they watch things together.

This is a very poorly thought through piece of legislation. I am not going to criticise the member’s intent because I think his heart is in the right place. It is just a pity his brain was not engaged.

SIMON O’CONNOR (National—Tāmaki): I am pleased to take a call on the Broadcasting (Games of National Significance) Amendment Bill. I have found this debate very unsettling already—not so much that I am in opposition to the member’s bill but that I am in agreeance with Trevor Mallard. It is a very unsettling place to be. I am not sure how I am going to deal with that. I just want to echo in many ways what Mr Mallard said, particularly around who owns sport. I think that was a very salient point; the other is the community dynamics that do come from this. It is not the absolute argument of why we should pay for television, but most of us can think of those occasions when we go down to our local rugby club, pub, or just to our mates who have Sky Sport to go and watch.

Probably the other unsettling part I notice, as a fencer, is that nothing in this bill speaks about the great sport of fencing.

Hon Trevor Mallard: Yes, it does. It’s in the catch-all clause.

SIMON O’CONNOR: Oh, it is in the catch-all clause. That is excellent. That is probably one small bit of opposition. I look forward to seeing more fencing on television.

Hon Trevor Mallard: The member is a specialist on sitting on fences.

SIMON O’CONNOR: Oh no, not at all. I leave that to others. I leave that to the Leader of the Opposition, who sits on fences and then changes how he sits on them.

I believe that this is a bill—out of New Zealand First, not unsurprisingly—that has a sort of populist pandering and a romantic view of the past. Although, again, I do not doubt the intention and potential goodwill of the member, referring back to sport as he and others thought of it in the 1970s and the way things were is just romanticising something that does not exist anymore. Society has moved on. The business models of how we engage with sport have changed.

Fundamentally, a lot of sports—those listed in the schedule here—are now professional. Colleagues in the House have already indicated at this early stage the high reliance that our national sports have on the revenue generated by broadcasting. We have received information from the primary codes—the likes of netball, cricket, and rugby of course—that a substantial amount, almost half, of their revenue is gained from broadcasting, and that, in turn, is what enables them to do the development in schools that has been mentioned. It is what enables them to engage players to keep them here in New Zealand.

What this bill is asking us to do, because of some romantic view of the past, is for the Government to get all taxpayers, some of whom will not watch sport, to fund that. There is no understanding or articulation that I have heard yet from the member supporting this bill, Clayton Mitchell, of where that money is going to come from. It has been pointed out that there is nothing free here; someone here is going to have to pay. What this bill is trying to do is to push all of that cost onto the taxpayer. Those who work in broadcasting—the most notable, of course, is the likes of Sky television—will tell you of the hundreds of millions of dollars of investment that it takes to do the broadcasting. It is not simply about turning up with an old camera in front of television, given our requirements now. I think of even college sport. I was over in Glendowie last year as Sacred Heart College was battling it out with Saint Kentigern College. Sky was there. Again, we are talking top-notch cameras, camera crews, and the technology to make sure that level of broadcasting is at its highest and professional level.

Again, we have moved on as a country as to what we expect. This is an expensive business. I think the market is managing it perfectly well at the moment and to simply bring it across to Government just does not make any sense. In so much as we got a whole argument too—if I put my health hat on—that somehow free broadcasting is going to influence obesity by having our young people sitting around watching free television, it just does not make sense.

Just to bring out a final point: the fundamental principle in the bill in front of me, the general policy statement, talks about enjoyment. The whole basis of this is that if people enjoy sport, we should, in turn, make that broadcasting free. Well, I actually enjoy watching sport and I enjoy going along to sport. I am really interested in the member supporting a bill—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): I am sorry. The member’s time has expired.

JULIE ANNE GENTER (Green): I would like to thank the member who has brought this bill to the House. I think it is worthy of debate and consideration, absolutely—the proposal that there are certain sporting events that should be able to be watched by every New Zealander and they should be available. I think a fundamental principle of the Green Party’s broadcasting policy is that we should have 100 percent accessible broadcasting, we should have support for a wide range of publicly available free-to-air content, and, even though the mode in which that content is delivered is in flux and is changing at the moment, it is fundamentally important that there is public support for content and access. Without a public broadcaster, we have seen that it is not possible to get good quality content that is available to everyone.

I think that some of the Government members’ speeches tonight have demonstrated how the narrow view of user-pays or number of eyeballs watching a particular show determines whether or not it gets public funding is not a model that is going to deliver the things that are really important to New Zealanders. There are things that are of immense cultural and social importance to New Zealanders—

Hon Simon Bridges: Talk to us about sport you’ve watched.

JULIE ANNE GENTER: We will get to that, Simon—we will get to that. There are things that are incredibly important to our identity as a country. What other countries around the world, particularly small countries, have found is that it is vitally important to have public investment in public broadcasting. As the member who is sponsoring this bill noted in his speech, there are a number of countries around the world that do have similar provisions to what is proposed in this bill. It ensures that people in Canada, the UK, or Australia are all able to watch those sporting events that are of great importance to the nation.

The Green Party supports the investigation of this bill. Government members’ speeches tonight have very much focused on who is going to pay for it and what is the cost. It is important that we understand, because I think the Hon Trevor Mallard’s speech did indicate that the way the bill has been drafted there are potentially quite a lot of fish-hooks. That is something we would be extremely concerned about during the select committee process.

Fundamentally, this comes back to values. What I have found out there, from talking to New Zealanders, is that a lot of New Zealanders really value those national sporting events and they are really upset that people have to get a subscription to Sky television to see many of them. The fact that some of these events are of such great value to New Zealand was reflected in the fact that the Government made the decision to buy the rights to the New Zealand Rugby World Cup in 2011 so that all New Zealanders could watch it free to air, live, while those games were being played here in New Zealand.

Clearly, the Government does understand that at times there are really important events, but that is the exception rather than the rule. I think we have to think about what is of real importance to New Zealanders, and then we say: “That’s important to us, this is something we want to share, and it should be available to everyone.” By the way, all of that should be captioned—that is not in this bill—so that it is accessible to everyone. The reality is that with the changes in the media environment and with electronic equipment and filming equipment, it is actually getting much, much cheaper to film these events and to broadcast them on a variety of mediums.

So it is quite possible that the cost of that will come down. The real cost that we would have to investigate would be the support for sport in schools and for some of these sporting clubs. What I do like about this bill is that it includes women’s sports as well as men’s sports. I think that is really important. Of course, the Green Party would have to consider what the full cost implications would be, but I think it is safe to say that if something is important to New Zealanders, we can get behind it. Everybody should be able to watch these sporting games, and we should find a way to make it happen, because it is possible.

Hon Peseta SAM LOTU-IIGA (National—Maungakiekie): It is an honour to speak on this bill, and can I acknowledge the member Mr Mitchell for bringing the bill, because I know where his heart is on this. I know that he cares about New Zealand sport. He cares about the New Zealand public and how they view sport, the relationship between New Zealanders and sport, and how important it is to the social fabric of our nation. However, I think he gets this bill extremely wrong. He gets it wrong in terms of what it is trying to achieve, and, in fact, the consequences of this bill could be quite damaging to many of the sports that he talks about. Although his intentions are good, the bill is misplaced.

I think one member has already said it correctly: we cannot go back to the days of sport being littered with ads, with delayed coverage, because it was free to air. The commercial reality of it is that sport, although we enjoy it and although it is part of our community and our lifestyle in New Zealand, is a business. New Zealand rugby is a $133 million business—

Hon Trevor Mallard: In a bad year.

Hon Peseta SAM LOTU-IIGA: —and expanding—and New Zealand rugby is a brand that all New Zealanders are proud of, and we know from correspondence from three of our major sports—New Zealand rugby, New Zealand cricket, and New Zealand netball—that rugby and cricket form 40 percent of that revenue. It is such a critical part of their operations that what Mr Mitchell is saying with this bill is that he will threaten the livelihoods of top sportspeople. This bill will threaten the livelihoods of community sports by taking that revenue away. He shakes his head, but he has not come up with any answers as to how he will cover the costs of providing for sport in this country.

He also does not explain how the costs of producing these broadcasts will be covered. Some say that it costs $180,000, for example, to cover a test match—all the production equipment, all the staff that are required—and yet how does that get funded? He also talked about All Blacks whom we need to retain within this country—top All Blacks like Ben Smith, Aaron Smith, and Kieran Read. Yet this bill will threaten their livelihoods, and, yes, they will go overseas. They are more likely to go overseas with this bill in place than they would be under the current status.

Clayton Mitchell: You need to research it. You need to do some research.

Hon Peseta SAM LOTU-IIGA: He has asked about research, and yet he refers to markets overseas and the Australian market. We all know the Australian market is very different from the New Zealand market in terms of free-to-air broadcasting and the competitiveness of that market, and how that competitiveness will not lead to revenues going to our unions or to our sports bodies through this bill. I ask him how he would pay for this. He says the debate has been around that the taxpayer also funds a lot of these sports. Well, if you look at the schedule, actually the taxpayer does not fund too many of the sports that are in the schedule. The funding for those particular sports is actually quite low. So I put it to him that the research has not been done here.

I also do not think he recognises the changing nature of the digital platform on which sports are being covered around the world.

Hon Simon Bridges: A bit complicated.

Hon Peseta SAM LOTU-IIGA: It is a little complicated. We are more and more seeing sports being streamed on the internet, where people are able to pay to watch individual sports events, and also pay to see their favourite sports team, whether it be the All Blacks or New Zealand cricket or New Zealand netball, online. Those are the things that are changing within the sports market, within the broadcasting market, that I think this bill ignores.

I just want to say, again, in summary, that although I agree with the intentions of this bill, I think this bill is flawed. I think this is going back to an age where—we are just not going there, in terms of the Government. In terms of the Opposition parties, I have heard members opposite criticise this bill. We are moving forward with sport in this country. It is a big business. It is community driven. This bill is a step to the past; it is not looking to the future.

CLARE CURRAN (Labour—Dunedin South): There has been a lot of passion expressed in the House tonight on this bill, so I am going to be the the voice of reason. We do not support this bill. It gives me no pleasure to say that to New Zealand First, as I have got a lot of respect for those members’ guts and their values, and it is a decision that is not made lightly. But it is the right one, and here is why.

Firstly, we get that many people in New Zealand are pissed off that they have to pay $100 or more a month to watch live sport. We get that there are many New Zealanders who cannot afford to pay that money and feel locked out. I am not going to be an apologist here tonight for the dominance that Sky has on our small market, and for what I consider to be a model that is becoming outdated. I know it is grappling with that right now. Its subscriptions have been dropping—that is in the public arena. The advent of Netflix, YouTube—if you are under 40, you watch YouTube; you do not watch television. Well, is anyone here under 40? Ha, ha—Peeni Henare raises his hand. He is an outlier.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): Generation X.

CLARE CURRAN: Secondly—ha, ha—we get that, in other comparable jurisdictions, such as Australia, Canada, and the UK, there are requirements for live, free-to-air sport. In each of those jurisdictions sport and broadcasting systems have significantly more financial support than they do currently in New Zealand.

Thirdly, we get that there are sports of national significance that are part of our psyche. We acknowledge that there is an issue of fairness. But here is why we cannot support it, Clayton Mitchell. It is that it is completely naive and unworkable. To actually bring this bill into law would be a massive cost—a massive cost—to New Zealand, costing over $100 million. That is money that could be used for more elective surgeries, for more teachers for our schools, for more affordable homes, and for many other things.

Just on that, Labour wants to lead Government; therefore, we have to be responsible about what we can support. I think Trevor Mallard said that there is a higher test around honesty, but there is also a test around workability, and we have to be conscious of that. Our priority is public broadcasting—public interest media—which is an argument for the notion that every citizen should be able to access their culture, to be able to have free public broadcasting that is a multimedia service that operates across all platforms, not driven by commercial interests, and we consider that to be essential to our democracy.

It is fascinating when you listen to people giving their valedictory speeches in this Parliament, because almost to a one of them they mention the importance of media and its fundamental importance to democracy, which John Key said in this House tonight. A lot of members leaving this House say that having public interest media is critical to our democracy. Well, that Government does not invest in public interest media. That is the Government that has starved Radio New Zealand of funding for 8 years, that has starved NZ On Air of funding for 8 years, that is starving our culture of funding for 8 years.

Sport is a fundamental part of our culture, yes. But it is one part of our culture. What we need is an investment in a public interest media framework that truly does mean that we value New Zealanders, that we value the fact that there should be an investment in journalism, in current affairs, in culture, in programming that reflects everyone around New Zealand, no matter where they live, no matter whether they live in a city or in regional New Zealand, and that actually puts a value on that. Sport is an important part of that, but it is not the only part.

DAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): I rise on behalf of the ACT Party in opposition to this bill. I could not help but wonder when Julie Anne Genter was speaking: what would she do if it came down to a choice between pay-per-view sport or sport that was funded by the advertising of sugary drinks? What would she do with that particular dilemma? I have no idea, but it was clear that she did not really support the bill anyway.

I would like to compliment the Labour Party for taking a principled view on this bill, but from New Zealand First we could not expect any better. There are people who come into politics for purely populist reasons and people who come into politics to make better public policy, and this is a classic example of purely populist—

Hon Simon Bridges: They don’t know why they came into politics.

DAVID SEYMOUR: That is a very good point from Simon Bridges. They may not know at all. But I can tell them why they are there. It is for purely populist politics and nothing to do with making better public policy. What this bill would do is take the owners of private property, of brands, of events, and of institutions, and take away their right to sell their property to another private interest that still more New Zealanders have paid to consume a product from. If we start going down that track, well, there are just so many examples of different things in New Zealand that are produced by private enterprise, that constitute private property, that other New Zealanders choose to consume, and that in theory we could apply this concept to.

Take, for example, the agricultural sector and the food sector in New Zealand. Well, why should we stop at sport when we could have “free to eat”? There are lots of people who want lots of food that is produced by all sorts of businesses, and if you do not care about the property rights of all of those people who work and produce and invest—just like New Zealand First does not care about the New Zealand Rugby Union, does not care about Netball New Zealand, does not care about New Zealand Cricket or any of their rights. Why should we not just take away the rights in the property of the entire food sector? We could call it “free to eat”.

But what about the clothing sector? There are a lot of people who want to wear Karen Walker. I know that Simon Bridges is one of them. Yet why should we not have a “free to wear” policy? Karen Walker does not deserve the property rights for the business that she has built up over a long period of time! With a forthcoming member’s bill from New Zealand First, “Free to Wear”, everybody can have Karen Walker jewellery and clothing, and bugger the property rights of New Zealand businesses!

What about entertainment? What about Adele’s concert? Why should she be able to come to New Zealand and charge people?

Paul Foster-Bell: What about Bieber?

DAVID SEYMOUR: “What about Justin Bieber?”, I hear from Paul Foster-Bell. Paul Foster-Bell wants to know why he cannot have free tickets to Justin Bieber. Why should Justin Bieber be allowed to come to New Zealand and sell his tickets only to people who actually pay to go to his concert? It is an outrage! We should have “free to Belieb”. People should be able to get free Justin Bieber tickets for the good of our nation.

What about cars? We should have “free to drive”. Why should private businesses be able to import cars into New Zealand and sell them only to people who pay to buy them? This is an outrage! We should have a “free to drive” policy so that everybody can freely drive cars funded by the taxpayer or by advertising.

If you take it to its logical conclusion, this New Zealand First bill has no respect for property rights, no respect for business, no respect for individual choice and free enterprise. It takes us back to a world where we are all watching the same, where we are all wearing the same, we are all going to the same concerts, we are all getting the same entertainment, we are all driving the same cars—all of the things that are allowed by the Government. This bill is actually communist. It actually takes away the property rights of private enterprise and gives it to people by Government fiat.

I know New Zealand First would love to take us back to the 1970s. I know that they would like to go back to those grey old days of New Zealand, but the reality is that today we live in a prosperous, diverse, property-owning, business-building liberal democracy. I am very proud of that and proud to oppose this—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): Order! The member’s time has expired.

LOUISA WALL (Labour—Manurewa): Tēnā koe e Te Māngai o Te Whare. It is my pleasure to speak on the Broadcasting (Games of National Significance) Amendment Bill. I would like to acknowledge Clayton Mitchell, whose name this bill is under, but I think he missed a couple of words from the title. He assumes that the games should be “for free” and also “live”. The sport and recreation industry has an economic value on it, and I found a Lincoln University report that was published in 2015 that basically said it was worth $5 billion. This is the sport and recreation industry: there are all the national sporting organisations; the physical and human infrastructure, which is all the stadiums—they are worth another $800 million; and the market value of volunteers is about $1 billion. So, in total, the sport and recreation sector is worth $5 billion.

The value of broadcasting to that industry, to produce, deliver, and screen sport live on Sky, is worth $175 million. That is incredibly relevant when we look at the intention of this piece of legislation. Rugby, in 2015—I looked at the annual report—its income was $133.7 million. Of that, 0.5 percent was received from the Government. It is really interesting to know why the Government invested that $670,000 in rugby, and it was actually to support tier 2 sports, which are the Rugby Sevens teams, both the men’s and the women’s. The contribution of the Government to rugby, which is a 123-year-old institution in our country, was $670,000. So the shortfall, if we were to take away the revenue from Sky, would actually be $52.8 million. So maybe the person who has proposed the legislation, Clayton Mitchell, can answer the question of who is going to provide that $52.8 million to the Rugby Union.

I have found it quite interesting, this whole debate, because, as I said before, the premise is that there is not free-to-air screening of sport in New Zealand, and it is not true. Of the sports that are listed, there was 96 percent coverage for Prime Television across New Zealand. Rugby World Cup matches—for the last Rugby World Cup, the opening match, the quarter-final, the semi-final, and the final were live, and it was free. All Cricket World Cup matches—well, the semi-final and the final—were live and they were free. All domestic one-day cricket internationals—same; they were live and they were free. And all Football World Cup matches involving New Zealand, last time we played, were live and free. The All Blacks tests against the Lions, who are coming soon—they are not going to be live, but, actually, there will be delayed coverage on Sky. So everyone who wants to watch those three All Blacks tests in June will be able to—coverage will start an hour after kick-off.

So the whole premise of this bill is that sport is not free and that New Zealanders do not have access to sport in this country. That is not true; it is a fallacy, and I want to articulate why those sports are provided to New Zealanders. It is because Sky and the codes themselves want all New Zealanders to be able to access sport in New Zealand. I mean, I know, as we all do, the value of sport. I have played sport. I have got a history of international sport. I woke up this morning, and it was incredibly interesting—I am not sure whether people saw, but Cricket Australia is going to increase its women players’ annual retainer by 227 percent. Currently, those women get $79,000 a year; they are going to get $179,000, and in 2021 they will get $210,000—this is the women. Why? They got $590 million worth of broadcasting rights from Channel 9 and Channel Ten.

So what do I expect will happen to some of our codes that are getting money from Sky, to ensure that their sport continues to development and thrive? Actually, what I am hoping for in New Zealand is that there will be more opportunities for women’s sport and for women to be professional athletes. This bill undermines the integrity of that intent, not only by cricket but, I know, by rugby and other codes in New Zealand. Kia ora.

PAUL FOSTER-BELL (National): Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker, for the opportunity to make a brief contribution in this debate on Clayton Mitchell’s Broadcasting (Games of National Significance) Amendment Bill. I am not going to engage in quite the same level of invective that the ACT Party leader, David Seymour, did, although I do concur with his basic supposition that—

Hon Simon Bridges: That it’s communist.

PAUL FOSTER-BELL: —this bill is communism. I have to say that this is ironic, given that earlier in the day Mr Mitchell made allegations that our colleague Mr Scott Simpson’s bill on giving high earners some choice around the negotiations in their employment contracts—in the ability to negotiate out of protection that may be provided in the case of personal grievance—was fascism. I think we have to be very careful when we hurl these sorts of terms across the House, because when one accuses another member of fascism—these terms should be reserved for when things are actually fascistic, otherwise we run the risk of being the boy who cried wolf.

But, in this case, I do agree with the basic supposition of Mr Seymour’s that this is a communistic measure, and that it seeks to socialise, I think, what entertainment is. Since when did the ability to turn on the television and enjoy one’s favourite form of entertainment become a human right? I quite enjoy House of Cards, for instance, or that wonderful new TV series, The Crown, which shows our glorious monarch, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth from her early years—

Hon Simon Bridges: What about that Prince Philip though, eh?

PAUL FOSTER-BELL: Oh, Prince Philip—he was quite a good looker in his youth, was he not, Simon? But, the monarch and her family—this is the most expensive TV series produced in history. It cost over $100 million to produce it. And it would not have been able to be produced in such glorious high-definition splendour, with wonderful sets, amazing costuming, and the best actors available—John Lithgow’s portrayal of Sir Winston Churchill, for instance, is masterful—if it were not for Netflix subscribers contributing their $15 or so a month to enable them to access that subscription service.

In the same way, if we want to see high-quality sports in this country, and if we want to have a national rugby team that is able to continue to be the best in the world, and if we want to have netball teams and cricket teams that are performing at their absolute maximum capacity, then they have to be appropriately funded. Like other members, I am sure, I have received combined correspondence from the Rugby Union, but also from New Zealand Cricket and Netball New Zealand, outlining the significant shortfalls in funding for those codes that would occur should this bill pass. I have some grave concerns about that.

This bill does have, I suppose, a good intention: to promote the availability of live, free-to-air broadcasts. Increasingly, of course, people are accessing content on demand because the live broadcast is at an inconvenient time. We have seen this with the Rugby World Cup—when it has been played in the United Kingdom it has been at a very inconvenient time, often in the very early hours of the morning, that most of the games were played. This House considered these issues at some length when we were looking at alcohol licensing and the very sensible measure to liberalise alcohol licensing, which, in the end, certainly led to no harm. There was not a great deal of drinking actually going on, because many of the games were at 4, 5, 6, or 7 in the morning—breakfast time. People were going into the pubs to watch the games over a latte and bacon and eggs, rather than to watch them over a beer in the middle of the night.

Increasingly in this world that we live in, people want to consume their media in a method and a style and in a mode of their choosing, but also at a time of their choosing. So I think the importance of the live match is something that is, Mr Mitchell, unfortunately, slowly dying. Those who really want the excitement of the live game will go down and buy their ticket for the stadium. But those of us who prefer to keep a civil timetable and go to bed at our usual time will record the match and save it for later viewing or will watch it on the delayed free-to-air coverage.

Hon Trevor Mallard: Oh dear. Oh dear.

PAUL FOSTER-BELL: I concede—I happily concede—that I am perhaps not as much of a follower of the rugby as Mr Mallard or others. There are members on this side of the House who are noted for their rugby fandom; I will watch those important games for New Zealand, but I will do so on the delayed coverage.

I seek leave, Mr Assistant Speaker, to table a letter from the New Zealand Rugby Football Union, Cricket New Zealand, and Netball New Zealand outlining their concerns on this measure—

Jami-Lee Ross: It’s public.

PAUL FOSTER-BELL: —a letter to me.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): Is this in the public domain?

Jami-Lee Ross: Yes, it is.

PAUL FOSTER-BELL: Has it been published? It was a letter sent to me.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): No. I am not accepting it.

CLAYTON MITCHELL (NZ First): Where do I start? I do not blame the National Party for not supporting this bill. In fact, when we put this legislation into the ballot, we knew that it would not. Why would a party that is in so deep with its mates at Skycity Casino ever conceive of doing something—

David Seymour: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. The member should know by now—he has been here for almost 3 years—that imputing a motive like that is against the Standing Orders.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): I am the judge of that.

CLAYTON MITCHELL: Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker. And, of course, the absolutely lunatic contribution that was made by the ranting “Captain FIGJAM” over there earlier on made no sense at all, and I will not even give it the time of day. I am going to give a metaphorical thick ear, if you like, or a metaphorical fat lip, to the Labour Party, however.

I just want to bring your attention to, dare I say it, a media release that was released on 29 March 2013 by the wonderful Clare Curran, which said: “Kiwi sports fans being ‘ripped off’—Labour. Labour’s broadcasting spokeswoman Clare Curran says Government regulation is needed to rectify New Zealanders’ lack of free-to-air television access to major sports. Her party opposes Sky TV’s buy-up of major national sports over the past decade. ‘Sky have held at bay the prospect of regulation probably for decades, and very successfully. I have said for a couple of years now that that has to stop,’ says Ms Curran. With the ink just dry on an exclusive five-year deal to show the V8 Supercar series, Sky has completed a master coup. The subscription-based channel has now bought up all of New Zealand’s major sporting series. ‘It’s a monopoly in a regulation-free environment. It’s doing all it can to boost its own revenues and the outcome ultimately is that people who can afford a Sky subscription get to see a sport and people that can’t or choose not to can’t get it and can’t get our national sports,’ says Ms Curran.”

This is yet another flip-flop from the party that thinks it is preparing itself to run this country. It is an absolute joke. We had a flip-flop earlier on today with a workplace relations amendment bill that that party’s leader said its members would maybe consider supporting—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): Order!

CLAYTON MITCHELL: —and then turned around and opposed it. Just for your information, this House, which we are in today, is a place where we make legislative changes. We are here to vote and to make people’s lives better. That is our purpose. All I heard tonight, all around the House, is the fact that you are trying to put regulation in place before we have got the legislation. This bill is about the legislation. This is about what we are doing and why we are doing it. How we are going to put it together comes afterwards.

The whole idea—your hollow, shallow, insipid words from Trevor Mallard, who said: “We support the intent of this bill. We support the intent and we would like to see it go through, but, unfortunately, it makes no sense to us.” What absolute lunacy. Why would you make a comment like that? The best thing for you to do, if you were genuine and sincere about making a difference to people’s lives, would be to get it into a select committee so that it can actually be debated, pulled apart, and actually put back together again.

We understand—we absolutely understand—that things can be tightened up and that we can do some better things. We would not even mind if we had some oversight by the Minister, as long as it was not the Hon Simon Bridges. The reality is that some ministerial oversight—which can ultimately change the outcome of which sports we deem to be significant or not—can come later on.

The fact that you are all talking about what the cost of this bill is going to involve is absolutely ridiculous. We are at a stage of deciding whether it is fit for purpose. The reality is in Australia—

Louisa Wall: They’re already free, and most of them are live.

CLAYTON MITCHELL: Louise, you just mentioned earlier on about—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): Order!

CLAYTON MITCHELL: —Louisa, sorry—Channel 7 and Channel 9 allowing people to get a higher payment with netball. They are both free-to-air channels. They broadcast both live and free to air.

This is around the fact that we, as New Zealanders, spend nearly $1 billion every single year on sports and recreation. Because it is so significant to all of our country folk—to our people around this country—we need to make sure that we have got the ability to have access to it live and free to air. It does not mean it is going to be free.

Debate interrupted.

The House adjourned at 10 p.m.