Tuesday, 9 May 2017

TUESDAY, 9 MAY 2017

TUESDAY, 9 MAY 2017

Mr Speaker took the Chair at 2 p.m.

Prayers.

Points of Order

Crimes (Blasphemy Repeal) Amendment Bill—Leave for Introduction and Setting Down as Members’ Order of the Day No. 1

DAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I seek leave to introduce the Crimes (Blasphemy Repeal) Amendment Bill, a member’s bill in my name, and for the bill to be set down as members’ order of the day No. 1.

CHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka): I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. This morning I tabled an amendment to the Statutes Repeal Bill, which will be debated on Thursday. It has the effect of doing exactly what Mr Seymour’s bill proposes, without needing to waste the time of the House with a whole other bill.

Mr SPEAKER: I thank the member, but I will be putting the leave, and the House will decide.

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS (Leader—NZ First): I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. To be able to make a judgment, as we are being asked, we need to have seen the bill. Given the propensity of this member to make so many mistakes when it comes to—

Mr SPEAKER: Order! No. I need no further assistance. Leave has been sought. Is there any objection to that course of action being followed? There is objection.

Oral Questions

Questions to Ministers

Economy—Growth, Resilience, Vulnerabilities, and “NEETs”

1. Hon JO GOODHEW (National—Rangitata) to the Minister of Finance: What recent reports has he received on the status of the New Zealand economy?

Hon STEVEN JOYCE (Minister of Finance): This morning the International Monetary Fund (IMF) released two reports on New Zealand, and the outlook in both is positive. It broadly endorsed our macro-economic and fiscal policy settings. The IMF predicts that the economy will grow over 3 percent in 2017-18. It dips slightly after that, but the IMF expects it to remain strong out to 2022. I would note that Treasury’s own Half Year Economic and Fiscal Update near-term growth forecasts are slightly stronger than the IMF’s, but, whichever forecast you choose, this is a positive endorsement of this Government’s strong economic plan and careful management of the economy since late 2008.

Hon Jo Goodhew: How are ordinary New Zealanders likely to benefit from this growth?

Hon STEVEN JOYCE: Last week the household labour force survey showed that unemployment had fallen to 4.9 percent. That means there were 29,000 more people in employment than there were in the previous quarter, and, once again, our employment rate was at record highs. This is a very good achievement. I am further pleased to report that the IMF, in its report, expects that the unemployment rate in New Zealand will stay below 5 percent for the next 5 years. This Government has worked hard over the past 8 years to consistently keep the economy growing. That has and will continue to translate into more jobs and higher incomes for New Zealanders.

Hon Jo Goodhew: How resilient is New Zealand’s financial system to severe shocks?

Hon STEVEN JOYCE: The IMF, as part of the Financial Sector Assessment Program, modelled New Zealand’s residents to four key vulnerabilities: the housing market, debt levels in the agricultural sector, the banking system’s dependence on overseas funding, and our ongoing vulnerability to natural disasters. It found that New Zealand has the capacity to withstand any adverse events brought on by those risks. The Government has learnt a valuable lesson from the global financial crisis and the Canterbury earthquakes: unforeseen shocks are far easier to cope with when public debt is low. That is why we intend to reduce Government net debt to between 10 and 15 percent of GDP by 2025.

Hon Jo Goodhew: What further work did the IMF recommend be undertaken to further shore up the financial system?

Hon STEVEN JOYCE: Firstly, the IMF acknowledged the significant progress that has been made in strengthening the financial regulatory system. It recommended that further work be undertaken in the prudential policy area. The Reserve Bank and other agencies have made good progress on a number of these matters, including the proposed debt-to-income lending ratios, bank capital requirements, the review of the Insurance (Prudential Supervision) Act, and the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment’s (MBIE’s) review of the Financial Advisers Act. Our goal is to ensure that New Zealand has the capacity to absorb shocks, without extra taxes and without slashing entitlements.

Darroch Ball: Does the Minister agree with the Prime Minister, when addressing the 20 percent increase under the National Government of young people not in employment, education, or training (“neets”), that it is a puzzle and “the challenge is just finding them”, or Paul Goldsmith, who said: “They are just having some time off and having some fun.”?

Hon STEVEN JOYCE: Well, I agree with the Prime Minister that it is a puzzle, but it is an interesting puzzle, because if you look at the figures it actually shows—and if the member perhaps would like to look at the figures—that the number of people in the 15 to 24-year age group since those numbers went up is actually the biggest explanation for those numbers increasing. In fact, if you look at the number of young people who are unemployed and not in education as a percentage of the total cohort, it is actually slightly lower than the adult population unemployment rate.

Darroch Ball: How can he agree with the Prime Minister that the challenge is finding these young people, when a 2016 Treasury report clearly states that data specifically targeting all school-leaver “neets” is held by the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Social Development (MSD) and passed on to contracted youth service providers in every single region?

Hon STEVEN JOYCE: Well, the member did not listen to the answer to the previous supplementary question, in that, actually, the very things that he is talking about—which the Government is doing, and there are many in that area; he has just mentioned one—are actually ensuring that the rate of youth unemployment, as measured by the number of people who are not in education who are unemployed, is actually lower as a percentage of the total cohort than the adult population. So that is a sign that things are working, but, of course, the puzzle we have got is to get it down to zero.

Coalmining—Conservation Land, Climate Change, and Native Species

2. JAMES SHAW (Co-Leader—Green) to the Minister of Conservation: Would she like to see more coal mining on conservation land?

Hon NICKY WAGNER (Associate Minister of Conservation): on behalf of the Minister of Conservation: There is no black or white answer to this question. A third of the country is in conservation estate, and on the West Coast it is nearly 85 percent. So of course mining has always been part of the picture. But in a rapidly changing world we need to have a thoughtful, nuanced, and intelligent conversation about this.

James Shaw: Given that Bathurst Resources paid the Department of Conservation (DOC) $22 million to mine the Denniston Plateau for coal, does the Minister still think that it is OK for coalmining companies to pay off DOC to let them dig up the very conservation land that DOC is there to protect?

Hon NICKY WAGNER: No; that did not happen.

James Shaw: Why is her Government forcing the Department of Conservation to rely on pay-offs from coalmining companies to fund core conservation work like pest and predator control?

Hon NICKY WAGNER: We are not.

James Shaw: Does the Minister agree with the Department of Conservation that “Climate change poses a significant risk to New Zealand’s native species and ecosystems.”?

Hon NICKY WAGNER: This Government is absolutely committed to protecting taonga species, but all endemic species as well. That is why we are doing Predator Free 2050 and why we will be launching a threatened species strategy tomorrow.

James Shaw: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker.

Mr SPEAKER: I can imagine what the point of order is. I am going to invite the member to repeat that question, for the benefit of the Minister.

James Shaw: Thank you, Mr Speaker. Does the Minister agree with the Department of Conservation that “Climate change poses a significant risk to New Zealand’s native species and ecosystems.”?

Hon NICKY WAGNER: Yes, of course climate change threatens our species, but we are also concerned about predators. That is why we are doing Predator Free 2050, and that is why we are also launching a threatened species strategy tomorrow.

James Shaw: Does the Minister agree with the scientific journal Nature that 82 percent of already known coal reserves cannot be burned if the world is to hold global warming to less than 2 degrees?

Hon NICKY WAGNER: Yes, of course we listen very carefully to what is being said by scientists internationally, and, as I said at the very beginning of this discussion, no decisions have been made on coalmining on the coast. What is more, in a rapidly changing world, we need to have a thoughtful, intelligent, and nuanced discussion about it. [Interruption]

Mr SPEAKER: Order! [Interruption] Order! Mr Smith. Supplementary question—James Shaw.

James Shaw: Does the Minister agree with the Collins English Dictionary that the definition of “conservation” is the “protection, preservation, and careful management of … the environment”?

Hon NICKY WAGNER: Yes, she does, and I think that is why she enjoys being that Minister.

James Shaw: Well then, can she explain to the House how coalmining in a kiwi habitat supports the Department of Conservation’s Kiwi Recovery Plan?

Hon NICKY WAGNER: I will repeat: no decisions have been made, and, in a rapidly changing world, we have to have an intelligent, thoughtful, and nuanced discussion around these issues.

James Shaw: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. My supplementary question was asking the Minister to explain how coalmining supports the Department of Conservation’s Kiwi Recovery Plan. The Minister did not address that question.

Mr SPEAKER: The question itself was addressed, because the question started with “can the Minister explain”. That gives very wide licence to a Minister in trying to explain. The member might not like the explanation, but the question has been addressed.

Mental Health Services—Adequacy of Provision

3. ANDREW LITTLE (Leader of the Opposition) to the Prime Minister: Does he stand by his response when asked did he think he was failing New Zealanders in mental health, “No no, I don’t think we are failing New Zealanders”; if so, is he saying that mental health services in New Zealand are in an acceptable state?

Rt Hon BILL ENGLISH (Prime Minister): Yes. Ensuring New Zealanders get access to the mental health services they need continues to be a priority for this Government, in full recognition of the growing demand and complexity of meeting all mental health needs, but there is always more to do.

Andrew Little: Is he aware that the number of people needing mental health services has risen 60 percent under his Government, while mental health funding has risen less than half as much?

Rt Hon BILL ENGLISH: There is plenty of measurement now that shows there is much greater awareness and more measured prevalence of mental illness. But, of course, services have expanded. For instance, the number of people treated for alcohol and other drug addictions, including methamphetamine, has almost doubled—almost doubled—to 48,000 since 2008-09.

Andrew Little: What is his reply to Nancy Dally, a mental health nurse with 40 years’ experience, who says: “it’s worse than I’ve ever seen it before. Nurses can work up to 15 hours a day, double shifts, on a regular basis because we’re so short staffed, and we’re short of doctors.”?

Rt Hon BILL ENGLISH: Overall, there are a great deal more doctors and nurses in the health system, and I would suggest that if staff are under that kind of pressure, they need to be consulting with their employers about the suitability of working those hours. We fully understand that there is pressure on facilities and staff, and that is why the spending on mental health continues to grow, but, bear in mind, it is not just about acute mental health services. There is a great deal that is being done—and more to be done—in prevention and in dealing with the large pool of people who are designated as having some mental illness and who are in the welfare system.

Andrew Little: What is his reply to the person quoted in the People’s Mental Health Report as saying they cannot get the help they need unless they are on the verge of suicide, and “I guess the budget doesn’t stretch to hope.”?

Rt Hon BILL ENGLISH: If they are feeling that kind of distress, of course we would want them to get the help they need. The member probably does realise, though, that in some cases there are differences of view over what help is appropriate and when that help is best available. We have skilled professionals in the mental health area who are always called on to make difficult judgments, and sometimes families and patients do not agree with those judgments. [Interruption]

Mr SPEAKER: Order! There is a significant level of interjection coming from both front benches. It will cease.

Andrew Little: Does he agree with his Minister of Health that the 500 people who shared their stories with the People’s Mental Health Review, including many who have lost family members to suicide, are “left-wing, anti-Government protesters”?

Rt Hon BILL ENGLISH: I do not believe the Minister was referring to those people in that way.

Andrew Little: Does he acknowledge that in addition to a lack of funding in mental health, there is also a lack of coordination and access, meaning that people do not know which door to knock on when they need help, and, too often, the police and the justice system end up picking up the pieces?

Rt Hon BILL ENGLISH: The issues around the overlap with the police and the justice system are well understood and are being acted on, because, in some cases, people have been dealt with inappropriately. But we are being much more creative about them than saying that—in the case of the member’s policy—the best thing you can do for Māori who are caught up in the justice system is to give them their own prison.

Andrew Little: After 9 years, does he really think a 5-year quality improvement initiative, starting in a couple of months, is an acceptable response when we have got doctors like Dr Anne-Marie Cullen saying: “It can’t take five years. Things will go wildly wrong.”? Can we not have some fresh thinking now, instead of in 5 years’ time?

Rt Hon BILL ENGLISH: Of course that is not the only measure, but it is an important step to take—to ensure that you have high-quality services. There is no point in having services that are not effective and do not achieve results for the patient. Alongside that initiative, of course, there is more funding for acute services and for prevention, to try to prevent people getting into the situation where they need acute services.

Pike River Mine Disaster—Drift Re-entry and Video Footage

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

Rt Hon BILL ENGLISH (Prime Minister): Yes.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Does he stand by his statement on manned re-entry into Pike River that “You can’t have no one responsible”; if so, why is it that after 6 years, no one has been held accountable for the disaster and loss of 29 lives?

Rt Hon BILL ENGLISH: While the company was actually found guilty, it was the perception that no one was held responsible that led to the changes in workplace safety law passed by this Parliament. It is somewhat ironic that that member is the one who now wants us to exempt the Pike River situation from the law we put in place because of the problems at Pike River.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Why did the Government switch to saying re-entry into the mine is not safe, when the Pike River Coal tunnel reclamation proposal of 2007, pages 6 to 8, outlined two options of reclamation that do not mention any risk of explosion?

Rt Hon BILL ENGLISH: It is not a matter of whether it is the Government’s position. It is the case that the decision not to send men back into that mine at significant risk to their lives was made by the people in charge of the workplace who would be responsible for the entry and who had extensive assessment of the safety risks and came to the view that they could not deal with all those risks. That is the decision that has been made and the Government, as it happens, agrees with the view based on that advice.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Who should the people of New Zealand trust: Paula Bennett, who claims that Pike River families were shown key parts of the video footage in 2011, or Mike Clement, Deputy Police Commissioner, who admitted that the families were not shown footage of a mine rescuer in the drift?

Rt Hon BILL ENGLISH: The two people are probably talking about different things. The Police advice was that video was shown to the families. They have not made any claims about which bits were seen and which family members were there. The video should all be, and is being, released to the families. I wish it would deal with their concerns, but it probably will not.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: When the Police say it does not know who made the decision not to show all the footage to the Pike River families, who did, because it challenges the Government’s perverse view that the mine is not safe for re-entry?

Rt Hon BILL ENGLISH: It would be great if the video footage was decisive in some way, either about what happened in the mine or about the safety of re-entry. Certainly, the advice that I have had is that it does not make any difference to those perceptions. However, it is important that the families can see that, and, therefore, that they should see all of the video. In the meantime, we are getting on with a process that will collect more and better video, with a safe unmanned entry to the mine to try to answer some of the families’ questions.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Does the footage to be shown to the families include all the borehole footage?

Rt Hon BILL ENGLISH: I am advised that all the video that has been taken will be made available to the families, and some already has. If there are further questions about what is in the mine, or evidence about what might have happened, hopefully, more questions will be able to be answered by the next step in the process, which is unmanned entry, with better technology and higher-quality video.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I asked a question that would have to be answered yes, no, or I do not know, which was to do with the specific borehole footage that the families want to see, and the Prime Minister is going everywhere but there. I want to know whether it is yes, no, or he does not know.

Mr SPEAKER: Order! On this occasion I cannot help the member. I ask him to refer to Speaker’s rulings 191(3) and (4). What that says, effectively, is if that member wants that sort of detail in his further supplementary questions, then he needs to not ask such a generalised primary question.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Ah!

Mr SPEAKER: Order! The question has been addressed by the Prime Minister, in answering the member’s supplementary question.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Did he have a memory fade when he said he was not aware of New Zealand being used as a back-door entry to Australia, given the countless times he was warned by New Zealand First of that, and even by his colleague in March of 2003, in her copycat mode—that is Katherine Rich—when she said it was being used as a back-door entry because—

Hon Dr Nick Smith: 14 years ago.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Well, that is when it happened, stupid. All right?

Mr SPEAKER: Order! The question has now been asked, and it was not helped by the interjection from the Hon Dr Nick Smith.

Rt Hon BILL ENGLISH: No.

Pharmac—Funding and Subsidised Medicines

5. Dr SHANE RETI (National—Whangarei) to the Minister of Health: Can he confirm that Budget 2017 will invest an extra $60 million over 4 years to enable Pharmac to provide more New Zealanders with access to new medicines?

Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN (Minister of Health): Yes, indeed. Improving access to medicines is a key priority for the Government, and this injection will mean that Pharmac’s budget has increased by $220 million, from $650 million in 2008 to $870 million per year in Budget 2017. Over our time in Government, 820,000 New Zealanders have benefited from 414 new and widened-access medicines that this funding has provided, and it is important to note that last year 3.5 million New Zealanders received a funded medicine.

Dr Shane Reti: Can he confirm any details of the latest round of treatments that Pharmac is looking to fund thanks to the Government’s investment?

Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: Yes, I am able to. Pharmac has commenced consultation on a new package of medicines, including anti-infective drugs, earlier access to four HIV anti-retrovirals, a medicine to benefit 5,000 children with neurodevelopmental disorders, as well as new medicines for cancer and cardiovascular conditions. All up, over 33,000 New Zealanders will benefit directly from this latest package, and it just proves that the Government and Pharmac are delivering more medicines for more New Zealanders on an ongoing basis.

Dr David Clark: Can he confirm that the cancer drug he has just mentioned, which was funded for lung cancer, was described last year in a Pharmac report as having no clinically meaningful health gains, that Australia has had that same drug for 12 years, and that this week he has announced he is funding it?

Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: What I can confirm is that I take the expert advice of the scientists and doctors at Pharmac over the doctor of divinity over there.

Dr David Clark: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker.

Mr SPEAKER: This point of order will be heard in silence.

Dr David Clark: I did ask quite a specific question, and it was around a specific treatment. The answer was dismissive, and the Minister does tend to do that. When he is out of depth, he goes for the ad hominem answer.

Mr SPEAKER: I listened carefully to the question, and on this occasion, though the answer was not, I think, helpful to the order of the House, it certainly addressed the question, particularly the middle part, about the meaningful clinical trials. So the question was addressed.

Tax System—Potential Changes

6. GRANT ROBERTSON (Labour—Wellington Central) to the Minister of Finance: Why did he say recently, “I wouldn’t be characterising anything we do primarily as tax cuts”, and would he still agree with former Prime Minister the Rt Hon John Key that a meaningful tax cut package would require “$3 billion, I reckon”?

Hon STEVEN JOYCE (Minister of Finance): In answer to the first part of the question: because the statement accurately characterised my thoughts. In regard to the second part of the question, as I said to the member’s very similar question on 5 April—and I quote myself for the member—I agree with the former Prime Minister that $3 billion would certainly represent a meaningful tax cut, but so would a $1 billion, $1.5 billion, or $2 billion package, depending on how it was targeted and timed.

Grant Robertson: Is the reason, then, that he would not particularly call what he is doing a “tax cut” that he knows that tax cuts that change the tax brackets for inflation since 2010 would deliver close to $18 a week to him, but only $2.38 a week to someone earning $48,000 a year?

Hon STEVEN JOYCE: Well, the member is desperately trying to prejudge what is in the Budget, but I bring him good news: he has only 16 days to wait until Budget day.

Grant Robertson: I seek the leave of the House to table a Parliamentary Library document calculating the value of a tax bracket change to a Cabinet Minister of $18 a week, and to a person earning $48,000 of $2.38 a week.

Mr SPEAKER: I will put the leave. Leave is sought to table that Parliamentary Library information. Is there any objection to it being tabled? There is not. It can be tabled.

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

Grant Robertson: Will the changes that he is planning to make in the Budget, in terms of Working for Families, make up for the $700 million per year, or $2.8 billion over 4 years, lost by families that was the result of his Government’s cuts to Working for Families in 2011?

Hon STEVEN JOYCE: The member is well ahead of himself. The Budget, of which he is trying to tell me what I have already written in, is apparently not until 25 May, which is 16 days from now. I just invite Mr Robertson to be patient and see what turns up in the Budget.

David Seymour: Can the Minister at least assure New Zealand taxpayers that tax changes in this year’s Budget will be more substantial than Michael Cullen’s now infamous “chewing gum tax cuts”?

Hon STEVEN JOYCE: That brings to two the number of members who are well ahead of themselves in terms of the upcoming Budget on 25 May. It is good that they are excited, but I would temper their enthusiasm by saying that the Minister of Finance, whom I am acquainted with, has not made any commitment in regard to any elements of the Budget package on 25 May.

Grant Robertson: Did his Government, in 2011, lift the abatement rate on Working for Families and drop the income rate at which the abatement kicked in, thereby cutting out at least $448 million worth of spending on Working for Families?

Hon STEVEN JOYCE: I am not sure that I would agree with the member’s characterisation of the effect, but the Government did make some changes through the global financial crisis and the Canterbury earthquakes because it inherited a prediction from Treasury, as a result of the previous Government’s rather Santa Claus - like settings on a range of things, that we would have a decade of deficits from 2009 onwards. We made significant changes—

Grant Robertson: Absolute rubbish.

Hon STEVEN JOYCE: He may say it is absolute rubbish, because he has, after all, dissed Statistics New Zealand before now, and now he can add Treasury.

David Seymour: If the Minister is not prepared to say what is in the Budget, can he confirm that there will be no adjustments to tax rates?

Hon STEVEN JOYCE: Well, that will be—

Rt Hon Winston Peters: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. You will realise that there is a serious constitutional problem with this question, because the Minister of Finance is prevented by longstanding tradition, even to the extent of someone resigning in the UK way back in the late 1940s on this very matter. The Minister of Finance cannot answer that question, and I think you should, perhaps, bring the young chap up to date and tell him to get in line and get in the zone of what is allowed here.

Mr SPEAKER: I do not need any more. The question is in order, and the Minister can address it.

Hon STEVEN JOYCE: For the benefit of the member, and also to the member opposite and the member opposite over there, it is not long to wait until the Budget on 25 May. In the meantime, I will keep my counsel on what exactly is in it.

Grant Robertson: Can he at least reassure New Zealanders that his families package will make up for the $2.8 billion that has been cut from Working for Families as a result of the changes his Government made?

Hon STEVEN JOYCE: What I can do is reassure New Zealanders that this Government is absolutely and constantly aware that all the money that it receives, with which we get to vote in the Budget, comes from the pockets of hard-working Kiwis, and it is very careful with it. Mr Robertson’s road to Damascus conversion of concern for Kiwi taxpayers is very recent, and I think New Zealanders will understand that.

KiwiSaver HomeStart—First-home Buyers

7. Dr PARMJEET PARMAR (National) to the Minister for Building and Construction: How many people have purchased a first home with the assistance of the Government’s KiwiSaver HomeStart in year one and year two of the scheme?

Hon Dr NICK SMITH (Minister for Building and Construction): Over 11,000 were assisted in the first year, with grants of $56 million. Over 15,000 were assisted in year 2, with $73 million in grants. The scheme is on track to grow to $100 million a year of support for first-home buyers and by 2020 it will have assisted 90,000 New Zealanders into homeownership.

Dr Parmjeet Parmar: Are the Government’s changes to KiwiSaver enabling easier access to funds helping young people into homeownership?

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: Yes, and dramatically so. The withdrawal of KiwiSaver funds has increased from $201 million in 2015, to $457 million in 2016, to $627 million in the last year. In fact, if you combine the KiwiSaver withdrawals with the HomeStart grants, the scheme is now providing over $700 million a year in supporting first-home buyers and is making up approximately one-third of that used by first-home buyers to pull together a deposit for their home.

Dr Parmjeet Parmar: Noting the huge growth in new home construction from 13,000 a year to 30,000 a year, is there an increase in first-home buyers using KiwiSaver Homestart for new homes?

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: Yes, there is. An increasing portion of the KiwiSaver HomeStart support is going on new homes. In the first year it was $9 million or 17 percent; in the second year it was $16 million or 22 percent—i.e. HomeStart is also helping funding the strong growth in new home construction.

Housing Infrastructure Fund—Number of Houses Built and Debt

8. PHIL TWYFORD (Labour—Te Atatū) to the Minister for Infrastructure: How many houses, if any, have been completed as a result of the Housing Infrastructure Fund since it was announced in July last year?

Hon STEVEN JOYCE (Minister for Infrastructure): The answer is none yet, but I think the member may misunderstand how the fund works. It is a form of bridging finance to help—

Rt Hon Winston Peters: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. Sadly, there was such a lot of noise that I did not hear the answer to that question; could we have it again?

Mr SPEAKER: No, the question has been answered, but the Minister can complete his answer if he wants.

Hon STEVEN JOYCE: As I said, I think the member may misunderstand how the fund works. It is a form of bridging finance to help debt-constrained councils put infrastructure in place so that houses can be built. It does not pay for houses to be built.

Phil Twyford: Is the lack of progress because the fund was rushed through in a matter of weeks to invent something for the Prime Minister’s speech after a short brainstorming session with political staff?

Hon STEVEN JOYCE: No. I appreciate the member’s latest conspiracy theory, but, actually, councils have been working through a process where they submit proposals for a share of the fund. Those proposals closed on 31 March of this year, they are currently being assessed, and the decisions will be announced and allocated to councils later this year. The good news, though, for the member is that, in the meantime, housing construction is at record levels and the construction workforce is at record levels, and that is good news for Auckland housing and housing around the country.

Phil Twyford: I seek leave to table an email obtained under the Official Information Act from a staffer in the Minister of Finance’s office floating the idea for the infrastructure fund just 2 weeks before the Prime Minister announced it.

Mr SPEAKER: The date of the email?

Phil Twyford: The date of the email is 13 June 2016.

Mr SPEAKER: Leave is sought to table that particular email. Is there any objection? There is no objection.

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

Phil Twyford: Was Treasury correct when it advised—and I quote—“…these are not proposals by officials. These were ideas that were brainstormed and discussed in that light. We have not done sufficient analysis to be able to provide concrete advice” and that the fund “is not likely to result in additional housing”?

Hon STEVEN JOYCE: I think the member’s criticism could be characterised as having two limbs. One is that we work too quickly and, secondly, that Ministers may come up with ideas—guilty on both counts.

Phil Twyford: Why did the Auditor-General advise that the debt from the fund should be recorded on the council’s balance sheet—thus making redundant the very reason for the policy—when he gloated in the House only a few weeks ago that it would not, or is the Auditor-General wrong?

Hon STEVEN JOYCE: I would have to check back in the Hansard. I did not gloat at all about where the debt would be held. The simple fact of the matter is that if you have a debt, it appears on your balance sheet.

Phil Twyford: Is the lack of progress from his infrastructure fund because he has spent the last 11 months scrambling around with Auckland Council officials trying to salvage a policy that would have loaded more debt on to a council that is already up against its debt ceiling?

Hon STEVEN JOYCE: In answer to the first part of the member’s question, I think the member misheard me, because, actually, we have been making good progress. But in terms of Auckland’s debt, Auckland Council does have a challenge in debt at the moment. As I have said to the member previously, its income has grown substantially over the last couple of years—from $3.5 billion in revenue 2 years ago to $4 billion in revenue today—except, unfortunately, because its expenditure has gone up so much over the same period, it does not have debt-ceiling room to do the sorts of things it needs to do, and should be doing, as a fast-growing council. So we have stepped in to help, and in this way we have offered, as with a number of fast-growth councils, interest-free debt on behalf of the taxpayers of New Zealand, which I think is actually a pretty fair and reasonable deal to help it build its infrastructure.

Phil Twyford: Was the call for final proposals correct in that councils will still be working on business cases for the fund this December; if so, how does he expect that a fund that takes a year and a half to even fund anything, let alone build anything, is going to help the housing crisis?

Hon STEVEN JOYCE: In relation to the fund, Governments have this weird thing: we do not just give away money to people; we actually require some sort of arrangement to be agreed between the council and the Government. I appreciate that the Labour Party never adopted that approach, but that is our approach. But in relation to the so-called housing crisis, I think Mr Twyford needs to update his talking points. We have record construction, we have record numbers working in the construction workforce, we have record numbers of apartments being built in Auckland, and we have prices in Auckland now buttoning off and steady. The member needs to update his view of the world.

Education—Additional Learning Support

PAUL FOSTER-BELL (National): My question is to the Minister of Education and—[Interruption]

Mr SPEAKER: Order! If I hear a further interjection from the Hon Nick Smith today, I am going to be asking him to leave the Chamber.

9. PAUL FOSTER-BELL (National) to the Minister of Education: What recent announcements has the Government made about funding for services for children who require additional learning support?

Hon NIKKI KAYE (Minister of Education): I am pleased to advise the House that as part of Budget 2017 the Government has committed an additional $34.7 million over the next 4 years to provide additional behaviour services to children with behaviour difficulties. I am also pleased to advise that this Government has also committed $6 million to provide targeted and specialist support to 3 and 4-year-olds with oral language needs who are at risk of literacy difficulties.

Paul Foster-Bell: How many extra children will have access to these services?

Hon NIKKI KAYE: I am pleased to confirm that the behaviour services initiative will provide behaviour support for an additional thousand children aged up to 8 years who behave in ways that negatively affect themselves or others. This is on top of the 5,000 children who already receive specialist behaviour support each year. We expect that, overall, up to 50,000 children will have access to enhanced language support. Around 7,600 of these children, with the highest needs, will receive more targeted support, including support from speech language therapists for around 1,900 children.

Paul Foster-Bell: What difference will these services make to children?

Hon NIKKI KAYE: Every child in New Zealand deserves a fair chance in life, and this is about providing more support for some of our most vulnerable children. By providing more support earlier for those children with behavioural or language challenges, we are reducing disruption in the classroom and helping more young children into a positive path in learning. This is a Government investing significantly in improving our education system and supporting more of our most vulnerable children.

Auckland Property Investors Association—Allegations of Improper Practice

10. MICHAEL WOOD (Labour—Mt Roskill) to the Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs: What action, if any, has she taken since learning that Ron Hoy Fong and the Auckland Property Investors Association are actively promoting practices such as the use of fake bids and false names by property investors to take advantage of vulnerable homeowners?

Hon JACQUI DEAN (Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs): When made aware of the allegations, I publicly stated my concern and said I would take advice from officials and ensure that the Commerce Commission was aware of the issue. The Commerce Commission has now said it is seeking more information and considering the issues further before making a decision on whether to launch an investigation.

Michael Wood: Will the Minister join with Labour in condemning the Auckland Property Investors’ Association for promoting these unethical practices in its member’s packs for over 1 year; and if she will not condemn them, why not?

Hon JACQUI DEAN: I note to the member that the Commerce Commission is now considering whether or not it is going to take any action on the issue the member raises. I would also note that I cannot direct the Commerce Commission. Sections 105 and 133 of the Crown Entities Act prevent me from doing that, and as there is, potentially, an investigation under way, I am unable to comment directly.

Michael Wood: If video evidence of Ron Hoy Fong telling people to put forward fake bids and use fake names and boasting about homeowners being set up is not enough for her as the Minister to take a stand on behalf of consumers, then what would it take for her to make a stand, beyond telling people to make a complaint?

Hon JACQUI DEAN: I am always concerned when matters arise where, potentially, consumers have been misled or deceived. However, I cannot direct the Commerce Commission. The Crown Entities Act provides that I should not do that, and as there is a complaint under investigation, I am not able to comment further.

Michael Wood: Is it true that while she knows that the highlighted practices are utterly unethical, she feels hamstrung by her party’s close association with property speculators, and that she is just too afraid to speak up for consumers who are being deceived?

Mr SPEAKER: Order! There is no ministerial responsibility for a political party’s associations.

Michael Wood: Has the Minister asked officials to undertake any work to assess the scope of exploitation by property speculators, given that Mr Fong’s activities have been going on for at least 3 years; if not, why not?

Hon JACQUI DEAN: I do not think we should reactively change laws based on individual cases. The beauty of the Fair Trading Act is that it encompasses all misleading and deceiving behaviour. However, I will be watching this situation, as I do with all consumer issues, and I would note that as there is an investigation currently being considered by the Commerce Commission, I am not prepared to make any further comment.

Michael Wood: Supplementary question, Mr Speaker.

Mr SPEAKER: Labour has used all its supplementary questions today.

Customs, Minister—E-gate Expansion Project

11. STUART SMITH (National—Kaikōura) to the Minister of Customs: What reports has he received regarding the eGate expansion project?

Hon TIM MACINDOE (Minister of Customs): I have been advised that 15 new e-gates have been installed and are now fully operational at Auckland Airport’s arrivals area. This brings—[Interruption] I am delighted to know that the House is as enthusiastic about this as I am. This brings the total e-gates installed nationwide to 50. This very welcome development—[Interruption] But wait—there is more. This very welcome development for passengers has been made possible due to this Government’s $6.6 million investment, to more than double e-gate capacity. The nationwide upgrade and expansion is due to be completed in June. [Interruption]

Mr SPEAKER: Order!

Stuart Smith: How do the new e-gates facilitate travel at the border?

Hon TIM MACINDOE: Our e-gates, or smart gates, as many people using them more commonly know them, make the customs—

Grant Robertson: Thank you, thank you.

Hon TIM MACINDOE: —I am delighted that Mr Robertson is enthusiastic—process faster and more intuitive, delivering a better visitor experience. The smart gates allow—[Interruption]

Mr SPEAKER: Order! Get on with it.

Hon TIM MACINDOE: The smart gates allow legitimate passengers to complete customs checks easily, therefore enabling customs officers to focus on high-risk travellers. The next generation smart gates are faster and use a single-step process, taking around 25 seconds per passenger. They are also more accurate, using 3-D technology to enhance facial recognition and eliminating the need for the passenger to stand completely still. I am delighted to tell the House that since e-gates were introduced—

Rt Hon Winston Peters: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. Most of us are renowned for our tolerance, but this is insufferable.

Mr SPEAKER: I can recall very similar questions put to a very eager Treasurer in about 1996, 1997. [Interruption] It is part of the process, I am afraid.

Foreign Affairs, Minister—Statements on Middle East

12. Dr KENNEDY GRAHAM (Green) to the Minister of Foreign Affairs: Does he stand by his reported comments that “the solution to conflict in the Middle East would be achieved by the people who live there”, and that “New Zealand should not pronounce how either party involved in Middle Eastern policy should behave”?

on behalf of the Minister of Foreign AffairsHon SIMON BRIDGES (Leader of the House): Yes. New Zealand has always said that peaceful resolution to the conflict in the Middle East will require engagement by both Israel and the Palestinians. A sustainable solution to conflict in the Middle East needs to be achieved, ultimately, by the parties.

Dr Kennedy Graham: Does the Minister agree with the Prime Minister’s comment that Security Council Resolution 2334 of 23 December was “expressing longstanding Government policy, in fact, a longstanding commonly held international view.”?

Hon SIMON BRIDGES: Yes.

Dr Kennedy Graham: In light of the Prime Minister’s comments that “I think it’s just reflective of someone brand new on the job … being fairly new into the foreign affairs area—you get to learn the Government’s positions and the language that goes with that.”, is he now of the view that describing the resolution as “premature” was incorrect?

Hon SIMON BRIDGES: I agree with the Prime Minister.

Dr Kennedy Graham: Does the Minister agree with Israel’s Prime Minister that co-sponsoring the resolution was “an act of war by New Zealand against Israel” or with the British Ambassador to the United Nations that supporting the resolution was an act of friendship with Israel?

Hon SIMON BRIDGES: Well, of course I agree with our Prime Minister that this is simply a re-statement of longstanding New Zealand policy. But can I be very clear: we are committed to moving our relationship with Israel forward. I think there is a number of exciting opportunities for us in innovation, agriculture, and the like, and that is something that we intend doing.

Annual Review Debate

In Committee

Debate resumed from 3 May on the Appropriation (2015/16 Confirmation and Validation) Bill.

Health Sector (continued)

BARBARA KURIGER (National—Taranaki—King Country): It is a pleasure to take a call in this Appropriation (2015/16 Confirmation and Validation) Bill debate on the health sector.

Since this Government came into office, health spending is up $4.3 billion, which is 6.2 percent of the economy. The New Zealand Health Strategy lays out the future direction of health, and it is a health system with a focus on prevention. It has really been good to see, over the last little while, the work that is going on between health, between education, and between all of the other departments having a look at putting the children first and doing the cross-agency work around social investment—and that process is starting.

Starting from the bottom, there is a whole lot of stuff going on for children. For a start, the free doctors visits for under-13s—that has increased almost 14 percent between July and December 2016, compared with the same period in 2014. That is a real credit, knowing that our children are able to get out and attend the doctor without parents having to find that extra financial burden of having to pay. It is also constructive to know that 99 percent of New Zealand’s GP practices have received funding to make the zero fees possible for children under 13. There are lots of doctors’ practices that are partaking in this great move.

I would also like to note that immunisation coverage for 18-month-olds is now at 95 percent. That compares with just 67 percent of 18-month-olds in 2007. That is a huge jump. That is a whole lot of children who are protected now who never were 10 years ago, and the spread and risk of some of those diseases that we do not want to see in our families are being prevented.

Moving on to the school front, we have 219 new decile 1 to 4 schools signed up for the Health Promoting Schools programme. That is 46 percent above target. That is really creditable. To think—when we look at the prevention approach, this is where the whole school community works together to address the health and well-being of students, of staff, and of the community, so everybody is on board. It takes a whole community to raise a child. Whether we are talking about education or health, everybody needs to be on board in this process, and it is really good that the schools are actually starting to get really engaged in it.

The Government is also currently in the process of co-designing a nationwide transformation of the disability support system. I would just like to put a call out to a couple of organisations in my electorate, EnrichPlus and ConneXu. They are actually working with people—helping them to live better lives—who are starting to find their own way in the world. That is one of the processes, and the other one is helping those people to integrate into the community, to get jobs. We have got a lot of employers who are quite prepared to employ people with disabilities. Having a disability does not mean that you are not able to work; it just means that sometimes some special things need to take place in the workplace to allow you to be there. I think it is fantastic, because those people want to live a really good life, like anybody else. I think it is commendable that this is going on.

I also would like to note the access to Pharmac’s medicines. There is a record $850 million—Budget 2016 invested an extra $124 million. As a result, Pharmac has widened access to HPV and varicella vaccinations. It has funded two new hepatitis medicines—

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): Order! I am just going to warn the member that we are having a slight problem with the clock. She does have only 30 seconds left.

BARBARA KURIGER: Oh, that is cool. I was wondering about that, thank you. Pharmac has increased the funding for two new hepatitis C medicines, a treatment for advanced melanoma, and patches for menopausal women. Those increases in Pharmac funding have actually given a lot of people opportunities, particularly around melanoma—to take a drug that is very effective in treating melanoma these days. So it is a pleasure to take a call on this. We can see some good things happening in health.

Dr DAVID CLARK (Labour—Dunedin North): I want to begin by acknowledging the people who presented a petition to Parliament today on a topic that was covered frequently in the annual reviews, and that is the ActionStation petition on mental health, which was led by Kyle MacDonald and Mike King. That was presented to Parliament today, along with thousands of signatures from New Zealanders, calling on the Government to act in the area of mental health. I guess we saw today what was typified across the annual reviews—a kind of arrogance that says: “We do not need to fund this. There is no problem. There is nothing to see here.” That was the response that we got across the annual reviews when we looked at mental health, which we did across all of the district health boards (DHBs) in New Zealand. That was personified today in the health Minister’s dismissal of the 500 New Zealanders who had shared their personal stories of their experiences with the mental health system. In one fell swoop, the Minister trod on those people, calling them a bunch of left-wingers and anti-Government activists.

That has typified what we have seen through this annual review process from this Government. It has dismissed at every turn the need for funding mental health services adequately. That is the kind of arrogance and the out-of-touch nature of this Government, and it is personified in that Minister who sits in the chair over there, Mr Jonathan Coleman. We see him doing that time and time again. And Bill English, of course, will not stand on him, because Bill English fears his influence in the caucus. Yes, Jonathan Coleman has ambitions for that leadership. He is waiting for Bill English to get out of the way, and Bill English is happy to let him hang out to dry with a trickle of funding and a worsening crisis in the health sector. That is why Bill English will not discipline him. That is why Bill English’s failure of leadership is being shown over and over again. [Interruption] I come back to the matter that we saw directly in the annual reviews—

Hon Dr Jonathan Coleman: I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. I believe this is a review of the 2015-16 year.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): Order! I think both members will sit down. Now you can stand up, Dr Clark. The member Dr Coleman is absolutely aware that I have just called the member Dr Clark back to the—

Hon Dr Jonathan Coleman: You haven’t said anything.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): I think the member saw me indicate to the member, and the member did—

Hon Dr Jonathan Coleman: I’ve seen nothing, I’m sorry.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): Well, I am sorry the member was not focusing.

Dr DAVID CLARK: Thank you, Mr Chair. I want to focus specifically on a couple of examples in the annual review that illustrate this point, because there has been a 60 percent increase in the demand over the last decade for mental health services in New Zealand. That is the increase in the number of users across New Zealand of mental health services. A recent example is the Kaikōura earthquake. We examined that in the review of the Canterbury District Health Board, which was presented in March, and we learnt at that stage that the chief executive of the Canterbury District Health Board had already spent $2 million of the $840,000 the Government had allocated for the year.

In March he had already spent twice as much as the Government had allocated to that particular earthquake in Kaikōura and the effects on mental health. The Government has put a little bit more money towards it since, but already the expenditure is running ahead of that. The Minister has failed to acknowledge the need that is present, particularly in Canterbury. I mean, the unbelievable thing is that the Canterbury District Health Board is funded below the national average for mental health and addiction services—below the national average. It spends, as a requirement of the Government, to a certain level above which it is funded, and then beyond that it spends more because the need is so great. Yet this Minister has the arrogance—the arrogance—to stand up and dismiss the experience of those people, and I bet plenty of those who submitted to that report were from the Canterbury DHB; the arrogance and the out-of-touch nature to just dismiss those 500 people and their experience of the mental health system in one fell swoop.

We are seeing it across all the DHBs, though. The $1.7 billion that this Government has stripped out of the health sector over the last 6 years is also apparent in my own DHB down in the south, the Southern District Health Board. It has—and we covered this as well—issued a 5 percent funding cut across all NGO providers. It has said that regardless of performance, regardless of how the NGOs are performing, over the course of the year as contracts are renewed they will all be cut by 5 percent. That is not even a failure to fund at the same level, that is not even a failure to fund wage increases; that is a cut—a cut. Services are being cut, and all of those NGOs are feeling the pinch.

The Minister knows it, but he thinks he is above it all. He thinks he is above it all. He thinks it has nothing to do with him. He can cut services in the health sector, because he does not care about them. That is what it looks like to ordinary middle New Zealand. Middle New Zealand, though, is crying out for a properly funded health service. New Zealanders demand, rightly so—and the Labour Party will support them in this—affordable access to quality health services.

Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN (Minister of Health): Well, I mean, all we really got out of that speech was just one long, unrelenting personal attack, but I do have to take issue with Mr Clark there and what he is saying there about $1.7 billion being removed from the health system. That is just factually incorrect. Basically, health funding has gone up from about $12 billion to about $16 billion per year. That is a fact, and Mr Clark knows it. So the funding has gone up. Mr Clark needs to have a greater argument in the healthcare space than just more money.

Yes, the money has gone up, but it is actually about providing more services, and there is no question that under this Government, access to services has gone up right across the board. Only today we announced that there are 6,900 more doctors and nurses in the system than there were 8 years ago—6,900. That is a huge increase. There has been a 45 percent increase in the number of senior doctors working in the New Zealand health system compared with 8 years ago. So that clearly is more resources and more services being delivered across the board.

If you talk about funding, the member talked there about his own district health board (DHB), the Southern District Health Board, and said that funding had been cut. Well, actually, last year funding went up by $32 million. It has gone up in the Southern DHB by $194 million over the last 8 years. But what is really interesting, if you look at funding per head of population—so every New Zealander is having 21 percent more spent on them, per head of population, than 8 years ago. Inflation cumulatively over that period would be about 15 percent. So in actual fact, in real terms, health funding has gone up.

Mr Clark talked a little bit about mental health there, and, you know, what we have acknowledged quite clearly is that 96,000 people were seeking access to specialist services 8 years ago; this last year it was 168,000. So that is an extra 72,000 more per year. That is a lot of people. Funding has gone up in mental health. It has gone up by $300 million per year, from $1.1 billion to $1.4 billion. This is the interesting point, actually—there are more mental health nurses working in the system than ever before. If you look at where nursing graduates are going, more of them are going into mental health than anything else. So Mr Clark can launch personal attacks—

Dr David Clark: I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. The Minister insists on using my false title, and I might like to refer to him as His Royal Highness, but I resist.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): I am prepared to rule on it now. The member did himself make that error once. The Minister in the chair has now made the error seven times. I am asking both of you to learn.

Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: Well, I think the basic point is well made—that this man has no background in healthcare and does not know what he is talking about. The one bit of advice I would give Mr Clark is to go and spend some time with Mrs King. She was an excellent health spokesperson. We had a very good rapport. Question time was entertaining. She actually had health at the top of the question list every day. You always knew—Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, you would come down and health would be question 1 or 2. Where is it now? It is question 12 on a Thursday and I think that really shows, actually, what Mr Little thinks of “Dr” Clark.

Anyway, when we look at other areas—so look, it is quite clear that the levels of appointments have gone up across the board, quite massively, from about 400,000 specialist appointments per year to 550,000. The numbers of elective surgeries have gone up per year from 120,000 to 180,000, and I think Labour should very careful when it bases its argument just around funding, because last time it was in Government it increased the funding quite dramatically but managed to deliver fewer operations each year. So it doubled the funding, and 2,000 fewer operations were being performed per year. My colleague Barbara Kuriger, the excellent member for Taranaki—King Country, was talking about free GP visits. That has been a major achievement under this Government. So free under-13s—99 percent of practices across the country are offering free under-13 visits.

Of course, what really irritates the Labour Party is that it is a National Government that has delivered the $2 billion pay equity settlement to the hardest-working, lowest-paid people in New Zealand, the New Zealand care and support workers. I can tell you, I was in a rest home in my local electorate, Anne Maree Court, the other day. You know what? Those workers on the minimum wage—20,000 of whom are going to receive a pay rise between 21 and 49 percent—were singing and dancing. I can tell you what, if Labour wants to get in the game on health, it had better come up with some policy pretty soon, because we have got a great record there of increasing services, of extra delivery, of an extra $4 billion per year.

Carmel Sepuloni: No one believes that, Minister.

Dr David Clark: No one believes you.

Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: I do not care if Labour members do not believe me, because the public of New Zealand do, and that is who really counts.

MELISSA LEE (National): I am a fairly new member of the Health Committee, and it is a real pleasure to rise to participate in debate on the Appropriation (2015/16 Confirmation and Validation) Bill in the Committee of the whole House. I just want to congratulate the Minister of Health sitting there. In terms of the Budgets, health Ministers always want more money to do more, and there is always more to do, and I just want to congratulate the Hon Dr Jonathan Coleman, because he has managed to do more—make the money stretch a heck of a lot, as well. As the Minister actually said, we now have more than 4,600 more nurses compared with 2008. That is about, you know, nearly 23,000 nurses, and we have about 8,000 more doctors who are actually full-time equivalent. That is a heck of a lot more than we used to have back in 2008. I think that putting the budget where it is actually required, on the front line of service, is actually something that this Minister has managed to do, and I congratulate him.

One of the things that I am really fascinated with is the results that we achieve in health. Recently I was talking to a friend of mine—he is actually a volunteer for me, and 3 years ago, when he was volunteering for me in the last election, he had major issues walking with me, doorknocking. He needed a hip replacement, and, you know, now he is walking much better. He is running, almost. He is so healthy. His business is actually back on track. He is earning a heck of a lot of money, because he is actually a builder. He is so very happy. He has got two brand new hips. These elective surgeries that we have managed to provide for New Zealanders is something that we should actually congratulate.

There is more access to specialists. That is actually a priority for this Government, the first specialist assessments that people are getting. There were 552,423 patients who received a first specialist assessment in 2016, a rise of almost 10,000 on the previous year. That is actually a huge increase—148,000 patients since 2008. That is a 37 percent increase, I believe. I am trying to look at the numbers here, and, you know, I am obviously not having a very successful reading ability in terms of reading numbers here. I should actually do better in numbers because I am oriental. Unfortunately, the members opposite could not even pronounce the Chinese name that they were asking a question about, anyway.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): Order! [Interruption] Order! The member will resume her seat. She will come back to the debate that is current, and she will not make comments that, if made by any other member, would result in a severe telling-off.

MELISSA LEE: I am a big supporter of the bowel screening that this Government has put in place. Budget 2016 invested $39.3 million for the start of the roll-out of the National Bowel Cancer Screening Programme, and I think it is really, really wonderful. You know, there are people who get diagnosed with cancer, and it is “the big C” that people actually worry about, and they are scared of it. The fact that we have actually introduced a screening programme—early detection means that they can actually deal to it. We have run successful programmes for early detection in terms of cervical cancer. We have also done it with breast cancer, and now is the chance for bowel cancer screening. Southern and Counties Manukau are the next district health boards (DHB) to in fact roll out the screening programme in 2017 and 2018, and the Hutt Valley and Wairarapa DHBs will receive it this July. I think it is actually wonderful that this early screening roll-out has been put in place, and that is expected to help about 500 to 700 people detect cancer so they can actually deal to it.

There have been other things that other members have mentioned. The “healthy kids” target—free for under-13s—is something that all parents up and down the country will be celebrating, because when you have a sick child it is in fact the parents who actually worry. I am very glad that the immunisation numbers are up, as well.

Reports noted.

Justice Sector

SARAH DOWIE (Chairperson of the Justice and Electoral Committee): It is an absolute pleasure to lead off the debate in respect of appropriations for the 2015-16 year in the justice space. I am exceptionally proud because, of course, we are known as the law and order party. We have a record that is exceptional in the law and order and justice space. We are visionary in respect of breaking down the silos of government to look at justice across all Government departments, to make sure we are focused on holding offenders to account, to make sure that we understand and invest in people to eliminate the drivers of crime in a social investment space, and, of course, to focus on rehabilitation.

Most importantly, we are a party that is focused on putting the victim at the centre of offending—at the heart of that offending—and making sure that victims are supported and that they feel that justice has been done in that space.

We can celebrate the fact that we are the fourth-safest country in the OECD. We do want to be No.1, and to be No.1 we need to now start really tackling the “sharp end of the wedge” crimes, such as family violence. That is where I have to acknowledge our fantastic Minister, the Minister of Justice, the Hon Amy Adams, for spearheading a portfolio of work that is quite revolutionary in this space. We acknowledge that changing the laws is not going to, in itself, get on top of the 110,000 call-outs that occurred last year in the family violence space, but we acknowledge that law change will be a platform that we can springboard off, again to hold perpetrators to account and to put victims at the centre of that offending, to support them and their families, to make them feel safe, to help them feel safe, and to make sure that behaviours are changed so that these families can lead more productive and healthy lifestyles moving forward.

I know that the Minister will talk more about family violence in the legal overhaul that she will spearhead, but some of those reforms, generally speaking, will be in respect of making protection orders more accessible and more tailored to families for their specific circumstances, and also to look at further developing property orders to make sure that victims and survivors of domestic abuse are able to stay in the family home so that they feel safe in their environment and they are not the ones who are punished from being victimised, and also, though, to connect those perpetrators and offenders with the right supports that they need in the community to make sure that they start to develop healthy behaviours moving forward. So I think that these are fantastic reforms that the Hon Amy Adams is spearheading, and, like I say, she will touch on them further.

But it is not only about legal reform; it is also about integrating other Government departments, including the Police. The police are often the first people who are on the scene when these horrific incidents occur. We are giving them the tools to help them better respond, but, also, one of my favourites in the prevention space is of course the police disclosure scheme. The police disclosure scheme is a new scheme that allows the police to disclose to a partner the potential danger of their existing partner if they have a criminal history.

This scheme has now been used 158 times since it was launched in December 2015, and the police have approved 117 disclosure requests. That empowers people who are in a relationship with somebody who has a past history to make decisions that are best for them, as to whether to move out of the family home or to stop seeing their partner, or whatever it is, to seek the help that they need and, again, put in place some measures to make sure that they are safe. So this is a Government that is breaking down silos and making a difference.

STUART NASH (Labour—Napier): I would like to talk about the New Zealand Police and the review we did of the New Zealand Police. That last speaker, Sarah Dowie, said that the National Government is the law and order party and that it is visionary for New Zealand. Well, the New Zealand Police review actually put that to bed, because that is not true in any way, shape, or form. In fact, what we saw is an organisation bereft of the funding needed to really make a difference in our community.

What we heard from the commissioner—and I think he must have heard me incorrectly when I did ask him how many police he asked the Minister for, because he said he asked the Minister for 880. He did not. Actually, Police asked this Government for 1,165 more police. The interesting thing about that is that the paper the Hon Judith Collins took to Cabinet actually also asked for 1,165 more police. That was the number of sworn officers the commissioner originally said he needed to get on top of crime. That was the number he said he needed to get on top of crime, and he was given 880.

What is worse is that the budget he was given was $96 million less than Police said it would need for 820 more police. So, yet again, we are seeing a Government that is not listening to Police and is not listening to our communities. I am really worried that it is going to underfund.

Let us take a step back. The Minister signed off a document in May that said there would be no more police for at least 4 more years. Then what happened is that Andrew Little and Jacinda Ardern, but mainly Andrew Little, showed some leadership. Andrew Little showed that he was listening to the people of New Zealand. Andrew came out and said “We’ve heard. We’re going to give you 1,000 more police over 3 years.”—1,000 more police over 3 years. And, lo and behold, the National Government followed and said: “We’ll give you 880 over 4 years.” Andrew showed leadership, and National followed.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): Order! The member has been here for some time. He knows how to name members. You do not do it by first names.

STUART NASH: Mr Little, the leader of the—

Jono Naylor: Show respect for your leader.

STUART NASH: I have immense respect for Andrew Little.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): Order! Who was the member then who commented on my ruling? Did someone comment on my ruling?

Jono Naylor: No, I interjected on his comment.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): The comments that were made before I ruled?

Jono Naylor: I guess so.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): Can I just say to members that having assistance—it is a bit like refereeing. It is not very helpful. Mr Naylor, you are warned not to help me again, please.

STUART NASH: All I want to just outline here is that, in fact, crime is increasing. We were told by Police that there was “a small increase in total crime rates since 2015.” In fact, the statistics show that burglaries increased by 10,288. That is an increase of nearly 200 burglaries a week.

The former Minister of Police over there, the Hon Judith Collins, she understood that. She knew what was needed. That Minister took a paper to Cabinet that said we need 1,165 more police. At some point—and I am not too sure why—she was overruled and the Government came out with 880 more police. It is simply not good enough. The reason I say that is that crime is actually out of control and our communities expect us, as parliamentarians, to do something about that and to address that. There is absolutely no evidence that the Government over there has heard (a) what the police are saying, and (b) what the community is saying.

There are a couple of other interesting points that need to be made with regard to this report. First of all, we heard that 23 shopfronts or kiosks have been closed due to health and safety concerns. They were done well over 14 months ago. It does not take 14 months to address health and safety concerns for community-based kiosks. If there is one thing I have learnt in this portfolio it is that community policing must be at the heart of safe, healthy communities. If there is one thing I can tell this Committee it is that Labour will instigate a policy that takes us back to the principle of community policing. The overall police strategy is about prevention first—I completely buy into that. I think it is the right strategy, but until we get community policing working, it will not be able to be delivered. Thank you.

Hon AMY ADAMS (Minister of Justice): It is a pleasure to take a call in this justice-themed section of the debate on the Appropriation (2015/16 Confirmation and Validation) Bill. I want to, obviously, address my comments as both the justice and courts Minister but also the Minister who leads the wider justice sector. I want to pick up on the comments that the chair of the Justice and Electoral Committee, Sarah Dowie, made in her contribution, where she highlighted the success of the sector in the time we have been in Government. It is working very much as a sector and we are no longer looking at these as individual stand-alone portfolios, but looking quite comprehensively right across the justice sector, and, actually even more so, increasingly right across the social sector and understanding the interactions between them.

While my contribution will focus on that part of our work, I also want to almost beg a little bit of indulgence and look at it through the lens of one of my other portfolios, which is around social investment. I actually think that when you look at the work that the justice sector has done, which we have seen reflected in the various financial reports that we are debating in this bill, you see an excellent example of agencies tilting towards and pivoting towards taking that social investment approach. Absolutely, they are working as a sector. They are no longer devising their work programmes along agency lines with those strict vertical silos that have for so long frustrated the public around the way the Government works; they are very much focusing on early intervention. They understand that it is not enough for them to simply react to what is happening, react to the crime in society, react by processing them through the courts, and react to the prisoners who turn up in our corrections system. They are very much—and most of the work programmes of those agencies are—thinking about and working out how we can better understand the people who are ending up in the system, and how actually, as a system, we could have intervened sooner and more effectively to both reduce the level and severity of the offending, and to actually stop them offending at all.

I think that really has been the story of the work in the sector over the year. We are seeing a lot more better-targeted interventions. That really comes about through a far greater analysis and understanding of the customs we see through the system, and understanding that there is not a one-size-fits-all approach. The justice sector has been one of the leading sectors across Government at doing what we call the investment approach—understanding its population, understanding the types of stories that are coming through, being able to segment its analysis and its response down to some very, very granular levels of interaction, and ensuring that our responses are very targeted to those particular understandings. What all that means is that we have a much more effective way of intervening and working with people who might otherwise end up in the criminal justice system, and the best chance of working with those who are in the criminal justice system to turn that around.

I did want to just reflect on and commend the work of my fellow Ministers in the sector, but also the chairs of the two select committees, Sarah Dowie and Kanwaljit Singh Bakshi. I congratulate Mr Bakshi on his appointment as parliamentary private secretary—for his work in Police and his strong interest in this area.

We are seeing quite an interesting programme of work that supports that investment-approach lens that I have been talking about. It will not be any surprise to this Committee that one area that I am very proud of, and I think absolutely demonstrates this approach, is the work around family violence. Because if you want to look at an area where, as a society and as a House and as a system, we can intervene far better, more effectively, and much earlier to turn around not only criminal justice outcomes but actually whole-of-system outcomes, it is in this area. We know that children growing up in households where there is violence are five times more likely to commit suicide and have a significantly higher chance of not getting NCEA. It is the highest—by a long shot; the single highest—predictor of going on to then become both offenders and victims of family violence. So it is working far better at those early signs of violence in the home—long before they get to court, actually. If we wait until they are in court to get help, we have left it too long.

So the whole package of reforms is now in a bill in front of a select committee for consideration, and we are having a family violence summit in the next month to continue discussing with the wider community the response programme. It is exactly that: it is pivoting the whole of the justice system, alongside their colleagues in the social system, to working in a much more citizen-centric way to better address and better target family violence, and respond much, much more quickly.

In that respect, in my closing seconds, I do just want to particularly comment on the work of the Integrated Safety Response pilot in Christchurch and the Waikato. In the 9 months that has been operating, we have seen 24,000 people helped through that programme. I can tell this Committee that the feedback we get—we never pretend that we have a perfect solution and it will magic it away—that resonates most with me is that the victims who have been in contact with the system, the providers, have said that we can never go back. This system has shown us that this is the only way to be working. It is the way to make progress, and I think it very well demonstrates the system-wide early intervention approach of the sector.

DAVID CLENDON (Green): The member for Invercargill, who first spoke in this debate, Sarah Dowie, described this Government’s performance in the justice sector as “exceptional”. I would actually agree with that. It has been exceptional, particularly when I look at the annual review of the Department of Corrections—it is exceptionally poor. It is unprecedented, in fact, to the extent that we have seen an incredible increase in the number of inmates being kept in our prisons, and that is recorded in the review. We are keeping more people in prison for longer, without any increase in public safety and despite a reduction in the crime rate overall. There are more people being held on parole—something like 28 to 30 percent more—largely due to policy change, not due to any risk profile or any other defensible reasons. There are more inmates failing to get parole; again, not because of the level of risk they present to the community but simply because of process failures within Corrections. So I would agree that it has been an exceptional performance by this Government, and it is an exceptionally poor performance. We need to do a great deal better.

We are spending a great deal more money. The operating revenue for Corrections in the previous year was up some 5.5 percent. Despite that, it still did not manage to meet its budget; there was an overspend. This is unsustainable. The Prime Minister knows it is unsustainable. He said as much some 4 or 5 years ago. Nothing has changed. We do need to do a great deal better. The prison muster is currently in excess of 10,000. We are told, I think in an attempt to comfort us, by the chief executive officer (CEO) of Corrections that he thinks it will level off somewhere around 11,000 inmates in the next 8 or 9 years. He cannot tell us when the levelling off might occur. I think it would be a disgrace for this country if, in fact, our prison population did level off at 10,000 or something above that. We should be targeting something in the range of 3,000 to 4,000 as an acceptable—if that is the right word—number of inmates in our prisons. It certainly is unacceptable that we should accept in excess of 10,000 people in our prisons.

The response of this Government to this unprecedented rise has not been to interrogate its own policy or the practice in our prisons or the failure of rehabilitation and reintegration programmes; it is simply launching into a new bout of prison expansion—expansion of capacity. We heard from the CEO that it expects within the next 4 years to be able to accommodate another 1,945 inmates in our prisons. This was presented as though it is some sort of success. Some of that is new capacity, some of it is what he called “latent potential”, which I think means reopening old units, old prisons, that were closed for very good humanitarian and operational reasons. This is not an acceptable response: spending more money, less public safety, more waste of people’s time and effort in our prisons. It is not a good look for this Government.

We know that the more people you have in a jail—particularly when they are double-bunked—the more people you have in a facility not designed for the number of inmates, you get higher levels of stress, higher levels of violence. We asked the CEO of Corrections directly whether the increased tension and stress of more people in a space beyond the design capacity was leading to more violent outbreaks, and he certainly agreed that that was one reason why we are seeing more incidents of violence in our prisons. Again, this is an unacceptable response. We can do a great deal better and, in fact, we will do a great deal better.

I do think, to be fair, that a change in culture is called for, and that is across not only the Corrections department but nationally, as a country. We need a change of culture in the way we think and behave in terms of crime and punishment in our prisons. We need a cross-party agreement. We need, over time, to stop using law and order and, particularly, Corrections as a political football. We have been doing that for 20 or 30 years, and we are failing to get good results. We are actually getting worse outcomes. We could go back as far as 1989 to the Roper report and look at some of the recommendations in that report. We do need a cross-party commitment to actually address the problems in our prisons in a modern way, in a positive way, with a view to dramatically reducing the social and economic cost of our prisons. Thank you.

KANWALJIT SINGH BAKSHI (National): Thank you, Mr Chair, for the opportunity to participate in this debate. First of all, I would like to congratulate the leadership of Ministers the Hon Amy Adams and the Hon Paula Bennett in this justice sector. As has been mentioned, it is not just policing or corrections but we need to look into the wider picture in the justice as well as the social sector, where we can address the issues that have been raised. I would like to also acknowledge the Hon Judith Collins for her leadership as the Minister of Police in the past.

The Government when it came into power in 2008 inducted 600 more front-line police officers who helped us to improve the law and order situation drastically. That had been our main issue at that time and that is why we are today the fourth-safest country in the world, and we will continue to work upon it. That was the past. In the future—the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister have earlier this year announced that we will be having an additional 1,125 police officers to help the situation. It is very important we should understand that the numbers will help us to improve the law and order situation but it is the wider spectrum—as the Minister mentioned—the social angle, that also has to be looked into, and we hope that this will help us.

We also rolled out new technology. New tools were provided to the police who told us that there were equivalent to about 350 more police officers on the street because of the technology. They did not have to go back to the police station to report what they had done. They are using technology—smartphones—to record crime, and that is helping. This is what we are doing, and we have also provided them with Taser guns. They are in lock-up and they are available; if the situation requires, then they can use them.

The additional half a billion dollars that was allocated to the justice sector earlier this year will help us to provide more money to Justice, Corrections, and Police so that they can help to increase the safety of people in their homes, in their communities, and at their businesses. Mr Nash mentioned that we have closed down a few police stations, or community police stations, but I can assure him that in the days to come we are helping 20 more police stations to be 24/7 so that they can provide the safety that people are looking for.

We have also provided an additional 20 ethnic officers. It is very important to understand that, with the changing demographic of New Zealand today, we need more and more ethnic officers who can understand the culture, who can talk in the language they speak, so that they can have the benefit of their safety and their perspective.

We are also going to launch a non-emergency number, which will help people to take pressure off the 111 number. The non-emergency calls can be attended by this new number, which can connect them to the police stations that are not 24/7.

We are also working on family violence. We have made a lot of changes in the past so that family violence can be addressed and we can help the families to feel safe.

Interest in getting recruited in the police has increased and more than 1,351 applications were received earlier this year.

I would also like to touch upon the Corrections part, which is also important, because most of our prisons have been turned into working prisons so that we can provide training to the inmates so that when they come out into society they have got some skills with which they can help themselves and their families to live a life with mana and they can be people with self-respect. In 2015 and 2016 a total of 176—

KELVIN DAVIS (Labour—Te Tai Tokerau): I agree with the Prime Minister: prisons are a fiscal and moral failure. They are a fiscal failure because we spend close to $100,000 a year to lock people up when we do not spend a fraction of that to keep people out of prisons. I agree with David Clendon as well, when he said that the culture of prisons needs to change.

People will be saying: “Well, what do you mean by ‘The culture of prisons needs to change.’?”. Last week I spent a good couple of hours with People at Risk Solutions (PARS) in Auckland, and one of their workers said to me: “Kelvin, of all the people who walk out of prison with a mental health issue, in my professional estimation 40 percent of those mental health issues actually started in prison.” This is not me just spouting something off; this is what I have heard from someone who works at the coalface: 40 percent of people who walk out of prison with a mental health issue actually had that mental health issue start in prison. That is an indictment of the system that we have.

Not only that, but we have 62 percent of prisoners come into prison who already have a mental health issue, and we do very little to actually address that. That needs to change. Part of the reason, probably, that they commit crime is because of all the stuff that is going on in their head, which they need to have addressed before they even get to prison. We need to start working with the education system, the health system, and the justice system to prevent those people coming in and not getting their mental health issues addressed.

Our prison population grew in the last 2 years by 1,500 people. The chief executive of Corrections says that he believes our prison population will level off at about 11,000 in 8 years. Well, if the prison population has grown by 1,500 in the last 2 years, and we keep that rate of growth up, in 8 years we are actually going to have 6,000 more people in prison. We will not have 11,000; we are going to have 16,000 at least, because the prison population in December of last year hit 10,000 for the first time ever.

Prisons do not work. The more we build prisons, then the more people we throw in prisons, and then the more failure we create. Prisoners go out when their sentence is finally over. They do not get rehabilitated; they, in fact, go out, and the vast majority end up reoffending within a couple of years, which creates more victims in New Zealand. It is just a self-perpetuating cycle that we are creating here. We are not making New Zealand a safer country. We are not having fewer victims, even though there is actually less crime, and that is the really strange thing about our whole justice system.

Another really interesting point that the PARS person said to me was: “Kelvin, stop talking about rehabilitation.” The reality is that we assume, with rehabilitation, that many of the prisoners were actually habilitated at some stage in their past—that they grew up in families like mine who were loving and caring and supportive, and that they grew up with a set of values. The reality is that many of them have never been habilitated in the first place, and when they get into prison we need to actually start from scratch, teaching them the basic things that many of us take for granted. Prisons are a fiscal and moral failure. We cannot keep throwing in people at the number we are and at the speed we are and not do much to help them.

Domestic violence, in the annual review, makes up a lot of the increase in prison population, yet what are we doing for people who commit domestic or family violence? Do we actually engage the family in their rehabilitation, or habilitation? If dad is in there because he has beaten up mum and the kids, are the other family members actually brought in and is there some sort of healing done between dad and the family? And if he says “My offending is a result of my violent upbringing.”, do we bring in grandad and grandma as well, and have this whole whānau / whole family healing to address the issue? No. Basically, they go into prison and their courses are totally separate from the reality of their lives when they go back out. They have this teaching and training, but there is actually a disconnect between their offending and the people they offended against, if they are in there for domestic and family violence situations. That sort of thing needs to be looked at. We need to start looking at solutions to actually address the problem.

Hon LOUISE UPSTON (Minister of Corrections): I do want to agree with the member who spoke before me, Kelvin Davis, on one matter, and it is that, unfortunately, the people who come into the corrections system come with some challenges. One of them is mental health challenges—61 percent of offenders who come into the prison system have had a mental health issue in the 12 months that have preceded. That is why we are looking at cross-sector work with the Ministry of Health to focus very clearly on mental health so that we are in a position to reduce the number coming into the justice sector, but then there is also a significant amount of work that Corrections is doing to support those who are there.

The point that I do very deliberately want to disagree with the previous member on is the comment—it is twofold, actually. One is the fact that when people are incarcerated, they are not in our communities, and, therefore, those who are committing violent and sexual crimes are behind bars. That makes our communities safer. It is quite simple.

In terms of the rising number of those who are in prison, there are a couple of key factors. One is that our police system is far more successful at getting successful convictions. Of those who are convicted, the sentences—and they are not sentences that Corrections imposes. They are sentences imposed by the courts and by the judges. They are imposing longer sentences in recognition that some of those crimes are significantly more violent and a large number of them are also sexual violence. So they are being incarcerated for longer periods of time.

The third part of it is also around the ability for them to get early releases. Again, those are decisions that are made by the Parole Board based on the level of risk that an offender may pose to our community. If the Parole Board determines that that person is unsafe to be in the community, that is the decision it makes. That is the decision it makes.

So the point the member before me made was that our communities are not safer because we have more people in prison. Well, I am sorry, but you do not actually know your facts, because if someone is behind bars, they cannot commit a crime in our communities. So, then, for those who are in the communities, absolutely there is a responsibility to enable them to be in a better position when they come out. In terms of reoffending, it is a 4.4 percent reduction that our Government has achieved. There are 38,000 fewer victims. That is success—38,000 fewer victims. Have we got more to do? Absolutely, but 38,000 fewer victims is, I think, a success for the work that this Government has done.

I want to take a moment because I want to acknowledge the incredible work that corrections staff do. They do work with some of the most challenged and challenging New Zealanders, and absolutely they have caused 38,000 fewer victims, with the concentrated work that they have done with offenders.

I want to go through some of those areas, because, again, one of the challenges with the offenders whom we have in prison is that they have a very low level of literacy and numeracy. Sixty percent do not have an NCEA level 1—equivalent education. So I want to acknowledge the work of our hard-working volunteers in the corrections organisations—organisations like the Howard League, which really supports prisoners in basic literacy and numeracy programmes—but then, what we do from there is taking them to participate in trade training. There is a really great collaboration between tertiary education providers, and, also, we are seeing more and more employers embracing the opportunity to not only employ offenders when they come out of prison but actually employ them while they are behind the wire. That is made possible by our work-to-release programmes, because our Government absolutely believes that while we have people inside the care of the corrections system, we want to enable them to have different choices, different pathways when they come out.

So whether it is education, whether it is mental health, whether it is skills for work, or whether it is work experience—these are all critically important things that the Corrections team and the wider justice sector are focusing on to ensure that those people have a better opportunity. But you are kidding yourselves if you think it is not about keeping our public safe.

MAHESH BINDRA (NZ First): It is a pleasure to rise on behalf of New Zealand First to speak to this appropriations debate. Corrections set itself a target of reducing reoffending by 25 percent by 2017 some years ago. We are in the middle of 2017 now, but what Corrections has said was that it identified that target as unachievable, so what it did was remove the target itself. There are no measurements, so there are no failures. And that is the answer to the failures by this Government.

Some years ago, when it set up Rehabilitation and Reintegration Services—in short, it is known as RRS—millions were pumped into it. There was a lot of fanfare that it started with. What it actually did was to work out earlier what the sentencing planning process was, which was carried out by custodial officers, sometimes in uniform, who had trained to plan the sentence of a prisoner according to their rehabilitative needs. Those needs depended, correspondingly, on the type of offences they were involved in, so that system worked. Like everything else, it was not perfect but it did work, and the cost to Corrections was minimal.

But now, what it has done is it has started this new reintegration and rehabilitation service, and some of those sentence planners—those who were the ex—corrections officers and senior corrections officers, who were trained to do the job—were taken in as case managers and senior case managers, but those numbers were not enough because the service was bigger and it was aimed at achieving higher targets. So what Corrections did was import officers and case managers from overseas, from the UK, from South Africa, and from other countries. Those case managers and managers had no idea about what tikanga Māori was all about, they had no idea how our prisons worked, and they had no idea about the culture of those prisoners. However, they were brought into this flash new service, and they were promoted over New Zealanders who were trained to do the job. They were promoted over those New Zealanders who had done the job in the past. Those New Zealanders knew what they were doing, but these foreign imports were brought in and promoted over those hard-working New Zealanders. So what was the result? The result was that the service failed, and failed miserably at that.

This importation of case managers was bitterly resented by New Zealanders who were capable of doing the job. It was resented by those New Zealanders because there was evidence that ex-butchers and ex-bricklayers were appointed as managers over the top of them. So that was bound to be a failure, and it was a failure indeed. And then what was the result? The result was that the target achieved was 4 percent—4 percent—as against the 25 percent advertised. So RRS, again, was a disaster. Millions of taxpayers’ dollars were spent and wasted, and then the Government had to resort to the idea of just removing the targets so that nobody knows what the measurement is, nobody knows whether they are a success because there are no criteria. There are no criteria for the success of RRS and Corrections as a whole.

So it is concerning that a large number of payouts were given to staff who were victims of bullying and sexual harassment. What happened was that when these foreigners were brought in as managers, they had no idea about our work culture and there had been complaints of bullying and sexual harassment against those managers. But what did Corrections do? It paid out the victims, and the alleged perpetrators kept their jobs. This is what has happened, Minister Upston—not on your watch, but on your predecessor’s watch. So please check on that.

Now, as if that was not enough, there was another disaster: Serco. The Government brought in Serco to manage the Mt Eden Corrections Facility, which was being managed by the Corrections staff themselves. But no, this profit-making foreign corporate was given that contract for $33 million per year, approximately. And then what happened? Kelvin Davis just mentioned that jails have been a fiscal failure and a moral failure. Over there it was an operational failure, also. There were escapes from that prison. There were fight clubs. There was contraband being imported into the prison. There were mobile phones in the prison. That became a massive operational failure.

So what does the Government do now? After the inquiry was done, the Government took back the Corrections management very reluctantly. So when it took back the Corrections management, it was a slap in the face for Corrections. However, officers from all over the country were brought in to help Serco run in the interim period. Millions were spent on that. Corrections was paid its fees, plus, on top of that, there was overtime paid to the Corrections staff, there were travel allowances, and there were other expenses that were not necessary at all. So that became another disaster.

So now coming to the Police—I would say our most overworked and understaffed and under-resourced public service is the Police. The Police admitted to closing down 30 police stations in the last 3 years throughout the country; however, it informed the Law and Order Committee that 15 new police stations have opened, which automatically means that New Zealanders are in deficit of 15 police stations. We asked the question as to how it has used the resources from the 15 police stations that were closed down. No answer. It said “We don’t measure that.” How will those resources that would have otherwise been used by those 15 police stations be spread out throughout the country? No answer.

Other than that, there has been an increase in population at the rate of approximately 46,000 people per year, only in Auckland. With the population there comes crime and there comes the need for extra essential services, the police being one of the most crucial of those. But what is the increase in numbers in terms of police on the streets? Just eight—an increase of eight policemen and women for an increase of 46,000 per year. That, clearly, is not enough.

So this increase in numbers and this now-promised increase in police numbers over the next 4 years is a very lethargic response to a problem that was imminent anyway. We have been raising our concerns about police numbers and rising crime for the last 3 years. However, we were always told that the law and order situation is under control, that we are performing better than we used to, and that it is not so serious. But the Government does not bother to go and ask those dairy owners who have been robbed and who have been assaulted and who are being killed, or their families.

It is so serious that the shop owners, particularly the liquor store owners, are scared to go to work. It is a very, very alarming situation, and the earlier this Government gets up, the earlier this Government rises to the occasion, the better it will be.

JONO NAYLOR (National): When we come to the annual reviews time in Parliament, it is always an interesting time. We get to hear from various different Government departments that come in and talk to us, and we get a better feel for what is going on. Certainly in the Justice and Electoral Committee, which I am a part of, we have had a wide variety of people come and talk to us.

In terms of the reports that we have sent back to the House—and I am sure the Attorney-General will be pleased to see some of these—from, for example, the Parliamentary Counsel Office and the Law Commission, it is a case of no news is good news. They had probably the shortest reports to the House that I have ever seen, actually saying that there is, in fact, nothing to report back to the House. However, with other organisations—for example, the Ministry of Justice—lots of news is also good news. It has been great to see so many impressive things that have been happening right across that whole area, and I just want to touch on a few of those today.

There has been a lot of innovative work that has been going on. For example, there was the alcohol and other drug treatment court. Our committee actually made a visit to the alcohol and other drug treatment court in Auckland. Unfortunately, I could not be there, but the feedback that I got from my fellow committee members was that this innovative piece of work is actually seeing some great results, whereby people can actually go and do alcohol and drug treatment programmes prior to sentencing. That can have an impact on the sentence they receive, particularly when alcohol and drugs have very much been a driver as a part of their offending. I think it is a really positive step forward. It is just one of the ways that we are seeing that innovation creep in.

Also, in that line, in the Rangatahi Courts and the Pasifika Courts, we are seeing young people being able to sort of have their issues addressed—not any more leniently, but in a way that is more culturally appropriate, which then delivers better outcomes for those young people as they progress through the justice system. In fact, both of those—the Rangatahi and Pasifika Courts—have had international acclaim and have received international awards. I think that is something that is good for us to stop and pause on and to acknowledge—that, actually, our justice system is moving forward. As we went through the whole judicature modernisation process—it is one thing to bring it up to speed, but we are also seeing this innovation that is going forward, delivering very good results for our community and also, particularly, for those younger offenders who are needing to break their way out of, I guess, a bad circle that they are involved with in terms of their behaviours.

There has been a significant legislative programme over the last while that has kept the Justice and Electoral Committee very busy, and it has been great to be a part of a hard-working and collegial committee. We have seen wide-ranging legislation come through in this area—for example, harmful digital communications legislation, whereby it is now an offence to send messages and post material online that deliberately causes serious emotional distress. It is now an offence. There is going to be a new offence about inciting people to commit suicide. It is great to see that we are starting to develop and get our laws into the 21st century, reflecting that, actually, harm can be put on somebody not just through physical harm but actually through our social media way in which we communicate. That too has been great for us to see, as we have reviewed the Ministry of Justice—to see the work that it is doing in this space.

Finally, I just want to touch on the extensive work that the Ministry of Justice has been doing in trying to reduce the very high levels of domestic violence that we have in New Zealand. The new legislation, which has just recently come before us—and I do want to make sure I get the name of it correct; it is the Family and Whānau Violence Legislation Bill—is introducing some new offences. It is an overhaul of the Domestic Violence Act, and I am really looking forward, in 12 months’ time—though I will not necessarily be there on the Justice and Electoral Committee—to hearing about what the impact of this new legislation is going to bring in. I am sure it is going to be equally successful, and I think that if we can continue, obviously, with a great Minister in charge of this area, who will be bringing these changes into effect, we will see greater inroads being made around domestic violence and around harm to others. I am sure we would all agree that that is a positive thing for New Zealand.

LOUISA WALL (Labour—Manurewa): Tēnā koe, Mr Chair. As a member of the Justice and Electoral Committee, with my colleague Jacinda Ardern, what I would like to take the opportunity to do is to highlight the outputs of this justice system over the last year.

In December 2016 our prison population hit 10,000. Is that congratulations to the Government? I do not think so. That is an extra 1,500 prisoners in the last 2 years. Why are our prisons exploding? And why have our prisons forced the Government to come out and say it will invest in a billion-dollar, 1,800-person new prison? Hopefully, it is not the Government’s form of social investment, because if that is what social investment looks like for our country, then we are in serious trouble.

We have over 20,000 people going through our prisons each year, and about 75 percent of the 1,500 increase over the last 2 years are remand prisoners. The other 375 new prisoners are there because of violence issues and also breaching non-violence orders. For people who do not think we have a family violence issue in our country, those statistics speak for themselves.

What I am really interested in are the people who end up in our prison system. What we do know is that 91 percent of people who go through our prison system end up with a drug, alcohol, or mental health issue. When they enter the prison system—and my colleague Kelvin Davis touched on this—61 percent of them have drug, alcohol, or mental health issues. So what our prison system is actually doing is teaching them to be drug addicts, become alcohol addicted, and also to develop mental health issues.

We have got to do something serious about people going into prison. We have got to prevent them going into prison in the first place. But going into prison should not mean that the outcome of that, if you are Māori—and this is where it gets really interesting, because 51 percent of the male prisoners are Māori, and 57 percent of the female prisoners are Māori, and if you are Māori, 80 percent of you within 5 years will be back in prison again. So that is the biggest challenge.

I want to highlight the Waitangi Tribunal case that Tom Hemopō took, on behalf of Māori. The finding of that particular Waitangi Tribunal case was that urgent action is needed to address the failure of the system. Māori going into prison actually should be a sign of the system supporting them to never go back again. But what it does do, as I said earlier, is create more drug addicts, more alcohol-addicted people, more people with mental health issues, and it actually keeps them in the system. That is an absolute failure, and we must do something about it.

The other highlight I want to make is The Backbone Collective, which was formed by Ruth Herbert, who also formed this group with two others, Deborah MacKenzie and Tania Domett. Now, what are they there to do? They are there for victims of domestic violence and abuse. They are there to support women and children, and they are an independent watchdog of the system. What have they said of the system? They have said that the system actually revictimises women who are going through the court system. They have said that the engagement with police and the process with Government departments actually does not help them; it hinders their experience of family violence. I know that they have put out a challenge—a wero—to the Minister of Justice. They have 160 questions that they want answered, and I hope that the Minister is going to answer those questions really quickly, because, from The Backbone Collective’s perspective, our justice system is failing our women and our children who are suffering from family violence in our country.

As a member of the Justice and Electoral Committee, we had an opportunity to go to Australia earlier this year. We were the chosen select committee. I want to highlight two particular issues and visits that we made. The first was to White Ribbon Australia, which, obviously, focuses on reducing family violence. What White Ribbon highlighted to me—and we also visited the Canberra office of family violence that is attached to the Prime Minister’s office. And what that office said to us—Mr Chair, I am going to ask for another call; I will do so now; [Bell rung]—was that when women experience family violence, they need support immediately. What type of support do they need? They need a home, they need adequate income, they need to be diagnosed, and they need wraparound support. Guess why? So that they can keep children with their parents.

One of the biggest issues that I think we are having at the moment is that if women who are experiencing family violence go into the system and Child, Youth and Family (CYF) is involved, guess what we are doing? We are taking their children from them. If that is what the justice system is doing and if that is what the justice system thinks is the solution, then, again, I think that is an indictment on this Government’s social investment strategy.

The other issue that I want to highlight is that while we were in Australia we got to speak with Justice McClellan. Justice McClellan is the chair of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. He has been chairing this process now for 5 years. What did he tell us? Actually, he told us that over 66,000 children have been sexually abused in institutions either run by the Government—that is 40 percent of those who were sexually abused, but 60 percent of the abuse actually happened in Church institutions. What have they committed to? They have committed to providing victims of sexual abuse with counselling and support for the rest of their lives. What they are talking about in Australia is trauma. The trauma caused by suffering family violence, sexual abuse, and other forms of abuse that actually end up following you for the rest of your life.

Why is that relevant? I went to an event that the National Council of Women hosted about a month ago. It was titled Towards a Gender Equal New Zealand. One of the people there, Louise Nicholas, talked about going to a prison and talking to 21 women in that prison. They were all preparing to leave and of those women 19 of them had been sexually abused as children. This issue of sexual abuse is a huge issue. On Thursday we will hear from Grant C West, who is bringing a petition to this Parliament to call for a royal commission on institutional responses to child sexual abuse.

If we do not think that that royal commission is relevant to the justice sector, then we are kidding ourselves. Based on what Louise Nicholas told me, most of the women in prison are there because they have been sexually abused as children. That abuse has never been validated. They have never been assessed. They have never been diagnosed. They have never got the support that they want. And how does that affect their lives? Well, obviously, it means they end up alcohol dependent, drug dependent, in prison, and with mental health issues. So if anyone wants to consider or ponder the relevance of an inquiry, then maybe they should look at the statistics starting to emerge in this particular sector that we are discussing today.

I quickly want to talk about the increases in aggravated robberies that have happened in New Zealand in the last year. That is a 10 percent increase nationally. That is 2,841 aggravated robberies. What has that resulted in? Actually, it has resulted in the formation of the Crime Prevention Group, and I want to do a little bit of an acknowledgment of their president Sunny Kaushal. I was at a hui, with other members of this Parliament, on Thursday looking at this issue specifically and how it relates to our Indian community, how it relates to our Chinese community, and what we are going to do about it. This is because people who are going about their lawful business should not have to be confronted with—unfortunately—young people, and also gangs of people, who are stealing specific commodities. Those commodities are cigarettes; those commodities are alcohol.

What we heard, actually, was a cry for help, and I am here to add to that cry for help. We need more police front-line staff serving our community. We need more support for Neighbourhood Support. So I have got a meeting with my local police and Neighbourhood Support because guess why? Neighbourhood Support is in our community, binding our community together, being vigilant together, and trying to stop the drivers of crime so that people can be protected when they are going about their daily business. And if this Government thinks that 800 new front-line police officers are enough, I think that it needs to do some recalculations. From my perspective, the justice sector is in disarray.

MAUREEN PUGH (National): It is my pleasure to stand to speak to the Appropriation (2015/16 Confirmation and Validation) Bill here today. I am pleased to be taking this call as a member of the Justice and Electoral Committee and to contribute to this debate on behalf of the justice sector.

This Government has set itself four priorities, and one of those is to deliver Better Public Services—so building a safer New Zealand is, of course, an important part of that plan. As we have heard today, New Zealand is currently ranked fourth in the world for safety. We are not taking our foot off the pedal; we actually want New Zealand to be No. 1 in the world. So we are approaching that with a great deal of enthusiasm, and, as a result, we have been very active in the Justice and Electoral Committee working on many pieces of legislation.

One of those is the Integrated Safety Response (ISR) pilot, which is under way now. It is working with 24,000 people and building safety plans around them in an integrated way that brings together many organisations, agencies, and NGOs, because we understand that it is only when these agencies work together that we actually do a better job with these families in keeping them safer. The agencies that are working together in this pilot are the New Zealand Police, Child, Youth and Family, the Department of Corrections, the Ministry of Health, Māori services, and a specialist family violence NGO.

Another piece of work that the committee has been working on over the past year has been the historical homosexual convictions scheme. This has been a very difficult one emotionally for the committee to tackle. It also was difficult listening to the submissions of people involved in those historical convictions. The Government is going to be working on an expungement of those historical convictions, so that these people can actually move on. It is hoped that this will be introduced in 2018, when the essential laws have been passed.

Another major piece of work that has been undertaken in the past year has been the modernisation of 108-year-old legislation through the judicature modernisation legislation. A major part of that legislation has been the changes to the court systems, bringing them into the 21st century by using technology. A major part of that has been the audiovisual links that are now being rolled out. There are already 20 courthouses that have those links installed and are using that technology. Of course, this allows the participants in the court proceedings to appear via audiovisual link, rather than in person, and for prisoners on remand it means that they are also not required to be transported to the courts—it does not take up valuable resources in staff and vehicles. So this is a better, faster, cheaper, easier, and, of course, safer system. For example, it is estimated that the Hastings District Court now has the potential to hold more than 800 of these court appearances by audiovisual link—so those savings are clearly obvious.

One of the other issues that the Government has been working on very hard since the earthquakes in Canterbury has been the Christchurch Justice and Emergency Services Precinct—a $300 million project. It brings together all of the justice and emergency services into one precinct. There are 19 courts, encompassing the High Court, the District Court, the Family Court, the Youth Court, the Māori Land Court, the Environment Court, and, of course, other specialist jurisdictions. Beside these are the emergency services: fire, police, and the Order of St John, as well as civil defence and emergency management agencies. This is expected to be fully operational within the next few months. Indeed, I was talking to a potential staff member there yesterday who said the precinct is absolutely superb—it is groundbreaking in terms of the template that it will set for other facilities across the country.

This Government has been busy with the Safer Communities package, it has introduced an offenders levy, and it is also committed to much more policing: 880 more front-line police. So justice and community safety is hugely important to this Government, and we are continuing to invest.

Reports noted.

Māori, Other Populations and Cultural Sector

NUK KORAKO (Chairperson of the Māori Affairs Committee): Tēnā koe, e Te Kaiwhakahaere. I rise to speak on this appropriations debate for the Māori, other populations and cultural sector. I rise to speak also as the chair of the Māori Affairs Committee. A big part of our work on the Māori Affairs Committee in the last year has been Te Ture Whenua Māori Bill. This bill will unlock the incredible economic potential of the land and assets that Māori already own. It is also a bill that will continue to protect—and give more protection, actually—for Māori ownership.

The Government has also been pushing ahead—

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): Order! I am just going to warn the member now that that is one bit of legislation you cannot talk about, because it is a matter that is sitting on the Order Paper for further discussion. So, just to remind the member, the review is about the year to 30 June and the current operations of the agencies, not the committee.

NUK KORAKO: Kia ora, Mr Chairman. So, just moving then to a bill that was passed earlier, which really did reflect some very, very unique legislation. This is the Te Awa Tupua (Whanganui River Claims Settlement) Bill—the bill giving effect to the Whanganui River settlement. This one is truly groundbreaking. When you look at this particular legislation, it actually bestowed on the river the legal status of a person, allowing this to put in place all the structures and safeguards that will protect and manage the river, with oversight from the iwi.

Also, when looking at all of this, the other part that we looked at a lot, through various legislation, was what does actually benefit families, particularly in terms of the opportunities to get ahead. One of the big things was around education. For too long Māori have been achieving at a lower rate than non-Māori. With the former Minister of Education Hekia Parata, not only did we get overall better achievement for New Zealand students but this skyrocketed and the gap between Māori achievement and the national average is quickly closing. The same is true for our Pasifika cousins.

One other thing that was really relevant, particularly for the Māori Affairs Committee, was the health of Māori, particularly around the Better Public Services targets, as well. As we saw, a lot of this has actually been reflected in better health services for Māori. Last week the Prime Minister announced the targets for the Public Service, including the target to reduce the number of hospitalisations of children aged 12 years and under with preventable conditions. This has also meant that Māori have measured how a lot of these sorts of cases are actually treated.

I think one other thing that is really important within this sector is that this Government—and it has been reflected on a number of things that have come through the Māori Affairs Committee—has actually very much really considered how we measure and treat the most vulnerable members in our society. This Government can actually stand proud on its record of actual results from the most vulnerable in our society. In looking at that, the election itself—to do this was actually very tangible in the way that we improved lives for every New Zealander.

So when we look at these sorts of different things that we have seen, particularly in the Māori Affairs Committee—Treaty settlements. It has been a record, actually, of deeds of settlement that have been signed and deeds of settlement that have been passed. One of the things around the Treaty settlements is that this is also a part where it actually does very much create a positive environment for regional development. When we look at a lot of the regional development that is tied to Treaty settlements, it is very much about how iwi can actually develop a lot of their commercial development and social development. And, in turn, that leads to better education and also better health. Commercial education is another thing, particularly around scholarships that are offered by the iwi, and savings schemes and all these sort of services that are supplementary to what the Government provides.

So with this report on appropriations, the Māori Affairs Committee, being a collegial committee—

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): Before I call Kelvin Davis, I am just going to make a ruling. The member Nuk Korako might have seen that I went to stand up to interrupt him when he started talking about Treaty settlements, because the Office of Treaty Settlements is not on the list of organisations that we are currently looking at. I did, however, go back and have a look at the finance and government administration sector, where one might have expected to find it. I found it is neither there nor anywhere else. So, at some risk of criticising my colleagues on the Business Committee who did the allocation, it appears that the Office of Treaty Settlements has been missed, and I will therefore rule that reference to it can be made as part of this sector.

KELVIN DAVIS (Labour—Te Tai Tokerau): I will take that opportunity, then, to acknowledge the Minister for Treaty of Waitangi Negotiations, the Hon Chris Finlayson. I think, regardless of which side of the House we sit on, he has done a really good job in getting Treaty settlements through the House. I know that they are not always unanimously agreed to by various iwi and hapū, but, in general, you cannot fault the work that he has put into that portfolio. I just also want to talk about the Te Awa Tupua (Whanganui River Claims Settlement) Act, because I think that was actually an amazing, groundbreaking piece of legislation that has given Te Awa o Whanganui the status of a legal person. I think that that is legislation that should be used throughout the country to make sure that we do protect all our waterways, not just Te Awa o Whanganui. I hope it is replicated.

The Government will tell us how great the country is going. The difficulty for many Māori, mainly those Māori at the bottom end of the scale, is that they are not really feeling the love. If we look at Māori homeownership rates, it is now down around 28 percent, which is the lowest Māori homeownership rate ever, in the history of New Zealand—going right back to the time when everybody lived in an eco-whare. That has got to change. We cannot afford to have our people living in cars, living on the streets, living in doorways, having to be put up in marae such as Te Puea Marae. And when they are having to be put up in marae, I would like to think that more than $10,000 would go towards putting them up there. Māori unemployment—one in 10 Māori is now unemployed. That is over twice the rate of non-Māori. Part of that can be put down to the education system. We hear how NCEA rates for Māori have grown and improved over the last 9 years, and yet we are still not seeing that reflected in the ability of Māori to get jobs to the same extent that non-Māori can. That needs to change.

When we had Minister Flavell in front of the Māori Affairs Committee, we asked him about Whānau Ora. The concept of Whānau Ora we agree with. I believe that there needs to be more Government support towards the implementation of Whānau Ora. We cannot just rely on the commissioning agencies to do the work and not be funded for it. I believe when the former Minister for Whānau Ora, Tariana Turia, first developed the idea of Whānau Ora, she actually wanted considerably more—millions and millions of dollars—to make it happen. So Whānau Ora, financially, is a shadow of what it should be. It is trying to achieve huge outcomes with not enough pūtea, not enough funding. I just take my hats off to the commissioning agencies, which are doing the best they can with the resources they do have.

When the Minister in the chair, the Hon Te Ururoa Flavell, was in front of us at the select committee, he mentioned there was a $5 million fund set aside to get Māori out to vote. The reality, from our understanding, from our inquiries, is that that $5 million is yet be used at all. I am not sure this is the appropriate time to ask questions of the Minister, but it would be good to know what has happened to that $5 million fund. Is it being used to get Māori to register, first of all, as voters? As the Minister said in the select committee, regardless of who you vote for, can we get Māori out? A huge proportion of our people does not vote. They need to, and so we would like to know what is happening with that fund.

The Minister also spoke about and gave a couple of anecdotes about how things are improving for some whānau. The question was raised in the select committee, looking at the anecdotes that were given and the work that some agencies have been given—millions and millions of dollars to use—how is that work actually different to the work that many of our electorate offices are actually doing out in the communities? Imagine the work that our offices could achieve if they too were funded to the tune of millions and millions of dollars.

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Does the member want a call?

Barry Coates: Mr Chairperson.

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): You need to call. I call Barry Coates.

BARRY COATES (Green): Tēnā koe, Mr Chair. Sorry, Mr Chair. I rise to speak about the most important issues that I think affect New Zealanders, which are about arts and culture. It is with great pleasure that I contribute to this annual review of issues that cover film, literature, visual arts, dance, theatre, performance, music, and just an extraordinary variety of cultural art. Arts and culture, I think, could be regarded not so much as a sector as, rather, who we are as New Zealanders. From the perspective of looking at a year in review, we can both celebrate some extraordinary performances from the sector and also ask ourselves whether or not we have fully recognised the value of arts and culture to our society.

If we look at the range of activities covered, from the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra and the Royal New Zealand Ballet through to thousands of community-based arts and cultural organisations, from New Zealand On Air to our fantastic film industry, I think what we see is an incredible richness—a richness of culture as well as arts, across Māori, Pasifika, Asian, and many other cultures in our country. We see huge levels of participation. Surveys done showed that 89 percent of New Zealanders had engaged in arts and culture over the past year. We see 630,000 people regularly undertaking dance, compared with only 150,000 participating in rugby. We see, perhaps, a difference in the way that these different pursuits are treated in our society, in terms of both funding and also recognition. We see from our arts a huge contribution to our creativity and our innovation, not only in New Zealand but internationally. We see its representation at the Edinburgh Art Festival, at the Festival of the Pacific Arts, with Māori and Pasifika artists—over 100 artists involved—and we see the emergence, now, of Asian theatre as well, which is very exciting.

All of this has an impact on tourism and our international reputation. It is not only specific artists like Lorde, Eleanor Catton, Taika Waititi, Flight of the Conchords, and Peter Jackson, but it is the many thousands of other artists who are now represented internationally and who make a huge contribution to our international reputation. It also contributes to our quality of life. Imagine Wellington ever winning a “quality of life” award if it was just Parliament here and not the tremendous richness of Wellington as a centre for the arts.

We see, instead, a focus of much Government policy on commercial success and profitability, on science, technology, engineering, and mathematics rather than on the creative sectors. It is all about business innovation but not about the creativity that emanates from the arts sector. I think if you look at it from that context, we see that arts and culture in New Zealand have been starved of core funding. Funding has been flat and dropping in real terms over recent years. The arts community is forced to rely on volatile lottery funding, which is by no means ensured. We need to provide ways to support the thousands of struggling artists in our country, who are struggling to make a living in low-wage jobs or on the benefit. We need to provide opportunities to support them in being able to express their art and in being able to contribute to our society. The Government needs to be more of a partner as well as a funder for the artists. If we call this a creative industry rather than arts and culture, no doubt it would attract far more funding, perhaps in the hundreds of millions rather than $43.7 million in the last financial year.

So my message is: let us celebrate our amazing arts, our artists, our actors, our writers, our performers, our musicians, and our cultural artists. Let us support them. Thank you.

Aupito WILLIAM SIO (Labour—Māngere): It is quite clear to me when it comes to the National Government that Pacific people have not been its first priority. The New Zealand economy looks good on the surface, but working New Zealanders have not been receiving a share of that success. Multinational companies and big banks are doing it good, but falling education levels in many families mean that our children are doing it bad.

Under National, speculators with rental homes in Auckland have been doing it good, but New Zealanders sleeping in their cars and garages have been doing it bad. Big businesses like health insurance companies have been doing it good, but people waiting months and years for elective surgery are doing it bad. The question I would like to ask of that Government is: what is the point in having a so-called strong national economy if the working New Zealanders—if the rest of New Zealand—are not sharing in that success?

There are over 350,000 Pacific people in New Zealand. This is the future workforce of New Zealand. Sixty percent of them are now born in New Zealand. We are growing three times faster than any other population and we have a median age of 22 years of age, compared with 37 for the rest of New Zealand. Sixty-six percent of that population lives in Auckland. I proudly say, wherever I go, that I represent Māngere—the gateway to the nation; land of the young, beautiful, and gifted; home of world champions. And the reason why I repeat that is that our young people must feel that they are supported, that they are cared for, and that we want to encourage them to reach their fullest potential. But, sadly, under this Government, in terms of unemployment—while everybody else has been doing good—Pacific people are still at 11 percent. We have a greater unemployment number than Māori; far more than Pākehā, which is at 4 percent at this time.

Here is the big issue: on Saturday there was a group of 500 people from all of South Auckland who came together, and I asked them: what is the No. 1 issue for you? Housing—for Pacific families, it is housing. Our homeownership at the moment is 16 percent. In 2013 figures it was 18.5 percent. That means 74 percent of our Pacific population does not own a home. How sad is that? Is that not an indictment that this Government’s policy does not favour Pacific people? It is even more reflected when you look at the median net worth of Pacific people: it is $12,000. The median net worth for the rest of New Zealand is $87,000. That is the gap—$12,000 median net worth for Pacific and $87,000 median net worth for the rest of New Zealand. That is the gap.

There are a couple of things that the ministry has said that it would work on, and the outcomes are education, language and culture, and the third outcome was going to be employment and entrepreneurship. We know that this Government does not prioritise Pacific people, because it simply wants to sweep them aside. The Pacific Business Trust is—basically, we do not know what is going on there. We have not heard anything. It has sold off the asset that is in Ōtāhuhu. We do not know what it is doing. When it comes to Pacific language, we have an asset called the Pasifika Education Centre, an asset that was born in 1974 under Phil Amos, who was the Minister of Education at the time, and was established in 1978 in Ponsonby. That asset, the Pasifika Education Centre, will cease to exist as we know it as of 1 July, because that is how long this Government appointed its board members for. It then becomes an entity under the Manukau Institute of Technology. Do you see the point I am making? Pacific people are not this Government’s first priority.

When it comes to education, we have heard this Government laud the increases in early childhood education participation. That is good, and that is largely as a result of the effort by families. They have lauded the increases in achievements in level 1 and level 2, but when we look at tertiary education levels—level 4—there has been a continued—

Hon TE URUROA FLAVELL (Minister for Māori Development): Kia ora tātau katoa i tēnei ahiahi, ka mihi rā ki a tātau katoa i tēnei rā. Ko te wāhi tuatahi, he tautoko ake i te kōrero a te hōnore mema o Te Tai Tokerau me tana mihi ki Te Minita mō ngā Take Tiriti. E tika ana tāna; ko ia tērā i āki nei i ngā kerēme kia eke ki te taumata e tika ana, kai te tautoko i tana kōrero mō te āhuatanga o te pire mō Te Awa Tipua. He mea hou tērā te whaiwhai haere nā te āhuatanga o te pire mō Ngāi Tūhoe, ko Te Urewera tērā. Nō reira, e mihi ana ki te āhuatanga o te kupu kōrero i puta i tērā o ngā mema ki Te Minita. E rima pea ngā pou i whakairia e au ki mua i te aroaro o Te Motu, i raro i tōku parirau ā-Minita nei. Ko ērā pou tuatahi, ko te whānau; tuarua, ko ngā take whare; tuatoru, ko te whakapapa; tuawhā, ko te whenua; tuarima, ko te whakawhanaketanga. Nā, me whai wāhi au ki te kōrero mō ētahi o ēnei take i tēnei wā tonu nei tuatahi ko Whānau Ora.

He pai tonu ki a au te kōrero a Kelvin Davis me tana whakaae mai ki te āhuatanga o Whānau Ora. Ko Whānau Ora i tipu ake ai i roto i ngā hiahia o Te Ao Māori me te kī, ka taea e tātau Te Ao Māori te whakatikatika i ngā uauatanga ka pā mai ki a tātau, ā, haere ake nei, haere ake nei. Nō reira, ko te painga ake o Whānau Ora, te tikanga ia, ka puta ngā painga o roto i te hauora, o roto i ngā take mātauranga, ā, whai mahi, ērā āhuatanga katoa. Nō reira, e rata ana ki a au ki te kōrero! He painga anō rā kua puta i a Whānau Ora, ka mutu, kua kite au. Kua kite ēnei karu i te painga i roto i ngā hapori katoa o Te Motu, Taumarunui mai, Kaitāia mai, Kawerau mai i te mea, kua riro mā ngā mea e mōhio nei ki ērā hapori ki te toro atu i te ringa āwhina ki tēnā, ki tēnā, ki tēnā. E ai ki ngā commissioning agencies, tae rā anō ki te mutunga o te tau kua hipa ake, rahi ake i te 10,500 whānau, me kī, kua whiwhi i ngā painga nā runga i te āhuatanga o Whānau Ora. Nō reira, tērā tērā!

Ka rua, ko ētahi kua pātai i te pātai, ā, he painga anō rā o Whānau Ora mō te whānau Pākehā? Ko tāku ko te kī atu, ē, āe! E tika ana! He nui ngā painga o Whānau Ora ki ngā whānau Pākehā ēhara i Te Māori rānei. E ai ki ngā tatauranga, 16 paihēneti ō roto o Tāmaki-makau-rau ēhara i Te Māori, nō reira, ka whai wāhi ngā non-Māori ki te whiwhi i ngā painga o Whānau Ora, Nō reira, inā kē ngā painga o Whānau Ora, kaua mō Te Māori i tōna kotahi ēngari, mō Te Motu.

Me huri atu rā i tēnei wā, me kī, kua whakarahi ake i te pūtea mō Whānau Ora, ka mutu, mā te $90 miriona, i ngā rua Pūtea kua hipa ake nei. Ka mutu, $5 miriona i te tau kua hipa ake i tukuna atu ai ki ngā ringa āwhina, arā, ki ngā navigators i Te Motu. Ko te painga ake, pēnā i tāku i kī nei, koirā te hunga ō roto i ngā hapori e mōhio nei ki tēnā, ki tēnā, ki tēnā, ka mutu, e taea ana e tēnā, e tēnā, e tēnā, ā, kia āwhinatia mai ai e ngā navigators.

Me huri rā ki ngā kaupapa whare i nāianei. Ka mutu, i ngā rā tata kua hipa ake, i pāohotia atu ko tētahi pūtea anō rā i tēnei tau tonu nei mō ngā take whare. E tika ana tā Kelvin Davis, ā, ko ngā take whare, he kaupapa nui, whakaharahara tērā. Mēnā e mahana ana te whare, e mā ana te whare, ērā kaupapa katoa, mā reira ka taea te tautoko i ngā whānau e rongo nei i ngā uauatanga. Nō reira, ko te kaupapa nui ki a au, o tēnei kaupapa o ngā whare, ko ngā tamariki, ko ngā tamariki i te mea, ka raruraru ngā tamariki, ka pā ki te māuiui, ē, kua raruraru katoa te whānau. Nō reira, mai i te wā i whakarewahia ko te Māori Housing Network, i te tau 2015, kua āwhinatia mai ai ko ngā whānau 140 Māori nei, i roto i ngā hapori katoa o Te Motu, nō reira, kai te tino harikoa te ngākau, ka mutu, i roto i ngā hapori pakupaku pēnei i a Ngāruawāhia, ā, kua whai wāhi anō hoki ahau, otirā, ko taku tari a Te Puni Kōkiri ki te āwhina i tērā momo hunga. Kua kite au i te pōhara nei, i te pirau nei o ētahi o ngā whānau e noho nei i te takiwā, i roto i Te Tai Tokerau, i roto i ngā takiwā katoa o Te Motu. Nō reira, i ngana nei Te Puni Kōkiri ki te tohatoha i ētahi moni ki te āwhina i a rātau; I te tau kua hipa ake, $10 miriona i tohatohaina, kaua ko te $15 ēngari, he pūtea tonu, tukuna ki uta, ki tai, ki te āwhina i te hunga e rongo nei i te uauatanga.

[Thank you to us all this afternoon and acknowledgments on this day. The first thing for me is to endorse the contribution of the honourable member of Te Tai Tokerau and his tribute to the Minister for Treaty of Waitangi Negotiations. He is right; it was that Minister who urged the claims along to reach the appropriate level. I endorse his statement in regard to the situation of the bill for Te Awa Tipua. Following up is a new thing in regard to the situation about the bill for Ngāi Tūhoe, which is the Urewera one. Therefore, I commend the nature of the statement uttered by that one of the members to the Minister. Under this ministerial wing of mine there were five pillars perhaps that I hung up before the nation. Those pillars were firstly, about family, secondly, about housing matters, thirdly, about genealogy, fourthly, about land, and fifthly, about development. I have an opportunity right now to comment on some of these matters and firstly, Whānau Ora.

Kelvin Davis’ contribution and his approval of the situation relating to Whānau Ora were really good to me. It emerged from within Māoridom’s aspirations, which stated that we of Māoridom can rectify difficulties relating to us that crop up repeatedly. So traditionally, the good things about Whānau Ora are the benefits that grow from within health and educational matters, job opportunities, and from all of those situations. So I warm to the talk! There is indeed a gain that has come out of Whānau Ora, furthermore, I have seen it. These eyes of mine have seen the benefit in all the communities of the nation, from Taumarunui, Kaitāia, and Kawerau, because the responsibility to extend a helping hand to that one, that one, and that one, has gone to those ones who really know the situation in those communities. According to commissioning agencies, right up to the end of the year just past, more than 10,500 families, shall we say, have received benefits based on the Whānau Ora situation. And so that is that one!

Secondly, some have asked the question, does Whānau Ora have any benefits for the Pākehā family? I say, emphatically, yes! It is true! Whānau Ora has many benefits for Pākehā families or those who are not Māori either. According to the statistics, 16 percent within Auckland are not Māori, so non-Māori have an opportunity to receive Whānau Ora benefits. Therefore there are many, many Whānau Ora benefits that are not just for Māori alone, but for the nation.

Let us turn at this point in time, shall we say, to funding for Whānau Ora that has been increased, and furthermore, by $90 million during the two Budgets just past. What is more, a further $5 million was granted in the year just past to helping hands, in other words, to nationwide navigators. The real gain, as I alluded to earlier, are the ones within communities who really know who that one, that one, and that one are within those communities, who should get assistance from navigators.

Let us turn now to housing matters. Furthermore, in days just past, a further fund for Whānau Ora was announced only this year for housing matters. Kelvin Davis is correct in that those housing matters are critical and important ones. If the house and all those matters are warm and clean, then the support for families experiencing these difficulties will be possible. Therefore, children are the most important matter for me in regard to housing issues, because if they have issues, if they become sick, and then, hey, the entire family is in trouble. So from the time the Māori Housing Network was launched in 2015, 140 Māori families here were assisted in all communities of the nation, so the heart is elated and, as well as that, in the smaller communities like Ngāruawāhia I have also had the opportunity, in conjunction with my department Te Puni Kōkiri, to assist that type. I have witnessed this impoverishment and defeat experienced by some of the families in the region in the North and in all regions of the nation. Therefore, Te Puni Kōkiri has attempted to distribute some money to help them—$10 million was distributed in the past year, not $15 million, but a fund all the same was released to the interior and to the coast, to assist those experiencing difficulties.]

I am telling the Committee that the Māori Housing Network was able to support, through our repairs projects, about 379 whānau in areas of high deprivation, which is, basically, on the back of comments made by the honourable member for Te Tai Tokerau. We have been able to build 63 new affordable houses, mostly affordable rentals for whānau but owned by Māori collectives. We have been able to support whānau with infrastructure—that is, roading, connectivity to water and to sewerage—about 176 new homes in that regard—and 36 capability building projects, including papakāinga feasibility projects and 62 initiatives to increase whānau knowledge about housing. All of that is important, because what we have found is ka noho tonu ētahi o ngā whānau Māori i te kore mōhio ki te āhuatanga o ngā uauatanga ka pā ki a rātau [some Māori families remain oblivious to the nature of the difficulties that affect them].

They are finding that there are difficulties in dealing with banks and dealing with all the things that go with housing projects, and so on, and the development of that.

In answer to the member’s question in respect of electoral participation, I can tell him that the money will be going out. There will be two parts to the equation. One will be a little bit of support to the Electoral Commission to get in and amongst Māori communities. Secondly, there will very much be a focus on rangatahi from about the ages of 18 to 34, from memory, and there will also be a part in certain communities for those who have contacts in the Māori communities to be a part of that project, and, therefore, roll it out in a way that is appropriate for them. So it should not be coming over the top with what, sometimes, some of us might say is adult-speak and giving it to rangatahi. It just will not work. We have got to have those who are able to make the connections in the communities to get our people to participate in the election process. I understand his concern, but I can say that there is information available, I hope, on the Te Puni Kōkiri website in respect of the rolling-out of that particular project. If not now, it will be in the very near future. It is about increasing the Māori participation in the electoral process.

I have been really pleased with how Te Puni Kōkiri has reacted to some of the challenges that it has faced. Having secured the money, the direction from me, as Minister, has been to ensure that the money that we have secured—hard fought for—in discussions with the Minister of Finance must be rolled out into communities. That is to say, it will not necessarily be out the door straight away, but it is certainly committed within the financial year in which it has been secured. That way we can always look to, firstly, ensuring that the money that we secure is well spent, and then, secondly, that we can look towards building on the progress that has been made over time. That has been borne out by way of the progress made with Whānau Ora—and there is more money in that space, heading that way—but also in terms of the housing projects.

Of course, in the language development, kua tino harikoa i te mea kua eke Te Mātāwai ki tōna taumata [I am very delighted because Te Mātāwai has reached its summit].

We have been really pleased with the development, as slow as it has been for my liking. Nevertheless, it is appropriate under the circumstances, as a new organisation, just to bed in and get itself right, and now we are looking towards the join-up of having Te Maihi Karauna, Te Maihi Māori na, kia noho tahi ki te tēpu kotahi ki reira kōrero ai i ngā take [the Crown and Māori strategy to sit there together at the table to discuss the causes].

In terms of whenua, of course, we should not be discussing ture whenua in this debate, because we have not, in some senses, completed that debate fully, but that will be for another time. But in a whakawhanaketanga area, it is true that He Kai Kei Āku Ringa does have a direct input into Māori communities. I am really pleased with the fact that very shortly we will be relaunching He Kai Kei Āku Ringa, probably in front of one rugby game that is happening in the near future, whereby we will re-present He Kai Kei Āku Ringa as the Māori economic strategy. That is all in front of us.

Hon Trevor Mallard: I’ve got my tickets.

Hon TE URUROA FLAVELL: Ha, ha! Good on you. I am happy for you. I have not got any yet, but, anyway, be that as it may, that will be some real progress in Māori economic development.

Dr SHANE RETI (National—Whangarei): It is a pleasure to speak to the Appropriation (2015/16 Confirmation and Validation) Bill for the Māori and cultural sector. The annual review was wide ranging and it covered quite a lot of service areas under the umbrella of the Ministry of Māori Development. I want to start with the big picture from the annual review and look at the agency’s impact for Māori and then hone in on a few specific points.

Firstly, under this Government the life expectancy for Māori has improved. The gap in life expectancy between Māori and non-Māori is decreasing. Between 2005 and 2007 a non-Māori was expected to live 8 years longer than a Māori person. Well, that has reduced. It has reduced down to 7 years. We know life expectancy at birth is 77 years for Māori females and 73 years for Māori males. In comparison, non-Māori females are expected to live 84 years and non-Māori males 80 years. Basically, life expectancy has improved with what we have been doing.

One of the reasons for that is our attention to rheumatic fever, which we know significantly influences Māori children generally—teenagers and younger—more than others. This is a strange immune condition that, basically, attacks the heart valves. I recall seeing young children who might have been short of breath. You have always got to have in the back of your mind—yes, it could be asthma or they might be unfit, but what if they have got rheumatic fever and, in fact, they are getting congestive heart failure? I know I have seen in the past that when a child unexpectedly died they were thought to be just unfit. In fact, they had rheumatic fever, and they were building up fluid on the lungs and they died. We have really applied ourselves to rheumatic fever, and what we are finding here is a significant reduction. We have dropped from 97 cases in 2012 to 43 cases in 2016. That is a 56 percent reduction.

One of the explanations through the review for why Māori life expectancy has improved is our attention to rheumatic fever. If we talk about life expectancy and give it a number of years, that is just a number. That does not actually talk about the quality of life. We know that quality of life is related and correlated to incomes. We know that the higher an education a person has, generally, the better their quality of life. So education is a key enabler—it was mentioned by my colleague recently—for Māori, and this was discussed through the annual review as well. We can talk to some of the high points in that, through the whole education spectrum.

More Māori pre-schoolers are participating in early childhood education, up from 88 percent in 2008 to 94 percent in the 2016 review. Again, NCEA level 2 for 18-year-olds is better for Māori, and this came through the review also. It has improved from 62 percent to 72 percent. The Māori and Pasifika Trades Training Initiative has also done very well. In 2015 there were 1,800 participants. In 2016 there were 2,500. In my area, I actually went to the launch of the Māori and Pasifika Trades Training Initiative in 2014. I was a candidate at the time. McKay Electrical, a wonderful Whangarei firm led by Lindsay Faithfull, its managing director, was the first firm to take on a Māori and Pasifika trade apprentice. I actually caught up with Lindsay this afternoon and asked him how that had gone. He said it had gone exceptionally well. The apprentice graduated last year, the firm was pleased, and he is now out in the workforce. It is really a testimony to success, certainly in Whangarei as well.

So the quality of life is important. Education is an enabler. What is also an enabler is settlements. We have been given leeway to just briefly talk, under the Office of Treaty Settlements—of course settlements are important. They are a really key enabler, and a key enabler for Māori. I need to highlight that the Crown has signed 82 deeds of settlement with iwi, and this represents claims covering 70 percent of New Zealand’s land interests. I mean, the figures go on—89 percent of all iwi groups are recognised by mandate. We have signed 56 deeds of settlement. So this is a good story.

I want to just talk to my colleague here, because he brought into account the cultural part to this sector as well—the cultural arts sector. I just want to briefly talk to Hundertwasser, which is progressing very nicely. We have been working very hard on that over the past year, and we have ongoing meetings over the next few weeks. But what I want to comment on is that its full name is actually the Hundertwasser Wairau Māori Arts Centre—hundertwasser being 100 waters and wairau also being 100 waters. I just want to indicate that this is going to be a really important economic driver for Te Tai Tokerau, for Northland, and we are making good progress and are expecting big things. Thank you.

PITA PARAONE (NZ First): E hiahia ana au kia whakatakoto o aku whakaaro e pa ana ki tēnei take ahakoa i rongo i a mātou ngā kōrero ā Te Minita, ahakoa me pēhea te kaha o ana whakaaro, ē, kei te pai tana mahi. Tōku pātai, e aha ana te take kei te noho tonu te ao Māori i roto i ngā pōharatanga? Nā reira, wena te pātai nunui.

[I want to set down my views about this matter, mindful of the fact that we heard the Minister’s sentiments, and despite how firm his thoughts may be, what he is doing is fine. My question is: what is the reason why Māoridom is still impoverished? That is the big question.]

I was just saying that it does not matter how articulate the Minister has been in terms of the so-called achievements that Māori have made under his watch, particularly the references made by the previous speaker, Dr Shane Reti, the question needs to be asked: why are Māori still featuring very poorly across the social indices?

While the Minister for Economic Development mentioned the fact that unemployment had reduced to 4.9 percent, what he failed to make mention of was that in terms of the Māori population the percentages are unacceptably high, particularly in the electorate where I am based, in Whangarei—in fact, we have the highest unemployed Māori rate in the country. In spite of what some people might say about the economy in Whangarei and what this Government has done in terms of Māori, it is nothing to write home about.

We talk about unemployment. We talk about health. While we may have made some grounds in terms of some health issues, unfortunately, in terms of diabetes Māori feature very highly in those statistics. While we may have gained a few extra years as an average, in terms of our longevity, at the moment, if you go to hospital—and that is if Māori can get into hospital and access those services—you will find that there is an unacceptably high number of Māori having to use those services, if they have access to them.

The other issue is housing. In spite of the figures articulated by the Minister, if we compare them with back in the 1980s, when the Department of Māori Affairs still existed, you could guarantee that for every year there would be at least 500 new homes built for Māori. We cannot say that under this Government’s watch.

The other issue is in terms of trade training. The then Department of Māori Affairs ran a trade training scheme that every year saw 1,200 young people, both boys and girls, qualify with a trade. Those figures cannot be compared by this Government. What I am saying is that Māori are no different from the rest of the communication. All they want is good education, access to health services, a good job paying First World wages, and to have a good quality of life.

The Minister mentioned the level of funding that he has been able to get, under his watch. Then the question has to be asked: why is it that for 2 years running the Ministry of Economic Development underspent its allocation? That, to me, is criminal, given the social position of Māori in this country. We talk about Whānau Ora. How long has that programme been running? While the Minister may extol the virtues of that programme, in terms of how it has helped people, at the end of the day, if you look at the wider picture, it has not done very much for Māori. The only people from the Māori community who are extolling the virtues of those programmes are quite clearly those who support the Māori Party.

Reports noted.

Primary Sector

IAN McKELVIE (Chairperson of the Primary Production Committee): It is a pleasure to take a call on behalf of the biggest industry in New Zealand and to point out, I guess, a few facts about it and how important it is to us. This industry—and the sector that is run by primary industry and by the Ministers concerned, three of them—is very important in New Zealand. It is absolutely critical to our economy and to our prosperity. Its diversity is also critical to New Zealand’s future.

I want to make the point here that this whole sector is diversifying very quickly in New Zealand. Whilst we were a country of wool, meat, and dairy products, we are now a country of great diversity, and I want to make the point that the kiwifruit industry, wine, horticulture, forestry, and a number of industries are contributing significantly to the diversifying of our land use. They are helping with the challenges around the environment that our sector faces.

This sector’s growth is vital, and I want also to make the point very strongly that whilst the Government has a goal of doubling the value that this sector produces, by 2025, that in no way means the doubling of production. It is certainly not the Government’s intention, nor the sector’s intention, to double our production. It is all around the fact that we can double the value of what we do produce and diversify that production as well.

There are four critical sectors in this area: food safety, biosecurity, animal welfare, and the environmental sustainability that our sector is facing. These are the keys to the future of this sector, and they are the keys to the future of New Zealand. Whether we like it or not, we are very good at producing food and all those other—well, fibre, I guess, is the other part of that sector. So these things are very important to us. It is extremely important that we maintain very high levels and standards around our biosecurity, our animal welfare, and our food safety. We will hear, no doubt, the Minister talking much more about biosecurity as this debate progresses.

This year we heard from a couple of organisations that we have not heard from before during the course of the annual reviews. One of them was the Walking Access Commission. One of the things that really interested us, I think, about the Walking Access Commission was the fact that many of you will remember some significant challenges around the Walking Access Commission when it was first introduced to New Zealand some 8 or 9 years ago. It created quite a bit of controversy. One of the things it pointed out to us very strongly in the course of the time it spent with us was the great cooperation of New Zealand landowners and, in particular, interestingly, those from overseas who have acquired iconic pieces of New Zealand land, and their willingness to make that available for all New Zealanders to enjoy. I think it is a trend that is increasing in New Zealand, and one that I think is very important to most of us: that we do have access to some of the best parts of New Zealand and that we are able to walk or find our way around some very exciting and beautiful bits of New Zealand, many of which have, historically, been held by private landowners who are now making those available for other people to enjoy. I think that is particularly important to us.

I want to talk very briefly about Landcorp because Landcorp epitomises the challenges, I think, that our primary sector faces and the challenges that our farmers face. More, especially, it epitomises the challenges that corporate operations face farming in New Zealand. The reason for that is that, historically, this sector has been run by family farms: small operations, very successful operations that live and work the land and do it successfully. Landcorp has, in recent years, really shown the great challenge that the requirement for a commercial return to the Government shows in that sector.

The other issue I want to raise very quickly is irrigation and the extraordinary contribution that irrigation, if we manage it well, has got to make to our provincial economies. The really important thing for us in New Zealand is, I think, that we do not force people to urbanise; that we encourage and create opportunities for people to live in provincial New Zealand. Thank you.

MEKA WHAITIRI (Labour—Ikaroa-Rāwhiti): Tēnā koe, Mr Chair, otirā, e ngā mema o Te Whare nei, tēnā tātau katoa. I am pleased to take a call on the 2015-16 annual review of the Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI). Can I say that when I first came to this House, the Primary Production Committee was my first select committee, and I miss it dearly although I am no longer on it. Following on from the contribution from the chair, Ian McKelvie, of course New Zealand wants a primary production system that is fit for purpose. We want it to be progressive, we want it to be inclusive, and we want it to be prepared for the challenges that we face as a country now and going forward. I agree that primary production is a vital component of New Zealand’s economy. The primary sector earns around $30 billion a year for New Zealand’s economy, making it, by far, our largest export earner. So the question I pose in my contribution to this debate is: do we have a system that is fit for purpose?

I want to make a few comments, specifically because I was not there during the examination, using the select committee’s own report, to just highlight some concerns that I have in answering that question. I do want to acknowledge that it is a large ministry—you have got about 2,400 staff, Minister. Roughly $558 million was the total revenue for 2015-16. It went up by about $33 million, and that was mostly on border clearance levies that were contributed.

But I do note that there was a saving in this particular year of about $6.8 million. Of course, you could say “Congratulations; we made some savings.”, but as we have heard just recently with the outbreak of myrtle rust in Northland, it begs the question of whether we are saving at the expense of our border. That is a real, live issue, and many would have heard that for some of the people up in Northland, particularly the iwi, there were some concerns that perhaps there was a bit of a delay in information coming from MPI. So I just want to say that perhaps we need to look at that—the biosecurity systems of MPI—to ensure that we are notifying people in a timely manner.

I want to touch just briefly on the new initiatives that were raised in the report to the select committee. I want to talk particularly about the economic intelligence unit. It is a new initiative with MPI this year. When I look at the description of what this unit does, it says it investigates whether there are any market access issues for countries that New Zealand has a trade agreement with. I put the question: I actually thought that is what New Zealand Trade and Enterprise does. We have got a Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment, and I would have thought that that was that particular agency’s role. But we got confirmed at the select committee that it is not, so I am just wondering where there is alignment between ensuring that MPI, in terms of trade agreements, is talking with our major agency, which is the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment.

I want to touch briefly on the future of fisheries and just note that there is the Future of our Fisheries programme. Its aim is to review the current regulatory and legislative systems for the fishing management system. We all know that there are as many hooks in the fish industry as there are actually fish. I just want to note that there was a commitment that Māori fishing rights would not be touched through this programme, so I want to go on the record on that. I also want to draw the Committee’s attention to the scientific research into fish stocks and just note that there has not been any investment in the scientific research for fish stocks. It has been stagnant for several years. Again, it goes towards whether we have got a primary production system that is fit for purpose if we have not invested in that area. Of course, the number of observer days in snapper trawler fishing has also reduced, so, again, there are some issues around that.

Quickly: Primary Growth Partnership. I want to note that $727.9 million has gone into 19 programmes. It would be nice to know what the economy has gained from that investment from the Crown. In my closing 20 seconds, I do believe MPI has a role to play in leadership around our economy, particularly in fresh water, and in terms of trade emissions. I am just concerned that we are not at the table, leading with the information that we have got on behalf of all our sector groups that the primary industry works with, so that we do have a world-class primary production system.

RICHARD PROSSER (NZ First): I am pleased to rise and take a call in this annual review debate. I pick up on a couple of things that my colleague Meka Whaitiri has touched on and, perhaps, go a bit further with some of them. I am glad that Minister Nathan Guy is here in the chair, because he may be able to shed some light on one or two queries. I want to echo a couple of things that the chairman of the Primary Production Committee, Ian McKelvie, has said. We are probably the most collegial committee in Parliament. We agree on most things, and most of what we do, in fact, does not have a lot of controversy about it. But when we get down into the nitty-gritty of the Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI), what its purpose is, and what it does—my colleague Meka Whaitiri echoed the call that we have to have a ministry that is absolutely fit for purpose.

When we look at, for example—fish stocks is one thing—the Primary Growth Partnership, we did not have an issue with that. We do have an issue with the fact that the taxpayer, who puts a lot of the funding into the Primary Growth Partnership, does not get the share of the intellectual property that comes out of it. So those are things that can be looked at in the future.

What I want to touch on, in possibly a little more detail, is the recent incursion of myrtle rust. It is another one in the long, seemingly endless chain of biosecurity upsets—incursions, disasters you can call them—all, of course, leading up to the big one. If we do not get biosecurity right, the day will come when we have to face foot-and-mouth disease. That is why it is vital that MPI and its systems are properly resourced and are properly focused on preventing these sorts of things from happening. I say “resourced to prevent them happening” because myrtle rust was something that was always going to happen, and, in fact, the Government was warned as long ago as 2010 that it was a risk that was coming. In this report from Scion, Briefing document on myrtle rust, a member of the guava rust complex, and the risk to New Zealand, there are a number of poignant comments made to do with the pathways by which this particular infestation could arrive here. Back in 2010 the risk was outlined as being a probability that related to several steps on an incursion pathway. It was already present in Australia at that time, and the warning was made that if the Australian authorities were not able to eradicate this particular rust, it was doubtful they would be able to contain it, because the spores are transportable by wind as well as on footwear and clothing, and so forth.

Actually, this paper from 2010 makes a point that apart from being windborne—long-distance dispersal—there are other means by which this disease could have arrived in New Zealand. Obviously, we knew that it had arrived in the Kermadecs and that there was a possibility it could arrive by wind from Australia or by other means. The paper from 2010 says that the importation of infected plant material could be one pathway. It also says that deliberate introduction of spores or “infected material by persons of questionable character” could possibly be a pathway. It is interesting because, when we look at the Kerikeri infestation, had the spores arrived by wind from Australia the most likely pathway is that they would have made landfall first in Taranaki, because that is the first part of the country to intercept those prevailing winds. But for them to have arrived in Northland, a long way away from that and on the wrong coast, and to have turned up in two nurseries, tends to point in the direction of a human-introduced pathway as opposed to a natural one. So the indication there is that there is a strong possibility it could have been brought in on infected plant material that was not detected, or, in fact, that it could have been deliberately introduced.

It is all very well and good saying—and I know the Minister has said on a number of occasions that biosecurity is his No. 1 priority, and I do believe him when he says that. I really feel for the Minister in that he cannot seem to persuade his Cabinet colleagues that this aspect of the nation’s defence is utterly critical—that adequate resourcing really does have to go into biosecurity and into border control in all shapes and forms, because the immediate, most pressing urgency about myrtle rust is that it can infect mānuka. That means that the entire mānuka honey industry is at risk, and I think we cannot discount the possibility that international competitors in what is an extremely lucrative and growing mānuka honey industry might possibly be looking at ways in which New Zealand could be compromised in terms of its production and its competitiveness, simply through the mechanism of introducing pathogens that could put us on the back foot.

So in the few seconds I have left I would just like to ask the Minister in the chair to respond to some of those and, hopefully, put our minds at rest. I hope you can do that.

EUGENIE SAGE (Green): Tēnā koe, Mr Chair. I was waiting for the Minister for Primary Industries to respond to the invitation by my colleague Richard Prosser to comment. He obviously was not going to do that. I am not a member of the Primary Production Committee but did sit in on it for the review of the Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI). As the chair of the Primary Production Committee noted, MPI is a major agency. It has got more than 2,400 people across New Zealand and it had revenue of $458 million in 2015-16. In my comments I will focus both on agriculture and fisheries.

Farming is one of our most important activities. It is responsible for 77 percent of our merchandise exports and yet in the primary sector, in its oversight of MPI, this Government has been as tired as it has in every other sector. It has missed a lot of opportunities and it has failed to implement the new initiatives that are needed. It is just doing the bare minimum that it needs to do to get it through to the next media cycle.

One of MPI’s desired outcomes is that the primary sector is resilient to adverse climatic events. The primary sector has obviously got much more to lose than many other sectors of the economy from catastrophic climate change, and that is because it relies on a stable climate. Weather is changeable, but where you have an unstable climate there is an increased likelihood of drought, increased and more intense storm events, a greater risk of severe fire, more tropical cyclones tracking south to New Zealand, and a greater risk of pests and weeds spreading into areas where they are not currently found. We know that the costs of this are huge. Just in June 2015 when those storms hit the Taranaki, Whanganui, and Rangitīkei areas, that cost farmers there over $270 million. Where you have got droughts, that puts enormous stress on farmers having to get rid of stock, often at the worst and least profitable time.

So climate change is a major threat to the stability of the primary sector, but the National Government fails to realise the need for urgent action. In MPI’s annual report for 2015-16, there is only one progress indicator in relation to climate and that is reducing greenhouse gas emissions per unit of production. There is no indicator about bringing down agricultural emissions generally. It has certainly been the case that because of the increase in production—and now I notice Government members are saying “Well, it’s not our aim to double primary exports;”, which is what it has been saying, “the aim is to double the value rather than the volume.” That is not what we have heard previously.

So when we have had a major increase in agricultural production in the last 15 or so years, we have also seen our agricultural emissions increase quite significantly. So while that progress indicator is showing that the rate of increase per unit of production has slowed because of efficiencies in the sector, it is still going up. It is MPI that is responsible, with the Ministry for the Environment, for the implementation of the emissions trading scheme (ETS). When, in the select committee, we asked whether MPI had provided any advice to the Minister about including agriculture in the emissions trading scheme so that it would have to take account of its greenhouse gas emissions, the answer we got was that there were discussions but they were confidential.

The National Government has explicitly ruled out including agriculture in the ETS. It excluded it from the review and all we are seeing is an investment in research through the Global Research Alliance on Agricultural Greenhouse Gases, and through the Sustainable Land Management and Climate Change Plan of Action with a couple of million dollars in there. The National Government seems to be assuming, as a former Prime Minister did, that science is going to provide some magic bullet to reduce emissions: a methane vaccine, low-emission animal feed, or improved breeding that reduces the ruminant emissions.

That is doing a disservice to farmers because it is not providing a signal that they need, and we need to start having a discussion now about how and when farmers should be exposed to an economic instrument to an emissions price so that they can start to work out what changes in land use and land management and agricultural practice are needed to bring emissions down. There seems to be the assumption by this Government that farmers are unable to reduce their level of emissions. That assumption is wrong, because there is a growing body of research and practice that shows that farm profits can be maintained or even increased with fewer animals. The Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment in her 2016 report on biological gas emissions highlighted Lake View Farm near Hamilton, which in 2009 had 530 cows. It reduced that to 350 by 2014, it cut its greenhouse gas emissions, it cut its nitrate leaching, and it increased its profitability.

We have got Landcorp, our largest farmer. It has got a goal of being carbon-neutral within a decade, and it—as the select committee heard—is diversifying into sheep milk and into more forestry as part of its push to reduce emissions. Yet by failing to bring agriculture within the ETS, the Government is simply kicking it down the road for future generations, and it means that agriculture is not getting the same price signals as the rest of the economy, and that is amounting to really an implicit subsidy for the sector. The Greens in Government would ensure that there was a price signal for agriculture, and that it did come within the ETS, because we want to lead on climate because New Zealanders want the Government to do more to protect our climate.

Just going on to fisheries—another major part of MPI’s responsibilities is to ensure that New Zealand fisheries are sustainably managed in accordance with our legislation in the Fisheries Act. This is a really important responsibility, particularly given the popularity of recreational fishing. But 2015-16 has been a pretty dire year for the Ministry for Primary Industries and its Minister in terms of fisheries. There are big questions over the integrity and independence of fisheries management in New Zealand and the over-reliance on the industry to monitor itself, so there have been pretty major dents in the claims that the quota system is world leading.

We saw in May last year a major report by academics from three universities that showed that our commercial fishing vessels were dumping around 20 percent of their catch, on average, and that foreign-flag vessels were dumping around 50 percent of their catch. That means that the amount of fish that is reported internationally as having been caught in New Zealand’s waters is actually substantially larger than the statistics going through to international agencies like the Food and Agriculture Organization. The dumping is occurring because it is often small fish, which have a lesser value in the market, or the fish are under the minimum size, or the fisher has no quota. So what did MPI do? It went into denial mode. It rubbished a comprehensive independent report from leading universities, but it provided no evidence to the contrary that that dumping was not happening.

Then, of course, we had the Heron investigation into Operation Achilles and Operation Hippocamp—two investigations that showed that fishers in the trawl and set-net fisheries were dumping catch overboard near Timaru and Ōāmaru—and MPI had clear evidence that substantial dumping was occurring, but it did not prosecute. The Queen’s Counsel Michael Heron found that that decision was flawed. MPI says it is reviewing its fisheries compliance functions with the aim of providing clearer national leadership, but we have yet to see evidence of that. There are 30,000 inspections of recreational fishers each year, and MPI is really proud of that and that needs to happen, but we have not seen the same focus on ensuring that the commercial fishing industry complies with its legal responsibilities not to dump.

We also have an issue around at least 11 fish stocks being below the hard limit in terms of their biomass—that is a euphemism for the fact that the stock has been overfished and has collapsed—and we need an urgent plan to rebuild. As Meka Whaitiri mentioned, the investment in research has been static, at around $22 million. This is a $1.8 billion industry that supports hundreds of jobs, and yet under this Government we spend only $22 million annually on the fisheries research needed to better understand the ocean ecosystem, fish stocks, and everything else that is required to ensure that fisheries management is sustainable. That is typical of this Government. It is failing to invest in protecting the natural systems that are the basis of major industries like fisheries and agriculture.

Hon NATHAN GUY (Minister for Primary Industries): It is a great opportunity to take a call in the annual review debate for 2015-16, and I want to thank the Parliament for the contributions that we have heard this afternoon. I will be specifically talking about the Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI), as the lead Minister, and I do not necessarily agree with some of the contributions that I have heard across the Chamber, but that is not to say that we do not all agree in this House all of the time. So I want to myth-bust some of the comments that I have heard this afternoon, but, importantly, what I want to say is that the primary sector is in really good shape. Export earnings are at about $37.5 billion and are forecast to be $40 billion next year, which is fantastic, is it not—and I see a few members nodding around the Chamber—because that is—

Phil Twyford: They’re falling asleep, Nathan.

Hon NATHAN GUY: —73 to 75 percent of our merchandise exports. Mr Twyford might want to learn a little bit about the primary sector, being an Auckland urbanite, and he probably would not even understand where his food comes from. His food, which he consumes in those flash Auckland restaurants that he is a regular visitor to, comes from our hard-working farmers, fishers, and growers up and down the country. But I happen to have a very proud—

Phil Twyford: I take offence at that!

Hon NATHAN GUY: Ha, ha! I am very proud of the efforts that they make in actually taking premium products not only to the top restaurants in Auckland but to about 150 markets around the world.

There have been a few discussions this afternoon about a few areas that I want to touch on. It is interesting that Meka Whaitiri talked about saving at the expense of the border. I disagree with that. What she may not realise is that the biosecurity investment made by this Government is at an all-time high. What that member may not even realise is that it was quite embarrassing when I brought urgent Budget legislation through the Parliament about 18 months ago to introduce a border clearance levy, which meant that instead of the taxpayer funding the costs at the border for customs and MPI, it would, in fact, be recovered by those who used the services, and that is, of course, about 60 percent foreigners and about 40 percent New Zealanders who come across the border.

Instead of me as Minister having to go cap in hand in every Budget round, back for more money for ports and for airports, it means that as tourism numbers continue to grow, we have more money to invest at the border. Labour and New Zealand First, unfortunately, voted against that, and because they have done that, they do not have any credibility, in my view, to stand up in the House and say that the Government should be investing more in biosecurity. They could not back the legislation that went through the Parliament that even the Greens had the good sense to support, because the Greens are focused on biodiversity—

Richard Prosser: It’s just shifting the revenue stream from one place to another.

Hon NATHAN GUY: —and yet New Zealand First and Labour stood up in the House—I remember their speeches. Actually, to give Mr Prosser some credit, he wanted to support it, but he got rolled. He got rolled by the leadership within New Zealand First. So for New Zealand First and Labour to stand up and say that we need to be doing more at the border—they could not bring themselves to vote for a border clearance levy. So as we have increased tourism numbers coming across the border, we are seeing more investment being made at the border, which is fantastic.

What New Zealand First and Labour also do not give us any credit for is that we have also increased the number of dog detector teams. We have put more people on the front line, more dog detector teams—that is, the dog and the handler. Those numbers have increased. We have now got more modern X-ray machines, which we can move around the country—some of them are portable, particularly for the cruise liner industry.

What our opponents also do not want to acknowledge is that we are making a sizable investment in Wallaceville, just up the road here in the Hutt Valley—$87 million is being invested in a biocontainment facility. That is basically an insurance premium for our animal industries, if we do ever have an exotic animal disease scare. Hopefully, we can keep our international market access open, because we have got a lab that we can our do world-leading testing in. So there is a huge amount happening in the biosecurity space.

Also, right now, specifically talking about myrtle rust, because it is quite a serious issue, particularly for Northland and for the country. We have found two areas with myrtle rust: one nursery and one area very close to that nursery. The 0800 number—there are a lot of calls coming through there. There is a huge amount of awareness. People are ringing up for further advice. We put in a restricted place notice when we do find an area with myrtle rust. We have got over a hundred officials working in the Kerikeri area, and Department of Conservation staff as well, looking at high-risk surveillance sites in Northland. There are over 300 of them. Thankfully, they have not found anything on all of their inspections so far on those conservation estate sites.

The public play a very important part in a biosecurity system, and when I was up there on Friday, I thanked this nursery owner and his staff for the great work that they did on identifying that it was, indeed, myrtle rust, which was backed up by the scientists at the lab. Those people did the right thing.

We have got the best opportunity ever because of the public awareness and the public’s involvement in trying to eradicate this, but it will be incredibly challenging to do because it is a wind-borne fungal disease. It is going to be incredibly challenging to eradicate it. No one has ever eradicated it before. And I have seen numerous reports. These reports talk about 20 occasions a year when it could be wind-blown in from Australia.

We have been getting prepared for this since 2010. We have done a huge amount of work, whether it is diagnostics—we can turn around these samples a lot quicker than we could before—whether it is germ plasm, whether it is surveillance, or whether it is planning. So we are prepared for this, but it is going to be really challenging, meaning we are doing a hell of a lot, but it might be that if we have more finds in the Northland area that we need to move to a long-term management plan, like we have for kauri dieback. So we are doing everything possible, and the Northland community is being hugely supportive, and I thank them for that.

In terms of iwi engagement—because Meka Whaitiri talked about that—there was one example, I think, on RNZ this morning. The member might be interested to know that MPI and other officials are visiting marae in Northland. When Minister Barry and I were welcomed on to the Department of Conservation office, which is the main site in Kerikeri where we will be running the response from, we were welcomed by local iwi. Iwi leaders were briefed on Friday at Hopuhopu about this particular find. They are on board with what we are doing. So there is a huge amount happening in terms of iwi engagement. Just yesterday my officials were engaging with the Māori biosecurity capability network, and there has been another science forum this week. So there is a lot of engagement happening to do with myrtle rust.

Can I touch on a couple of other areas that were mentioned by—I think it was the member Eugenie Sage, and also Meka Whaitiri about fishing. We have the Future of our Fisheries under way, and we are actually getting close to rolling out the first stage of the electronic reporting. That is going to be tablets on boats and it is going to be VMS—which I commonly call GPS—vessel monitoring systems, so we will know exactly where any vessel is 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. They will be reporting on a tablet, so we will know exactly how much they are catching. That all starts to roll out in October this year. Then we move to the next stage of cameras on these vessels. So the eyes and ears are looking across the in-trawl and deep-water fleet.

And we know there is a cost for the fishing industry to comply, but most fishers who I have talked to are up for it. They want to lift their social licence to operate. They catch a premium product worth about $1.8 billion of export revenue, when we bring in aquaculture as well. So yes, they have got some issues to do with social licence, and the way that we can move the debate is by having more transparency.

What has also been talked about is to do with the Primary Growth Partnership. The Primary Growth Partnership is where the Government co-invests with industry about not only looking at new market opportunities, but more innovation. And when you have a look at the 19 programmes that are currently running, which has a significant investment of over $700 million co-invested by the Government and industry—it is really starting to hit its straps in return and starting to grow those exports. We only need to look at the Precision Seafood Harvesting. That is a wonderful net design where fish are selected for size at sea, come on board the vessel—new vessels are being built with holding tanks. It is all about freshness and premium products into market and, ultimately, lifting the sustainability of our fishing stocks. Then, if you think about the Steepland Harvesting PGP Programme where, ultimately, you will have no one sitting in the cab of a digger felling trees on steep slopes—that is all about lifting productivity, but also health and safety performances as well, and lifting that as well.

I can go on and give you other examples—whether it is the Lifestyle Wines, whereby you have lower alcohol and less sugar in the wine and, of course, benefits with healthy lifestyles and benefits for those who want to consume wine and not get under the weather like some do. I could go on and talk about red meat—significant programmes under way there.

So I guess I want to summarise now by saying that the primary sector is in a good space. MPI’s goals are all about growing and protecting. The largest ever biosecurity investment made by any Government has been made by the National Government. We will always be at risk of bugs or diseases flying in or swimming in here, even if we close down all of our people-to-people contact and got rid of all of our trade—and no one would want to do that, because we would sink. We would be a little country in the South Pacific that could not earn its way in the world. So we need to be mindful that we have a multilayered biosecurity system. We will do everything we can to deal with myrtle rust, but it is going to be challenging, and our officials do a good job of protecting us, whether it is in food safety—and I know Minister David Bennett is going to talk about that as well.

The primary sector is the engine room of the New Zealand economy, and when I hear Opposition politicians attack it, it really disappoints me. It just goes to show that on this side of the House we are very focused on growing exports and protecting the New Zealand economy in things to do with biosecurity and food safety and animal welfare and, actually, we are doing more to do with swimmability.

On the other side of the House they do not seem to care about exports. They do not care about actually giving positive speeches in the House and saying that, actually, the primary sector is the engine room of the New Zealand economy. We do not hear from the Greens or Labour about the importance of water storage projects. We just do not hear from them. Occasionally, we hear about it from New Zealand First, because it knows that the odd drought turns up in Northland. But we do not hear anything about the importance of water storage projects not only for economic growth but for the environment because you can maintain summer water flows. We do not hear the Greens or Labour, because Labour, actually, is quite confused on the Ruataniwha and whether it supports it or not. It is quite confused whether it supports water storage projects or not. The Greens are just completely opposed. But on this side of the House we know that water storage projects are important for economic growth and they are important for the environment. Just look at the Ōpuha Dam—when that nearly ran dry it was still feeding the Ōpihi stream, and we had Fish and Game out there a few years ago collecting trout species in nearby tributaries and releasing them into that river that was fed by the dam.

And what is not well understood about water storage projects is that, often, the water flows into local towns or cities. Hunter Downs is going to get across the line shortly. That is going to put water into Waimate and Timaru. The Ōpuha puts water into Timaru. The Wairarapa water storage project is going to feed some of those towns. So there are numerous examples where water storage is hugely important for New Zealand because of the economic, because of the social, and because of the environmental factors as well.

So the primary sector is in good heart. We are doing all that we can to support our fishers, foresters, growers, and farmers. We are opening up new market access opportunities. Recently we had a wonderful trade announcement by our Prime Minister and Minister of Trade—$90 million invested. That means more people, new market opportunities, getting on and dealing with non-tariff barriers, and opening up new embassies around the world. And, actually, we have got some challenges in this space, but if anyone is going to deal with them, it is going to be the National Government. Thank you very much.

Hon DAVID BENNETT (Minister for Food Safety): Just following on from the series of speeches from the Minister, he is doing an excellent job as the Minister for Primary Industries, and it is a pleasure to work with you, Nathan Guy. You have been very helpful, as a new Minister coming into food safety. So I appreciate your guidance and your strength in this area, as well, and your knowledge and understanding of the industry.

In the food safety industry, it is so important for New Zealand, as well, that we have that strong Government support through the Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI). MPI has an important role to make sure that New Zealanders can trust the food they eat, but also that the markets that we send products to can also have that trust in the security of our food supply. That investment that you see from the Government in a wide range of areas is so important. Whether it is on farms with MPI, or whether it is within the processing sites with MPI, or whether you look at our trade facilities with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, and MPI and other connections that we have throughout the world, there are so many links in which New Zealand relies on our primary industries and also the sales, the marketing, and the production of the products that they deliver on the world stage.

We are very fortunate to have the best farmers in the world in New Zealand, who are committed to making the best products in the world. We have the best companies in the world, which work to make sure that we have the highest standards of food quality. When you look at what can go wrong around the world, it is really important that you have those standards that are Government supported and Government backed, to actually ensure that we do not cut corners around food production—that we actually make sure that we can have that confidence in Brand New Zealand. MPI has got an important role in that area through its compliance role and also its verification role. It is vital to how we can perform as different industries. I would just like to take, for example, the meat industry, which is so reliant on having the higher standards not only of the production of the actual meat but also of the cleanliness and of the processing capacity that you see within our plants.

If you even take the importance of the Government in there, in making sure that we have those high standards, it is so crucial to their sales. But, also, you can see that the Government has worked hard through trade agreements, especially the chilled meat going into China. I think that is a great initiative that we have worked through in trade and on farm and also in processing and production, to make sure that we can access that market. That is a huge market going forward and really shows the importance of different parts of Government working together to make sure that we actually have the strongest primary sector and take advantage of those opportunities around the world.

The New Zealand primary sector may be able to feed 40 million people, but the market out there is huge. The Asian market, for example, would be 4 billion people. So even if we get just 1 percent of that market, then we are actually really achieving a lot for New Zealand, and that can be a real win for us as an exporting country. We actually face a lot of challenges also in that area. The Minister spoke about myrtle rust, which is one of those types of challenges that can come along.

Phil Twyford: Don’t talk about Maggie like that.

Hon DAVID BENNETT: I am afraid the member over the other side should withdraw and apologise if he is going to make comments like that about our colleagues in the House.

Myrtle rust is something that, as the Minister said, always had the potential to come to New Zealand, and it is something that nobody wishes to see here. The vigilance of those in the North who identified it and made it known to the authorities really shows the trust that New Zealanders have in their system. This is a system they believe in. They are willing to work with it. That can give not only us, as parliamentarians, a lot of trust in the officials who work within the agricultural and horticultural sector, but also those international consumers whom we rely on for our exports can validly have that trust in our sector going forward.

TODD BARCLAY (National—Clutha-Southland): I just wanted to begin by acknowledging the Minister for Primary Industries, the Hon Nathan Guy, the Minister for Food Safety, the Hon David Bennett, and the chair of our committee, Ian McKelvie. I acknowledge you, Mr McKelvie, with great admiration, but with one point of hesitation, because I saw a tweet by you the other day where you mentioned that the Rangitīkei electorate produces half of New Zealand’s lamb, and the best half at that. I would beg to differ on that—

Hon David Bennett: Waikato.

TODD BARCLAY: —small point there. Ha, ha! Well, Southland, actually. I just wanted to speak on this particular debate because the primary sector, as has been outlined by the Minister, is incredibly important to the New Zealand economy. It is also incredibly important to my electorate. As the primary sector grows, expands, and does well, then my electorate does well. That filters through the 34 towns and communities that we have; all of which, with the exception of Queenstown, are service towns to the primary sector. Everybody in the electorate that I represent has either a direct or indirect relationship and reliance on our primary sector.

That is why it is incredibly important that, as a Parliament, we give credit to the success of the thousands of people who are working day to day in that industry, who are holding up our economy. As the Minister has pointed out, the primary sector is the backbone of our economy. Our new figures forecasting primary sector growth are that it will reach $37.5 billion for the year ending June 2017, which is up $0.8 billion on the previous forecast. But, interestingly, next year’s overall primary sector exports are expected to grow by 9.7 percent, to over $41 billion. That just highlights the significance of that sector to our economy.

Down south we are seeing that level of investment going into the primary sector in order to support that growth. Just at the end of last year, there was a $220 million investment into the Mataura Valley Milk plant, which is a collaboration between some local investors and a Chinese animal husbandry group. The investment that has taken place, and the construction—well under way now, as we speak—is an incredible mark of our positive backing of the sector both down south and also nationally as well.

As Mr McKelvie pointed out before, prices have increased for milk solids. The interesting thing about this investment is that it is their largest investment in a single initiative in Southland’s history. It will employ over 65 people directly when the plant opens. But, interestingly, between now and when the plant opens, there is going to be over 500 contractors and other workers working on that plant, and the contribution that that is going to make to the eastern Southland economy, in particular, is going to be absolutely huge. We talk about Auckland house prices; Gore house prices are actually increasing at the moment, Mr Twyford. It is as a direct result of this investment, which is fantastic, and we welcome that.

But if you look at some of the wider Government support in order to support the growth of our primary sector, the Minister has been a huge champion of the Primary Growth Partnership (PGP), which has seen Government and industry co-invest over $759 million over time into 21 PGP programmes spread right across the primary sector. So for people to say that the Government is not doing enough to support the primary sector, actually, we are doing a lot to support the primary sector. But the primary sector is doing a lot to support itself. Through that almost $800 million investment into science, research, and development right across all of the sectors within the primary industries, there is going to be some really interesting and fascinating and exciting results coming out of many of those projects.

On biosecurity—the point the Minister was talking about predominantly before—we had the velvetleaf scare down in Southland last year. I wanted to remark to the Minister and MPI on the huge level of support that our community has for the robust response that MPI, in conjunction with Environment Southland, put into that. They were incredibly swift to come in and support our local farmers to get on top of that issue in the way that they did. So it is incredibly important, and I wanted to just, basically, highlight that, and as the Minister says, biosecurity is so important to the stability and integrity of our exporting system. So, for a response in action as we saw it, it was great.

Reports noted.

Social Development and Housing Sector

JOANNE HAYES (Chairperson of the Social Services Committee): I stand to make this speech on the Appropriation (2015/16 Confirmation and Validation) Bill, social development and housing sector. The 2015-16 period has been a very active time for this Government, by supporting low-income families.

In the 2015 Budget, we saw $790 million invested into the child hardship investment, which came into effect during that period. For the first time in 43 years, we saw a $25-per-week increase in benefits to the many people who are on benefits, and that is a historical event for this country—the first time in 43 years. We saw Working for Families increase between $12.50 and $24 per week for low- and very low-income families, and we saw child support and access to it also be made more available for low-income families.

Under the social investment approach to welfare working in the 2016 Budget, there was $111.5 million set aside over a 4-year period. This was to help New Zealanders to come off benefits, and $41 million of that went into Youth Service so that they could receive specialist services through—

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): I am sorry to interrupt the honourable member, but the time has come for me to leave the Chair for the dinner break.

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

JOANNE HAYES: Following on from my speech before we rose, I want to take some time to talk about the overhauling of the care and protection system, because this is a massive piece of legislation. What it has done is it has looked at Child, Youth and Family and the way that that system has worked, and it has developed a new system that has set up the Ministry for Vulnerable Children, Oranga Tamariki. What that does is it places the child at the centre of everything around their needs and supporting them, so that they can thrive in a society where they were a little bit—well, not a little bit, but where some of them actually did not thrive. The establishment of this ministry, as I said, has also worked in helping to set up a new independent advocacy service called VOYCE – Whakarongo Mai, meaning “Listen to me.” “Listen to me” is the catchcry for the young people who will come in under the Ministry for Vulnerable Children, Oranga Tamariki. This piece of legislation has also overhauled the age at which young people can stay within the service, so that a young person can stay in the service up to the age of 18.

This is, as I said, a massive piece of legislation. There is $347 million for the care and protection of vulnerable children and young people, of which $140 million will actually go towards the front line—the pressures that this piece of legislation is developing. Also, $200 million of this is going to be used to help transform the system for young people. As I said, this piece of legislation actually fits in with all the other areas of the social development and housing sector.

Along with the areas within sexual violence and family violence, this is another piece of major legislation that we have also been working on over this 2015-16 period. With family violence, we are looking at an integrated safety response budget of $1.4 million to start to get things rolling. Just recently the Government announced a $680,000 boost to the Canterbury Integrated Safety Response pilot.

Sexual violence is hideous—hideous, it makes me sick just having to think about it—but it is one of those things that have actually affected many, many, mainly women, in New Zealand. Our response of $46 million of operating funding over 4 years has actually helped to put in crisis support services and has also put in a 24/7 sexual violence helpline, which is something that women will be able to access that they have not accessed in the past. It also—[Bell rung]

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Order! [Interruption] Order! Does the member want another call?

Joanne Hayes: Oh, sorry.

Hon Ruth Dyson: Got a minute and a half on the clock.

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): No. I told her how much time she had. I am calling Denise Roche.

DENISE ROCHE (Green): I rise to take a call for the Greens to look at the Housing New Zealand annual review. There is a wise saying that a society will be judged based on how it treats its most vulnerable. I think that if we look at the case of Housing New Zealand and social housing generally in this country, then we should be judging the Government very harshly indeed since our vulnerable are not cared for very much at all.

Over the last 8 years there has been a real ideological shift around housing and social housing in this country. National has applied its ideology of free-market economics to the housing situation, and it has not only refused to invest in social housing, Housing New Zealand, but sold off its assets. The total stock under National has fallen from 69,173 homes in 2009, its first full year in Government, to just 64,000 last year. Through a combination of sales, divestments, and lease expiries, 3,633 houses have passed on from Housing New Zealand. During the time that National has been in office, the population has increased. In the 2009 census, it was 4.3 million, and it increased last year to 4.69 million. That is an increase of around 400,000 people. So while there has been an increasing need for social housing and an increasing population, there has been a decrease of the investment that this Government has actually put into social housing in New Zealand.

I guess one of the things it has done is provide emergency housing in motels at the cost of around about $100,000 a day for emergency accommodation, which is incredibly short-term thinking. If we were wanting to build communities, to support families so that they can thrive, then we should not be sticking them in motels with the hope that they will be able to find something later on when there is nothing there. Those are the lucky ones. According to the Otago University research last year, there were over 4,000 rough sleepers, people sleeping in their cars, or people sleeping in the streets, and we have no provision for them. It is growing. That is not even recognising the people who are doubling up, who are actually sleeping in garages or three or four families together. That rise in rough sleepers is actually incredibly disturbing. To quote economist Shamubeel Eaqub, “Our housing market is fundamentally broken—it can no longer provide decent, warm, safe houses and that basic human right, which is shelter, is no longer available to all New Zealanders.”

I believe that the Government has a responsibility to support those human rights for all New Zealanders and that we should be looking at social housing provision, and that Housing New Zealand should definitely not be selling off homes, particularly to the private sector, in the guise that they will be building affordable housing—because it is not affordable housing, certainly not in Auckland. What it is doing in places like Glen Innes is it is fracturing communities, well-established communities, which have been there for generations.

We can do better. We can do much better. We have got a Homes Not Cars policy, which would let Housing New Zealand keep its dividend so it could build emergency housing. We have got a Home for Life policy to increase the level of homeownership in this country, particularly for the lower-waged people, like we used to do.

Phil Twyford: Very sensible.

DENISE ROCHE: Very sensible—you are quite right, Mr Twyford. It is a very sensible policy. But the biggest change of all that we need is we need to ensure that this Government changes in September and that we get a much more progressive Government to support our people, the vulnerable people, of Aotearoa New Zealand.

JACINDA ARDERN (Deputy Leader—Labour): I feel like it is timely that I can stand at the end of that contribution from Denise Roche and completely concur with the sentiment at the conclusion of her speech—timely also because she was speaking to housing issues. I really do think that that will be a key point of debate this election, as it should be. My colleague Phil Twyford will speak to that issue sometime soon, because housing truly is fundamental to us as the Labour Party, the people’s party, because it fundamentally affects absolutely everything. As much as I am the spokesperson for children, I cannot look past the impact of unaffordable housing and of poor quality housing on a child’s health and well-being, and on their family’s discretionary income, their ability to put food on the table, and help that child fully participate in their school and education, and in their community generally. So it affects everything.

The issues that I want to speak to, though, relate more directly to elements of the social development portfolio that affect children. We do, of course, now have a Minister for Children, a role that we have applauded for having been created. It is something that we had as a policy for some time. We equally had, matching that policy, the idea of creating a ministry for children, something we as a Labour Party still stand by. We saw with much disappointment that the opportunity of creating a separate department was, in a way, squandered when the Minister decided to apply a very narrow approach to her work with children and child well-being by creating the Ministry for Vulnerable Children, rather than a ministry for children. I think that speaks, fundamentally, to the differences in the social development portfolio generally between Labour and National. National has, via its social investment approach, taken the view that unless it can prove that there is a particular data-driven outcome, it is not worth investing.

On our side of the Chamber, our view is that there are social and societal gains to be made by early intervention and early investment that may from time to time come in the form of universal services; that may reach beyond a particularly heavily targeted group; and that will not wait for someone to be in dire straits, be it their mental health situation or be it the vulnerability of a child, before we provide support services in a community, because that essentially waits for harm to happen before we look to provide any intervention.

I want to give a real-life example of where we have seen the Government’s approach versus Labour’s approach. For over 20 years now there has been a programme called Parents as First Teachers (PAFT) operating in New Zealand. It was attached to Plunket originally. The idea was that, yes, everyone in New Zealand gets their contracted visits—I hope that is not something that social investment will change. Every New Zealander is entitled to visits from Plunket nurses. It is a world-class service. But they identified that there were some families that would benefit from additional support. They might not be as this Government would predetermine. They may not be families that necessarily have another family member in prison, or someone on a benefit, or some other marker that the Government has determined is the only rationale by which you can ever get social services. They might, however, be isolated. They might be rural, young, have English as a second language, or have something—just something—that may trigger some need in that family. The Plunket nurses use their professional discretion—their professional discretion via that universal service—to say these are families that could do with additional support.

Parents as First Teachers was that additional support. The Government decided it did not target families that were vulnerable enough, and cancelled it. I saw firsthand the accounts from families that stood as testament to the worth and value of that early investment. Where was the evidence to say that those families did not need that support? Where was the evidence to say that the need existed here, and that should be mutually exclusive to the need that exists over here? But that is what this Government’s model of so-called social investment is. It is a narrowing of the scope. It is, essentially, an exercise to try to reduce down the investment in people, the investment in community. We fundamentally disagree with such a narrow view of well-being because it will result in simply greater need manifesting further down the track, in our view. The Government’s decision was to take money out of Parents as First Teachers and put it in Strengthening Families. Yes, there is value in Strengthening Families, but Strengthening Families triages a much higher-risk group. PAFT existed to stop families moving into that high-needs group. It was a totally short-sighted move.

My additional view, and the view of the Labour Party, would be that if you genuinely want to have an effect on some of the things that the Government has targets around—infectious skin diseases, preventable illnesses like respiratory diseases and bronchiectasis—then you would target the cause of those preventable hospitalisations. What are the causes of them?

Clare Curran: Housing.

JACINDA ARDERN: Housing.

Hon Ruth Dyson: Cold, damp houses.

JACINDA ARDERN: Gold star to Clare Curran. Gold star to Ruth Dyson. Cold, damp, overcrowded houses: that is fundamentally the cause of those issues. Actually, when we use the word “overcrowded”, often you might actually have sufficient bedrooms, but families will reside in one room because that is the one room they can afford to heat. That then causes the spread of disease and infection.

It is our view that if you want to make a fundamental difference, then, yes, you will have plans around housing—well, around reducing homelessness and overcrowding, and improving the quality of housing—but why not target material deprivation? The Children’s Commissioner suggested it. There is value in it. Surely we can agree it is an international measure. Why not actually target income poverty itself, as the driver of so many of these social ills?

That, to us, fundamentally demonstrates the Government’s view around the notion of social investment: that the Government is the only one that can come in and save these families, when, actually, a huge proportion of New Zealand families would need nothing to do with the State if they had the dignity to do the job themselves through decent wages, decent incomes, and the ability to look after themselves with dignity and respect. They do not need us to come to the rescue. A huge number of families do not need us. They just need a Government to back their ability to earn a decent wage. That is what they need, and that is what is missing in this portfolio.

What did we see last Budget? We saw, finally, acknowledgment, though, that we have a child poverty issue in New Zealand. The Government’s response to that, instead of looking at some of those bigger systemic issues, was to provide a pot of money, and say to officials: “Here is your pot of money. Choose how you distribute it.” We know that, because that is what came out at the Social Services Committee. That is what generated the $25-a-week increase for those on benefits.

I will counter the rhetoric that exists that this was the first time benefits were raised in decades. That is totally incorrect. That is totally incorrect. The Labour Government, when it introduced Working for Families, introduced the family tax credit. The most extensive part of Working for Families was the family tax credit, and it went to families on a benefit. There is a fundamental misunderstanding of that policy package. So it is totally incorrect to say that that $25 was the first increase.

It is also incorrect to claim it made a difference, because when you have a 40 percent increase in rents in Auckland in an 8-year period, you can bet your bottom dollar that 25 bucks is gone already. During the Mt Albert by-election I had someone come and tell me that they had just received a 20 percent increase in their rent. Snap: that is that $25 gone—gone.

Hon Ruth Dyson: And more.

JACINDA ARDERN: And more—absolutely. What we need this election is some honesty from this Government about what really will create change for these families. It has touted that it might do something around Working for Families. I think we just need a little honest reflection. In 2010 National froze the threshold for abatement. In 2012 it increased the abatement rate and it changed the income thresholds for Working for Families. In 2015 it increased the abatement rate again. Hundreds of millions of dollars have been taken out of Working for Families because of this Government’s adjustments to that scheme, and now we have the Minister claiming that that is probably where we are going to see some wins for families out of this Budget.

I would remind New Zealanders that just like we saw for KiwiSaver, this Government has tinkered, and tinkered, and tinkered again, and squeezed families on middle incomes and low incomes via its changes in Working for Families. Do not be under any illusion that what we see in this Budget will necessarily be generous, when you take that into account. Do not be under any illusion that the Government has well-being genuinely at its heart via something like social investment.

DARROCH BALL (NZ First): It is a pleasure to rise on behalf of New Zealand First in this debate. I would like just to focus on something that Jacinda Ardern mentioned. When we talk about social services, especially the modern Government’s approach to social services, you cannot go past discussing the social investment approach. The one word that pops into everybody’s mind—or into mine, certainly, when I am looking at the social investment approach—is the word “juxtaposition”. There is no more blatant, definite, and palpable example of the Government’s juxtaposition between what it says in regard to the social investment approach—what it says the reasoning is behind the social investment approach—versus what actually happens and what it does.

In the Ministry of Social Development’s annual report, the intent of the social investment approach is stated everywhere. It states that “Building a social investment approach … is about applying rigorous and evidence-based investment practices to the development, purchase and delivery of social services so decisions can be made that improve the lives of New Zealanders.” That all sounds well and good, and we would agree with that if that was the actual case, but the fact is that it is not.

It goes on to list a number of the works that the ministry is working towards in regard to the outcomes, and one of them is “More people into sustainable work and out of welfare dependency”. One of the programmes that the ministry and the Government are using to get their young people and youth off the benefit and avoid them being State-dependent is the Youth Service. If you take into account what I have just quoted about what the intent of the social investment approach is, and what the Government says the social investment approach is about, and then just read—do the basic research and reading and evidence-finding in the report from Treasury, which was released only earlier this year, about the success, or not, of the Youth Service—these are just fundamental things about what the intent of the Youth Service was. It was about educational participation. The report did not find any significant change in the likelihood of staying in school for these young people through this Youth Service, through the social investment approach into this Youth Service.

Talking about time spent on benefits: in fact, it found that there was slightly more time spent on benefits by these young people using the social investment approach to fund this programme. It said that participation in the Youth Service was associated with higher rather than lower benefit receipt in the following 2 years, with the impact on benefit rates increasing through that time. It actually found a negative impact on employment rates: “The limited impact of [the Youth Service] on qualification attainment is the most likely reason for the programme’s lack of labour market benefits.”

In conclusion, the report says that “The programme did not raise participants’ employment rates, and their benefit receipt rates were slightly raised rather than lowered.” But here is the kicker—here is the sentence that is the absolute juxtaposition of what the Government is saying the social investment approach is: “Prior international research on the impacts of youth mentoring programmes has found that they either have no impacts or small … effects on academic achievement.” This is all based on the social investment approach, and it is the social investment approach that is failing. Yet this Government and the Prime Minister and the Minister have said that this entire Budget coming up is based on the social investment approach.

One of the programmes that the Government is going to be reinvesting in is the Family Start programme. This is just yet another example of saying one thing and doing another. They say that—and this is the evaluation of that programme that it is going to reinvest in—“We find no statistically measurable impact … on participation in the B4 School Check. A concerning finding is an estimated reduction in enrolment with a primary health organisation at age 1”. This is before they have made any sorts of decisions to reinvest in this programme.

Lastly out of this report, an evaluation of the before school checks: “By the nature of our data, we are restricted to examining outcomes that are captured in administrative records. Administrative data currently offer few direct measures of children’s cognition, parenting behaviours and attitudes, or the home environment. This means that our study captures only a subset of programme impacts that are of interest.” Yet this Government is investing more under the guise of social investment, and it has proven to be a failure.

Hon ANNE TOLLEY (Minister for Children): I would like to take a quick call to talk to some of the issues that have been raised. I want to pick up on what Denise Roche from the Greens said, that a society can be judged on how it treats its most vulnerable, and, I think, if you take that saying then this Government has much to be extremely proud of. I know that the Opposition does not like it and it keeps arguing against it, but if you look at some of the most vulnerable in our communities, they are people who are reliant on the benefit. Benefits are supposed to be a hand up, not a handout. This Government was the first Government in 43 years to increase the benefit directly to beneficiaries who had a family. [Interruption] It does not like it; it tries to dispute it, but, actually, for all the time that Labour was in power, and it talks big about looking after the vulnerable, this Government, led by John Key, a National Party - led Government, increased the benefits to family members with children. Ninety thousand - odd families, which is about 170,000 children in New Zealand, directly benefited from this Government.

It is all very well for people to talk about Auckland, but I can tell you that $25 a week, every week, goes a hang of a long way in places like Ōpōtiki, in Wairoa, in Taumarunui, in Te Kūiti, in Kaitāia—some of the areas with some of the poorest people in this country. Twenty-five dollars a week has made an enormous difference to those children and their families. What is more, we increased the take-home Working for Families for those low-income families and very low-income families. The Opposition hates it; it never gives us any credit for it, but this Government looked after some of the most vulnerable people in its community.

While we are talking about vulnerable people, I want to talk about the magnificent effort that New Zealand’s sole parents have made over the last 8, 9 years to get themselves out of welfare, into employment and independence, and supporting their own families. That is an enormous step for a young mum or dad to take when they have that enormous responsibility of raising their own children. I pay tribute to the fact that we have seen that number of sole parents reliant on the taxpayer for support reducing by 57 percent since 2009. That is well over half of those sole parents who have backed themselves—we have been there with them—and they have gone on to work and independence.

That is important, because we want to break the cycle of dependence. On this side of the Chamber, we want to break that cycle, and we know that those 60,000 children who are no longer growing up in benefit-dependent homes—we know that is important, because we know that if a child grows up in a benefit-dependent home they are twice as likely to go on to a benefit themselves before the age of 23, and we know that if they go on to a benefit before that age, they are most likely to spend 14 or 15 of their adult years on a benefit. That is no life for New Zealand’s children. Some of the most vulnerable children in our community—this Government not only cares about those vulnerable members of our community but is doing something tangible about them.

Then I come to the overhaul of perhaps the most vulnerable children of the lot, the overhaul of Child, Youth and Family—well, long overdue. Child, Youth and Family has been restructured 14 times, and if you go out and talk to the community they say those amazing changes to the law in 1989 were not put into practice. Well, we are determined, on this side of the Chamber, to make sure that every single New Zealand child gets the opportunity to have a great, successful life—even those children who for some reason or another have to be taken into State care. They deserve to have the best lives ever, and it is time that the State stood up and took responsibility. I am very proud to be part of a Government that is doing that and is determined to make the changes that will happen over the next 4 to 5 years as we work in partnership with a whole variety of groups in our community. Iwi are ready to take responsibility for their children; they want to be part of the new Ministry for Vulnerable Children, Oranga Tamariki. They know that they have a place to play. There are Māori organisations; there are NGOs. This Government is determined to make sure that every single New Zealand child gets a great life.

KRIS FAAFOI (Labour—Mana): We have just had 5 minutes of rhetoric from the Minister in the chair, Anne Tolley, so here are 5 minutes of the reality. The Minister said that this Government is about looking after vulnerable families, but I want to give just one example of how this Government’s policies and systems let one family down. I want to talk—and I will not mention names—about one sole parent who was looking after her adult child and a 3-year-old grandson and relying on one income. Since the Government changed its policy where Work and Income assesses income-related rents and Housing New Zealand becomes the landlord, there has been mass confusion between those two departments and sometimes a lack of communication.

This single parent with a disabled child was paying $127 a week. She had her personal circumstances change; her marriage broke up, so she had her income-related rent reassessed and it went to $329. She could not afford $329, so the arrears for her rent piled up to close to $4,000, to the point where her family was at the Tenancy Tribunal, 1 day away from being evicted out of their Housing New Zealand home. Let me reiterate what we are talking about here: a single mother with an adult disabled child and a 3-year-old grandson whom she is looking after by herself. She cannot afford the $329, because that is $200 more than what she was paying before. She comes to my office and says: “Kris, something can’t be right. Can you please have a look at this?”. She is 1 day away from being evicted from her house.

So we move a few cogs, and things get moving, and, lo and behold, those two agencies are wrong. Because her rent should have been—wait for it—not $329 but $53. So they were about $280 shy of the mark, and this rent that she could not afford piled up and got her 1 day away from eviction, and this is how this Government looks after vulnerable families in our community. It was 1 day away from evicting a mum with a disabled child and a 3-year-old grandson. She is looking after them by herself, and the Minister says: “We are looking after vulnerable families.” Well, that is the reality of what this Government’s policies and this Government’s attitudes towards looking after vulnerable families and providing good, affordable housing is doing to people in our communities.

So stand up and take another 5 minutes, and explain to this Committee and to this country how you are looking after vulnerable families, if your policies and your departments are about to kick out a grandmother with a 3-year-old grandchild whom she is looking after, and an adult disabled child. I say to those members on that side of the Chamber: stand up and defend that. That is exactly what happened, and if it were not for a Labour member of Parliament working for his constituents, that lady would be out on the street looking for somewhere to live. If you want to be proud of your track record of looking after vulnerable families, then get up and defend that. I doubt any of you will—not one of you. That is the reality of your policies around social housing and the way you changed the game for my constituents 2 years ago.

The other thing is that you have sat on your bums and done nothing about this piece of land in Porirua for the last 7 years. This is a photo of Castor Crescent. It used to have about 45 homes in it. You demolished it.

Hon Ruth Dyson: Let me see it.

KRIS FAAFOI: It looks like a park; it is not.

Hon Ruth Dyson: It’s bare land.

KRIS FAAFOI: It is bare land. You demolished the houses 7 years ago, and promised you would rebuild—and the Government promised it would rebuild, sorry, Mr Chair. You have not lifted one hammer, hammered in one nail, or dug one hole to put those houses back. And you say that there is no massive demand for social housing in New Zealand. Well, tell that to the Citizens Advice Bureau, which, when I went and visited it the other day, said “Emergency housing is the biggest issue here in Porirua.” Tell that to the camp owners who are saying “We can’t take any emergency housing cases any more. It’s starting to affect our business.”

If you did care about people who need homes you would do something. Something needs to change, when there are 41,000 New Zealanders who are homeless. Something needs to change, when you are not replacing homes in my electorate. Something needs to change, when a single mother with a disabled child and a 3-year-old grandson gets her income-related rent calculated at the wrong amount and nearly gets kicked out of her house. Something needs to change. Something needs to change, and that is the Government. If people really care about housing they will do a great thing on 23 September and kick this lot out.

JAN LOGIE (Green): I too want to respond to the Minister for Social Development’s rhetoric. To be honest, there are times in this House when I feel as if I am living in a completely different country to that Minister.

When I hear that Minister saying how much the Government has done to alleviate poverty in this country, how generous it is, and that it is basically just politics that we are not standing up here and congratulating it on everything, I just wonder whether that Minister has ever sat across from any advocates, like we did in the Social Services Committee, where we heard from advocates telling us that they had worked with a mother and a baby who were living in a shed on a mouldy piece of carpet because that family was too intimidated by the culture of Work and Income to apply for a benefit. I want to hear what the Minister would say to that mother and to that advocate in response to those concerns.

I want to hear from that Minister what she might have to say to the pensioner with PTSD who was kicked out of his Housing New Zealand house for the damage that he did to it during a psychotic episode. I want to hear from that Minister what she has got to say to those children who are not able to go to school because there is no food at home, because they do not have shoes, and because they are too embarrassed to get to school.

I want to know what this Government is going to do about that. I am not going to congratulate this Minister on a $25 increase when there seems to be nothing that her Government has done that is based on listening to the needs of those families and the people working with them. There is nothing.

We have had a token increase based on evidence provided by the officials, who told the Minister that that $25 increase would not take one category of people out of poverty—not even one of the people in poverty—in a country that has so much and where productivity and GDP have increased so much, but where 155,000 kids are going without seven or more of the things that they need. These are not things that would just be nice to have, but these are things that are considered the basics for getting by in this society, where almost 300,000 kids in this affluent society are living in significant income poverty. The Minister expects us to congratulate her and her Government on that. Well, I am not going to congratulate the Minister on that.

I also want to make the connection between these policies of poverty and the other failed policies around care for children who are hurt in their families and are needing to be removed—and I say “needing” with some hesitation. There has been an increase in recent times in the number of children taken into Child, Youth and Family care and an 8.1 percent increase in tamariki Māori, in particular, and I think that is particularly important to note when this Government has so comprehensively failed to work with Māori to plan the new way forward for care for tamariki Māori.

While we have had this increase and we know that more children are being taken into care because the pressure on social workers means that in many cases they are not able to work with whānau or families to be able to come up with good solutions, and after we had a report in 2014 that told us we needed 356 more social workers, we now have fewer social workers than we did then. We have 66 fewer social workers. In a time of transition and a time of increased risk of things going wrong, we have fewer social workers. We have a Commissioner for Children with a statutory role of oversight of that system who has repeatedly said they do not have the resources to be able to do that job effectively.

So our children are at risk right now because of the decisions of that Government. This Government has created poverty and chaos, and it should be kicked out.

PHIL TWYFORD (Labour—Te Atatū): I am very happy to be following on from a couple of excellent contributions from my colleagues—Kris Faafoi, who made an impassioned speech about the failure of this Government to live up to its rhetoric about helping vulnerable New Zealanders, and also the superb contribution from the deputy leader of the Labour Party, Jacinda Ardern, on the hollow that lies behind the Government’s talk of social investment.

I want to talk about housing, because if there is one issue that shows that this National Government has run out of ideas and given up, it is housing. Let us look at the numbers, because they are quite shocking. New Zealand’s rate of homeownership is now the lowest it has been since 1951. The Auckland average house price has doubled since National has been in office, and the housing crisis is now spreading around the country. We are seeing extreme homelessness in Blenheim, in Dunedin, in Taupō, in Tauranga—all over New Zealand. This sickness is spreading. One in seven properties in Auckland is being purchased by a property speculator who owns multiple properties—five, six, seven, eight properties. That is how bad it is.

But put the numbers aside, because this is deeply personal. Andrew Little has a son called Cam. Like me—I have a son. His name is Harry. He is a bit older than Andrew’s Cam, who is a teenager. But his son and my son—their generations do not stand a chance of achieving their dream of affordable homeownership. They are locked out. Their generation does not stand a chance under the policies of this Government. [Interruption]

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Order! We are not going to have this cross-bench—[Interruption] The member will sit. We are not going to have this. I am calling Phil Twyford to carry on—

Hon Dr Jonathan Coleman: I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson.

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): No. I know what you are going to be saying.

Hon Dr Jonathan Coleman: You can take a point of order in this Parliament. I would just like Ms Dyson to withdraw and apologise for an unparliamentary remark.

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): No, no. I am in control of this. The member will sit. [Interruption] I am ruling. The member will sit, please.

Hon Dr Jonathan Coleman: I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson.

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): I have dealt with it. The Minister will sit. The clock is ticking. It does not stop because of this—Phil Twyford. [Interruption] The member will withdraw and apologise for those comments. That is completely unparliamentary.

Hon Dr Jonathan Coleman: That is exactly what Ms Dyson just said.

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): I did not hear it. I am asking the member to withdraw and apologise.

Hon Dr Jonathan Coleman: Well, you’ve got to turn up, seriously, or—OK, I withdraw and apologise, but you are losing control of the House.

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

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): No, no. Sit down. Did Ms Dyson—did she make those unparliamentary comments as well? [Interruption] If the member did, I would ask her to withdraw and apologise.

Hon Ruth Dyson: No, I did not.

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): You did not? I take the member’s word for it—Phil Twyford.

Chris Hipkins: I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. It is absolutely unacceptable for a Minister of the Crown to tell a presiding officer they are losing control of the House.

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): It is, and I am in control of this. I am moving on to Phil Twyford.

PHIL TWYFORD: It is deeply personal, the housing crisis, and I deliberately say to this Committee that—[Interruption]

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): I do not want any more on this subject. I am calling Phil Twyford to continue the debate. I do not want to hear any more about that matter. I have dealt with it.

PHIL TWYFORD: I am glad that the member Jonathan Coleman is getting all emotional about this debate, because it is deeply personal. When my son and his generation do not stand a chance of ever owning their own home in our country’s biggest city, when Andrew Little’s son, Cam, and his mates do not stand a chance of ever owning their own homes, something is seriously wrong in our country, and that is the reason why the housing issue has become the most explosive political issue in New Zealand today. Parents and grandparents from one end of this country to the other feel sick that their children and their grandchildren will never have the opportunity that our generation enjoyed to own their own home. That is why it is deeply personal. That is why housing is the issue that illustrates, more than any other, why this country needs the fresh approach that a Government led by Andrew Little and Jacinda Ardern will bring.

We are approaching the Budget, again, and the Government is talking up a big game about a Government-backed housebuilding programme. After 8½ years in office, the Government has suddenly decided that it might be a good idea if the Government started building houses. But, as we think about that, let us consider what this Government has done in terms of Budget-time housing policy over the last few years.

In 2013 the Government’s great Budget housing policy was the Auckland Housing Accord, signed 3 years ago by the Hon Dr Nick Smith. What has the housing accord achieved? The Government promised to build 39,000 houses. Well, it has built fewer than 2,000 houses under the Auckland Housing Accord. The Government promised 39,000 houses; it has built fewer than 2,000.

What did the respected analyst Rodney Dickens have to say the other day, in his critique of the Government’s housing policies? He pointed out that since Nick Smith signed the Auckland Housing Accord in 2013 house prices are up 45 percent, land prices are up 52 percent, and building costs are up 36 percent. That is the result of the National Government’s flagship housing policy.

In Budget 2014 the big announcement was that the Government was going to reduce and suspend anti-dumping duties and tariffs on a range of building products. The Government promised it would knock $3,500 off the cost of the building supplies needed to build a standard home. What has happened since then? What has happened since Budget 2014, in regard to building supplies? They have got more and more expensive. Instead of saving $3,500 off the cost of the building supplies for a new home, the cost of wallboard alone has gone up by more than $3,500. That was the other great flagship housing policy of this National Government.

What happened last year, in last year’s Budget? The Government announced a $1 billion line of credit, so that councils could build infrastructure to allow new homes to be built. We found out in question time today, from the Minister for Infrastructure, Steven Joyce, that not a single new house has been built as a result of that policy. We found out, from the Official Information Act, that this $1 billion line of credit offered to councils was dreamt up, in a brainstorm, by a staff member in Bill English’s office only 2 weeks before the Government announced it in a speech.

Treasury said at the time that it had no advice about the policy because it did not come from officials. It was dreamt up by a political staffer. The absurdity of that policy is that it tried to offer councils cheap credit—councils that are already bumping up against their debt ceiling; they cannot borrow any more money.

But this National Government, which has borrowed $90 billion since it has been in office—the Government that has borrowed more money than any other Government in New Zealand’s history; it has spent the last 8 years criticising councils for borrowing too much—its idea of a solution to the housing crisis was to offer councils more cheap debt. What has happened? The Government has spent the last 12 months trying to fix that problem, because the policy was so wrong-headed that none of the councils actually wanted to borrow any of the money that the Government was offering them.

What was the other big policy that the Government announced this time last year, around the Budget? It made all sorts of big promises about emergency housing for the homeless, in the middle of the “winter of misery” last year. We found out, only a couple of weeks ago, that in the last 6 months since Paula Bennett made all those great promises about building extra emergency housing, the Government has increased the stock of emergency housing across the whole country—Alfred Ngaro, this is your responsibility now. The Government has increased the stock of emergency housing by five beds in 6 months—five beds in 6 months. That is the net increase in emergency housing. Is it any wonder that the Government is spending $100,000 a day on housing homeless Kiwi families in motels?

This speaks volumes about the bankruptcy, the intellectual bankruptcy, of this National Government. It has reduced the number of State houses by 2,500 and it is selling thousands of State houses around the country. It has added only five extra beds to the stock of emergency housing in 6 months, but it is shelling out $100,000 a day to moteliers, to put up homeless Kiwi families. That says it all about this Government’s housing policy.

The only good news in this story is that help is on the way. In September the country has the opportunity to vote for a Government that will fix the housing crisis—that will build 100,000 affordable homes for first-home buyers in New Zealand. That is the kind of policy the country is crying out for. People want a Labour-led Government that will do what Governments have done for decades—what Labour Governments have done for decades in this country. When there is a mess created by the National Government, Labour will come in and fix it. When there is a housing shortage, we will build houses. We will build affordable homes for young Kiwi families. We will ban foreign buyers. We will tax speculators. We will change the rules so that renters get a better deal. We will build thousands of new State houses, instead of selling them off.

DENIS O’ROURKE (NZ First): I want to talk about the housing crisis holistically because one aspect of it is linked to another. Lack of the number of houses available for people to buy leads to demand for rental houses, lack of rental houses causes demand for social housing services, and so on. Since the National Government took office in 2008 it has been rather like a frog in a saucepan waiting for the heat to increase to the point where it really has to jump. It should be jumping high now because the housing crisis is chronic. It is chronic and the Government has done far too little about it. In the last 9 years house prices have gone through the roof in Auckland, so we now see that in that city houses cost, on average, 12 times the annual income of the average wage-earner. It should be more like four times, because that is historically what it has been in New Zealand. So it gives you an idea of the magnitude of the problem.

The Government has done some little things about it. It has caused greater access to KiwiSaver funds—for those who have any to access, but, of course, there are many who do not, and so it is a rather limited solution. Then when you look at rent you will find that the situation is not much better than homeownership. Between 1991 to 2015 there was a shrinkage from 74 percent homeownership, as a proportion of the whole population in homes, to 64 percent. Those who rent have gone from 23 percent of the total to 32 percent. That is caused by the huge ballooning in rent throughout the country, but mainly in Auckland. The result has been more poverty, more homelessness, and more waste of Government money on emergency housing, which should never be necessary in the first place.

The root causes are mainly—we say mainly—immigration. Immigration numbers of over 70,000 per year for the last few years are just not sustainable. Reduced immigration is therefore a central plank of New Zealand First’s policy. That is something we would want to do first. We want to further discourage speculation by making it not possible for overseas buyers to purchase homes in New Zealand. We would stop them doing it altogether.

Looking at the special housing areas and accords—yes, they have helped to some degree. But the real problem is the Government’s unwillingness to invest directly in housing. New Zealand First policy is to do just that: to invest in land and see that it gets developed through a special agency for the purpose, and to make sure that people can afford them by allowing them to purchase either a section or a fully built property over 25 years at a low interest rate. The Government has done that, to some extent, with Crown lands. But it is looking at places like Point England, and Point England has got its own problems: it is a drop in the bucket and it causes a loss of public amenities, open space, and conservation values as well.

A much greater Budget provision is needed for the Government to invest in real housing solutions by making sure that the houses are there by actually building them. It needs a long-term strategy of the kind that New Zealand First has in our policy, together with assistance for first-home purchases, as I have mentioned.

The Government’s record is even worse in rental housing. Rents have increased under National by over 20 percent, well above the Consumers Price Index. It is the lowest-income earners, of course, who are hurt. Typically, people paying rent in Auckland have to pay more than 50 percent of their take-home income. You can understand how crippling that is for them and how bad it is for New Zealand’s social cohesion. The problem is that the whole thrust of the Government’s housing programme is wrong. It minimises its efforts in social housing and has done far too little for first-home buyers. It is really a poor performance overall.

MOJO MATHERS (Green): I think that at the heart of what we are discussing here is what kind of New Zealand we want: one that is compassionate and caring and supports people on the way to having a decent standard of living and supporting themselves and their families, or one that is harsh and judgmental of people who are experiencing tough times and harsh and judgmental of disabled people? This is an issue that is really close to my heart. Recent statistics that have been released on cold, damp housing show that 38 percent of disabled people cannot keep their houses warm—significantly higher than any other group. Just think about that: people with disabilities are living in cold, damp housing—38 percent of people with disabilities. The very people who often, for health reasons, need to be kept warm—need to be in warm housing—are not.

The social support system in New Zealand is failing these people. Year in, year out, winter after winter, they are living in cold, damp housing. They are living in cold, damp housing because the benefits are not enough to secure rental housing that is warm and dry for them. Not only is the rent too high but, for many people, there is a shortage of accessible housing, housing that meets their needs. Sometimes they are forced, both because of their specific needs and because of low incomes, to accept the worst possible housing, and that is just outrageous. This is not what we want for New Zealand.

The other issue I want to pick up on is the one that was raised by my colleague Jan Logie, about the culture of Work and Income being intimidating—about this solo woman with a baby who could not get the benefit because she was so intimidated by going into Work and Income. I know what that feels like, because I have been there. I have been there under two different Governments. I have directly experienced what it feels like to go to Work and Income under a Government that is harsh and judgmental, that rants on about beneficiary bludgers. Do you remember those days?

I remember trying to go to Work and Income and asking for the unemployment benefit. It was like being hauled over the coals as to why I should get the unemployment benefit to see me through a few months. It was an incredibly humiliating experience, and that was under a National Government. So what happened—jump forward 15 years later—when a Labour Government was in? I thought that the culture at Work and Income might still be the same. When there was a crisis in the family business and there was no money coming in for several months and the cupboards were bare, I still could not bear to go to Work and Income because I was terrified of being subjected to the same treatment. Finally, a friend rang them and said: “Look, I have this mum with three children who is actually quite desperate for a food grant.”—this was under a Labour Government. They said: “Come on in, come on in. Just bring in your records for your business, and we’ll see what we can do for you.” The atmosphere was completely different.

I cannot tell you how important that is, that fundamental culture of respect when somebody walks in that door and says: “We’re experiencing tough times.” They should not have to dot every “i” and cross every “t” and produce a billion swathes of documents to show who they are, multiple times over. They should not have to prove that they have a disability every 6 months or every year, or whatever it is. That is what happens at Work and Income. It is so intimidating, so overwhelming, that people are desperate when they try to explain. Then they get it wrong—sometimes they get it wrong. They confess they have earned some money that week. They get it wrong and Work and Income cuts off the benefit by 50 percent straight away without actually factoring in that over time they have not earned that much.

There are so many things wrong at the moment in Work and Income—so many things. The only way we are going to get things better is to change that culture, and that is going to require changing the Government because I cannot see National ever recognising that it has such a serious problem with the culture at Work and Income.

CHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka): There are moments in the House when you sort of take pause for a moment and you take stock and you think. Someone says something that makes you really think about things and you just hope that other members in the House have also paused to think about them. For me that was a few weeks ago, when we were in the House and the Minister who is now in charge of social housing, Amy Adams, stood up and boasted about the fact that the National Government was spending more on emergency housing than any other Government in New Zealand’s history. I stopped for a minute and I just thought: “Really? That’s their signature achievement in housing—that they are spending more on emergency housing than any other Government in New Zealand history?”. I thought: “Well, Labour did not need to do as much because we actually had houses for people to move into.” Amy Adams’ pride and joy so far in the portfolio is that the Government is giving more people hotel units or caravans than it is giving them houses.

I think that says everything about where this National Government has landed up, because for years and years we heard Bill English talking about how the National Government was going to protect New Zealanders from the sharp edges of the economy. Well, which New Zealanders are those? It is not the 41,000 homeless New Zealanders whom we are now dealing with, the tens of thousands of young New Zealanders whom Bill English has written off as “pretty damn hopeless”, or the 78 percent of people renting houses today who have no hope of getting the deposit together in order to buy their own homes. None of those people are being protected from the sharp edges of the economy by this National Government.

When I think about what this Government has done to housing, I do not need to look much further than my own electorate. One of the first issues that I dealt with as a member of Parliament was the publicity and the furore around what was going on in Farmer Crescent in Pōmare. There was a North & South magazine and the cover story on it said: “Is this the”—I do not know whether I can use the word in the House. It was the headline in the paper. It said: “Is this shittiest street in New Zealand?”. That is what the North & South magazine said about Farmer Crescent. Phil Heatley, who was then the Minister of Housing, went in there all guns blazing and booted everybody out. He evicted everybody from their houses, those houses then ended up being vandalised and they were eventually demolished, and the land sat empty for years. Finally, the Government got around to doing a redevelopment. Well, how many of those families were able to return? None. How many of those houses ended up being State houses out of the hundreds that were demolished? Only a handful ended up being State houses and the rest have all been private houses.

So where did those people go? Where did those problems that were associated with that street go? They have not just disappeared. Those people did not just vanish off the face of the earth. They are still there. They have just been relocated elsewhere and, in the meantime, the Government freed up some very nice land to create more private houses for people who could afford to buy them—none of the people who used to live there, of course. And what do we know now? It is doing exactly the same thing in Naenae and in Ēpuni and in Pētone and in other areas of the Hutt Valley where the Government is demolishing houses and leaving the land empty. Nothing is happening there. Nothing is happening there and, as a result, we have got more people showing up at our electorate offices in the Hutt Valley desperate for accommodation.

I also want to put on the record here that I think the decision to separate out the needs assessment from the provision of housing has been a disaster. The left hand does not know what the right hand is doing, and my office, day in and day out, is trying to mediate between Housing New Zealand and Work and Income because they cannot get their act together, and we have got people living in car boots because of it. We have got people missing out on rental housing because they do not know what they are doing and because nobody can get any sense out of Government departments that are supposed to be working together. The Government has made an absolute hash of providing social housing for people. People are falling through the cracks, they are being lost in the system, and the National Government is simply turning a blind eye to the problem.

It is getting worse—more homeless people every day. I had someone sleeping outside my electorate office a few weeks ago because they desperately needed housing, and no matter what we did we could not get the Government agencies to get their act together and provide them somewhere to stay. The holiday parks in my electorate think that the Government’s housing plan is great because they are getting extra business from people who are homeless and the extra revenue that goes with that. I think that that is an indictment.

I think that a fundamental right as a citizen is to have a roof over your head, and this Government’s track record is woeful. It is a stain on this Government’s record—the level of homelessness and the absolute disaster when it comes to people being able to afford any form of accommodation.

Hon ALFRED NGARO (Associate Minister for Social Housing): I rise to take a call on this debate. It is an interesting thing, when a member gets up to talk about one party’s history and forgets his own. I think that member, Chris Hipkins, needs to stop for a moment and just take a little bit of a history lesson and maybe talk to some of the more senior members of his party, and actually think about your own history. Think about your own history. When you talk about housing and the housing stock, think about the sort of housing stock that we inherited—[Interruption] that is right—nearly over 9 years ago. It was run down, it was cold, and it was unsuitable for people to live in. Who was the Government that made the investment to make sure that we could retrofit those houses?

But here is the thing—right? You have started to use examples, so let us go for an example, because you will want to use an example. Let us take the Tāmaki Transformation. That was under a Labour Government. That was under a Minister who turned around and said that this housing stock in Glen Innes—by the way, we lived in it as well—was not fit for people to live in. This housing stock—I can name you the streets: Farringdon.

Chris Hipkins: Inherited from a National Government.

Hon ALFRED NGARO: No, no, no, no, no. Let us take this: 9 years—9 years. So now you are saying it was inherited from a National Government. You had 9 years to make a difference—sorry, Mr Chair—under a Labour Government, but you did not. You did not. [Interruption]

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Order! I want to hear what the Minister is saying.

Hon ALFRED NGARO: Thank you, Mr Chair. You know you are getting in when the growls start to happen. You know when you are scratching home, because all of it begins to hurt and all emotions start emerging. OK, that is when you know you are starting. Why? Because it hurts, because it is the truth. It hurts because it is the truth.

Under this Government we have retrofitted, we have fixed, we have housed more people in warmer, drier homes than that party in Government did in 9 years. That is the truth and that is the difference we have made. Over 35,000 homes have been retrofitted and made warmer and drier, under this Government. That is the record that we have. So I can tell that member that when he thinks about his own history he should think very hard before he starts to blame the legacy of this Government, because that is what this Government has done to make a difference.

I want to also acknowledge my colleague and friend Kris Faafoi who talked about and said—I want a member on the opposite side to stand up and to actually make a comment. It is not a challenge, because actually I think that what that member has done is the right thing. He has been an advocate. That is what a good electorate MP will do, which is to take a constituent case. He talked about the single mother who had, I think, a disabled eldest son and a grandchild living with them and they were having to pay their rent arrears. Up to something like $350 is what they were asked to pay, after the review on their income-related rent. You are right, because if it was not for your advocacy—and then when the amount came out, what they were entitled to was $53. It was $53. So what do we say to that? We say this: you are right, Mr Faafoi, and the fact is that in the calculations an administration error was made and your advocacy caught it. But here is the thing that you have to say: $53 means that actually it is affordable.

Hon Member: Are you really defending it?

Hon ALFRED NGARO: I am going to defend it. Why? Because under this Government we have ensured that actually it is appropriate that they are able to. Once the right amount was made, OK, the problem was fixed—right?

This member over here was talking about emergency homes. This is the first Government that has invested $354 million in emergency housing. No other Government has done that. The other side can talk about it, but this is what we are doing to make a difference: 8,600 emergency homes every year, to make a difference for those without housing.

Those members have been complaining about the fact that people were living in cars and were struggling, and now, when we are giving them temporary accommodation—that is all it is; it is a transitional house, into social housing—the heckles are coming up that we should not even be doing that. They say that we should not even be doing that, but it is a temporary fix. By the way, it is not all just in motels. There are other forms of builds that we have been making to make a difference, and that is what is making a difference. We are increasing supply from 66,000 social houses. By June 2020, it will be 72,000 houses. That is 6,400 extra social houses. That is making a difference.

Under this Government we know that the direction we are taking is making a change. It has quietened down now. Why? Because we know that this is more than just rhetoric. These are facts. These are the things that we are doing as this Government. We are not only increasing social housing but at the same time we are also looking at emergency housing. That is making a difference. That is coming along.

We are proud of our record that under this Government we have taken responsibility for those who are vulnerable and who have needs in our community. We are proud of our record to date. Thank you.

GARETH HUGHES (Green): Kia ora, Mr Chair. Ngā mihi ki a koutou. Kia ora. I am sure everyone has seen the newspaper series featuring headlines such as “ ‘I almost lost hope’: Woman, 23, lands dream home in Auckland”, “How to buy a home before you turn 30: Millennial tradies get head start”, or “From nothing to two homes, one in Auckland, in two years”. It is a bit like Instagramming food in a famine, but people are clicking these clickbait headings because, in New Zealand, house buying has gone from normal to unusual.

I want to speak about the housing affordability crisis featured in the Vote Housing report, but I want to be honest and say I am one of the fortunate few who bought a house at the age of 30. Like the newspaper series, I could have said: “Look, it just took a bit of hard work, a bit of dedication, an MP’s salary, a zero percent deposit, parental support, and travelling back in time 5 years, before house prices got crazily high.” Instead of asking why a couple under 30 bought a house in Auckland, we should be asking why a whole generation is being locked out of homeownership.

It is time for some home truths. Currently, the median house price in Auckland is more than $1 million. The median income is now only $23,000. House prices are now 11 times the median income, putting us first or second in the developed-world housing affordability league. We are seeing $100,000 annual price increases, which might make some people feel rich, but it is making the country feel poorer. Generations are being locked out of homeownership and record numbers are sleeping rough. Meanwhile, in the middle of this crisis, the Government is selling thousands of State homes. That is like burning the furniture to keep warm. National has built a speculator’s dream, where homeownership is now at its lowest level in 60 years, and unless people’s parents are wealthy, they are being locked out.

So, after 9 years of National, what do we see? House prices up, deposit requirements up, building costs up, rents up, people sleeping in cars up, and people sleeping rough on the streets up. The only thing going down is the number of State houses. But why is it getting worse? Well, if you read the report we are debating, the Government is about to launch a housing affordability indicator—an indicator. It is like waiting for the weatherman to tell you your house is blowing away when you are inside it in a tornado.

Let us have another home truth: National does not care. It knows it will not be around in 5 or 10 years’ time to be held responsible. It knows that people without a home do not vote for it, so it does not care. And, as the most self-interested, power-hungry, poll-driven Government ever, it knows that as long as it gives the appearance of acting, it does not have to act.

So how has National got away with it? Well, first, it called it a problem of success—a problem of success. When everyone else stopped laughing, it went on to plan B: blame everyone else. First, it was Labour’s fault, then it was the Greens’ fault, then it was the councils’ fault, and then it was the Resource Management Act’s fault. The only person, it seems, not responsible was the person most responsible—Nick Smith. Meanwhile, its mates blame millennials, and the other parties, they go and blame immigrants.

The reason millennials are locked out of homeownership is not that they go to Bali twice a year. It is not because they are driving a BMW on lease or have a 42-inch plasma screen and blow 200 bucks at the bar on Friday and gorge themselves on smashed avocado brunches.

Chris Bishop: You’re locked into Phil, who blames migrants.

GARETH HUGHES: It is because house prices are too high, Mr Bishop. National has built a two-track society, where wealthy kids get into housing. And, to be blunt, if you do not have a house now, your kids probably are not going to have one in the future—170 years after migrants fled the class society in Britain, we are returning to the days of the landed gentry.

National’s housing policies might be rotten, but the foundation of New Zealanders’ values—that everyone deserves a house—is still solid. The housing crisis has not been an accident. It has been the result of policies. Policies can be changed when you commit to having a warm, dry house for every New Zealander.

No one but the Greens has the courage to say in this House that house prices cannot go up for ever. No one but the Greens has the intellectual honesty to say that we need a capital gains tax. No one but the Greens has been able to work with both the red team and the blue team to insulate homes. Who first put a rental warrant of fitness on the agenda? The Greens. Who put rental rights on the political agenda? The Greens. Who will stand up for Generation Rent and get on with building homes? The Greens. The Greens will build a future where homeownership is not just clickbait; it is the New Zealand home truth.

CARMEL SEPULONI (Labour—Kelston): I just want to refer back to what Minister Anne Tolley said earlier, and that was in respect of being judged for the way National treats the most vulnerable. She acted and spoke as if that judgment would be favourable, but we in the Committee know that National will be judged harshly for the way that it has treated the most vulnerable.

I want to quote Minister Alfred Ngaro from a recent magazine article just to highlight, really, my concern for his lack of aspiration for our people. He said “ ‘We had a three-bedroom house that was full of family, between 12-15 people, no insulation, no running water and an outside toilet,’ he recalls. ‘But living in that house, I never had the sense that we were impoverished. We saw this country as the land of opportunity and lived and breathed it.’ ” The way I read that is that, basically, he is saying to all those people out there who are struggling with unhealthy homes and who are struggling with overcrowding in houses because they cannot afford to get their own housing that they should be grateful for what they have, and they should be grateful because they are in the land of opportunity, they need to work harder, and life is good. Well, that is not the case for so many of our people.

I think that Minister needs to look at the statistics with regard to our Pacific children and respiratory diseases and the admissions to hospital over the winter months. The number of our children who die because of those respiratory problems—those respiratory problems that are largely brought about because of the substandard living conditions that they are forced to live in, the ones that Mr Alfred Ngaro is, basically, saying should be celebrated. So I want to call him out on that, because our people should not be grateful for substandard living conditions, but that is what they have had imposed on them by the National Government.

Mr Ngaro is a list MP in west Auckland, so I am surprised that, unlike the rest of us who work in west Auckland, he does not see the reality of the housing crisis that has been inflicted on our community by the National Government. I want to talk through some of those cases that have come through my office—like my colleague Kris Faafoi did—because the reality is so far removed from that Government’s rhetoric it is a joke. No one can accuse me of making these stories up. These stories are documented. They are in the papers. They have been interviewed—these are real people, real lives, and real struggles with housing.

The first family I want to talk about is the Fa’avale family, who have two children. Mr Fa’avale found himself in the situation where he could not work any more because of a workplace injury. He was not given the right gear in his workplace, and so he had to give up working. Before long, basically, the family could not continue to pay their market rent and they were evicted. On the day that they were evicted, Mr Fa’avale was supposed to have the operation on his eyes, but he could not because he was concerned with looking for accommodation. No emergency housing was available to them, so they ended up living in a makeshift tent in Henderson, under a tarpaulin at the back of a Housing New Zealand house. Luckily, Housing New Zealand did not know about it, otherwise they would have been moved on. There were already other people living in that house, so only one of their two children could live inside the house, and that child cried every night, knowing that his parents and his 4-year-old brother were sleeping outside under a tarpaulin.

We had to take that case up with Housing New Zealand and Work and Income, and of course they jumped into action when an Opposition MP brought it to their attention. But that Government should not be waiting for Opposition MPs and the media to bring these cases to its attention. I was so disgusted when I showed up at that house with a journalist and saw that poor 4-year-old child come out of that bed, having just woken up, with eczema and mosquito bites covering his body. That is the reality, Mr Alfred Ngaro. There is not much to celebrate there, and that family was not feeling very happy about their situation.

Chris Bishop: Probably because there was a journo.

CARMEL SEPULONI: I want to talk about—Mr Bishop thinks it is funny. Keep going, Mr Bishop. Your whole Government thinks the housing crisis is a joke and will not take it seriously.

I want to talk about the family from my electorate who were in emergency accommodation at a motel on Lincoln Road over the school holidays. They were evicted after 10 years in a rental house because they missed a couple of weeks of rent earlier this year. Going to visit them at that Lincoln Road motel during the school holidays—a 5-year-old, a 7-year-old, a 9-year-old, and a mother who had taken 2 weeks off her job at Tegel to stay home with those kids. Talking to those kids, I had the 7-year-old turn around and say, with tears in their eyes—I am not even exaggerating—“Thank you so much for helping our family.” This was another family that was homeless under that Government’s watch. So I do not know what the Minister is talking about when she says that Government will be judged fondly for what it has done for the most vulnerable people in New Zealand.

I have sat through the annual review, I have listened to the officials, and I have listened to the Minister. The reality is that the additional money that the Government puts into benefits—it cannot even tell us whether or not it has had any impact on the child poverty rates in this country. It has not done anything to address the real hardship that families are facing, and that is why we are in the situation where we have least 41,000 people who are homeless. It is not the reality that we all grew up with in this country. It is so foreign for us, still. It still shocks me when I go to my local shopping centres and I am faced with rough sleepers outside those shopping centres. It is not the reality that we in New Zealand know, and it is not what we want to see every day, but we have got a National Government that continues to ignore it and to pretend that it is actually attending to the needs of our most vulnerable when that is not the case.

I want to point out what came up in the annual review around the Ministry of Social Development’s role with regard to getting people into employment. It continues to bother me and worry me that a large number of the people who are going off benefit are not, in fact, going into employment. It came up last week that an increasing number of people who are going off benefit are going into prison, and a decreasing number of people who are going off benefit are going on to study. You have to wonder how aspirational that is. When you listen to the rhetoric from that Government talking about social investment, talking about long-term cost savings—because it is not going to save us money if what we are seeing is people going off benefit and into prisons, and it is not going to save us money if people are not getting the upskilling and training that they need when they find themselves in a period of unemployment when they cannot get work.

So we have an increasing number of people going into prison. In fact, if we look at the numbers in terms of the trend, if it continues on that path, in 4 years’ time, one in 25 people who go off benefit will actually be exiting because they are going into jail. What kind of legacy is that, and how aspirational is that, for our people who find themselves out of work?

We had a 40 percent drop in the number of people who are going on to study. I have to refer back to one of the first actions of that National Government—another action that was anti-aspirational, not supportive of some of the most vulnerable families—and that was the cutting of the training incentive allowance. Of course there has been a drop in the number of people picking up study, because they are not supported by that Government to get into study. Instead, what they are encouraged to do in whatever way is to just get off benefit and, where possible, go into the nearest, fastest minimum-wage job, which does not actually see them better off and which does not actually see their long-term employment prospects improve. As a country, we should be concerned about that.

The Government has been trying to celebrate the fact that there has been a slight drop in benefit numbers, but the reality is that families are not better off. We see that with the increase of hardship grants given out—74,000 additional hardship grants compared with last year. We see that with the extra $20 million that needed to be spent on emergency housing. There is $100,000 a day being spent on motel accommodation. We see that with the types of hardship grants that families are having to seek out. Those hardship grants are in the area of food and educational costs—the basics that we would expect any New Zealand Government to provide for with regard to families in this country.

So families are struggling; there are no two ways about it. And, actually, when you look at the hardship grants, it is not just beneficiaries who are having to access them. It is an increasing number of working families—10 percent of those hardship grants that were accessed were actually accessed by working families. It has been 9 long years of incredibly, incredibly harsh treatment of the most vulnerable in this country, and, actually, an increasing number are vulnerable because of the actions, or the non-actions, by that side of the House.

STUART SMITH (National—Kaikōura): Thank you, Mr Chair—a good decision. We have heard a lot about substandard housing in the last little while, and I would just like to point out that probably 17 years ago, 20 years ago, those houses would have still been substandard. They have not appeared to be substandard just overnight. They are old houses, they are old stock, and the issue is, actually, there has not been enough investment in that stock over the years, and it is in the wrong place, it is the wrong size, and it needs to be reconfigured, and at last we are attacking that. I applaud that step forward. It is forward-thinking, and it is a massive step, but it has to be taken. It is a shame it has taken so long for that to be realised, because we now have a lot of ground to make up.

There was a lot of talk about what is happening in Auckland, but, you know, I do not live in Auckland, and while there are some shortages in other parts of the country, there is a lot of surplus housing stock around the country, and also it matches up with a shortage of employees to work around the country. I note in the Ministry of Social Development report that it talked about how we asked the Minister about several of the initiatives, like the 3K to Christchurch scheme, which provides $3,000 to enable people to move to take up jobs in Christchurch, and that has worked incredibly well. It is quite ironic when you look around the country that we cannot get people into the regions, and it is happening in every region. I note meatworkers, for example—I have got an abattoir in my electorate that is desperate for staff. It is desperate for them. It cannot get them, and yet there are meatworkers with skills in other parts of the country who will not move. So it is a real problem.

We also have some issues in other parts of the country, like in Southland with dairy workers, all being paid—

Phil Twyford: What about Blenheim?

STUART SMITH: And vineyard workers in Marlborough, absolutely. In fact, a taxi driver was telling me the other day, quite proudly, about his adult son who is home from university and who cleared $19 an hour in his hand working in the vineyards. It is actually very good money, and it is surprising that more people are not availing themselves of that.

I also wanted to talk about how there was an appropriation, or a vote, of $15 million for 800 places in the Limited Service Volunteer programme. I have to say, as a former patron of the Limited Service Volunteers, I have seen how well that works, and I applaud that money going towards that programme. To see over 6 weeks the young people who come along to that programme, most of their heads down, in fact, with very little confidence, very little pride in themselves—to see how their heads come up over that 6 weeks and the skills they get having to work in a team, having to actually take responsibility for themselves, is quite amazing.

They are allowed to smoke, for instance, but there is a little square painted on the ground in amongst all of the buildings, and if they want to smoke, they have to find their way over there to smoke, and they are allowed to do that only a couple of times a day. But it has turned their lives around. And to see the pride on their faces—I had the pleasure of handing out the awards at the graduation, or passing-out parade. The emotion on the faces of those people was amazing. I think, for some of them, it was the first time they had ever been told that they had done a great job. It was fantastic to see that and, really, a very humbling experience.

I also—talking about experiences—would like to reflect back on the Budget in 2015, which was my first Budget. I have to say it was quite amazing sitting in here when the Government announced its hardship package raising the benefit for the first time in 43 years, and to see the look of absolutely stunned mullets across the other side of the House was quite an amazing sight, really. To stand up as a Government, and particularly a National Government, to actually raise the benefits for the first time in 43 years—I think New Zealanders really stood up and took notice of what great leadership John Key brought to this country. He will be sorely missed and will go down as one of our great Prime Ministers. On that note, I would like to commend the reports to the Committee. Thank you.

PEENI HENARE (Labour—Tāmaki Makaurau): Tēnā koe, Mr Chair. Thank you for this opportunity. What I get asked by my constituents across Tāmaki Makaurau is when will this Government stop pointing the finger to administrations past and actually have a good hard look at its time in office now.

Let me tell you a story about a family—a mother, a father, and seven tamariki—who were put through the stress of having to move out of their home, just like the example given by my colleague here, Mr Faafoi. They met with Housing New Zealand 16 times—16 times; seven tamariki, all still of school age—and were constantly being denied and told that they were not a priority and that there was not enough availability. They begged the principal of the school to take them in, let them put a roof over their heads, let their tamariki have a shower, and let them be able to give the necessities to their tamariki. Well, they could not stay at the school for ever, and, in fact, what the school was doing was breaking the law. But that is what it had to do to make sure that this family could have the necessities.

The family came into my office, frustrated and angry. The parents were in tears—tears of embarrassment, tears of frustration, and tears for the fact that they felt inadequate because they were not able to provide for their tamariki.

I am proud to say that my office has helped 122 families into accommodation. Some of it was emergency accommodation, where we knew that they would be there for only a temporary time, but most of them have got into homes through the hard work and advocating done by my staff.

The sad thing about that—the sad thing about that—is we know that the Government has sold off the Housing New Zealand stock, and, in fact, it did it with the support of the Māori Party. The Māori Party has said that this will provide Māori housing providers with the opportunity to provide social housing for our people to be able to manage housing stock with values of tikanga, as espoused by our Māori people. Here is a number for this Government: how many of those Māori housing contractors have been able to pick up a contract for social housing in this country? Zero—none. That was supported by the Māori Party. The housing stock was sold off—no Māori social housing providers.

I want to ask the question of where the Māori Party is in this particular debate, because I blame it for this State housing sell-off, and for the fact that more and more Māori people are ending up in my office looking for support, looking for somebody to listen to them, and looking for somebody to actually advocate on their behalf with Government departments. The point has been made quite well on this side.

I was sad to see one of the exchanges earlier, given that the Minister of Health turned a blind eye to the fact that the state of a lot of rental properties today means they are incubators for illness. The tragedy in this whole debate is that, on that point, those illnesses are preventable. They are preventable. That is what the problem is. Those illnesses are preventable, yet we are quite happy to ignore the fact that a lot of the social housing that is available to our people now is actually substandard. Those properties are incubators for illness and they are not making our people better. We all know that what is going to happen when a family moves into a safe, warm, dry home is that the life of that family will be improved exponentially—exponentially—and what this Government fails to see is that for the many families in Tāmaki Makaurau, in particular, but also right across the country, its policies have got a negative impact on them.

Minister Anne Tolley mentioned that the Government’s increase in benefits has been welcomed by the people of Kaitāia and Tokoroa, and she mentioned a couple of other small townships. Well, in my constituency of Tāmaki Makaurau, it means nothing. It is barely even a bus fare. It is not enough for a kai. It is not enough to give the tamariki the educational resources that they need to thrive and to be successful at school.

So I ask what this Government has done, and so do the people of Tāmaki Makaurau. I will be telling them that there are zero Māori housing social providers, that over 120 families have come into my office looking for assistance on housing issues alone, and that this Government has turned a blind eye to the critical issues of the people in Tāmaki Makaurau.

Dr PARMJEET PARMAR (National): I would like to start by talking about the work that we are doing for children and young people. It is understood that every family wants to do well for their children.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): Sorry, I had better warn the member that this debate finishes at 9.08 p.m. So just forget what is on the red clock; worry about the clock above it.

Dr PARMJEET PARMAR: Thank you, Mr Chair. All families want to do well for their children, but then there are circumstances when families are unable to do that, and it is about breaking that cycle. We want to see that every child is safe, healthy, and attains some formal qualification—and this is for all children, whether they come from welfare-dependent families or they come from families who have never been on benefit. These families sometimes need some direction or they need some assistance to get off benefit, and that is what this National Government has been doing. We have been seeing some really good results. We have seen that there are 57,000 fewer people on the job seeker benefit in September 2016 compared with September 2010.

During the select committee process there was a discussion about what happens to those people who go off benefit. There are several reasons why people go off benefit when some assistance is provided to them. The good thing is that there was already some baseline work done, by collecting information from people who have gone off benefit between July 2010 and 30 June 2011.

Another great outcome that we have seen is that there are 8,000 fewer sole parent beneficiaries. This is from 2014 to 2016. Looking at the working-age group who are on benefit, we recorded the lowest number of working-age people on benefit in December 2016. This is the lowest proportion since 2007, and that is before the global financial crisis—a very good outcome. This has been possible because we have been investing hugely to help people get off benefit.

Our focus has been on young people. We know that if people go on benefit at a younger age, they tend to stay on benefit for a longer time, so we have been investing. There was a package of $41 million to help 19-year-old beneficiaries with children, and also 18-year-old beneficiaries who were considered to be at risk of staying on benefit for a very long time. A very gutsy step this—

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): I apologise for interrupting the member, but the time for this debate has expired.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the reports of committees relevant to the Social Development and Housing Sector be noted.

Ayes 62

New Zealand National 58; Māori Party 2; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.

Noes 57

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

Reports noted.

A party vote was called for on the question, That clauses 1 to 10 and schedules 1 to 5 be agreed to.

Ayes 62

New Zealand National 58; Māori Party 2; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.

Noes 57

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

Clauses 1 to 10 and schedules 1 to 5 agreed to.

House resumed.

Bill reported without amendment.

Report adopted.

Bills

Appropriation (2015/16 Confirmation and Validation) Bill

Third Reading

Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (Deputy Leader of the House) on behalf of the Minister of Finance: I move, That the Appropriation (2015/16 Confirmation and Validation) Bill be now read a third time.

Bill read a third time.

Bills

Education (Tertiary Education and Other Matters) Amendment Bill

First Reading

Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (Deputy Leader of the House) on behalf of the Minister for Tertiary Education, Skills and Employment: I move, That the Education (Tertiary Education and Other Matters) Amendment Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Education and Science Committee to consider the bill. At the appropriate time I intend to move that the bill be reported to the House by a date that is 4 months and 1 week from the date the bill receives its first reading. I also intend to move that the select committee have the authority to meet at any time while the House is sitting, except during oral questions, during any evening on a day on which there has been a sitting of the House, and on a Friday in a week where there has been a sitting of the House, despite Standing Orders 191 and 194(1)(b) and (c).

This bill will help the tertiary education system run more efficiently, ensure quality, and provide additional student protection. Tertiary education providers need to innovate and be able to respond quickly to the changing needs of students and the labour market. The changes the bill is proposing balance an increasingly flexible system with the appropriate accountability and monitoring mechanisms to ensure that providers can focus on delivering better outcomes for students. The changes in this bill will also ensure a more consistent playing field for tertiary education providers and will broaden student protection arrangements.

Currently education legislation does not allow the Government the flexibility to make reasonable changes to increase or shift funding across the tertiary education system in response to changes in Government policy or student demand. The lack of flexibility has meant that the Government has been operating short 1-year to 2-year funding cycles, meaning that providers are more focused on short-term planning and outcomes. This bill will enable changes to be made to a funding mechanism after that funding has been approved, including to conditions on the funding. This flexibility will give the responsible Minister more confidence to approve tertiary education funding for up to 3 years, it will reduce compliance for providers, and it will give them more time and resources to focus on improving student outcomes.

To ensure the changes do not compromise funding certainty for providers, the legislation will require the Minister to make changes only when it is reasonably necessary, following consultation with the sector and with an appropriate lead-in time. The Government has already implemented a number of changes to strengthen the monitoring of tertiary education organisations, in response to a recent investigation. This bill builds on these changes by allowing better monitoring of the tertiary education institutions’ use of Government funding.

The bill requires providers to have information on their use of Government funding prepared and collated, to be provided to the regulatory authority when the need arises. I want to assure the House that this is not increasing the reporting burden on providers but is a requirement for providers to hold information in an accessible format, for use when required. It allows the Tertiary Education Commission (TEC) to impose conditions on a tertiary education organisation so that, if required, they can monitor activities not funded by the Government. It will allow the TEC to recover some of the cost incurred as part of investigating breaches of funding conditions only where breaches are found to have occurred. These changes will give the TEC more ability to identify, investigate, and address compliance issues.

The bill also seeks to create a consistent playing field for tertiary education providers to encourage performance and innovation. Tertiary education providers that provide good outcomes for students should receive the same benefits, regardless of whether they are publicly or privately owned. Currently, public and private providers receive the same rate of funding for similar provision. However, the Education Act 1989 allows a future Minister to fund private providers at a different rate from public providers for the same provision. The bill requires tertiary education providers to be funded at the same rate for the same provision, regardless of their ownership. This change reflects current practice.

The Education Act regulates the use of four terms that refer to tertiary institutions: university, polytechnic, institute of technology, and college of education. Only institutions established as such under the Act can be described using these terms. Wānanga, particularly Te Whare Wānanga o Awanuiārangi, consider the current law unfair. Awanuiārangi wishes to use the term “indigenous university” as an English language description after its official name, as the term “wānanga” is not well understood internationally. I propose to allow wānanga to apply for ministerial consent to use a protected term in the same way a private training establishment can already under section 253C of the Act. This would not mean that a wānanga will become a university under the law; it simply means a wānanga could apply to use the term “university” so as to describe itself as an indigenous university.

In the past year a number of issues have arisen that highlight gaps in the legislation relating to student protection arrangements, so this bill aims to broaden student protection. Following the recent collapse of a private school in Auckland, 14 international students were transferred to another private school, which meant additional tuition and homestay fees, which were paid for directly by the Ministry of Education. The export education levy is a contribution paid by all providers who take on international students, both schools and tertiary providers, to fund development and risk management initiatives for the export education sector. The bill will extend the levy’s reimbursement provisions to cover private and partnership schools. This will allow international students to be reimbursed for their fees and continue to study in New Zealand, should their provider fail.

A recent High Court ruling found that schools cannot stand down, suspend, or expel international students for misconduct outside school, even if their enrolment contract allows for it. This has consequences for international students’ safety and well-being. The schools are unable to effectively manage risky or potentially harmful behaviour. The bill will enable schools to manage international student misconduct outside school, so they can uphold their contractual duty to ensure international students’ health, safety, and well-being.

Following the recent closure of an international education provider, there was evidence to suggest that learners had not been appropriately assessed. The current offence provisions do not hold that provider to account. The bill will make it an offence for a person to falsely award credits to a student studying towards a qualification. This will allow the New Zealand Qualifications Authority to pursue action against providers for falsely awarding credits.

The bill also proposes a number of other changes that are minor or technical, or seek to modernise other aspects of the Act. In conclusion, this will increase funding flexibility and further strengthen monitoring and accountability of the sector, create a consistent playing field for tertiary education providers to encourage performance and innovation, and broaden student protection arrangements, which supports all students studying in New Zealand to have a high-quality education experience. I commend the bill to the House.

CHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka): I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. Before I get into my contribution on the first reading of this bill, I would just like to seek some clarification from you that that referral motion moved by the Minister will be debated separately at the end of the debate on this first reading.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): The short answer to the question is yes. It is a debatable motion not because it is a shortening motion, but because of the other conditions that have been put in there. So there will be a debate that will be held if the bill gets its first reading.

Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (Deputy Leader of the House): Speaking to that point of order—and I am moving this motion on behalf of another member—the signal is of the intent to move a motion, and at the end of this debate there will be that motion, Mr Assistant Speaker, can you just clarify whether or not, in response to that, it is possible to move a different motion that warrants no debate?

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): I think I am in the relatively lucky position in that I will take some advice on that question and I will report back to the House this evening on that. My gut feeling is that it is possible—and the fact that the member has not supplied a copy to the Chair, which is somewhat unusual, might give him a bit more latitude—but I will consider that matter and we will come back to the House on it.

CHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka): Speaking further to that issue, I was on the Standing Orders Committee when this rule change was proposed about two parliaments ago. The decision of the Standing Orders Committee was that the only non-debatable part of a referral motion would be a referral to a select committee with a shortened time frame of no less than 4 months. Any other conditions or any other shortened time frame would be debatable.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): That is absolutely the case, and I did not want anything that I said to take away from that. The question, I think, that the Minister asked was a different question, and that was whether, if the Government changed its mind as to the type of motion that it wanted to move, it had the flexibility to do that. That is something that I am currently considering and will report back on. I think, though, to be fair to the member, who is about to make a speech, he is free to refer to the motion as currently indicated now, although the debate will happen later.

CHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka): As long as my voice remains, I intend to take my speech on this first reading of the Education (Tertiary Education and Other Matters) Amendment Bill. I want to say that I am very proud to stand here in defence of New Zealand’s quality public education system against yet another attack by the current National Government.

We used to have a public education system that all New Zealanders could be proud of. We could be proud of the fact that we had polytechs and universities that were world class, particularly a network of polytechs—or nowadays we know them as Institutes of Technology and Polytechnics, or ITPs—around New Zealand that we could be proud of and that were providing a quality education in our regions, with a variety of subjects and options to ensure that all New Zealanders had access to the type of education that they needed to achieve their potential in life and to secure good employment, as well. Unfortunately, what we are seeing under the National Government is that that quality network of provision around the country is being eroded, and this bill will serve only to exacerbate that problem.

One of the things that this bill does is it removes any presumption that the Government would consider its ownership interest in tertiary education institutions in making funding decisions. I think that that is an abrogation of the notion that the Government has a responsibility to provide for a network of public tertiary education institutions throughout the country. This bill will serve only to harm our polytechnics and our institutes of technology, even more than they already have been. The first real onslaught against them came with the idea that some parts of their funding would be thrown up for contestable funding rounds. That has seen a significant transfer of funding from public institutions to private institutions, and now this will do them even further damage. There are many aspects of this bill that the Labour Party is very strongly in favour of, but the provisions that relate to funding are ones that we are going to be strenuously opposed to.

Public institutions should be able to receive a differentiated level of funding. They serve a different purpose to private training establishments (PTEs) in many cases because they are ensuring that there is a base level of educational provision in all parts of the country. A fully contestable, market-driven model is not going to deliver those same outcomes. It is going to result in private providers being able to cherry-pick the aspects of tertiary education provision that are the most profitable, leaving the polytechs and the institutes of technology with the least profitable parts, and with no recourse back to Government to say that they need to have additional funding in order to continue to provide that education.

The result of that is that the polytechs and the institutes of technology will continue to be financially crippled, and the breadth and depth of educational provision in New Zealand’s regions will continue to contract. New Zealanders will have less and less access to that education, and that is what this bill is going to exacerbate. So we would oppose this legislation based on that factor alone because it is going to be such a fundamental change to the way our tertiary institutions are funded. We think that public funding for education should go towards education and towards supporting public educational institutions, not be sucked out in the form of either capital accumulation by private businesses or dividend making by private businesses, as this bill would allow to happen.

There are some aspects of this bill that we are open to debate on, and I suspect there is going to be good and lively debate on them. The renaming of private training establishments to a title that is more representative of the breadth of provision that exists within the sector is an appropriate thing to do. Whether the use of the word “independent” tertiary education providers is the right one is something that I am yet to be convinced about, because our public institutions—the universities and polytechs—are independent. In fact, they are statutorily independent from the Government. So saying that PTEs are going to be regarded as independent would suggest that the public institutions are not, which simply, I think, is a bit of a misnomer. So I am open to a more inclusive form of wording here. In Australia, they make a differentiation between community-based or not-for-profit education providers, and profit-driven education providers. If that was to be a differentiation that we were going to make within our law, I would be certainly open to that debate, and I think that that would be helpful. I think it is frustrating when some of the very, very good community education providers are lumped into that PTE category and receive, rather unfairly, some of the criticism that goes with other parts of the PTE sector. So I would certainly like to see a different terminology that better embraces what it is that they do.

We are open to the debate around wānanga being able to apply for the use of the term “university”, which is a protected term at the moment, but we want to have more debate and understanding about what that will mean. We have eight universities in New Zealand. We have not done what they did in the United Kingdom, where they called all of their tertiary education providers universities, including the ones that were dealing with predominantly sub-degree programmes. We did not go down that road in New Zealand. We kept the term “university” for institutions that are dealing predominantly with level 7 and above qualifications—so degree-level and above qualifications. If we are going to extend the term to wānanga, I would want to have a bit more discussion around what that might mean and what type of wānanga provision might be able to be covered by that term. There are international expectations of what a university looks like and what the breadth of provision a university should provide should be, and therefore we want to see those issues fully canvassed before we would agree to that particular provision.

There are parts of the bill that we strongly support. Aligning the refund entitlements for domestic students involved in short courses at a PTE with those of international students—that makes a lot of sense. It seems wrong that an international student and a domestic student withdrawing from a course within the first few days are currently treated differently, and the domestic students are the ones, ultimately, who are worse off there. We think that enabling State and State integrated schools to manage international student misconduct outside the school is a very welcome change—and one that I know the schools will welcome, as well—including giving them the power to use stand down, suspension, exclusion, and expulsion, so that they can uphold their contractual duty and the duties they have under the code of pastoral care to ensure international students’ health, safety, and well-being, both in and out of school. We support extending the export education levy reimbursement provisions to cover private training establishments.

We certainly support allowing tertiary education institutions to pool assets from a number of trusts to create a common trust for investment purposes. In a past life I was involved with the Victoria University foundation that manages a number of different scholarship funds. One frustration for the university was when the investments of those scholarship funds were unable to be managed in a rational and sensible way. I hope that this provision will allow for those sorts of issues to be dealt with.

We also support the greater transparency around the compulsory student services fee. Of course, the reason the compulsory student services fee is as high as it is is that the institutions are currently trying to provide—[Bell rung]

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): Short-changed, I know, but you know.

CHRIS HIPKINS: —that is all right—services that students associations used to provide a lot cheaper, but students are paying more to get either less or the same as what they were getting before.

We also support the provisions that allow for the modernising of council operations, such as allowing councils to convene meetings via teleconference or other electronic means. I sat on a university council where it was somewhat frustrating. The council would meet maybe seven or eight times a year, and there was no provision for that council to deal with more urgent matters of a restricted and confined nature between meetings, so special meetings would need to be convened, even if they were just to do something as minor as pass a single resolution. So the ability for a council to use other forms of convening meetings and other forms of communication to do that in a way that is sufficient is, I think, very welcome.

The final thing I want to do is to actually provide a compliment to the Government around the process of this bill, and that is that I think that the development and release of an exposure draft of the bill before it was introduced for first reading is a very, very good practice. It is one that allows the sector to have its say and to actually make informed contributions to the drafting of legislation before it comes to the House, rather than select committees trying to tidy up something after it has already been through its first reading.

I think the issues here are going to be well canvassed, because this has been a good process. There will be bits that we strongly disagree with; there will also be bits that we strongly agree with. We welcome the opportunity to have an informed debate on this bill, and we commend the Government for a good process, if not for everything that is in the bill.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): Before I call a member, I am now prepared to rule on the matter that has been raised. It is going to be an ad hoc but slightly convoluted ruling.

The first point that is of debate is Standing Order 287(1)(b), where there is a requirement to “indicate the terms of that proposed motion.” I think that if that was strictly interpreted, it would mean that the Government could not propose a motion other than the one that it indicated as part of the speech. But I have got vague memories of Governments being convinced to change their mind and move things more reasonably, to come back from a particular motion—even though it agreed to it—and for the House to allow the motion to be moved. It would, of course, have been helped if Standing Order 287(2), which requires the delivery of written notice at end of the speech or after the speech to the Clerk—it would have helped our discussion.

But there is an overriding matter that means the motion will not be accepted, and that is that the motion attempts to bind the House for a period beyond the period when this House is going to be sitting. So the requirement for a select committee that will not be in existence because, according to the information we have received from the Prime Minister, the House will be dissolved in 4 months and 1 week—you cannot bind a committee that, at the time, will not be a committee of the House because the House will not be in that form at that stage. So my ruling at the moment is that at the end of the first reading, there is not a motion of that type that can be moved. I will also indicate to Minister Woodhouse that he does not have the option now to shorten up the period in order to defeat the ruling that I have just made.

Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (Deputy Leader of the House): I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. Thank you for that ruling, Mr Assistant Speaker. I have just a couple of comments and a question. Firstly, it is not my intention to disrespect the process of delivering the instruction to the Clerk. The Standing Orders do not prescribe a time, but it is customary that it is done immediately after the Minister moves the motion at first reading. I am holding back just so that I can understand what the process is.

In respect of the lifting of the House, I am intrigued because, in fact, that is the function of a machinery that has not yet commenced, and, indeed, it is quite possible—although extremely unlikely—for the House to continue to sit past 16 September, which would be the date 4 months and 1 week from now. The law requires the election to take place, I think, by no later than the last week in November and the Prime Minister has signalled that it is likely to be 2 months earlier than that, but the machinery of that has not commenced yet. Therefore, I would have thought that at least at the first reading, it was possible to indicate a report-back time that is within the period of the House sitting calendar that has been agreed by the Business Committee and confirmed by the House. It is a technical matter—it is almost unlikely to come up—but the failure to move a motion on the report-back date means that all bills are required to be reported back within 6 months, and, of course, that would mean all first readings from now on would fall into that electoral vacuum.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): Yes, and it is unusual for the member to be more of a constitutional purist than I am, and that is the angle that he is taking. I think, though, that the way that government works in New Zealand is that when the Prime Minister announces an election date and informs the country of it, there are processes that must be put in place that mean that the House cannot sit. If the election is to be held on the date indicated by the Prime Minister, the House cannot be sitting at the time that the member nominates. That means that I think that the Speaker is bound to take the advice of the Prime Minister as to the sitting of the House.

I can understand that the member might have a slightly more parliamentary point of view than that, but I think the practice up until now is that when Prime Ministers have indicated that there is going to be a general election on a specific date, the machinery of the House takes notice of that.

Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (Deputy Leader of the House): I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I beg your indulgence. I was going to make two points and ask a question. I forgot to ask the question. Is it your ruling, therefore, that at the appropriate time the Minister has two choices: to either move the motion, as he had signalled his intention to, or to not move the motion at all—and therefore there can be no variation from those two options?

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): If it were not for the overriding matter, then my ruling would be that the Minister could move a motion in regard to the shortening, without the others, and have a non-debatable motion. It is pretty clear from the Standing Orders that it is only the addition of not sitting during the time of the House or on Fridays—that is the area that makes it debatable. On balance—and I do not want to make a ruling that will necessarily stand for all time, because it is not considered—I think the Government could move a lesser motion if it so chose, but as I indicated, that is not an option that is open to the Minister in this particular case because of the matter of the general election being called. Does that answer the member’s questions?

Hon Michael Woodhouse: Absolutely, thank you.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): Right.

Dr JIAN YANG (National): As a former university lecturer, I support this bill.

Andrew Bayly: Very important.

Dr JIAN YANG: Yes. I am very proud of our tertiary education. We have eight universities, and all of them are ranked in the top 450 universities worldwide. My former employer, the University of Auckland, is ranked in the top 100 universities in the world. So this bill will further strengthen our tertiary education by increasing funding flexibility, strengthening accountability, monitoring tertiary education organisations (TEO), and also by ensuring consistent treatment of public and private tertiary education providers.

Increased funding flexibility will reduce compliance costs for TEOs, will provide TEOs with more incentives to focus more on student demand and outcomes, and will also be able to enable them to innovate. It is important that we enable our tertiary education providers to innovate, to remain at the cutting edge of technology and innovation. This will enable them to attract domestic and international students.

Strengthening accountability and monitoring of TEOs means that we are able to ensure these TEOs use funding more appropriately. These changes mean that we are able to deliver better services to our students, which is crucial to the growth of a globally competitive workforce in New Zealand. According to the OECD Survey of Adult Skills 2016, New Zealand adults are ranked the fourth-highest in literacy, fifth-highest in problem solving, and 13th-highest in numeracy. So we are doing well, but we can do better.

This bill also attempts to further strengthen regulations of for education. International education has become increasingly important to us. It supports 32 jobs in New Zealand and contributes $4.28 billion to our economy, which is an increase of 50 percent from 2014. This growth did not come easily. We experienced ups and downs in the past two or three decades in our international education. We can do better. This bill responds to a court ruling that a school had no rights to manage international students’ misconduct outside school. This bill proposes to amend the law to enable our schools to monitor, or to manage, international students’ misconduct outside school. This will ensure our schools or tertiary education providers can provide better services to our international students.

This bill will certainly enhance our reputation in terms of international education. This Government is committed to providing better services to our domestic and international students. This Government has done a great deal in terms of enhancing achievement and in terms of improving the management of the education sector. So I commend the bill to the House. Thank you.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): Before I call Jenny Salesa, there is one further matter that has come to my attention, which I do want to place on the record of the House again, and that is that the Prime Minister has written to the House and has tabled the date for the 2017 general election. While I was relying on general comments that were made in the media, he has actually informed the House. I do accept the argument that it is within the prerogative of the Prime Minister to change his mind, but I think what we have got to do at the moment is go by the intention as formally notified to the House.

JENNY SALESA (Labour—Manukau East): Thank you for this opportunity to debate the Education (Tertiary Education and Other Matters) Amendment Bill. New Zealand has a world-class education system. That is something we celebrate and are really proud of. Given this fact, why should we stuff it up by agreeing to what is proposed in this new bill? While there are some provisions in this bill before the House that Labour may have supported, what we have in front of us as proposed continues down the track of developing a privatised model of competition in tertiary education in Aotearoa New Zealand. This is the main reason why Labour opposes this bill.

This bill, according to what we read, will amend the Education Act of 1989, and it will “increase funding flexibility in the tertiary education system” and it will “ensure consistent treatment of public and private tertiary education providers”. This is simply code for supporting private commercial interests over the rights of New Zealand students to a well-resourced, well-rounded tertiary education by robbing needy Peter to pay for-profit Paul. So, as I said earlier on, this is the main reason why the Labour Party absolutely opposes this bill. It will further privatise tertiary education.

Part 1 of this bill covers the amendment to the principal Act as it relates to international students. Clause 34 amends section 238I, so that the funds of the expert education levy can be used to reimburse students if a private school or a partnership school fails mid-course and is unable to reimburse the students. This will allow international students to be reimbursed for their fees, but they will still be able to continue their studies here in New Zealand in the event that either of these two schools fails.

However, we know, because this has been covered very well in the media over the last few months and over the last couple of years, that there are a number of fraudulent agents that are currently operating in New Zealand. The Government needs to step up in this area because students and their families—their lives are being ruined. Ultimately, the tertiary education sector as a whole may pay the price of this fraud. It is New Zealand’s international reputation, our reputation for excellence in education, that may be irreparably damaged if this current Government does not step up and sort this out.

We also know that right now there are certain sectors in our society that are currently using skilled migrant labour. They utilise short-term visas, including working holiday and student visas, to fill the skill gaps that we are currently experiencing right across New Zealand but especially in Auckland.

But we also know that this current National Government is not actually transitioning a lot of our young people—thousands of our young people—successfully from secondary school, either on to further education in the tertiary sector or into employment. We also know that this current Government has not actually addressed the fact that we now have over 90,000 of our young people under the age of 24 who are not in education, employment, or training. We know that this number has increased from just over 70,000, 12 months ago.

This is an issue that I would have thought would be strongly addressed in this bill—that we should see more of what this current Government would be doing to address those who are not in education, employment, or training, and to address the fact that we have so many that we are needing to be skilled and in training. But we do not see that strongly covered.

Part 2 of this bill actually panders to private providers in education in a number of ways. First, it proposes that private training establishments—PTEs—should get the same rate of funding as universities, polytechnics, and wānanga. But we must ask: why should shareholders of those private companies get what are essentially massive corporate subsidies from all of us as taxpayers? That public money would be much better invested in New Zealand students, and indeed should be so invested at this time, when public institutions, our staff, and our students at those public institutions are under-resourced and are enormously stressed. We know this from recent studies. Over a thousand of our staff in those institutions have been surveyed, and they have told us they are enormously stressed and under a lot of pressure.

Private companies should not be given the same status as those of our independent universities and our polytechnics. Our public institutions have legal obligations to teach New Zealanders from all backgrounds, from all walks of life, and from each area in Aotearoa New Zealand. They maintain and they protect our academic freedom, and they support New Zealand with robust, unbiased research. By contrast, private, for-profit providers’ main obligation is to make a profit for their shareholders and for their owners.

According to Statistics New Zealand, just last year tertiary fees have gone up by more than 43 percent since the National Government took office. Our institutions are not coping with the funding freeze under this National Government. The enrolments at many of our public institutions continue to decline. The recent contestable funding process has seen a significant transfer of funding from public institutions to private ones. Regional polytechnics and institutes of technology—they are suffering. They are struggling for survival as we speak. Public institutions should continue to receive a differentiated level of funding because, amongst other things, their capital investments remain in our public ownership. Private establishments are under no obligation whatsoever to continue to use their accumulated publicly funded capital for educational purposes. Public funding for education should go towards education, not just towards capital accumulation and profit dividends for shareholders.

We have mixed feelings on some of what is proposed by this bill. One of the things that we have mixed feelings about is that we think we should have an open debate about whether or not wānanga should be able to use the term “university”. We think that we should have an open debate about this, but there is merit in having a debate before wānanga are allowed to use this term. We do know that universities already use the term “wānanga” in their Māori translations right now. But, as we say, we are open to a debate on this.

As I conclude, I would like to acknowledge those on the opposite benches because they have had a really good consultation process in preparation for this bill. Sadly, however, significant measures within this bill remain tinkering around the edges by the National Government—just tutu-ing around with the system—and we do not support this bill.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): I am just going to warn the member about her language. I am not going to formally do anything about it, but the member should take care.

TODD BARCLAY (National—Clutha-Southland): Mr Assistant Speaker, I thought you were about to warn the member of having inconsistent—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): The member is now going to sit down and not comment on my ruling. He knows absolutely that he is not allowed to. When the member gathers himself, he can start again.

TODD BARCLAY: Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker. As I was saying, it is great to be able to speak on the first reading of the Education (Tertiary Education and Other Matters) Amendment Bill. I just wanted to pick up on a couple of points following on from my colleague Dr Jian Yang, the chair of the Education and Science Committee, around international education—the point around the importance of it, in particular. International education last year was our fourth-largest export earner, generating around $1.3 billion in revenue for our country. Right across New Zealand, outside Auckland right through to Southland, Otago, and other parts of the country, everyone benefits from international education. But, in saying that, it is important that we have the structures right in order to—

Tracey Martin: He believes such rubbish.

TODD BARCLAY: —accommodate that growth. Clearly, Mrs Martin has not been down to Southland and seen the Southern Institute of Technology, which runs quite a unique operation. Traditionally, the international students whom it attracts are generally older—late 20s, early 30s—many of whom come to New Zealand with a partner. While one part of the partnership is studying full-time, the other is working. They often have got children as well. So for Southland, the proposition of international education—in particular, through the Southern Institute of Technology—provides overall benefits for our economy by attracting more people to Southland.

The other thing about it is that, unlike many of the more urban centres with younger international students—who come, perform their studies, and many of whom then leave again—of the students who are attracted to the Southern Institute of Technology, many of them stay and actually contribute and live in the community for quite a while after that. So it is important that there is a level playing field for international and domestic students and that the codes of conduct are fair in order to protect them while they are here.

In terms of the contribution this bill makes towards that, around managing the conduct—it is in response to a recent court ruling that said that schools have no rights to manage international students’ misconduct outside school. This bill contains a proposal to amend that law to enable State and State integrated schools to manage international students in the same way that private schools do, including the use of stand-down suspensions and exclusions for activities performed outside the school environment. That is consistent with the code of conduct and practice of pastoral care of international students who are at tertiary education organisations.

It is great to be able to speak on this bill. I look forward to considering it in greater detail in select committee.

GARETH HUGHES (Green): Kia ora, Mr Assistant Speaker. Ngā mihi nui ki a koutou. Kia ora. Well, that was not really commenting on the bill at all. It was just a vague homily about how wonderful foreign students are for the country. It would be good to actually have a debate on the legislation, because this is tremendously important—right?

I am going to talk about some of the technical, reasonable things that we agree with, but let us be clear: this is a major change to tertiary education funding and investment in New Zealand. This is a major ideological push by the National members, who clearly see the clock ticking on their Government and they have got to quickly ram through as much pro-market, pro-private, pro - for-profit provider support legislation. So yes, the National members can just give these vague homilies, but let us talk about the real issues, eh guys?

Look, I rise to oppose this bill. There is some pretty reasonable stuff in here that we can agree with—for example, giving wānanga the chance to use the term “university”, allowing the Tertiary Education Commission the ability to charge tertiary education institutes (TEIs) for investigations, transparency over how student levies are funded, and providing an opportunity for TEIs to censure students for off-campus behaviour.

I actually quite agree with the point made by the member Chris Hipkins, with regard to the other change that allows private tertiary establishments (PTEs) to be now called independent tertiary establishments. It makes quite a juxtaposition that on one hand you have got the State-run institutes not “independent”, because what we have at the moment are private tertiary establishments. The Government wants to change it because it is scared that everyone is going to view them as for-profit, which we know the vast majority are—so it is changing them into independent tertiary establishments, which has the problem that it implies that the current universities and polytechs are not independent, which we know is absolutely not true when you look at the university Acts and you look at the roles of the university councils. So that is an interesting point that Chris Hipkins has raised, which will be interesting to follow up in the select committee.

What I want to focus on, and why the Green Party is stridently opposed—we would like to make sure that this is repealed when we are in Government—is the private, for-profit funding changes. You see, I am opposed not just because of the negative technical changes—and there are some—but because of the significant changes, these milestones, which would see a fundamental change in our tertiary education sector. What we are seeing by the inclusion of the words “consistent funding” for private, for-profit providers is that it absolutely changes the historical playing field in New Zealand. In fact, this is explicit in the legislation that this is the point—to change the playing field.

Essentially, what we are going to see is private providers receiving as much as State-run universities and polytechs. Basically, this is public money for private profit. It is going to have a huge impact on the tertiary education sector, because what we know, and what we have seen in level 1 and 2 courses, is that they compete by lowering wages and they compete by lowering working conditions. What we have seen is the ability to cherry-pick specific courses. We are going to see the large, offshore PTEs get a foothold in New Zealand, and what this is going to mean is that funding is going to be much more precarious for tertiary institutions. But what it means on the ground for Southland, which we heard the member, Todd Barclay, talk about just then, is that we have already seen a massive decline in our polytech provision in regional New Zealand, and this is going to eat into it further.

So what is the agenda behind it? The Government throws out all of these slogans—“consistent funding”, “funding flexibility”, “level playing fields”. These are just slogans based on ideology. I believe there is a difference, and Governments for decades and decades in New Zealand have believed there is a difference, when the State provides high-quality public tertiary education. Those members cry on about the need for flexibility but present no evidence on where the system is failing. We have seen considerable flexibility in the sector to change with new technology and new pedagogies—and you see that, in fact, in the Productivity Commission report.

We look forward to engaging with this in select committee, but we are stridently opposed to this massive change to tertiary education. We are going to fight it all the way. Kia ora, Mr Assistant Speaker.

TRACEY MARTIN (NZ First): Good evening, Mr Assistant Speaker—

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

Debate interrupted.

The House adjourned at 10 p.m.