Tuesday, 20 June 2017

TUESDAY, 20 JUNE 2017

TUESDAY, 20 JUNE 2017

Mr Speaker took the Chair at 2 p.m.

Prayers.

Visitors

Republic of Mexico—Senate Delegation

Mr SPEAKER: Honourable members, I am sure that members would wish to welcome a delegation from the Senate of the Republic of Mexico, led by Senator Ana Gabriela Guevara Espinoza.

Oral Questions

Questions to Ministers

Economy—Growth, Outlook, GDP per Capita, and Exports

1. CHRIS BISHOP (National) to the Minister of Finance: What reports has he received on growth in New Zealand’s economy?

Hon STEVEN JOYCE (Minister of Finance): Last week Statistics New Zealand released the GDP figures for the March quarter, which showed the economy grew by 0.5 percent in the first 3 months of this year, taking our growth rate for the year to 3 percent. Growth in the quarter was across 11 of 16 industries, including agriculture, forestry, and fishing up 2.8 percent; manufacturing up 1 percent; retail, trade, and accommodation up 1.8 percent; and healthcare and residential care up 1.6 percent. They were partially offset by weaker growth in the transport and construction sectors. Construction fell in the quarter by 2.1 percent, but the annual construction figure increased by 9.3 percent over the year.

Chris Bishop: How is the March GDP figure expected to affect growth forecasts?

Hon STEVEN JOYCE: When assessing the state of the economy and economic growth, you have to be able to look through individual quarters up and down. This particular quarter was softer than expected, but the forward-looking indicators suggest there will likely be a pick-up in June—for example, the performance of services index rose 5.6 points to 58.8 in May, and the services sector, of course, accounts for about two-thirds of the economy. Also, the performance of the manufacturing index for May has also expanded to 58.5, which is its highest level since January 2016. Other economic data released last week showed that the balance of payments was at 3.1 percent, and the international liability position is down again to 58.5 percent of GDP.

Chris Bishop: What feedback has he received on the Government’s economic plan?

Hon STEVEN JOYCE: A key priority of the Government’s plan is to deliver stable economic growth so that businesses and investors can make positive long-term decisions about their future. That plan was endorsed last week by the OECD, which noted New Zealand’s strong economic growth and sound Government finances. Of course, there are also areas where they recommend we can further improve, as we always can, and many of the recommendations made by the OECD are in areas where we already have significant work under way. The Government’s ongoing Business Growth Agenda will continue to make policy adjustments to ensure that economic growth continues strongly into the future.

Chris Bishop: What is the market’s view of New Zealand’s medium-term economic outlook?

Hon STEVEN JOYCE: The market’s view is strong in terms of New Zealand’s economic perspective performance. The banks are optimistic—

Rt Hon Winston Peters: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. This Minister might have some ability and some responsibility, but one of them is not the market’s view of the economy.

Mr SPEAKER: When you are asking questions to the Minister of Finance, he, of course, has a view and listens with great interest to commentary from financial—

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

Mr SPEAKER: Order! The member will resume his seat. Before I call the member, he is perfectly entitled to raise a fresh point of order, but it must be a new matter. I have ruled on that matter, and I do not want any dispute on that.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Your ruling was that he was entitled to express his—

Mr SPEAKER: Order! I told the member—[Interruption] The member will be leaving the Chamber very quickly, if he wants to ask his two questions. I have ruled on that matter and the Minister can answer the question.

Hon STEVEN JOYCE: I am just recovering from the Rt Hon Winston Peters saying I have some ability. Looking across the economic commentary, the major banks are looking through the March GDP number and looking at the year ahead. Banks are optimistic about the prospects for the economy, with inflationary pressures expected to remain muted through the rest of the year. The pace of economic growth is expected to remain at 3 percent for this year, and the longer-term track expected by Reserve Bank, Treasury, and the major banks is for a positive 3 percent - plus growth in the years ahead. I appreciate the Opposition hates that, but then—

Mr SPEAKER: Order! That part is not necessary to the answer.

Grant Robertson: Can he confirm that last week’s data showed the second consecutive fall in real GDP per capita and the third consecutive quarterly fall in exports of goods and services in real terms?

Hon STEVEN JOYCE: I cannot confirm the latter one for the member, although I can confirm for him that the balance of payments is actually 3.1 percent, which is significantly lower than—

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

Mr SPEAKER: Order! [Interruption] Order!

Grant Robertson: The Minister has been able to answer a number of questions in significant detail about the material that was produced last week. Real GDP per capita and exports were within that. If he genuinely does not have that information, that is the end of his answer, and the rest of it is completely unnecessary.

Mr SPEAKER: Order! And the member, on this occasion, is right. The Minister, right at the start, said he could not confirm that, but then I heard the member himself interjecting, asking for the Minister to answer the question. He cannot have it both ways, but the question has certainly been addressed by the Minister saying he cannot confirm that information.

Hon STEVEN JOYCE: Sorry, Mr Speaker—

Mr SPEAKER: Is this a point of order?

Hon STEVEN JOYCE: Well, just speaking to the point of order, I had not got the chance to get to one half of the question, which I do have the information—

Mr SPEAKER: No, no. I have listened to the Minister and, again, he answered the question right at the start by simply saying he did not have the information. Question No. 2—[Interruption] Order! [Interruption] Order! Sorry to interrupt the member. I certainly do not want the continuation of interjections coming from the front bench of the National members.

Prime Minister—Conduct

2. ANDREW LITTLE (Leader of the Opposition) to the Prime Minister: Does he believe that the moral standards he sets as Prime Minister are high enough?

Rt Hon BILL ENGLISH (Prime Minister): Yes, but we can always do better.

Andrew Little: Is it one of his moral standards that Ministers who become aware of a breach of the law by a high-ranking public official should report it to the police; if not, why not?

Rt Hon BILL ENGLISH: I would expect any Minister who became aware of possible breaches of the law to bring it to the attention of the authorities.

Andrew Little: Why has he left it until today to confirm that he himself gave information to the police about one of his MPs and an allegation of unlawful conduct on the part of that—

Mr SPEAKER: Order! Can I just ask the member to reflect very quickly on that question, and I am going to read four Speakers’ rulings that I think are relevant. Speaker’s ruling 172/2: “The Prime Minister and Ministers are responsible for only those matters that fall within their responsibilities as Ministers, not as leaders of parties. That [applies to] all parties in the House.” Speaker’s ruling 172/3: “The Prime Minister is answerable for any statements made as Prime Minister. But the Prime Minister is not answerable for actions taken in a non-ministerial capacity, whether as Leader of the Opposition or as leader of a political party.” Speaker’s ruling 173/1: “The Prime Minister is not responsible for funding provided through the Parliamentary Service to the party.” Speaker’s ruling 173/2: “The Prime Minister has no responsibility either for what occurred at a select committee or for a member of the caucus.” I invite the member to consider his questions very carefully, but he needs to keep those four important Speakers’ rulings in mind as he proceeds with his line of questioning.

Chris Hipkins: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I understand that the comment that the Leader of the Opposition was questioning the Prime Minister about was made at a prime ministerial press conference. Therefore, he must be able to be questioned about it in the House.

Mr SPEAKER: Well, no. I do not think that is—[Interruption] Order! I do not think that is necessarily the case, particularly when I look at Speaker’s ruling 173/2: “The Prime Minister has no responsibility … for a member of the caucus.” So if it is a ministerial responsibility—[Interruption] Order! I am only relating what are the precedents that have been established in this House. The member might not agree, but she does not need to disagree with me while I am reading what is a Speaker’s ruling. I am not ruling any question out at this stage. It is going to be a difficult issue for me to negotiate my way through. I will do my best, but I am asking the member to carefully think of those four Speakers’ rulings as he frames his continuation of questions.

Chris Hipkins: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. In making those decisions about which questions should be in order or not, one of the important distinctions that we ask you to consider is that the Prime Minister is responsible for the conduct of Ministers and what Ministers do with information that comes into their possession, including whether that information was received whilst they were in a current or in a previous role. So the Prime Minister, as Prime Minister today, may have received information in a previous ministerial role. As he is now the Prime Minister, he can still be questioned about when he knew that and what he did with that information.

Mr SPEAKER: I think that is absolutely true, and if you consider the first supplementary question advanced by the Leader of the Opposition, it fell into exactly that category. Andrew Little—to continue his supplementary questions.

Andrew Little: Was the then Minister of Finance behaving ethically on 1 March 2016, when he told media that he had not directly talked to his former staff about Todd Barclay’s alleged illegal recordings, when in truth he had directly contacted both Glenys Dickson and Stuart Davie about it?

Rt Hon BILL ENGLISH: The then Minister of Finance, I presume, was answering questions about a matter that was in the media and under investigation.

Andrew Little: Is the Prime Minister standing by the conduct of his then Minister of Finance when being asked whether he had direct contact with people associated with the allegations involving the then MP—and still current MP—for Clutha-Southland, and went on to say he had had no direct contact with anybody involved in those affairs, which we now know to be untrue?

Rt Hon BILL ENGLISH: Yes, and I understand there was some further explanation of that this morning.

Andrew Little: Does he agree with his statement that “It’s not leadership to cover up and hope it all goes away?”; if so, why is he covering things up and hoping they will just go away?

Rt Hon BILL ENGLISH: I disagree with that. I think a statement to the police is not a cover-up.

Andrew Little: In light of his conduct in relation to not only Todd Barclay but also Alfred Ngaro threating housing NGOs that criticise the Government, Nicky Wagner disrespecting people with disabilities, Simon Bridges attempting to unlawfully withhold public information, why has the Prime Minister always chosen to defend their conduct rather than defend the moral standards Kiwis expect?

Rt Hon BILL ENGLISH: In the first place, I dispute a number of those statements. Secondly, I think Ministers have demonstrated their adherence to much higher standards than previous Governments because they recognise their mistakes and apologise for them quite quickly. That is how you maintain standards. People will always make mistakes; the question is what you do to fix them.

Andrew Little: If the conduct of Todd Barclay, Alfred Ngaro, Nicky Wagner, and Simon Bridges is OK by him, how can he possibly claim to have any moral standards at all?

Rt Hon BILL ENGLISH: Again, I disagree with some of the member’s statements, but the conduct he refers to was dealt with by the Ministers who recognised for themselves that their conduct did not reach the standards required by this Government, and they corrected those mistakes pretty quickly.

Andrew Little: Given today’s new revelations about Pike River, which contradict his Government’s repeated claims, is it morally acceptable for him to delay and frustrate the grieving Pike River families’ desire to see justice and get their men back?

Rt Hon BILL ENGLISH: I certainly understand the distress of the families, particularly as these matters have been drawn out in a way that must have some of them reliving the tragedy regularly. All the matters that have been raised by the families were dealt with by a royal commission. It is not a matter of what the Government thinks; it is a matter of what the royal commission did, where the families were fully represented. Rather than delaying and frustrating the families, we are actually working with them now on a plan, which is about to be implemented, for a safe, unmanned investigation of the drift.

Andrew Little: How did his Government’s morals come to include bullying staff and critics, covering up its mistakes, refusing to cooperate with the police, all the while ignoring New Zealanders who are desperate for mental health care, desperate for a warm, dry home, and desperate for a place to call their own; and is it not, after 9 years, time for this Government to stop governing in the interests of the National Party and govern in the interests of all New Zealanders?

Mr SPEAKER: The right honourable Prime Minister—the first part of that question is in order.

Rt Hon BILL ENGLISH: As demonstrated by the recent Budget, which Labour voted against, we focus on the issues that matter, such as raising the incomes of the lowest-income households in New Zealand. In fact, it is because Ministers deal with their issues quickly, recognise mistakes, and move on that we have been able to stay focused on the issues that matter.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Did he check out the facts when he conveniently forgot his involvement in the Barclay affair or his involvement with the Prime Minister’s budget going towards Barclay’s staff—

Mr SPEAKER: Order! Again, we are in the same territory where we have already been. There is no prime ministerial responsibility for a member of Mr English’s caucus.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. The Prime Minister’s budget is the relevant point, with respect, that brings this question inside the ambit of the Standing Orders.

Mr SPEAKER: No; that is exactly the reason it is no longer in line with the Standing Orders. I refer the member to Speaker’s ruling 173/1: “The Prime Minister is not responsible for funding provided through the Parliamentary Service to the party.” This question is out of order.

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

Mr SPEAKER: Order! I have dealt with the matter.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: I am seeking a point of clarity.

Mr SPEAKER: What is it?

Rt Hon Winston Peters: You are saying it is the Parliamentary Service budget. This, of course, came from the Prime Minister’s office. Are you saying it is the same thing?

Mr SPEAKER: No, it is exactly the same as the leader’s budget.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: I will put the question again, then.

Mr SPEAKER: Order! No, the question has been ruled out of order. If the member wants to ask a fresh supplementary question and have another go, he can do so.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: No, I am reframing the question.

Mr SPEAKER: Order! The question has been ruled out of order. It is lost. It is gone. If the member wants to have another—

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Yes, I got that.

Mr SPEAKER: Well, then, the member rises and asks for another supplementary question. Supplementary question—the Rt Hon Winston Peters. [Interruption] Order! The member will resume his seat. I am not putting up with this behaviour from a very senior member of this Parliament. He either starts to behave himself or he will be leaving the Chamber. If he wants a supplementary question, he rises to his feet and asks it.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. Am I entitled to ask my question in silence, without the backbench barraging me?

Mr SPEAKER: Yes, the member is totally entitled to, but when he rises to his feet he gets on with the question.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Can I ask the Prime Minister whether he conveniently forgot his involvement in the Barclay affair, and how come he told the media one thing that demonstrably is not true?

Mr SPEAKER: As far as there may be some prime ministerial responsibility I am inviting the Prime Minister—if he wishes to address it, he can. [Interruption] Order! The question has been asked. It was a very marginal question. I left it there. The Prime Minister does not have to rise to answer it. [Interruption] Order! If a member wishes to leave the Chamber—that is completely unacceptable parliamentary language. The member will now stand, withdraw, and apologise.

Chris Hipkins: I withdraw and apologise.

Refugees—Quota

3. JAMES SHAW (Co-Leader—Green) to the Prime Minister: Does he stand by all his Government’s policies?

Rt Hon BILL ENGLISH (Prime Minister): Yes, particularly those that the Greens voted for when, in Budget 2017, the Government lifted the incomes, from 1 April next year, of the lowest-income households in New Zealand. [Interruption]

Mr SPEAKER: Order! Before I call James Shaw, members have a right, once the question has been asked, to hear the answer. I had difficulty hearing that answer, simply because of the interjection that was coming from directly to my left. I require substantially more cooperation.

James Shaw: Does he stand by his Government’s decision to accept merely a quarter as many refugees per capita as countries like Australia, Canada, and Sweden?

Rt Hon BILL ENGLISH: We stand by the additional refugees that have been taken in over and above the quota of 750—250 per year—taking us up to 1,000. We also stand by the process by which we deal with refugees, which is to commit considerable resource, I think worth around about $100,000 per year per refugee, to make sure that they can attain the language and employment skills that will enable them to be participants in the New Zealand community.

James Shaw: Can he confirm that his Government cut the number of refugees New Zealand takes from Africa and the Middle East when it is precisely those people who are in the most precarious and needy situation?

Rt Hon BILL ENGLISH: There will be a range of opinions about the relative need among refugees, but the Government did respond to the very large number of refugees from Syria by opting to take several hundred more of them over the next few years.

James Shaw: Is he aware of other countries that have recently changed their rules to cut down the number of Muslim refugees and migrants, and does he support their approaches?

Rt Hon BILL ENGLISH: No, I am not aware of that.

James Shaw: What does he say to Yibeth Morales Ayala, a former refugee from Colombia who pleaded with the Government to increase the quota to help people like her be reunited with their families?

Rt Hon BILL ENGLISH: I would say to her that the Government has recently increased the quota in response to the problems in Syria; that it has now embarked, with, mainly, the Churches, on a community sponsorship programme for refugees, with the pilot starting just within a month or two; and that we have committed, through building new facilities and through extensive support for refugees, to making sure they can succeed in New Zealand.

James Shaw: What would he say to Bishop Justin Duckworth, who has called on the Government to show leadership on refugees, and said that Kiwis “have the capacity and the willingness to do so much more”?

Rt Hon BILL ENGLISH: As I just said, we are now working, or immigration officials are working, with the Churches, with whom I discussed this matter in the last couple of months, on a community sponsorship programme that enables those Kiwis who are interested in welcoming refugees and supporting them in a sustainable manner, to see whether that is a way that we can increase the numbers.

James Shaw: On World Refugee Day, will he do the right thing and offer a helping hand to families who are fleeing war and persecution by welcoming at least 2,000 refugees per year to New Zealand?

Rt Hon BILL ENGLISH: We are currently gearing up to deal with the increased numbers that are coming in now and getting the community sponsorship programme started. We are not about to announce very large increases in the refugee intake.

Points of Order—Unparliamentary Language

CHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka): I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I wonder whether you could explain why, on a previous occasion, you ruled that it was acceptable for the Prime Minister to tell the Opposition to “get some guts”, but you ruled that the phrase that I just used in connection to the Prime Minister is not in order?

Mr SPEAKER: It depends on the tone and the behaviour of the House at the time, but an interjection like that, I considered to be unparliamentary. I asked the member to withdraw and apologise, and he did so.

CHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka): I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker.

Mr SPEAKER: Is this another, fresh point of order?

CHRIS HIPKINS: Yes. On what basis was that unparliamentary?

Mr SPEAKER: Order! No, no, I have dealt with that. I have asked the member to do so. It is exactly the same rule as for everybody here. If he wants to relitigate it, then that is disorderly in itself, and I will be asking the member to leave the Chamber. If he wants to raise another new point—[Interruption] Order! If he wants to raise a new, fresh point of order on another matter, I am only too happy to hear from him. [Interruption] Order! The member will now leave the Chamber.

Chris Hipkins withdrew from the Chamber.

IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY (Labour—Palmerston North): I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. Just to clarify, is it now your ruling that “get some guts” is unparliamentary?

Mr SPEAKER: No, and the member now is trifling with the Chair and at risk of also joining his colleagues. I will deal with matters at the time, but an interjection like that was simply done to inflame the situation in this House and create disorder, and I ruled accordingly and asked the member to leave.

Tax System—Proposed Changes

4. KANWALJIT SINGH BAKSHI (National) to the Minister of Revenue: What is the Government doing to make tax simpler for individuals?

Hon JUDITH COLLINS (Minister of Revenue): Yesterday the Minister of Finance and I announced the release of a consultation document that proposes changes to make tax simpler and fairer for individuals. The main proposal is that individuals who receive only income like salary, wages, and/or interest would no longer have to provide information to Inland Revenue or file tax returns in order to get any refunds due. Currently, Inland Revenue does not automatically pay out all refunds, and people generally need to request them. Under the proposal, Inland Revenue would use the information it receives from employers and banks and automatically issue a refund or a notice of tax to pay. This will mean an extra 1.1 million people would not have to provide any information about their income to Inland Revenue, bringing the total number of people who do not need to file any returns up to 3 million.

Kanwaljit Singh Bakshi: In what other ways will the proposal make tax simpler for individuals?

Hon JUDITH COLLINS: The proposed changes are aimed at giving individuals more certainty by helping people to be on the right tax code during the year, by clarifying the rules on who has to interact at the end of the year and how they interact with Inland Revenue, and by making it easier when people have to interact. The proposals also include an easier digital process for getting a special tax code and an easier process for claiming a donation tax credit. This builds on legislation currently going through Parliament, which would see Inland Revenue receive income information from employers and banks more quickly, and is part of our work to make taxes simple and as fair as possible. I have sent out to all members an information pack to help all members to be able to advise their constituents.

Boarding Houses—Operation and Condition of Properties

5. PHIL TWYFORD (Labour—Te Atatū) to the Minister for Building and Construction: Why did he allow slum boarding houses like 43 Church St Ōtāhuhu and 454 Great North Road Grey Lynn to be operated year after year, housing tenants in unsafe and unsanitary conditions, before finally sending in the inspectors?

Mr SPEAKER: As I call the Hon Dr Nick Smith, I note that my office has been advised this answer may be longer than normal.

Hon Dr NICK SMITH (Minister for Building and Construction): Our Government—[Interruption]

Mr SPEAKER: Order! It would be a shame to see one of the junior whips being asked to leave the Chamber.

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: Our Government is taking a tougher line on substandard boarding houses than any previously. We passed a new law last year setting up a new Tenancy Compliance and Investigations Team that enables, for the first time, the ministry to directly prosecute landlords. The team is working closely with councils, which also have regulatory powers over boarding houses. I have confidence in the work of the new team. Prosecutions are under way for cases involving over 200 tenancies, including boarding houses. I note that three boarding houses have been shut down today as a consequence of joint work with the Auckland Council. I can confirm that both houses in the question are under investigation, but I am reluctant to comment further for risk of interfering in the judicially independent prosecution process.

Phil Twyford: Is he satisfied that sending in the inspectors only when there is a complaint or a media report means that the vast bulk of slum boarding houses will never be dealt with, because most tenants are simply too afraid to complain and probably assume that the Government is fine with these slums, because they were probably referred there by Work and Income in the first place?

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: I note that the boarding hostel the member refers to, at 454 Great North Road, Grey Lynn, has been operating for over 25 years. In the 9 years that Labour was in Government, I am advised there were many complaints and Labour did absolutely nothing. We are actually a Government that has passed the law that has given—

Mr SPEAKER: Order! [Interruption] Order! There is simply no point in continuing with the answer if the Opposition does not want to hear the answer.

Phil Twyford: Supplementary question, Mr Speaker.

Mr SPEAKER: I hope the members are interested in this answer.

Phil Twyford: Does he think that so many people would have been forced into slum boarding houses on his watch because they could not find anything better if the Government had not reduced the number of State houses by 2,500 and instead of taking $1.8 billion out of Housing New Zealand had spent that money building 5,000 extra State houses?

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: There are so many falsehoods in that member’s accusations that I could spend the entire afternoon—let us go through them. This Government is spending more money on housing support through the social housing budget and for the accommodation supplement than any Government, and, ironically, members opposite voted against the substantial increases in the accommodation supplement that would help many of those families. [Interruption]

Mr SPEAKER: Order! I am just not sure of the point in carrying with supplementary questions when I cannot hear the answer and, clearly, some of the members here are yelling so loud that they cannot either. Can we have a little more cooperation from one or two members to my left.

Phil Twyford: Is not the sight of our most vulnerable citizens, including children, living in filthy rat- and flea-infested slums, without toilets, sometimes even without glass in the windows, the ultimate indictment of his failed housing policies? [Interruption]

Mr SPEAKER: Order!

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: No. In fact, I am very proud that it is this Government that has chosen to actually set up a Compliance and Investigations Team to go after those slum landlords, that there are over 200 cases in the pipeline being prosecuted as a consequence of that law change, and that there is a further bill before this Parliament to further strengthen its powers. It will be interesting what members opposite do, because every time we bring legislation to this House to improve housing, they vote against it.

Fuji Xerox—Fraud Allegations

6. Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS (Leader—NZ First) to the Prime Minister: Before making a statement, does he check the facts; if not, why not?

Rt Hon BILL ENGLISH (Prime Minister): Yes, to the best of my ability. But, as the member may have noted, Prime Ministers are often asked new questions on a very wide range of topics, and if I cannot check the facts beforehand, I will often make a statement that indicates that I will go and check them before answering.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: If time of preparation is important, if New Zealand is meant to be corruption-free, with high-quality Government, as he told business leaders in his state of the nation address, why then has Fujifilm Japan revealed $500 million worth of fraud in its operations in Australasia, much of it involving New Zealand taxpayers’ money?

Rt Hon BILL ENGLISH: If the member’s allegations were correct—and I understand there are certainly problems with Fuji Xerox and its financial reporting, which may breach International Financial Reporting Standards—then that would be concerning, and the appropriate authorities should have a hard look to assess whether it did have any impact in New Zealand and whether there were any measures that should have been taken here to prevent the behaviour.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Talking about appropriate authorities, as the Prime Minister mentioned, can he assure taxpayers that not one dollar of the $55 million the Government spent with Fuji Xerox between 2012 and 2016 was as a result of corruption, backhanders, or bribes?

Rt Hon BILL ENGLISH: My understanding is that there were no problems about the delivery of services by Fuji Xerox in return for Government payment, but, of course, I cannot make guarantees short of a very thorough investigation, if that is what is required, about what happened to the $55 million the New Zealand Government paid it. But I am assured the services were delivered to the value agreed.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Given that “Mr Fix-it’s” DNA is all over this issue, is it acceptable for businesses to win contracts from his Government despite paying no tax, ripping off schools, and headlining in the New York Times depicting New Zealand as a corrupt banana republic?

Rt Hon BILL ENGLISH: Those are allegations the member has made. The assertion that seems to have some substance is that they under-reported their profits, or over-reported them—whatever—and, if that was the case, then they would have broken financial reporting law in Australia and in New Zealand. Allegations beyond that I have not seen substantiated, but there do seem to be grounds for investigation.

Transport Infrastructure, Auckland—Waterview Connection

7. SIMON O’CONNOR (National—Tāmaki) to the Minister for Infrastructure: How will the new $1.4 billion Waterview tunnel improve Auckland’s transport network?

Hon STEVEN JOYCE (Minister for Infrastructure): Very good question. The Waterview Connection will create a more resilient and reliable motorway network in Auckland and is the final major link in the Auckland western ring route. It will help people and goods move around the Auckland isthmus, particularly between the west and the south, including Auckland Airport. The project is forecast to generate over $4 billion worth of transport and agglomeration benefits over 40 years, along with additional local job generation, improved productivity, and increased accessibility for businesses. It is great to see the project completed and soon to be open for vehicles. I want to thank everybody involved in the tunnel’s construction for doing such a fantastic job.

Simon O’Connor: How has the Waterview project evolved over the years?

Hon STEVEN JOYCE: It has evolved quite a bit and, in fact, in some very positive directions. The first plan for completing the Waterview Connection was proposed to cost an estimated $2.77 billion, which was an amazingly large sum of money, made up of just under $2 billion for construction of tunnels and $550 million for finance costs, plus extra work on State Highway 16. The then Government decided the National Land Transport Fund could not pay for it and it would borrow it separately. This plan, incidentally, would have produced tunnels that were only two lanes in each direction, and the tunnels would have been a kilometre longer. This Government, when it came into office, shaved hundreds of millions of cost off the—

Fletcher Tabuteau: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker.

Mr SPEAKER: Order! [Interruption] Order! I apologise to the Minister.

Fletcher Tabuteau: Was this answer on notice? Under Standing Order 386(2) his answers are supposed to be concise and to the point, and we getting an anthology of some kind.

Mr SPEAKER: Order! I think the member has got a reasonable point. This is a very long answer, and I am not going to allow it to continue, but I—[Interruption] Order! But I do remind Mr Tabuteau that I am the sole judge as to when an answer has gone on, though I appreciate his assistance on occasions.

Hon STEVEN JOYCE: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. [Interruption]

Mr SPEAKER: Order! This is—[Interruption] Order! This is a point of order; it will be heard in silence.

Hon STEVEN JOYCE: I just wanted to make the point: this is about a saving of around $900 million—

Mr SPEAKER: Order! [Interruption] Order! That is not a point of order; that is an attempt to complete an answer that was too long.

Jami-Lee Ross: What further reports has the Minister received of historic costings around the Waterview tunnel?

Mr SPEAKER: I will hope for a clear and concise answer.

Hon STEVEN JOYCE: Well, the previous costing set up by the previous Government was $2.77 billion. This project was completed by this Government for $1.4 billion, and it is two three-lane tunnels, not two two-lane tunnels. That is what happens when you focus on delivering better results for taxpayers’ money.

Health, Director-General—Confidence

8. Dr DAVID CLARK (Labour—Dunedin North) to the Minister of Health: Does he have confidence in the Director-General of Health?

Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN (Minister of Health): Yes, and that is because he has overseen a lift in performance in hundreds of health services that the ministry oversees, including 50,000 more elective surgeries, 150,000 more specialist assessments a year, free GP visits for under-13s, and 6,900 more doctors and nurses across the system. Of course, now he is focused on implementing the historic $2 billion pay settlement for 55,000 of the hardest-working, most deserving workers in New Zealand, the care and support workers. But, of course, there is always more to do.

Dr David Clark: Did he instruct the director-general and his assistant, Michael Hundleby, to call district health board (DHB) leaders on 31 May and 1 June to tell them that misallocated Budget funding would not be clawed back; if he did not so instruct, why did they do that?

Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: My view, reached over a number of days, is that the ministry had to correct what was a technical error and make sure that the allocations were correct. To the best of my recollection, no, I did not instruct them to do that.

Dr David Clark: When did he first become aware that assembled chairs and chief executives of New Zealand’s DHBs, on 15 June, considered passing a vote of no confidence in Chai Chuah’s leadership of his ministry?

Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: I know they had a pretty vigorous discussion last Thursday, but I do not know that they considered passing a vote of no confidence. You would have to ask them about that. Clearly you have got a pretty good source there.

Dr David Clark: If the director-general of his ministry was proven to have lied to a group of senior bureaucrats, would the Minister retain confidence in him?

Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: That is all completely hypothetical. What I can tell you is I have found Mr Chuah to be an extremely honest person who every day comes to work and does his best to improve the health outcomes of the population. He is a man of very, very high integrity, and I stand by that.

Dr David Clark: Who, then, is telling the truth—Chai Chuah, who told DHB chairs and chief executives that he had offered his resignation to the Minister, or the Minister, who said he has not offered a resignation?

Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: Of course we would have to assume that you have got your facts right in the first place. I cannot recall him offering his resignation, but he is an honourable man. Look, the fact is he does not need to offer his resignation. This is a technical error. It does not change the overall allocation of funding to the district health boards, and Mr Chuah has done a very good job for New Zealand health over a very long time.

Child Poverty—Measurement and Unicef Report

9. JAN LOGIE (Green) to the Minister for Social Development: Does she stand by the Deputy Prime Minister’s statement in relation to child poverty that “I do question some of the data and the way that they’ve collected that”; if so, was she disputing all of the conclusions in the UNICEF report?

Hon ANNE TOLLEY (Minister for Social Development): Yes, and no.

Jan Logie: Does the Minister agree with UNICEF that “New Zealand is clearly capable of reporting against Innocenti’s measures for multidimensional poverty,”; if so, will she agree to start using internationally agreed-upon measures so we can compare her Government’s outcomes for children against the majority of OECD Governments?

Hon ANNE TOLLEY: To the first part of that question, this Government does use the multi-measure, multilevel approach when addressing issues of poverty and hardship. For example, one way we addressed that was in Budget 2015 when we included a $790 million child hardship package to better support the 60,000 to 100,000 children experiencing severe hardship, and that used the Material Wellbeing Index and the deprivation 17 index. Those measures benefited approximately 203,000 families. That is about 380,000 New Zealand children. We collect income information, both before and after housing costs, and we are one of the few countries in the world to do that, and we know that housing costs are an important factor in hardship, so in Budget 2017, with the $2 billion Family Incomes Package, the accommodation supplement was lifted, to lift about 20,000 families above that threshold for severe housing stress. These are the multidimensional, multilevel measures that the member was asking about. And then we collect and measure fully relative low-income measures that give trends about income inequality, and, again, the Family Incomes Package in Budget 2017 of $2 billion is expected—

Mr SPEAKER: Bring the answer to a conclusion.

Hon ANNE TOLLEY: —to reduce the number of children living in those families with less than half the median income by 50,000.

Jan Logie: Does the fact that New Zealand is ranked 38th out of 40 countries for child health and well-being, including 34th out of 34 for youth suicides, make her reconsider how effective her Government’s policies may have been over the last 9 years?

Hon ANNE TOLLEY: I understand that the temptation to mix the indexes that were used in this report is great, but I have no responsibility for the health issues that were part of the report that addressed child health issues.

Jan Logie: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. If you could provide me with some clarity—this question was initially to the Deputy Prime Minister because of the range of issues that were covered in that report. To have it redirected and then for the Minister to say she cannot respond to the wider issues—I think there is an issue.

Mr SPEAKER: No, no, not at all. The member used the ranking 38th out of 40, I think, and talked about poverty and health issues, so the Minister took the opportunity to say she is not responsible for health. It clearly can be transferred—there was no difficulty about that. In fact, the Government has a duty to transfer it to the Minister most responsible. The member then may not be happy with the answer, but the question that was given was addressed.

Jan Logie: So why is the Minister wasting time disputing data and justifying potential token efforts when the report has us languishing at the bottom of the developed world in relation to the health and well-being of our children?

Hon ANNE TOLLEY: I do not think anyone on this side of the House would describe almost $3 billion of taxpayers’ money addressed to the lowest-income people in this country as paltry. However, the advice I have received is that the UNICEF report on child poverty uses three indicators. The first is misleading for international comparisons. It is a relative measure that is relative to the incomes of that country. As I have said in this House before, because it uses median income it can change, depending on the median that you strike in any one year—

Hon Member: Yes, that’s true.

Hon ANNE TOLLEY: —it can change dramatically. That is true. The second indicator is not even a measure of poverty. It is a measure of the effectiveness of the tax and transfer system. So you could talk about it as the income redistribution—

Mr SPEAKER: Again, bring the answer to a conclusion.

Hon ANNE TOLLEY: —which is addressing inequality.

Jacinda Ardern: What is misleading about a relative measure for child poverty?

Hon ANNE TOLLEY: I have said in this House on a number of occasions that it is simply not possible to measure poverty—and no country that I am aware of has done it successfully—by one simple measure. It is a multidimensional, multilevel issue that is on a continuum. We should all be proud of the fact that successive Governments have gathered significant data that we can use, and this Government has used it, as I described in my response to the first supplementary question.

Pike River Mine Disaster—Re-entry and Recovery Operation

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS (Leader—NZ First): This question is to the Prime Minister—[Interruption] I beg your pardon?

Mr SPEAKER: Order! I am going to invite the member to start his question again, and I do not want interjection from the front row of the—

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS (Leader—NZ First): Thank you for your help, Mr Speaker. It is so appreciated.

Mr SPEAKER: It is a pleasure, sir.

10. 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: If there is, to quote him, “nothing new” regarding footage taken of Pike River mine from borehole 44 showing intact wooden pallets and rubber hoses a month after the explosions, why did the Prime Minister and his colleagues tell the families that there is nothing but ashes and dust down there?

Rt Hon BILL ENGLISH: The member is incorrect in his assertion about what may have been said to the families, but, more importantly, the issue of what happened in the mine was dealt with in great depth by the royal commission. The member is trying to portray the issue of what happened to the miners as a product of political opinion; it is not. It has been investigated in detail by a royal commission, with all the powers of a royal commission to inquire after any evidence that it wanted to see, and that has been fully and publicly reported on.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: If that is true, and there is, to quote him, “nothing new” regarding the recent footage of Pike River mine, then why was the Hon Judith Collins unable yesterday to defend her comments from last year that the mine was—and I use her words—an “inferno”, and referred journalists to the Prime Minister himself?

Rt Hon BILL ENGLISH: I think everyone is aware that there was a very large explosion in that mine—several explosions—and that 29 people were killed by those explosions because they were so devastating. Whether the same thing happened right through the complex structure of the mine is a matter for the experts to sort out. We are working with the families on safe, unmanned investigation of the drift to see whether we can answer more of their questions.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: If the Pike River families have seen footage that shows bodies still intact in the mine, then why will he not show leadership and support a manned re-entry to recover those bodies, rather than continuing with the families being the victims of a litany of lies?

Rt Hon BILL ENGLISH: I simply refute the member’s last statement. The facts of Pike River are set out best in the royal commission’s fulsome report, for which the families had legal representation and to whom all of the video was available. Our response to the families’ current concerns is to proceed, as is being planned with them, on safe, unmanned investigation of the drift to see whether we can answer more of their questions. The manned entry has been dealt with by people who under the health and safety law had to make a judgment about whether it was safe to send more people into the mine, and they decided that, in the light of 600 risks, it was not safe.

Housing—Three Kings Development

11. Dr PARMJEET PARMAR (National) to the Minister for the Environment: Why did he join legal proceedings last year over the $1.2 billion Three Kings development, and can this housing project now proceed?

Hon Dr NICK SMITH (Minister for the Environment): I joined these proceedings out of frustration that a high-quality urban redevelopment project that would provide 1,500 homes close to Auckland City had been held up for 5 years, despite over 100 consultation meetings and approval by independent commissioners. I was delighted last week that a settlement between parties that have a dispute before the High Court and the Environment Court has now been reached, which will enable the project to proceed. Earthworks will be under way this summer. The first houses will be completed in 2019.

Dr Parmjeet Parmar: What broader system lessons have been identified from the drawn out consenting of Three Kings that will help manage housing pressures in future?

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: Firstly, the planning system needs to be more responsive. The demand for housing in Auckland shifted dramatically 5 years ago, so we cannot have scale projects involving 1,500 homes delayed for up to 5 years with planning issues. Secondly, we need to better integrate the different decisions. That is why in the Resource Management Act reform bill this year the Government incorporated reserve changes into the broader planning process, and that would have made a material difference to getting this Three Kings project completed more quickly. Thirdly, we need a better framework for major urban redevelopment projects, and that is why the Government is specifically proposing an urban development authority Act. And it would actually help if Opposition parties did not spend their energies opposing new houses when they are blatantly required.

Dr Parmjeet Parmar: What progress has been achieved on the adjacent Three Kings special housing area?

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: We were able to bypass the legal dispute on part of the Three Kings site through the use of the special housing areas legislation. This 1.4 hectare site now has 99 new homes nearing completion. If anyone doubts the success of the special housing legislation, they should visit those homes and see what has been achieved. This also gives me confidence that Fletcher Residential has the capacity to deliver an equally attractive 1,500-home development on the adjacent 22 hectare site.

Disability Issues, Minister—Statements

12. POTO WILLIAMS (Labour—Christchurch East) to the Minister for Disability Issues: Why did she say that she would rather be out on the harbour than meeting with disability advocacy groups?

Hon NICKY WAGNER (Minister for Disability Issues): Thank you for the opportunity to make a statement about my tweet. I would like to make four points. The first is that my tweet was totally inappropriate, thoughtless, and poorly worded. Second, I apologise unreservedly. Thirdly, I have worked with the disability community for 3 years and I would never do anything deliberately to hurt or insult any disabled person or their families or their communities. I respect them far too much for that. Fourthly, I am absolutely committed to making life better for disabled people by developing policies and services that will give them more choice, more control, and more opportunities in their lives.

Poto Williams: If it was not the Minister’s intention to give offence, as she has just stated and also stated in her tweet of apology, why did she state that “we all would have rather had … meetings out on the harbour”; and does she not understand that some disabled people cannot access the harbour?

Hon NICKY WAGNER: As I said, that tweet was totally inappropriate, thoughtless, and poorly worded. I apologise, and I will continue to apologise, for it. I would never deliberately do anything to hurt disabled people, their families, or their communities, and I am absolutely committed to making life better for disabled people and to give them more choice, more control, and more opportunities in their lives.

Poto Williams: What feedback did she receive from people with disabilities and disability organisations on her comment that she would rather have been out on the harbour than meeting with them?

Hon NICKY WAGNER: As I have said before, that tweet was totally inappropriate, thoughtless, and poorly worded. I apologise for it, and I will continue to apologise for it. I have worked with the disability community and I respect them far too much to deliberately hurt them in any way. And finally—

Poto Williams: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker.

Mr SPEAKER: I will certainly invite the member to ask the question again. It has not been addressed.

Poto Williams: Thank you, Mr Speaker. What feedback did she receive from people with disabilities and disability organisations on her comments that she would rather be out on the harbour than meeting with them?

Hon NICKY WAGNER: I received mixed response from the disability community, but the thing that I find most disappointing is that that tweet got so much publicity when the work that I do with disabled communities and disabled people—and whom I tweet regularly about—which would make a difference to people in the disability community, never gets much pick-up.

Poto Williams: How does she respond to disability advocates who are now calling for her to resign?

Hon NICKY WAGNER: As I have said, I have worked for the last 3 years with the disability community. I think we are doing very good work for them. There has been a significant amount of work done in terms of Enabling Good Lives and giving them more opportunities with disability services, plus we have worked extensively with getting disabled people into work. I believe that that work should continue.

Maureen Pugh: What work has the Minister been doing to support disabled people and their families?

Hon NICKY WAGNER: My work for the last 3 years has been focused on giving disabled people more choice, more control, and more opportunities in their lives. We have rewritten the Disability Strategy, now with an action plan and a monitoring framework. I have championed the Enabling Good Lives principles and am now in a co-designed process to totally transform disability support services. Budget 2017 added another $204 million to disability support. I have also worked hard supporting disabled people into work—firstly, with Project 300 in Christchurch, which got close to 600 disabled people into work, and then we rolled out employability across the country based on what we learnt in Christchurch. And, finally—

Mr SPEAKER: Bring the answer to a conclusion.

Hon NICKY WAGNER: —because disabled people will have real opportunities to work only if employers open their doors, I have initiated the Disability Confident employers’ scheme, which has brought New Zealand’s biggest employers together to support this work.

Urgent Debates Declined

Fuji Xerox—Fraud Allegations

Mr SPEAKER: I have received a letter from the Rt Hon Winston Peters seeking to debate under Standing Order 389 the Fuji Xerox scandal. This is a particular case of recent occurrence. The application sets out the administrative and ministerial responsibility that Mr Peters considers attaches to the Government in this matter through a range of State sector agencies. The Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment is investigating the matter to give assurance to the Minister for Economic Development. The External Reporting Board has not taken any action over the allegations, because it does not provide auditing and assurance services. The Serious Fraud Office has not commenced an investigation. There is no ministerial responsibility for the Office of the Controller and Auditor-General since it is an Office of Parliament.

The purpose of an urgent debate is to hold the Government to account for an action for which it is responsible—Speakers’ ruling 207/2. Several previous Speakers have ruled that the absence of action on the part of the Government is not a particular case of recent occurrence—Speakers’ ruling 212/2. To date, the Government’s actions have involved seeking assurances from the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment, and no findings have yet been announced. On the facts available, the application for an urgent debate of the matter has not reached the point where it warrants setting aside the business of the House. Therefore, the application is declined.

Urgent Debates

District Health Board Funding—Allocation Errors

Mr SPEAKER: I have also received a letter from Dr David Clark seeking to debate under Standing Order 389 errors in district health board funding allocations made by the Ministry of Health. This is a particular case of recent occurrence for which there is ministerial responsibility. Last year the House held an urgent debate on financial mismanagement at the Ministry of Health in relation to a building project. The matter raised today is arguably even more serious, since it involves the incorrect allocation of funds for the delivery of health services. Dr Clark has pointed out that the Health Committee has already had its Vote Health 2017-18 hearing and that there was no disclosure of the issue at that time. The committee did not have the opportunity to question the Minister of Health on the matter. Public confidence in the health system is essential. Having carefully considered this application, I believe it does require the urgent attention of the House. I therefore call on Dr David Clark to move that the House take note of an urgent matter of public importance.

Dr DAVID CLARK (Labour—Dunedin North): I move, That the House take note of a matter of urgent public importance. This is the story of a Minister who does not care about his sector, it is the story of a ministry that is demoralised and struggling with senior leadership issues, and it is a story about a sector that is growing incredibly frustrated as its efforts to provide healthcare to New Zealanders who deserve it are frustrated time and time and time again by a Government that cannot lead on one of New Zealand’s most important issues.

I want to set a little bit of context at the start. We know that this is a sector that has been underfunded by the Government to the tune of $2.3 billion. The health sector has been struggling in a funding-constrained environment because this Minister and his predecessors have run a policy of underfunding year in, year out. That $2.3 billion is not a number plucked from the air; that is a number put together by independent research group Infometrics, using Treasury data to ascertain how much more funding would have been needed each year under this Government to deliver the same level of services. If you cut the amount of funding for delivering existing services, they get cut, especially when you take $2.3 billion out of the sector.

In this Budget, $200 million was needed just to keep district health boards (DHBs) standing still, to deliver the same level of services as they delivered last year. And what did we find out? We found out that $650 million was needed, but that there was a shortfall in funding in this Budget of $200 million. The Government allocated only $439 million to DHBs—a shortfall of $200 million in this Budget alone.

In that situation, with a tight budget, the ministry let those people know that they would have to make do, but it let them know that only at the last minute. Normally, what happens is that the prior December, or thereabouts, the DHBs get an indication of how much money they might expect in the Budget, so that they can do planning. If they are having to make cuts, as they are under this Government, they have to work out how they set their priorities. That is only fair in a funding-constrained environment. But what we had here is a Government that sat on the figures, a Minister who had no leadership, and a ministry that was then unable to communicate with the DHBs that they would be receiving a cut.

On Budget day, those DHBs found out that their budget was going to be cut in real terms by $200 million, and with that cut they had to make do. When they sat down the next day and tried to work out how they were going to make ends meet with their effective funding cut, they then had to work out what they were going to cut and what they would continue—with short notice, because they had not had an indication in the previous year, as is best practice. So they proceeded to try to work out what they would cut and what they would proceed with. Given that the next financial year was looming closely, many of them—the more diligent DHBs—will have got on with their planning and may even have started negotiations for service deliveries and service cuts for the coming year.

When it worked out that there was something wrong, the ministry rang the DHBs and said: “If you have extra money in this Budget—we know it’s tight; if you’ve got a little bit extra in your pot, we’ll let you keep it. You’ll be able to hang on to that money. Even though the Budget documents are printed—you know, they’re printed, they’re out there—we’ll let you keep that money.” Two weeks later—2 weeks later—the Director-General of Health and his offsider rang around the DHBs again and said: “Look, we’re sorry, we’re going to have to claw that money back. We know you’re underfunded already. We know we promised you on Budget day that you’d get X funding, but, I’m sorry, we’re going to have to take some of that back because there has been a blunder. There has been a blunder at the ministry.”

The Minister had seen the figures; he signed them off. He is responsible to this Parliament for those figures, and yet there was a mistake—and it is not the first time, and the Minister knows it. It was not so long ago that the ministry tried to get $18 million extra out for a blunder in the spending around the redevelopment of the head office. This is not the first time, and the Minister knows it, so he is trying to cover it up. He is sitting over there with that fixed grimace on his face, and well he might, because the story does not end there. We know the DHBs were underfunded, we know they were told they could keep the little bit extra that they got in the Budget, and we know it was then taken off them, but the story does not finish there. When they were called into Wellington, the chairs and the chief executives of the DHBs, to meet with the ministry—and the Minister admitted today in response to questions in the House that he was not aware of this, so once again we see that he is not across his portfolio—they considered whether they would put forward a vote of no confidence in the director-general. It has happened once too often.

This is a sector that is distressing of the leadership in the Ministry of Health—that important sector that delivers the healthcare that New Zealanders need. And let us not forget that we believe, on this side of the House, in the Labour Party, that all New Zealanders should have affordable access to quality healthcare. But those people who are providing it out in the communities, those people at the coalface, are being let down by the senior leadership in the ministry and the lack of leadership—the lack of leadership—from this particular Minister.

What is going on out there in DHB land as they cut the services? Well, we know from the Government’s own figures that over 500,000 New Zealanders last year could not get to a GP for reasons of cost. That is what is happening with these cuts that happen year after year after year—the funding that gets restricted in real terms. I will come back to how that equation is done, because the Minister keeps liking to say—he would put his hand on his heart and say that every year more money has gone into the health budget. But I think everybody in this House knows that $1 more each year would be more funding in the health budget, and everybody in this House knows that GP fees go up by more than $1 a year. One dollar a year doth not a swallow, a summer, or something like that, make—I think you get the point. One dollar more really is not going to cut it when we have got an ageing population, more complex health needs, and a system that needs more money just to deliver the same services each year.

Those ongoing cuts have got a real cost, and the ministry’s failure of leadership and the Minister’s failure to secure adequate funding for healthcare in New Zealand mean that those health professionals who want to deliver those quality services have their hands tied behind their backs year in, year out.

The Minister over there is not aware that the DHBs are considering asking for the resignation of his director-general. He said to the media just the other day, “No, I haven’t received a resignation, and nor would I want one, either. He’s doing a fine job;”—says the Minister—“a fine job.” He is the only one in the health sector—that shows just how out of touch he is.

I have spoken at several conferences in the last few weeks that have made the point, up the front on political panels, that they have a wide range of political parties there in front of them, but there is one that is missing. Just yesterday, in front of an audience of a hundred people, there was one major party missing. It was the National Party. Last week at the Rotorua GP conference there was one major party missing. There were hundreds of GPs there, and they were furious, but, once again, the Minister did not front. The Minister is not fronting up to the issues in the health sector. He is hiding, he is running for cover, and that is not acceptable, because this is such a significant issue for New Zealanders. When they cannot afford to go to their GPs, when half a million Kiwis cannot afford to go to their GPs, when Kiwis cannot afford the oral care they need, when Kiwis cannot afford to pick up their scripts at the pharmacist, it is simply not good enough.

The Government’s own figures tell us another thing. They tell us that 60,000 New Zealanders last year were referred back to their GPs by a hospital, even after they had been referred to a specialist, because the hospital said they did not meet their threshold: “I’m sorry, we don’t have enough money to give you the care that your GP says you need. You can’t even visit the specialist. We’re going to send you back to your GP; come back again if your situation gets worse. If you’re so much in pain that you can’t move, when it gets to the point that you can’t work, then we’ll look at it again, if you get another letter from your GP to come back to us.” That is all part of what is going on. It is part of a bigger picture, because every year it gets harder for New Zealanders to get the healthcare services that they used to get. Every year it gets harder for people to get the cataract surgeries, knee surgeries, and hip surgeries that they need, because this Government is not funding adequately to deliver the same level of services each year as the year before.

That is what that Infometrics report points to. It says that with an ageing and growing population, if you want to deliver the same level of services to each member of the population as you did before, you would need to put in $2.3 billion over that 9-year period. But that has not gone in, and so services have dropped, and that is the story that is demoralising the health sector as it struggles to deliver excellent care. Anyone who goes and visits a hospital or a GP will generally have a positive experience, because those health professionals are doing a mighty fine job—despite the Government, rather than because of the Government—and I want to take my hat off to them for making the most of a very difficult situation under this National Government’s watch.

I should also mention that Labour has clearly pledged that it will meet the health costs in the sector going forward and will return that $2.3 billion over time. We believe in delivering affordable healthcare that is of a world-class quality to New Zealanders, even if that Government across the Chamber does not.

We have now a situation where the Director-General of Health is lacking confidence from senior sector members. We have a situation where the Minister says he has not received a resignation, but the director-general says he has given one. What has happened there? One of those people, clearly, has got the situation wrong—I do not want to say, but somebody needs to tell the truth out there as to what is going on.

We also know that that money is being clawed back—that money in the Budget was wrongly allocated. That is a major Budget blunder. That is really basic stuff, Minister. That is the kind of mistake that should never happen in this House. Those numbers are checked and double-checked; they certainly would be by a diligent Minister who cared about what was going on in the sector and who was worried about those DHBs that were missing out.

I want to go through—if I can find the little bit of paper in front of me—and just mention some of those DHBs that are going to miss out, because this is really significant and those people living in those areas should be concerned.

Counties Manukau—if you live in the Counties Manukau area, on Budget day the announcement was that you got a little bit of extra money. It was not enough to meet the current needs, because we know there is $200 million short-funded across the sector anyway, but now you are going to get $6 million less than you thought you were going to get—$6,600,000. Southern DHB, down where I live—it is going to be $5.7 million worse off than it was on Budget day. Capital and Coast DHB—it is going to be $3.7 million worse off than it was on Budget day. Midcentral DHB is going to be $5.4 million worse off than it was on Budget day. Hutt Valley DHB is going to be $3.6 million worse off than it was on Budget day. Taranaki DHB is going to be $3.4 million worse off than it was on Budget day. Canterbury DHB is going to be $2.7 million worse off than it was on Budget day—and we know the struggles that are going down in Canterbury, as they struggle with mental health and other issues and years of underfunding under this Government. Hawke’s Bay DHB—nearly $2 million worse off. Wairarapa DHB—$1.5 million worse off. South Canterbury DHB—$1.2 million worse off. West Coast DHB—$780,000 worse off. Whanganui, Bay of Plenty, and Nelson Marlborough DHBs—also many hundred thousand dollars worse off than they were going to be on Budget day.

This is a huge concern. When those basic things are not got right in the Budget, when the Minister who is responsible to this House—the Minister who is responsible to this House—for Budget spending cannot get the basics right, we have a real concern.

I have found, as I have gone around the health sector in the short time I have been the health spokesperson for the Labour Party, that everybody—everybody in the sector—will agree that Tony Ryall was interested in the sector. They say he ran the sector from his cellphone. He was on the phone. Many people did not like him, but none of them will say he did not care about the sector or that he was not in touch with the sector every day. Yet everywhere I go, people say: “Jonathan Coleman—he is arrogant, he is out of touch, and he does not care about the health sector.” That is the story I am hearing around New Zealand when he does not show up for public events, when I am opening conferences because the Minister has turned them down again and again and again.

I have never seen such a disengaged Minister, and when you get a disengaged Minister like this, mistakes are made. Those things are put in front of him; he is not even looking at them. Clearly, if he is making mistakes this basic, he is not even reading his papers, and that should be a serious concern to all New Zealanders, not just people sitting in this House. This is public money that is being spent, Minister Coleman, and you, Minister, are responsible and accountable for that public money and the muck-up that has happened here. Hang your head in shame, Minister.

There is much more to come on this one, I must say. There is plenty more to come on this, because the ministry is in a spiral and the Minister knows it. There is more to come on this, and the Minister knows it. We will come back to the House tomorrow. We will hear more on this picture, but first the Minister needs to explain how this bungle was made; who is right, the director-general or him, on the call for a resignation; why the money is going to be clawed back, and what the Minister is lacking that he could not get a decent amount of money for them in the first place; and whether he is content to watch the sector wither—a managed decline under his watch—because of underfunding year after year after year.

I have not got time to cover the Auditor-General’s report—

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: No, you have not.

Dr DAVID CLARK: —which covers a myriad of faults in terms of DHB asset management—because DHBs are underfunded and they are stretching their assets. I just want to say that this Minister needs to be held accountable and he needs to do a much better job, pay attention to what is going on, and make sure that health services are properly funded so that New Zealanders can have access to the affordable, quality healthcare that they deserve and that the Labour Party will deliver.

Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN (Minister of Health): Well, Mr Deputy Speaker, I would just like to begin by wishing you all the best on a very significant personal milestone that I know you have passed today, and I must that say that you are looking a picture of health and fitness as you complete your sixth decade.

But, you know, I was very disappointed by that speech from the man from north Dunedin, David Clark. That was a mix of gross exaggeration, wild allegations, very deeply hurtful personal attacks that he has made on me, and, much more seriously, actually, the bullying of an outstanding public servant, Chai Chuah.

But, look, I am very happy to be in here debating this every day until the election, because we have just tied up Andrew Little and Jacinda Ardern for 15 minutes on an issue, frankly, that, I can tell you what, no one at the rugby on Saturday night in Rotorua would have ever heard about. No one in Rotorua has ever heard of the population-based funding formula—the people who were there at that rugby game. No one there would have known about Chai Chuah, but what they do know is that at their district health board they are getting more services than ever before. I am quite happy if the Labour Party wants to continue to focus on beltway matters, on technical errors—and yes, it was an error that the Ministry of Health made—and on the minutiae, rather than the big debates.

I can tell you why Mr Clark has seized upon this. It is for two reasons. When we were in Opposition we spent months and months and months going around the sector, really talking to people, analysing the issues, and producing an 80-page discussion document, Better, Sooner, More Convenient, which was our manifesto in health and which we subsequently delivered. What have we seen from Labour? We have seen nothing during its time in Opposition. There has been no work done. It has gone nowhere. It has not visited anywhere, actually, and I defy David Clark to state one conference he claims to have opened that I have not been at. He claims he is being asked to open conferences. Well, actually, I do not believe him.

You know, Labour did have a very good health spokesperson, Mrs King, and she was an excellent member of Parliament, very cruelly treated by the callous Labour leadership. It has not helped Labour, though. It is going backwards in the polls, and it put in this man from north Dunedin, who needs schooling in the vote. I can tell you that my best advice to him is to go and spend some time with Mrs King and learn about the health portfolio, because, unfortunately, during the select committee hearing we had to spend quite a bit of time educating him on the difference between Vote Health and Crown core health. He did not know the difference. It was very disappointing.

There are a few things I need to correct there. The Labour spokesperson has talked about a cut of $2.3 billion. That is a complete fiction. The Health vote has gone up by $5 billion. Labour members’ argument is just that they say that it should have gone up by an extra $2.3 billion. Well, actually, we do not agree with them. There is plenty of money in health. There is a record allocation this year—$888 million—and, more important than that, out of the hundreds of services provided across the New Zealand health system, you will struggle to find one that is not better than it was 9 years ago. We are doing more of everything. There are 50,000 more operations per year. There are 150,000 more specialist appointments. There are 6,900—it is an incredible number—

Hon David Bennett: How many?

Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: —6,900 more doctors and nurses across the system. So while Labour is happy to focus on beltway issues that, frankly, the voters of New Zealand just do not care about, the National Government is about delivering the services that matter. There is a very important point here. The district health boards received $439 million—$1.6 billion over the next 4 years. Despite this technical spreadsheet error, that remains unchanged. So it is very disingenuous for Labour to say that there have been cuts to the amount of money that the district health boards are getting. There have been only increases. Mr Clark went through a long list of district health boards and he said that Counties Manukau District Health Board was getting $6.6 million less. Well, that is completely untrue. Do you know how much more it is getting than last year? It is $41 million more than last year. So it is completely disingenuous and a very good example of desperate politicking to try to count that as a cut.

Then, No. 2, he moved on to the Southern District Health Board. He said “Oh, you know, they’re getting $5.6 million less because of this error.” Well, that is completely disingenuous. It is actually getting $24 million more than last year. It is a huge increase. Then Mr Clark said that Capital and Coast—incidentally, Labour left us with tens of millions of dollars of deficits to try to turn around; it was really going to hell in a handcart—was getting $3.7 million less. Well, in actual fact, it is getting $21 million more.

So it is very misleading to try to paint a minor technical error as amounting to a cut, because the DHBs are all getting more than last year—collectively, $439 million more. What this minor technical error is all about is a fraction—about 0.3 of 1 percent—of the total vote. It is a fraction, which was misallocated and now has been corrected, but the crucial point is that DHBs were getting $439 million on Budget day and they are getting $439 million now.

I am very happy for Mr Clark to talk about this every day in the House, because I can tell you that televisions all over New Zealand will be being switched off and people will be saying, like the person who came up to me on Saturday: “You know what, I went to the local hospital and I got great care.” I hear that all round the country. I have visited all our district health boards, and I keep in touch with them regularly. I know what is going on in health. I was talking at the College of General Practitioners AGM in Auckland on Thursday night. I had spent that day up at Northland District Health Board. There is some excellent work going on out there.

The thing with Labour is that it does not want to debate the real results. It does not want to debate what counts to people—things that this Government has delivered, like free GP under-13 visits. Ninety-nine percent of the population—and Mrs King was actually very gracious in her acknowledgment of that. She knows good policy when she sees it. She knows when a Government is performing for the people of New Zealand, and, I tell you, she is someone we can work with on health.

Hon David Bennett: Why isn’t she doing the job?

Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: Well, Mrs King was stabbed in the back, and they put in this guy from Dunedin North who does not even know the difference between Vote Health and core Crown health. Confidentially, he does say to people—because he says it to people all round the Parliament—“Look, I don’t really understand the vote, and I’m not really on top of my work.”

Dr David Clark: What a load of crap—what a load of crap.

Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: Just on the basis of his immediate reaction, calling it a load of “c”, you know I am right. If I was not, he would just be smiling and going: “Oh yeah, whatever.” But that has hit a raw nerve, because Mr Clark—

Dr David Clark: This, from the guy who’s just messed up the budget. This, from the guy who has just messed up the budget and is apologising in Parliament in an urgent debate—the irony!

Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: —who is continually interjecting here—I have hit the nail on the head. Now, I have got to tell the man from—Mr North Dunedin, here. Remember, this is the man who wanted to ban Google from New Zealand. Remember when he said that? He said: “Oh, if they don’t front up to their tax responsibilities, we’re going to ban Google from New Zealand.”—so he is going to be exercising a lot of power and taking on the multinationals. He says he is going to so-called “restore” $2.3 billion to the Budget. Well, we have got a calculator there, adding up the spending promises. Andrew Little will be out the back saying: “Oh, well, you know, there’s that person we put in as a health spokesperson, and he’s just promised another 2.3 bil.” So we will be counting that up at Budget time; we will be holding these guys to account.

But, look, talking about Budget time, I did mention that $888 million, and what a great allocation that is. That is producing all sorts of fantastic initiatives. You know, $60 million in there, roughly, for double-crewing of ambulances. Labour complained about that for years but never did anything about it. That means that 100 percent of ambulances, over the next 4 years, across the country, will be double-crewed. I can tell you that that is what people in New Zealand notice. They do not notice the beltway internal machinations of Wellington, which the member for Dunedin North is so excited about. They notice that, actually, they are going to have two highly skilled people driving the ambulance that picks them or their relatives up, should they experience some misfortune.

They are also going to notice the $60 million that is going into Pharmac. You know, that is going to benefit 33,000 New Zealanders. We have raised the Pharmac budget to record levels over time. It has gone up well over $200 million over time. Last year 3 million of us got a funded medicine. It is just incredible the progress we have been making. We are able to fund Keytruda and life-saving, life-preserving drugs. That is what matters to the people of New Zealand.

I will tell you what else matters to them: the fact that they are now getting their operations when they need them. I was down at North Shore Hospital about 10 days ago, opening the new $10 million clinical skills and research centre. People there are very happy.

Dr David Clark: When I said you were out of touch, I didn’t expect you to give examples.

Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: I wish Mr Clark had been there, actually, because he needs to get out a bit. He needs to actually come to some of these health facilities. I would like to take him to some of these openings. I would like to show him what the staff are saying on the ground of the New Zealand health system and show him some of the fantastic facilities that we are building. I can tell you that North Shore Hospital—the hospital that my constituents go to—was a basket case when we came into Government. It is now not only the largest but one of the best-performing district health boards in the country. I can tell you, with the right leadership, you can turn these things around.

But what would be very, very dangerous for the health of New Zealanders would be if David Clark—who, by his own admission, does not understand the portfolio and constantly demonstrates an ability to focus on exactly the wrong thing—ever got his hands on the portfolio I would be writing to whoever was leading Labour and saying: “You’ve got to bring back Mrs King. This is urgent. This is dire.” We need her back there if the alternative is that guy. Of course, that is not going to happen.

Of course, one of the things, when you are dealing with sport and health, people do raise a number of issues with you around portfolio-related things. It is no secret we have brought sport back into alignment with health. We are looking to get greater alignment between the two portfolios. Actually, I was out in Johnsonville yesterday. I wish Mr Clark could have been there with me to celebrate Green Prescription. We had a whole range of people there. I spoke to three or four members of the public there who are on Green Prescription. It is a great programme. They brought along some representatives. It is a great programme that is about creating innovative solutions for people with some of these really tough issues around being overweight, and obesity and diabetes. It was universally lauded as a great programme—it came in 20 years ago under a National Government. It is just another example of a programme that really counts.

Talking about sport and health and the relationship between the two, I can tell you that if we were not doing so strongly in health and were not delivering for people, do you really think that in the TV1 poll National would be at 49 percent? Here is another point about sport and health, Mr Clark: if you want to know the difference between the British and Irish Lions and the Labour Party’s polling, it is that the Lions are getting better. So let us look forward to the test on Saturday. It is going to be a great one. I look forward to discussing this issue for hours and hours to come in the lead-up to the election, because, actually, it is not something that makes any difference to the people out there. Meanwhile, I will be out there every day, talking about the achievements of this National Government and how, if we earn the right to be the Government again, we will continue to focus on those things that matter to New Zealanders—not the beltway stuff but the operations, the doctors, and the appointments. Kia ora.

JULIE ANNE GENTER (Green): Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker—tēnā koe. Tēnā koutou e Te Whare. I have to say, I was pretty shocked by the Minister of Health’s contribution just now, when he said that New Zealanders at the rugby in Rotorua do not care that their Minister and the Ministry of Health made a grievous error in the allocation of the Budget. I think that is quite disrespectful to New Zealanders. I think he does not give them enough credit. Of course New Zealanders themselves do not want to worry about those numbers—that is why they elected us as representatives. They expect the Minister to do that work so that they do not have to. But our Minister of Health—and sport, as he rightfully pointed out—is far more interested in attending sporting matches than actually doing the very important job of being a Minister of Health and having oversight of what is happening in the health budget, which is the single largest area of expenditure of taxpayer money. I think New Zealanders would rightfully expect that their Government would take that spending seriously. It does matter. Yes, it was an error, and errors do occur, but errors like these add up.

The disengagement of this Minister of Health is undeniable. It is certainly what I have heard, talking to people in the health sector around the country since I took on the health spokesperson portfolio 9 months ago—that this Minister is incredibly disengaged. And, hey, I feel sorry for Minister Coleman. It is no secret that he wanted to be Minister of Foreign Affairs or even Prime Minister, but, sadly for him, he did not win either of those contests. So here he is stuck being Minister of Health, and he has got very little interest in actually improving the health system for New Zealanders. He wants to kick back and attend the rugby matches and attend the sporting games and smile and shrug and say: “It’s all good—doesn’t matter.”

But the slow erosion of health services over the last 8½ years under this National Government is becoming very apparent to many New Zealanders. That is what I have heard when I have talked to people in this sector. There are some areas where this Government has focused more money, and those are ticking right along. It is no surprise that those areas where it has focused more money are the ones that benefit the people who are most likely to vote. The Government knows how to keep its voters happy. But it is not meeting the needs of all New Zealanders, and in the medium to long term that is a ticking time bomb that is going to come back to haunt us.

I know that all New Zealanders do not care for just their own health; they want to live in a society where their fellow citizens are healthy and happy for the long term, where the environment is healthy for the long term. That is what New Zealanders want, and they are starting to see through the smoke and mirrors and spin that this National Government has been so good at. It pretends to value the same things that New Zealanders value, but you have got to put action and Government spending where your words are. You have got to back it up with real action, and that has not been happening. It just is not good enough to hear yet one more excuse for why the Government made this minor mistake that actually involves tens of millions of dollars and how they are allocated to different district health boards. It just is not good enough.

Health underfunding—the Minister just claimed that there has not been underfunding in health. Yet Infometrics analysis makes it very clear that while the Government is nominally putting more money in, that has not kept up with inflation, population growth—record population growth—and increasing demand from an ageing population. All of that adds up to cuts. I am not saying that you just need to spend more money for the sake of it, but when we talk to people in the sector it is clear that they are experiencing the real impact of these cuts. There is burnout amongst specialists, general practitioners, and nurses, and no more so than in the mental health sector.

Minister Coleman allocated a slight increase in mental health funding, but has no idea what it is going to be spent on. When he came before the Health Committee, he said “Oh, we don’t need a nationwide inquiry.”, which many people in the sector have been calling for. The Green Party has supported those calls. We need an independent, nationwide inquiry to get to the bottom of our broken mental health system. The Minister claims that we do not need an inquiry because we already know what we need to do, but then, with the additional money he has allocated for mental health, he says it is for “innovation”, and we do not yet know what it is going to be spent on.

So which is it, Minister? Do we know what it is going to be spent on? Do we know what we need to do, or are we going to have an inquiry and get to the bottom of it? And make it be independent and make sure that we are hearing from everybody affected—the patients, the families of those patients, and the people working in the sector—because they are the ones who are best placed to tell us how we should best be allocating money and what levels of funding we actually need to ensure that the need out there in the community is being met, so that we can start reducing our disgracefully high suicide rate and youth suicide rate. It is just not good enough that New Zealanders with mental health difficulties are reaching out and being told that they have to wait, sometimes more than 8 weeks, to get the help they need. It is not good enough.

The National Government is also, while underfunding the health budget totally, not funding the areas where we really need to make a difference in the long term, and those are prevention and primary care. Over the last 8 years, the primary healthcare strategy that had been instituted and executed under the previous Government has, basically, fallen to the wayside. What we have seen is that the very slight increases to the nominal health budget have mainly been sucked up by hospitals, and that is really an ambulance at the bottom of the cliff. We are not putting enough money into primary care. We are putting less than a quarter, I think, of what GPs have said they actually need to meet the need out there.

This is pretty obvious, because—the Minister talked about the Opposition spokespeople not knowing what they are talking about. Well, at the select committee, he claimed not to know about a paper that was recently published in the New Zealand Medical Journal that estimates that one in four New Zealanders is not accessing primary care because of cost. The total cost of that is actually far greater than the cost of just funding the primary care in the first place.

We in the Green Party and the Labour Party have already committed, under our budget responsibility rules with our memorandum of understanding, to restore health and education funding to meet the need that is out there in the sector, and we have shown how we can pay for it. That means that the $2.3 billion hole in the health budget that has been created by this National Government will be met under a Green-Labour Government. That means that people out there in New Zealand are going to be able to access primary care.

We know that that is actually going to achieve what New Zealanders really want, which is their fellow citizens, their families, their co-workers, and themselves being able to access the healthcare and support that they need to live healthy, happy lives. That is the expectation of New Zealanders, the rightful expectation—that the Government will ensure that what they need, the Government services that they need, will be provided, and that our Ministers will actually sit down and do the sums and do the work to make sure that funding is appropriately allocated, not just shrug it off and say: “Oh, New Zealanders at the rugby don’t really care about the numbers.” They do not care about the numbers; they expect us to care about the numbers. They expect us to do the governing. That is what we are here for. Accept some responsibility.

This National Government is a disgrace. It is so good at the spin. It is so good at the spin, and it does just enough to keep it all from falling apart, but it is running out of time. It is running out of time.

The Green Party will prioritise public health. That is one thing that this National Government has completely—completely—let go. I have heard from anyone working or trying to work with the Ministry of Health that they know there is no capability or capacity in the Ministry of Health to meet our long-term health challenges.

We have heard excuses from the health Minister as to why we cannot have an effective plan to actually reduce the chronic disease related to childhood obesity, like a tax on sugary drinks that would fund health services and health promotions and reduce overconsumption. No, this National Government would rather prioritise the profits of a big multinational like Coca-Cola than the health of New Zealand children.

Hon Members: Aw!

JULIE ANNE GENTER: That is right. It just bends over backwards to help the Food and Grocery Council make sure that its members can keep making record profits on the back of New Zealand children being sick, which is going to cost New Zealand taxpayers in the long term.

We would institute a tax on sugary drinks and use the proceeds from that to fund health promotion. People would still have access to sugary drinks, but the tax would reduce overconsumption. We want to reduce the availability in schools. We want healthy food in schools. We want healthy food and drink choices available for New Zealanders, and particularly children, in sports clubs, in hospitals, and in all our public buildings, and we can achieve that. A Green Government will achieve long-term health benefits for all New Zealanders.

RIA BOND (NZ First): I am actually quite elated to finally get up here and have the chance to speak in an urgent debate, and I will tell you why. I have sat here in this House, as a member, for 2 years and 2 months and in that time I have seen the much-flouted Minister of Health, Minister Coleman, tussle with the Hon Annette King, and it seemed he was more focused on that tussle here in the House than actually the tussle out there on the street in our healthcare system, and that is despicable. What I have also seen, now that the Hon Annette King is not in the role of the spokesperson for health for the Labour Party, he has now got in, I guess, his sights to have a go at Dr Clark and question his numbers and question actually what the people out there in real New Zealand are telling us.

I do not know why that side of the House, that Government, is not hearing their voices. You have officers; you surely know that this is an absolute critical area for our healthcare system with New Zealanders out on the street. What I sat here and watched in the last 10 to 20 minutes was a Minister who actually spoke more about rugby than about people who are not getting on to the elective surgery lists—

Hon David Bennett: Tell us about your mates who are going to bring in cannabis.

RIA BOND: —who are actually having to be heavily medicated because the system cannot deal with the demand. That is a disgrace, Mr Bennett. Shut up and sit down and listen.

What we have also seen around this country—and I have been on the tour; in the last 2 weeks, for the last year, I have visited palliative healthcare. I have seen the failing of this Government in its health-allocated Budget spending, or lack thereof. I have also attended the GP seminars, their panels, and spoken about the fact that in real life GPs are actually massively underfunded and we do not have enough GPs for our normal citizens to actually have access to them.

Hon David Bennett: What? How many?

RIA BOND: It is a fact, Mr Bennett. The doctors are telling us themselves. Pull out your earplugs or your wax and start listening and pipe down in the front seat there.

What has also become evident is that the New Zealand Nurses Organisation has told us—it has had an open letter to the Government, and its message has been: “Please give us more funding so we can take of people in our hospitals and our residential homes, so we can take care of people who are actually the most vulnerable people within this healthcare system.” That Government crowed over it and thought it was so great in the Budget day release on 25 May that not one of you knew your Budget was wrong. The whole lot in health was wrong. Fools—fools, if you did not know that.

So, yes, I get worked up, because I get out there in New Zealand. Families come and tell me the difficulties they have, that they cannot get simple access, that we have 0- to 18-year-olds sitting there for 9 weeks waiting for mental health services to pick them up. It is not the fault of those nurses and doctors within mental health; it is the fault of this Government for having its head in the clouds, because it does not realise what its policy is doing to New Zealand. I think I have heard, from memory, a saying: “Keep ’em dumb, keep ’em stupid.”, and that is what that Government has delivered in this healthcare budget. It is a disgrace.

This is not going to go away. The Minister did not even address the issue of the fact that there has been a debacle and there has been absolute gross negligence from the Ministry of Health under that Minister. He preferred to talk about the rugby—the Lions games—and how wrong Mr Clark was in his figures. He preferred to talk about the issues of anything else but the fact that there has been no accountability put on the Director-General of Health. There has been not one thing—not one thing at all. Yes, Canterbury District Health Board (DHB) is calling for his resignation. Somebody has to be accountable, and that someone, who allocated taxpayer money to be spent, is the Minister of Health.

Although that Minister thinks that he now owns the Teflon coat, that is not going to last for ever—not in this year; not at this election. In September the people are going to vote. They have had enough of being stuck within this underfunded healthcare system that sees our children not having access to primary healthcare services; that sees our babies sick; that sees our families unable to actually see appropriate mental health care services given to them; and that we have to, as families in this country, take care of our most vulnerable, loved people when we actually cannot get them to be seen by mental health services when they say they want to kill themselves. We find, as members of our community, that we have to become the mental healthcare people to take care of them.

There are too many of our children who have been lost to suicide. We have the highest suicide rate in the OECD. That is nothing that this Government should be crowing about. That is nothing that families out there in our community are at all proud of. If anything, it breaks our community even more because of the fact that we are losing too many of our children.

Let us talk about the rural sector. Let us talk about the mental health in our rural sector. The amount of men and farmers in our rural sector committing suicide is an absolute concern on this side of the House and gets fobbed over on that side of the House. Let us talk about the fact that women in rural New Zealand cannot get access to healthcare services either. When we sit there—and I read, actually, a document from Cabinet from 2014 that said there is no recommendation to change the population-based funding formula and that it is fit for purpose. Well, I beg to differ. I beg to differ on that fact, and I absolutely can see, and question now, the question to that Government is: is a population-based funding formula fit for purpose today? Does it actually have its integrity intact over the debacle of what this Ministry of Health has actually done? Does it have the integrity to stand up now and still provide the key instrument in order to allocate funding for our healthcare services here in New Zealand? I suggest that no, it does not.

That Minister Coleman, that Ministry of Health, have actually just done the very job and made it become known to members of this House that that funding formula is not fit for purpose. The real question here that should be being asked is: when is Minister Coleman going to stand down? When is he going to stand down?

I will tell you what: I live in Southland, and I am proud that I live there with my family. My family accesses services from the Southland Hospital, and when our two areas, Otago and Southland, were merged into the Southland District Health Board, we had the biggest geographical area in this country of trying to cover all those who live within it, all those who live in that catchment. Some of the Ministers and some of the backbenchers do not seem to understand the distance in Southland there is to cover in terms of healthcare. My DHB, Southern DHB, has, as I have already said, actually lost out by $5.7 million. The concern here is that these DHBs, between 20 of those DHBs—yes, 14 were given an overspend, and, actually, six were given an underspend. These DHBs have already allocated the central spend. The Government might want to say: “Oh, it was a piece-of-paper problem.” The fact of the matter is that these DHBs built this budget into their budgets. The excuses that have come from that side of the House do not cut it. They are not going to cut it when it comes to election day, and they are not cutting it right now here in this House today.

The DHBs—and I think we have had members read out the whole list. I am not going to go down that way and read it all out again. What I am saying is that New Zealand First can hear the concern out there between DHBs. We know that they are being massively underfunded. We know that there is a problem with the population-based funding system, and we know that because of the debacle and the flunked way in which the Government had no idea, on Budget day, that its health budget was wrong. Not one figure was right—not one figure was right. The Minister might like to crow that “Oh, but the budget got $439 million extra in this Budget day.”, but we are still short $200 million in health just to keep it afloat today—just to keep health afloat today.

I think it is actually really quite worthy to say that in terms of primary health, from one of the panels that I went to—the question was put to the panel members: how much of Vote Health does primary healthcare receive? How much? I bet you Mr Bennett does not know that answer, and I can tell you it is less than 5.5 percent of total health spend. That is a disgrace. If we are trying to prevent health issues and outcomes—primary healthcare is only funded less than 5.5 percent of the total health budget. It needs at least 7 percent. When is that Government going to start listening to the country, start listening to the professionals inside of the area, and, actually, listen to what is essential to ensuring that our society and its health is put at the forefront of this Government? Thank you.

SIMON O’CONNOR (National—Tāmaki): Firstly, Mr Deputy Speaker, happy birthday to you, while I get this opportunity. Look, I am absolutely delighted to take a call in this urgent debate. Echoing, in many ways, what the Minister himself said, this is a marvellous opportunity, a silver lining, if you will, on a dark cloud, but a silver lining to actually highlight what is really good in this health sector.

But let me, firstly, address the accusations, if you will, that have been put forward. We have to start by absolutely acknowledging, upfront, that there has been an error within the Ministry of Health in how it has allocated the increased spending on health, the increased spending into the district health boards (DHBs). The Opposition is making a lot that somehow this is a cut, this is a huge disaster, the DHBs will fall over—a Chicken Little moment. It actually makes very little sense at all. It is a mistake, absolutely, and I do not think any of us step away from that, but mistakes must always be put into context and given a relative proportionate element.

The first point we have to make, of course, is acknowledging that mistakes do happen. It is the nature of being human. I know that the Opposition has been crowing a lot around the figures being misunderstood. I just have to remind the Labour Party of course that, I think in recent years, it put out a “baby start”, or a “best start”, programme, which it trumpeted in the media along with its leader at the time—I cannot remember which one it was—but, of course, it got all its figures wrong. Within a couple of days it was exposed that it had not allocated that correctly. That goes through a whole lot of other things. In fact, I would be fascinated to see the costing that the Green Party has put forward around refugees today—fanciful thinking. So there is little bit of richness in some of the commentary coming forward from the Opposition that somehow mistakes do not happen.

But this mistake is around how an increase in funding has been allocated to the DHBs. So we have to start with what is a record spend in the New Zealand health sector, of around $16.8 billion—a record spend in New Zealand’s healthcare of $16.8 billion; the largest spend ever. We saw in the recent Budget an $888 million overall increase. As part of that increase, there is about $430 million, $440 million that has gone into DHBs, and that is actually quite important. The DHBs have been calling for more and more money, and that too makes perfect sense. For those of us fully engaged in the health sector, it is never a surprise—never a surprise—that more money is needed. I say it somewhat off the cuff and quickly, when I am out and about, speaking publicly, but, actually, you could double the health budget tomorrow and we would still have people who would want more money.

So DHBs always want more, and this Government is reacting as best it can. And, really importantly, too, because I am hearing it coming from the Opposition, it is the DHBs that, in turn, pass the funding on and through into their communities. So decisions around primary care, around mental health, those decisions are made by the DHBs. I think it is really important to spend.

We heard from New Zealand First a few moments ago, talking about how much the Government puts directly into primary healthcare. Very few dollars, in effect, are put directly by the Crown into “GP land” if you will, because it is done through the DHBs. So what we are seeing in this Budget is $439 million extra for our DHBs—$439 million. In all this debate today and what we have read in the media in recent days, not one cent, not one dime—granted, if we were American—not one dollar has been taken away from that $439 million increase to DHBs.

What has happened—what has happened—is that in the apportionment that the Ministry of Health was doing, it has done that incorrectly. As I said at the start, that is a mistake. It should not have happened. We do not want that to happen. In fact, no one in this Parliament would want that to happen. But it does not take away from the fact that the DHBs are still getting an increase in their funding. In fact, this error, this mistake, is less than even 0.3 percent, I think, of a DHB’s total budget. And really importantly too, while they are working on their budgets from 1 July, they have not received this apportionment yet. In other words, there is nothing that needs to be taken back. This is an accounting issue, effectively. This is something to be dealt with on paper.

What it does highlight too, though, and no member of this House so far has touched on it, is the complexity of the population-based funding model that we have. It is a funding model that has been around for almost, I think, 20 years. For those who do not fully understand it, it is the model that is used to work out exactly how much money should be allocated to each DHB. I am not going to go through all its iterations, but everything, from the demographics of a community, its geographic spread, whether or not its hospital has tertiary services—by that, I mean cardiac surgery, neurosurgery, and so forth—apportionments are made.

Importantly, a number of people do—and we hear it in the select committee all the time, that the funding model should be reviewed. There are issues within it. But really importantly, and again, we did not hear it from the Opposition today, no one has come back with a viable alternative. Time and time again, when DHB officials are in front of us they say: “Yep, in many ways we’d like to see it adjusted in different ways, but we see it as a good operating model.” But it is a complicated model. It will be interesting to hear from, perhaps, former Ministers of Health who may or may not be in the Chamber, around the complexity of that system and in some ways why we end up, sometimes, with mistakes like this. It has been a mistake, which the ministry has acknowledged. They are setting up, I believe, Deloitte to do an audit, to understand how this came about and how to stop it again.

But I come back to my initial point. Not one cent, not one dollar, is being taken away from the DHBs. This is a Budget whereby we have just had a $439 million increase to the DHBs. What has to happen now is that the DHBs and the Ministry of Health have to go back and readjust their spreadsheets, and plan from there.

We have also heard throughout this debate effectively a lot of personal attacks. I think that begins to belie the fact that this particular issue has just been a launch pad for sort of playing the man and not the ball, and I think that is completely and totally inappropriate. I think attacks on the Minister are completely unhelpful. It is not to try to give counsel to the Opposition, but if you cannot actually play the ball, then playing the man shows great weakness.

The other two are this continuing claim—and again it is why I am delighted to take a call today—that we are not increasing funding. Well, again, that is demonstrably false—demonstrably; we are not going to get into the semantics, to the Hon Scott Simpson. That is demonstrably false. The other is this constant claim from the Opposition, in trying to link this accounting mistake to some indication that the sector is being underfunded. Last week, I believe, according to the Opposition—Labour and the Greens in particular—we were underfunding by something like $1.7 billion. This week I hear it is up to $2.5 billion. Next week I am waiting for it to be at $5 billion. The fascinating thing—and I have explained it to the House before, in the health area—is we continue to increase the funding. The Opposition, understandably, has its wish list of what it believes should be funded, what it wants to be funded, and, in its utopia, what it feels is appropriate.

I have often put down the challenge—I am not sure why the Opposition stops at $2.3 billion or $2.5 billion or $1.7 billion—why not say it is $15 billion underspending, just to make things sort of fanciful. Again, it is not actually based on much fact, and I suppose that is where it all comes back to this debate today. In fact, there is not a lot of substance to the wider elements of the debate. Yes, a mistake was made, but, actually, it has no material impact on the increase of funding that has been put into the DHBs.

I thank all of those who now are clearly working in the DHBs and the Ministry of Health to tidy this up. Fundamentally, the same services that were delivered last week, that were delivered yesterday and delivered today, and will be delivered in the future, are going to be delivered and will be delivered—announced on the back of an enormous array of positive changes that the Government has brought in. I am conscious I have got only about a minute left.

We often hear claims from the Opposition around mental health and wanting inquiries. That is all very well and good to talk about. This Government is about more than talk. It has invested over $224 million into mental health. The Opposition talks about supporting the disability sector. Well, the Hon Nicky Wagner has put in a substantial amount of money, through this Budget, to support the disability sector.

We get calls from time to time to increase funding to Pharmac. We have done that, to the tune of something like $60 million, which has now been able to fund a whole range of treatments, from the likes of Keytruda or Pembrolizumab, right through, I should say, to retrovirals for HIV and hepatitis C.

This is a Government that is now double-crewing ambulances—double-crewing ambulances. This is something we heard from the rural sector in particular. We are doing that. We were told that we need to have more funding for doctors and nurses in hospitals. We are delivering on that, and we have delivered on that. There has been an enormous amount of positive work that this Government has led and is continuing to lead in the health sector. As someone who is out in that sector, day after day, I say the feedback is positive but there are also the challenges too, and the Government is happy to engage those. Thank you.

POTO WILLIAMS (Labour—Christchurch East): I just want to remind the House of what we are actually debating here this afternoon. What we are debating is basically an error in the appropriations documents that were presented to this House at Budget time. That is what we are debating. We are debating the responsibility of the Minister of Health to actually get his appropriations correct when he presents them to the House.

When he presented to the Health Committee, of course, none of this actually came up for discussion. We are only just finding out now, in recent days, that there was an error made and the Ministry of Health, in response to that error, said to the district health boards (DHBs): “The error that we’ve made—we won’t require you to give that appropriation back to us. We won’t require that.”

And then, a couple of weeks later, lo and behold, we got a completely different story. We got a flip-flop from this Minister. He came into the House, the Minister, in his usual arrogant and dismissive way, and said: “Well, the people of Rotorua at the rugby on Saturday, they don’t understand the population-based funding formula.” Well, they may not understand the mechanisms that we use to fund the health system but they sure as heck understand how difficult it is to get any decent health services under that arrogant, dismissive Minister. I, for one, am saying to that Minister: “You may say it makes no material impact in terms of your budget, but it certainly makes a material impact in terms of the people who receive health services.”

I want to refer to a specific set of issues, and that is what happens with mental health in Canterbury. The situation is pretty well known to everybody. We have been talking about it for some years now. It is widely discussed. It is widely known and agreed that we have a problem with mental health not only in Canterbury but across the country. But we have some specific issues in Canterbury, and we know that prior to this Budget our district health board was talking about a $45 million hole in mental health support—money that had to come from other services to bolster up the support that our community needs around its mental health.

It is not going above and beyond to say that mental health services in Canterbury are probably at crisis point. We are getting clinicians and staff telling us of the difficulty they have in supporting people around their mental health issues. But it is not only that—rural New Zealand is expressing deep concern that people are unable, because of isolation and because of lack of resources, to access support for their mental health. We are talking about particularly vulnerable people throughout Canterbury.

I just want to refer to some articles and reports that have come out over recent months. Cate Broughton reported in May that “The workload associated with high numbers of patients under care is putting significant pressure on clinical staff and compromising quality, … Every month some adult patients slept in other wards”—these are mental health patients—“as there were not enough beds to accommodate them. … Children and adolescents assessed as having less urgent cases were waiting an average of four months for a second appointment.” So children and adolescents who are experiencing mental unwellness are waiting for 4 months to get a second appointment.

Hon Ruth Dyson: It’s disgraceful.

POTO WILLIAMS: It is more than disgraceful. But there is more. The Prime Minister’s Youth Mental Health Project reports that came out in December showed that there were six areas assessed across the country but that Christchurch youth—east Christchurch youth—were at the most risk: “Youth in Christchurch’s eastern suburbs are more likely to have self-harmed and suffered anxiety, depression and low self-esteem than others in the country. … Data from three schools showed 36 per cent had high anxiety or depression, 28 per cent had self-harmed, 43 per cent suffered low self-esteem …”. More than that, they have nearly 60 percent of children under 12 years of age waiting more than 3 weeks to get the support they need—kids under the age of 12 have to wait 3 weeks to get mental health support.

This is another damning piece of information: “Last year, police callouts for attempted suicides rose 60 percent”—60 percent—“from pre-quake levels, the highest in the country. Canterbury saw a 37 percent increase in people entering mental health services … Rural mental health presentations were up 65 percent. Emergency health presentations have risen 104 percent, psychiatric emergency assessments [are up] 124 percent.” So when the Minister stands in the House and says the people of Rotorua at the rugby may not have understood what population-based funding is about—no, they may not understand the mechanisms but they sure as heck understand what it means to them as people who are trying to access health services.

I want to give you a couple of stories from my own constituency, from my own electorate. I get people coming to me to intervene on their behalf to try to access health services. I have a story about a 19-year-old constituent who, since December, has attempted suicide three times. She cannot get an appointment for an assessment for at least 2 months. She is a young woman, she has got her life ahead of her, she is actually working, and when she is in a low mood, that is when she needs support. When she is starting to feel that depression coming on, that is when she needs the support—not to wait 8 weeks for somebody to give her an appointment.

She has had to come into the MP’s office to try to get me to intervene with health services to get her an appointment. It is lucky that I have some connections with mental health services in Canterbury and have been able to effect an appointment for her within a few days, but she was canny and came and saw me and tried to get some help. What happens to all of those other young people who do not know where to go? It should not take the MP to intervene on her behalf to get an appointment—someone who has attempted suicide three times since December.

I also want to talk about another constituent of mine. His mother has come to see me on several occasions. We have been working on this for a while. In fact, this case is one that I have passed to the Minister for Disability Issues—when she can stop looking at the harbour—to actually take some initiative over. A mother who has a severely autistic child who is assessed as requiring 36 hours of support each week has only ever received in the region of 6 to 9 hours support, up until December where he has been receiving none. His mother has had to care for that boy because he has not had the support he requires. She subsequently had a stroke. What does it mean for his care if his mother is becoming so unwell that she cannot care for him because she cannot access the support she needs for him? When that Minister stands in the House and says that the people of New Zealand do not understand the population-based funding mechanism—they sure as heck understand the impact on them when they are trying to access health services.

I have had people come to me to intervene to get them back on the waiting list for knee operations—people who are contributing to the workforce and who actually need to get their knees repaired so that they can continue to work. Do we not want people to work? We do not want them accessing sickness benefits because they cannot work because of their knees. We actually want them to work. So people are coming to their MPs to get support to get on to the waiting list because this Government is saying that you do not need to throw more money at it. Actually, in some cases, you do. The issue is not that we have not got the capacity to do the work in Canterbury; we have not got the staff to do the work in Canterbury.

I have to say that this is not just an issue about funding. It is actually about a matter of trust and the worthiness of this Government to govern. In recent weeks we have had some really disturbing occurrences happen. We have had Alfred Ngaro threatening the community and voluntary sector. We have had Nicky Wagner being completely dismissive of people with disability issues and disability organisations. We have had what can only be described as a cover-up, in terms of what has happened down in Clutha-Southland. I have to say, there is one thing: the people are watching—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): Order! The member’s time has expired. I think she got even further off the point at the end.

Dr SHANE RETI (National—Whangarei): We are acknowledging that there has been an administrative error. We are acknowledging that. I want to talk about what is being delivered and what will be delivered regardless of that administrative error. I want to talk about it in several domains. I want to talk about access, I want to talk about actually doing health stuff, and then I want to talk about our workforce and how, regardless of this administrative error, we can still do what we were planning on doing. We have heard other speakers talk to it as well.

Let us look at access across the spectrum of a life. Initially it was the under-5s—they get free access to healthcare. We increased that to under-13s—they now get free access to healthcare. But what is not often talked about is from 13 onwards—the other part of a life. Now they benefit from something called Very Low Cost Access, and probably at least 50 percent of the population is enrolled in primary health organisations. They get improved access at a co-pay cap of around $17 to $18. So access to healthcare will continue to be high quality and available regardless of this administrative error.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): Order! I am going to interrupt the member. I have been relatively flexible in dealing with this debate to date, but all other members have at least made an attempt within a couple of minutes to address the question that is before the House, which is the urgent matter. Just saying “misallocation” is not, I think, addressing the urgent matter for which the House has currently adjourned its normal business in order to consider. Now, I am not going to restrict the member—as I have not previous members—from discussing other matters, but he at least has to do more than wave in the direction of the matter before the House.

Dr SHANE RETI: Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker. This administrative error is going to have some consequence but we are reassured that it will not have a consequence that affects New Zealanders’ access to the good quality healthcare that we receive. I absolutely believe that. As we said, we put our hand up and said: “Look, we made a mistake in the modelling.” It is easy to do. I have done modelling as well, and it is easy to take an input and misinterpret it and realise at a later date that maybe it was draft input that we were looking at. By all accounts that is what we understand to be the issue here.

That aside, the administrative error will not change what we are planning to do. We have heard that from the Minister—we have the appropriations here. We know that the budgets are set as they are set. I am going to talk to the Northland budget specifically in a few moments, because, obviously, it is an area close to my heart. I was making the point that access will not change with this error. Access will not change to primary care, nor will it change to secondary care. In the Budget, we know that they will be doing more first specialist assessments. That means that access to secondary care is also going to continue to improve regardless of this administrative error.

So we have got access to health services—let us look at actually doing stuff. Is this going to change anything we are doing? Now, in primary care we know that the utilisation has gone up since we increased the cover to under-13s. We know that because the utilisation formula that was calculated for the capitation that first came out has been reviewed, and my colleagues are all telling me that they are doing an awful lot more as well. We also know that in elective surgery we are doing a lot more. That will continue to happen under this Budget as it was projected and predicted. In fact, we are doing 40 percent more than we were in 2008. So we are able to get to services better; we are able to do more.

I want to talk about the health workforce and address some of the questions that my colleague over there was talking about, again in primary care. I will start with that. Primary care does have some challenges. Health Workforce New Zealand is working very hard on that. I think that 50 percent of GPs over the age of 50 may be retiring in the next 5 years. So we know that workforce in primary care is an issue, but we have been doing things with that. If we look at the Health Practitioners (Replacement of Statutory References to Medical Practitioners) Bill, what we did there was look to give other allied health professionals an increased scope to do some of the work that doctors and others might do, more particularly the nurse practitioners. We gave them increased scope to sign sickness certificates, and do death certificates, and other things. So we are addressing that part of it. So I take some issue there.

Certainly, across the district health boards (DHBs), if we look at their workforce, again we are providing funding for that, and will continue to, regardless of this administrative error. In fact, what we know is that in the DHBs there are 2,250 more doctors and 4,640 more nurses. When I was a resident medical officer (RMO) at Northland DHB when I first started we had nine RMOs. There are now 90. The workforce is clearly increasing.

To briefly conclude, Northland receives $21 million in this Budget, and regardless of this administrative error, the core services that Northland DHB will deliver will, I believe, be unchanged and be the same quality they have always been. Thank you.

Hon ANNETTE KING (Labour—Rongotai): Can I begin by saying to the chair of the Health Committee that the Speaker would not have given this debate if it did not have substance. One of the remarks of Mr O’Connor was: “There is not a lot of substance to this debate.” Well, it had to be urgent, it had to have responsibility of the Minister, and it needed to be serious enough, and that is why there is a debate on this issue.

I have to say that I am astounded by the Minister of Health’s speech, because he believes that the health issues facing New Zealand are beltway issues. That shows a Government out of touch and out of favour, because if it was in touch it would know that health issues will be an election issue, because they affect families in all walks of life. People are affected by what happens in the health sector.

I have to say it is a sad day. It is a sad day that we once again have to raise the incompetence of the Ministry of Health, particularly the incompetence of the senior management of the Ministry of Health. I feel sorry for the staff who work at the Ministry of Health—not those in senior management but those who graft away every day, trying to do their best. I feel sorry for those who are working in the health sector and face the incompetence that has come out of this ministry under the leadership that it has. And it is not new. I have been raising these issues for over 4 years. I have raised them with the State Services Commissioner, I have raised them with the Minister of Health at the select committee, and I have raised them in this House, because there is a pattern here of incompetence. You only need to see what is happening to the confidence of those who work in the health sector. Their confidence is shot. Their confidence in the ability of this ministry and this Minister to lead the health portfolio is shot.

I have to say that when you see a district health board (DHB), like the Canterbury DHB, calling for the resignation of the Director-General of Health, that is unprecedented. I cannot recall a DHB ever calling for the Director-General of Health’s resignation. Now, the Minister might say “Unfair to pick on a public servant.”, but this was a mistake made by the head of a department that has a portfolio of billions of dollars, and this is a major mistake. But it is not the first. The first—well, there have been many. But let us just remind this House of the mistake made over the funding of the Ministry of Health’s building where the director-general did not inform his Minister that they did not have the money they said they had for refurbishment. That was hidden from the Minister for months. I have to say that this Minister has been given poor advice, this Minister has been misled, and it is fair to say that there have even been lies to the Minister.

We now have the lowest morale we have seen in any Government department in New Zealand because of this poor leadership. The Minister says: “Well, I don’t believe he needs to resign.” How can he say a $38 million blunder was just an administration error? It has also today been called a minor technical error, but it is not minor to the DHBs that have been on the receiving end of the $38 million blunder. Simon O’Connor called it an accounting error. Well, the director-general was an accountant. If they cannot do their figures over there, there is something seriously wrong.

So where is the accountability? Why has the Minister not asked the director-general to resign? He said he could not recall whether the director-general offered his resignation or whether he asked for it, which shows to me that this issue is not being taken seriously by the Minister at all. He needs to say “Be gone.”, because this sector is far too important for us to have such incompetence at the leadership of it.

Health, I have to say, is going to hell on this Minister’s watch. This Government does not like to hear it, but the shortfall in health is impacting in mental health, in primary care, in access to elective surgery, and in NGOs that are waiting for funding that they have not had for years. This is a serious debate. I am just so sorry that it has not been taken seriously by this Government.

BARBARA KURIGER (National—Taranaki - King Country): Yes, we are having a debate this afternoon because there has been an error made at the Ministry of Health. It is an unacceptable error and the Director-General of Health has fixed it. He has also gone to Deloitte to have a look and determine how this error was made. It was a mistake—it was a technical error—and I am not going to say it was minor. I really feel for the health boards that have had their funding changed, but we have heard today that it is appropriation. It is not money that is currently in their budget; it is money for their budgets going forward. So it is disappointing that it has happened, but it is a technical error and investigations are going on to see how that error happened so that we can ensure that it never happens again.

Just a reminder to those on the other side of the House: despite this error, all district health boards (DHBs) did receive an increase in their funding under the 2017 Budget, and they are all finalising their annual plans at the moment to fit that Budget.

So $439 million extra has gone into health, and it is amazing, actually, to see some of the things that are being developed on the health front. If we think about things in terms of surgeries, there have been an extra 50,000 elective surgeries, but there are also a whole lot of other changes in health. We have had a bit of a discussion today about various people around mental health. Well, actually, mental health is not the responsibility of only the Ministry of Health.

When I think about children at school and when I think about those in the community, I also think of Fieldays. I have just been to Mystery Creek Fieldays, and I think one of the highlights of Mystery Creek Fieldays is that there has been, for the first time in our rural communities, a health hub where people have been able to come in. They have been able to talk about dentistry, they have been able to talk about breast cancer, prostate cancer, wellness—we are talking about a whole range of things that were in this health hub, and I have to say that the health hub was the highlight of the Fielday. If we do not look at doing things slightly differently in our rural areas—[Interruption] Maybe some of you do not have any idea how far some people in our rural electorates have to travel to get to health services.

I think it is great that we take advantage of Fieldays and every opportunity that we possibly can. At the last three Mystery Creek Fieldays we heard that there has been a total of $1.6 million going into rural mental health. So this year saw another $500,000 being promised to mental health, and I think it is really important because we had a reference before about mental health needs increasing in our rural communities. But maybe there also has not been an awareness—although I thought it should have been obvious—that we have had a dairy downturn, and we have had people under severe, severe pressure financially and in a whole range of different ways.

I am very proud of our rural support trusts and the way they use the funding and the way they have dealt with people during this whole process. So, you know, we can keep doing things in a certain way, but, actually, there is a whole range of people who can get involved in mental health and make a difference. I can tell you that the suicide rate in the rural areas—even despite the dairy downturn—has been less at the $4 payout than it was at the $8.50 payout, so I am really impressed with what some people have done.

You know, it really does highlight the facts around social investment. It is not just the Ministry of Health; it is a whole range of other people who are getting out there. We also have 6,900 more doctors and nurses in our hospitals, and 552,423 patients received a medical or first specialist assessment in 2016. So we are making progress in health.

We are here today and we are focusing on something that has been an unfortunate error. I think we have actually got to find out what did go wrong, and we need to make sure that it does not happen again. It is important that we study how it happens. We can talk about the complications of the funding model, and, yes, it is a complicated funding model, but we have to get it right. So that is no excuse, and Deloitte is going to spend its time putting effort into finding out what went wrong to make sure that it does not happen again. Thank you.

The debate having concluded, the motion lapsed.

Voting

Correction—Care and Support Workers (Pay Equity) Settlement Bill

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): On 8 June, when the House was considering the Care and Support Workers (Pay Equity) Settlement Bill, the result of the vote on the tabled amendments to Supplementary Order Paper 324 was incorrectly recorded as Ayes 58, Noes 62. The correct result is Ayes 55, Noes 62. The record will be corrected accordingly.

Bills

Appropriation (2016/17 Supplementary Estimates) Bill

First Reading

Hon Dr NICK SMITH (Minister for the Environment) on behalf of the Minister of Finance: I move, That the Appropriation (2016/17 Supplementary Estimates) Bill be now read a first time.

Bill read a first time.

Bills

Outer Space and High-altitude Activities Bill

Second Reading

Debate resumed from 1 June.

Dr SHANE RETI (National—Whangarei): It is a pleasure to speak to this, the Outer Space and High-altitude Activities Bill, in its second reading, and, of course, from the first reading to now, we have had the launch of the 18-metre Electron rocket on 25 May from Māhia Peninsula. Congratulations to Peter Beck and his team.

As this bill progressed through the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee, we recommended several changes. There was general agreement on a lot of items, but we recommended several changes, and I want to especially comment on issues of payloads and launches from New Zealand for peaceful purposes. This was raised with us by Venture Southland, which was looking to insert a peaceful purposes statement.

We looked at this very closely, and officials made three points to us as to why this was going to be problematic with that specific terminology. The first point was that it is difficult to define and deploy payloads that may have a dual purpose. For example, initially GPS had a military purpose, and, of course, now it has got more of a civilian purpose. So it is very hard to tell what might actually go up in a payload and have a range of different purposes. Secondly, the proposed wording was not consistent with our international treaties. Australia, Canada, the US, and the UK do not use that particular terminology, so that was a challenge as well. Thirdly, the case made to us was that there are safeguards in place already with our international treaties, including the Outer Space Treaty, article IV, which requires peaceful purposes.

What we were able to do was to insert a sort of statement of intent, if you like. It is not quite an avoidance of doubt, but a statement of intent, and I think it very fairly conveys the committee’s recommendation. Everyone around the committee was in agreement, but it was just a question of how we did it. The committee recommendation reads as follows: “We recommend inserting clause 3(ba) to list the main obligations in the Outer Space Treaty about not: placing any objects carrying nuclear weapons or weapons of mass destruction anywhere in outer space; establishing military bases, installations, or fortifications on celestial bodies (natural bodies located outside of the Earth’s atmosphere, for example the sun, moon, and planets); testing any type of weapons or conduct manoeuvres on celestial bodies.”

So I think that fairly conveyed the intent of most people in the select committee for what we were looking to do—that is, we were very clear that payloads from New Zealand are not to be used for military purposes. It is for peaceful purposes. So I think that was very good.

There were a few other things that changed in the select committee. We decided some definition of “high altitude” was going to be important, and a few other things. But I would have to say there was very much general agreement, which is a good thing because, you know, this is projected as a $600 million to $1.2 billion enterprise over the next 20 years, and this is New Zealand’s innovative, high-tech reputation overseas. This is what we carry forward, it is what we do better than anything else, and I think it is a pleasure and a privilege to be able to wrap policy around it as policy makers to make this a successful venture. So with that, I commend this bill to the House.

Dr MEGAN WOODS (Labour—Wigram): It is my pleasure to take a call on this bill as well, and to reiterate that Labour supports this bill. We also extend our congratulations—which my colleague the Hon David Parker outlined in his earlier contribution in this debate—to Rocket Lab and Peter Beck on what is a significant advance for New Zealand. New Zealand joins a list of only a few countries—10, in fact—around the world that have reached into space. This is not something that is insignificant, and it is something that we need to celebrate.

We have heard, rightly, a number of celebrations, and politicians are jumping on the bandwagon, or the rocket-wagon, in order to try to achieve some of the fame associated with New Zealand’s launch into the far reaches of space. We have had Minister Steven Joyce, who has been a key proponent of this and is purported to be New Zealand’s and the New Zealand Parliament’s own rocket man. But I would like to pay homage where, indeed, it needs to lie, and that is to go back to the last Labour-led Government and the Minister for Economic Development in that Government, the Hon Trevor Mallard, who was one of the Ministers who had the great foresight to back this project at the very beginning. I think, as Labour’s science and innovation, research, and development spokesperson, it is important to underscore here the need to be investing in the type of science that is going to take this long to see fruition.

It was back in 2007 when the Hon Trevor Mallard attended Rocket Lab’s launch and said it would enhance New Zealand’s emerging reputation as a developer of first-rate technology and components. That is the kind of time-scale that we are looking at in terms of the commercialisation of some of this research. Actually, in many ways, this is a very short time-scale for commercialisation such as this, and we always need to bear that in mind and make sure that we are doing as the last Labour Government did—have the foresight to invest in research and development where we are going to see the long-term gains for the country, because good things take time. So now that we have got the congratulations in order, it is important to look at what this bill does.

This bill is in many ways a very open piece of legislation that sets up a framework around which this activity in New Zealand can be regulated. It facilitates the development of a space industry and its safe and secure operation. It implements certain international obligations that New Zealand has relating to space activities and space technology, and I think one of the interesting things about this legislation is that it puts into our legislative books in a very clear way international obligations that go back to 1968. The bill puts into legislation obligations that New Zealand picked up from its ratification in 1968 of the Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies—the Outer Space Treaty. That goes back to just after the time that humans first set foot on the moon, and how long and how far we have come under that.

One of the issues that has, of course, arisen since the ratification of that treaty and where we are here in 2017 is what uses humans are going to put outer space to. That is something that the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee did hear when it heard the submissions on this legislation: for what purposes were people being put into space? There was a submission that it should be explicitly contained in the legislation that this was to be only for peaceful purposes, but some of those international treaties that we signed right back then really did put in place the fact that that was the purpose. The advice that the committee received was that that did not need to be explicitly outlined in this legislation because it was inherent in our international obligations.

So if we have a look at the Outer Space Treaty, the nations that did sign that treaty agreed not to place in orbit around the Earth any objects carrying nuclear weapons or weapons of mass destruction, store such weapons on celestial bodies or station such weapons in outer space, establish military bases, installations, of fortifications on celestial bodies, or test any weapons or to conduct manoeuvres on celestial bodies. These are important things and we need to understand why it is that we are putting in place this regime.

The other thing that the legislation had to consider carefully was managing New Zealand’s liability that arises from its obligation as a launching State, as actually launching things through airspace to the levels that reach the outer space limits that are defined in this legislation or allowed for in this legislation—I will return to some of the definitions when we get to the Committee stage of this legislation—does carry with it risks. We have had discussions about airspace risks at a much lower level. We have talked about how we are going to regulate the use of drones in this country, and, likewise, how we are going to exercise control, for safety purposes, in those upper limits. We do this around airspace in terms of our aviation levels, but what are the safeguards that need to be put in place when we come to outer space as well? The bill goes on to talk about the need to establish a system to control certain high-altitude activities that take place from New Zealand, and then also to preserve New Zealand’s national security and national interests.

So these are things that needed to be put into place, but this is the very dry part of what the bill does. What the bill also speaks to is the kind of country that we can be—the kind of country that does invest in research and development; the kind of country that does believe in innovation—and that is the kind of Government that Labour Governments have always been. We saw that with Labour backing this project right in the beginning, right back in the early 2000s, and we are seeing the fruition now. We are going to see it again in future decades through the fact that we also need to be planning for a workforce and an economy that are ready for this kind of high-tech future, and we need to be making sure that New Zealanders have the skills that can take advantage of the economic development opportunities that can arise from this.

We have already seen some very nimble organisations in New Zealand taking advantage of the Awarua space station down by Invercargill. We saw Venture Southland approach the European Space Agency when it needed a southern launch zone, and it pitched our part of the world. We have obvious strategic advantages in terms of being on the other side of the globe and in what we can offer. But we also have niche opportunities in the value chain that exists around space exploration, and this legislation does set up a licensing and permitting regime that will control those activities.

But all that will count for nothing if we cannot give young New Zealanders—who were, rightly, excited at watching New Zealand become one of 10 countries that have launched a rocket—the kinds of skills and education that they need to be equipped for the future. We do not know exactly what that future is going to look like. When we look at the treaty that we entered into in 1968 that talks about setting up military bases on celestial bodies, we see that that is not what we are grappling with in this legislation.

So what we have to do is make sure that we are building an education system, a training and a skills system, that does equip people for that future, and that is exactly the kind of fresh thinking that Labour has been doing through its Future of Work Commission. We know that of the new entrants entering primary school now, 65 percent are going to undertake a job that does not exist today, and some of those jobs could well be in these kinds of industries. So as well as putting in place these kinds of regimes to control and regulate and make sure we are operating safely in our space industry, we have to be thinking more broadly about how we as a country prepare for this future. Thank you.

Hon JO GOODHEW (National—Rangitata): Well, it gives me some pleasure to rise this afternoon. Listening to the tenor of the debate and knowing the speeches that have gone before in the second reading of the Outer Space and High-altitude Activities Bill, it amuses me somewhat—as I am sure it does others—to hear the members of the House all competing over who can take the credit.

I think that on the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee there has been a wonderful openness to learning about, literally, the space that this bill occupies, because it was new space to all of us. There were terms that we did not understand and required quite a lot of clarification about, I might add, and there were treaties I had no idea existed—quite a few of them—and they all needed to be encompassed in our understanding of where we fitted into the world of space and high altitude.

We are now one of 11 countries, it is my belief, currently able to launch satellites into space, and New Zealand needed to—I know there were a lot of jokes, a lot of jokes about, you know, this was space age, and this bill was coming before us and this was out-of-space travel, and all the rest of it. But the reality is this is a great investment in a future sector that is going to continue to grow our GDP. Yes, there need to be skilled people. Yes, there need to be people like Peter Beck who are willing to take a punt and be extraordinary in progressing a project such as this. On the select committee we tried to get the nuts and bolts tightened down, and there was a great attitude across the select committee to doing that.

But I have to say that it is a very supportive Government that sees that our third-largest exporting sector is now the tech sector. That is a $16 billion contribution to GDP, and there are more than 28,000 firms and almost 99,000 people. Would it not be great if we got to 100,000 people because our space industry was going literally gangbusters and, in fact, the large number of launches from the Māhia Peninsula that are projected actually go ahead?

I have been given a short opportunity this afternoon. The members of the committee have already enunciated well the debates we had—not really debates; the settling of issues that we did in the committee—so I rest my case and certainly support this bill.

GARETH HUGHES (Green): Kia ora. Ngā mihi nui ki a koutou. Kia ora. I rise to support the Outer Space and High-altitude Activities Bill. I was born in 1981, and I am always disappointed that in the 21st century, there are no hoverbikes, there are no hover-skateboards, and there are no flying cars. It does not really feel like the 21st century we were promised from science fiction growing up. But I can say, at least, that New Zealand has a space programme in this, the beginning of the 21st century, which I think is so fantastic and wonderful, but also, for a new generation of New Zealanders, it is, hopefully, inspirational too—science, engineering, mathematics, and entrepreneurialism are all things that Kiwis can aspire to. Growing up simply to be an All Black was my greatest ambition, but, sadly, it did not turn out to be the case. But a whole new generation of Kiwis are going to be inspired to think that they could be launching rockets or satellites, or undertaking world-leading science, so it is fantastic.

The Green Party has supported this bill all the way through. I remember meeting Peter Beck and the team many, many years ago, and recounting the story that most New Zealanders had not heard of, say, 4 or 5 years ago—that in a warehouse just outside Auckland Airport we were building rockets and we were on track to becoming only the 11th space nation on the planet. More incredibly, we were going to become the only space nation that had reached orbit entirely privately, without a Government-run space programme. It is wonderful that so many more Kiwis know about it. It was great to see the successful test out at Māhia Peninsula. It is such an incredible thing.

This was one of the most enjoyable bills, I think, to work on in the Foreign Affairs, Defence, and Trade Committee. I thank the submitters, the other members of the select committee, and the chair.

The bill has been improved in the select committee process. There are three parts I would like to pick up in particular. The first area where I think it has been substantially improved—and I would really like to acknowledge the Hon David Parker for his consistent work in this area—is in terms of making it clear on the peaceful uses of space. When you look at clause 3, you can see three new key points being put in, confirming that it is prohibited to place any object carrying nuclear weapons or weapons of mass destruction in space, to establish military bases, installations, or fortifications on celestial bodies—that is, asteroids, the moon, etc.—or to test any type of weapons or conduct manoeuvres on celestial bodies or in space. It has been very clearly reinforced with the updated bill coming out of the select committee that the intent of this legislation is to promote the peaceful use of space, which is consistent with our international obligations, but it is also what New Zealanders want. We are, quite rightly, proud of our nuclear-free tradition in New Zealand, and it is clarified in these amendments to clause 3.

As a Green Party MP and as a passionate environmentalist, an area it was great to see progress on in the select committee was the issue of orbital debris. This is in clauses 9, 17, 25, and 33. As members well know, we have got some 500,000 pieces of space junk greater than 1.5 cm orbiting the Earth, and more than 20,000 that are significantly larger. If members have seen the film Gravity, they can see the risk potential in the future. It is quite clear that decades of the other 10 countries’ space programmes have left a huge amount of space junk—orbital debris—in space. It was, I think, a bit of an oversight that the launch permitting regime this legislation enacts was not cognisant of the risks, once you had launched your payload into orbit, of what could happen to the other parts left there that were intended to return back to Earth. It is great that this now must be considered by the Minister and a plan must be presented.

The third area was the debris protection area. This was an area where I raised the Green Party’s significant concerns in the first reading. This—I think it is Part 3 of the legislation—dealt with the impacts if there was an accident—for example, if a rocket exploded over the sea or over land after launch. In my first reading speech, I noted the concern that the legislation was so specific that it said that individuals could not photograph or report—and they literally could not sketch it—any debris that they came across. This seemed counterintuitive. It seemed to be breaching our human rights, and the fact that a human rights report was not done on this part was, we thought, an oversight.

After hearing the submissions in the select committee—I would like to thank the Journalists’ Association, which presented, and some human rights experts—and by questioning officials we got to the bottom of it. As part of this legislation, we signed the Technology Safeguards Agreement (TSA) with the US Government to protect US intellectual property when it comes to their rockets. But, more importantly, the rationale given by the TSA, which was signed by the New Zealand Government, and why these quite stringent requirements were in the debris protection area provisions of this legislation, was that if there is an accident, there is some sensitive technology you would not want terrorists or rogue States, for example, to come across.

Quite bluntly, by building these rockets and reaching orbit, we could, if you put a nuclear weapon on top of it, have an intercontinental ballistic missile. If the componentry of said rocket was found by elements that would want to do harm through shooting intercontinental ballistic missiles around the world, it could be incredibly detrimental for world security. So while there is some impingement on human rights in that you cannot sketch the debris you come across, we do think it is reasonable as part of the movement to consider and promote the peaceful uses of space to make sure that we do not see people launching—as we see in North Korea and other countries—rockets.

An area I was focused on in the select committee—and I am glad that we have clarified it in the legislation—is that this is not impinging on media reporting. A debris protection area is not automatically going to be enacted if there is—hopefully not—an accident, but a Minister must proactively decide whether a debris protection area is, in fact, needed. We have clarified in both the explanatory text and the legislation that it is not preventing the public or media from viewing or taking photographs of space launches or reporting outside the debris protection area. This is simply to stop the key components to launch intercontinental ballistic missiles from being shared around the world, and we do think that is an entirely reasonable position. So we looked into that, and we came back.

Basically, it is an incredibly exciting time for the country—we could be developing a space industry. I want to acknowledge the considerable, incredible work of Rocket Lab. It is tremendously exciting, and fantastic for the area where we used to go summer camping on Māhia Peninsula.

The key question now—whether we have a thriving space industry going forward or not—is clearly in the Government’s court. This Parliament is coming together to set up the permitting regime, and there is still a huge number of questions that have been kicked off to the Government to decide on regulations in terms of insurance and liability issues. We heard in the select committee the example of Australia, which tried to stimulate a space industry, but, because of rules that industry participants considered to be too stringent and punitive, it has not got one. We need to make sure that we do not do that here in New Zealand; that we find the appropriate balance to encourage innovation and fantastic new industries and potential new industries, as we have here.

So the ball is very much in the Government’s court. It has not said publicly or to the committee where it is falling on those areas, but I would urge it strike the appropriate balance.

All in all, I would like to stress the Green Party’s support for the bill. It has been improved in the select committee. Thank you to everyone who played a role. It is an exciting time for New Zealand in the 21st century.

FLETCHER TABUTEAU (NZ First): It is a pleasure to take this short call on behalf of New Zealand First on this, the Outer Space and High-altitude Activities Bill. By way of brief explanation to start with, the bill, essentially, codifies many of the international treaties that we are already signed up to and puts them into legislation. On top of that, it seeks to govern space activity from New Zealand by way of regulating launches with a focus on safety and—as some of the members have suggested, and I will get into a bit more detail later on—in terms of how we manage the debris that will invariably be created from those launches as those satellites or rockets come back to Earth.

This is—and I said it in my first contribution to the House—genuinely exciting legislation. This is legislation that means New Zealand can literally launch rockets into space. It is fun and it is exciting, and it provides so much opportunity for New Zealand going forward. By way of an example, as we have moved into the modern technological age—just a few examples—telecommunications, high-speed internet, navigation formats, place-based information, climate monitoring, and emergency management now are things that are all reliant on our access to getting that technology into space so that we can communicate around the world in pretty much real time.

This is a space of rapid evolution, creating new opportunities for innovation and entrepreneurship in New Zealand. New Zealand First is excited about it and does see significant—significant—economic and innovative benefits attached to it. This bill seeks to facilitate the development of the space industry, as I said, whilst providing the necessary protections to manage the risks associated with it and, as I said also, to meet our international obligations.

I would just like to acknowledge, though, that last month Rocket Lab launched its first test rocket on the Māhia Peninsula, which was, indeed, a major milestone, not just for Rocket Lab but for New Zealand also. It is kind of that highlight, that real tangible and visible evidence, that New Zealand has, in fact, got that space industry. That is not to take away from the efforts of the Invercargill endeavours over the last decade—or maybe, actually, two decades now. It is certainly that visible evidence.

But for me and for New Zealand First—and this is not an indictment on Rocket Lab—we are still really, really upset and we want to hold the Government to account here. We have a Government that gave millions of dollars to a private New Zealand endeavour, and that was wonderful. Then the owners sold it. They sold it to one of the largest aerospace industries in the entire world. To be fair to Rocket Lab, that is where most of the business will come from, so it makes perfect sense, but the indictment here is on the Government that did not make a single cent back from the investment that it put in this company on behalf of New Zealanders. That is the criticism we have.

This should be a celebration, because it does mean a lot for New Zealand, because, as has been said before—although I do question the numbers provided by one of the Labour members earlier—we are now one of only 11 countries currently able to launch rockets into space. As the Green member Gareth Hughes said previously, we are the only country that managed to do it with a fully-funded, privately owned orbital launch pad. It is a credit to them.

The Minister for Economic Development, Simon Bridges, said that “the Government’s interest in space is much broader than rocket launches. For example,”—he said—“New Zealand has the potential to become a niche player in other parts of the global value chain in this area.” I commend him for saying that, but I hope—I hope—it is correct when he used the words “New Zealand”, and I hope he specifically means New Zealand business, because the Government’s record, not only in this industry but in New Zealand innovation and New Zealand business, is slim to none at this stage. We seem to be bought out constantly.

So here’s to growing New Zealand business. Here’s to an exciting New Zealand industry where we can celebrate those young men and women who do endeavour and who want to become part of such an exciting industry, because now it is available to them here in their very own country. That is truly something to be celebrated, and it is amazing.

I too want to take this opportunity to credit the officials and my Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee colleagues, and I have to say we all tried earnestly, as others have noticed, to develop a permissive legislative regime. That is what we were trying to go for here—how we could make this easier—because Australia, for example, got here way ahead of us. It tried to create a similar industry in its own country, but the examples we got from that showed us how over-regulation and too much regulation can just shut down and destroy a fledgling industry. To the officials and to the select committee members who saw that, acknowledged that, and worked towards that permissive regime, thank you, and kudos to everyone there.

We were also keen, as were the officials, to ensure that the legislation did not lock the industry down—or keep it grounded, as it were—around new technologies. The wording of this legislation, you will note, is such that there is no specificity around particular technologies, because the idea, of course, is that we do not know what next year will bring. We certainly do not know what 5 years will bring in the space industry technology race. New Zealand has to be in a position to take advantage of that, and we cannot have legislation inhibiting it.

I want to acknowledge that equal importance has been placed on keeping compliance costs as low as possible. I noted that the legislation in Australia was destructive, literally, but compliance in terms of what it was allowed to do at a regulatory level also became burdensome and contributed to the industry being shut down.

So the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee took careful consideration and it made the time. We heard good submissions and, as the Minister said, the committee’s report includes many sensible recommendations that will help ensure that the bill achieves its objectives and will strengthen the functionality of this bill. I had three particular pieces from the legislation that I wished to talk about. My intention was to take a short call, so can I instead end by congratulating the committee and everyone involved, and very much supporting this legislation going forward. Thank you.

STUART SMITH (National—Kaikōura): Unfortunately, I was not on the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee when the Outer Space and High-altitude Activities Bill was being debated and was going through the select committee. However, I do feel I am qualified to speak on this, having attended the launch of a space shuttle out at Cape Canaveral some years ago. I would have to say that when I watched that shuttle roll on to its back and head off over the Atlantic Ocean, I had no idea that some years later we would be having launches here in New Zealand.

Having the 18-metre Electron rocket head up into space a few weeks ago is really testament to our great development in New Zealand. I think we saw a good example of that, of course, on the weekend with New Zealand’s foiling yachts, which are leading the world. We spent less money than the other teams and, to date, we have the most advanced boat on the water, and I think what we are seeing with this Electron rocket is also a great advancement. But to deal with this, and the matter at hand, we need to have the relevant legislation that covers off all the possibilities in the future of an industry in this country.

The select committee has done some really good work in this area, getting all of—they might seem dry sorts of details, but defining what “high altitude” is and what outer space is is actually quite important in order to meet our obligations in an international world. Peaceful purposes, not putting military installations on celestial bodies, and those sorts of things really come home when we look at what is happening in the Korean Peninsula, as well.

So it is a very important bill. It marks a very important step forward in New Zealand’s technological future, and I commend it to the House.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): The next call is a split call. Dr Kennedy Graham—5 minutes.

Dr KENNEDY GRAHAM (Green): Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker; I do not need the full 5 minutes. This is simply to reiterate the Green Party’s policy of supporting this bill right through, presumably, to the third reading, for the reasons that have been already advanced.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): I call Adrian Rurawhe—5 minutes. Tēnā koe.

ADRIAN RURAWHE (Labour—Te Tai Hauāuru): Tēnā koe e Te Māngai o Te Whare. It would be remiss of me not to at least mention in passing that this is a very important time of the year for Māori, mostly known as Matariki, but where I come from we call it Puanga. Of course, it is all about the revelation of the stars in the sky that indicate a particular time of the year, and we call it, in a modern context, our Māori New Year. I wanted to talk about that as one connection that I have to outer space and the importance that we place on the celestial bodies.

I was trying to think of how I could discuss this issue from a Māori world view. I went through the submissions and there was one submission that caught my eye, from one Mr Jimmy Pohe, who lives in Māhia Peninsula and whose family has whakapapaed to that land where Rocket Lab will now be launching its rockets. Mr Pohe had some concerns about the impact of Rocket Lab on his and his whānau’s ability to go fishing and to collect kai moana. What Mr Pohe asked was that in no way should Rocket Lab be given exclusive use of the coastal area. In my reading of the bill that is not going to happen, and so I just wanted to acknowledge Jimmy Pohe for, first of all, putting in a submission, and, second of all, to allay any concerns that he may have.

I want also to acknowledge Rocket Lab, and we have had a number of acknowledgments to Peter Beck in particular. He is obviously a man of great ability and tenacity to, along with his colleagues, get this project to where it is today. I want to acknowledge them.

Going back to my Matariki/Puanga kōrero, we see this as acknowledging the past but looking forward to the future. I just want to connect those two things together. This is definitely about looking forward to the future. I want to recognise all of the speakers who have focused on that, because looking forward to the future with this Outer Space and High-altitude Activities Bill will provide New Zealand and New Zealanders with huge opportunities, particularly around employment and just the opportunity to be participating in this very exclusive sector, I would say, with only 10 other countries involved.

There was one other thing that caught my eye, and it was in one of the documents that I read, which is that they may be sending human ashes into space. I am assuming that they will go up and then come back down again. It would not be a good idea to be adding to the orbital debris that already exists in space, I do not think. It did make me think about one of the sayings that we have in Māori, “E ngā mate kua wheturangihia.”, which basically means “Those who have passed on and become celestial beings.” It would give a whole other meaning to that—a literal meaning. With that, I want to commend the bill to the House. Of course, the Labour Party supports this bill. Kia ora.

JONATHAN YOUNG (National—New Plymouth): It is a great privilege to stand and support this bill before the House. It is a very good thing that New Zealand’s legislative framework is enabling technology to advance. Who would have thought that here, in New Zealand, we would see this sort of legislation coming to this House and going through, thankfully, with support right across this House.

We are one of just a handful of small developed nations where innovation is incredibly important. It is important because we do not have the scale of large nations, like the United States of America, Europe, Great Britain, and right through Asia. We are a small nation of 4.7 million people, and so we have to be smart, we have to be agile, and we have to be innovative, and it is good to see that we have a Parliament that supports this sort of work.

It has been estimated that this bill will enable companies such as Rocket Lab to function and bring to the New Zealand economy, over the next 20 years, up to $1.5 billion worth of economic value. That is tremendous. Not only is it going to enable jobs to be created but it is going to put us on the leading edge of this wave of technology and innovation, which is where the world is going. It is incredibly important that we, as a nation, grasp hold of these opportunities.

We are very thankful for the vision, the hard work, the tenacity, and the push-through that companies like Rocket Lab have brought into our innovation and technology space, because it sets a standard, and it sets a precedent for other people to follow. It is great to see this bill, which is going to open up more opportunities for New Zealand to work effectively in this space and to be there with other leading countries of the world. I am very happy to support this bill to the House.

IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY (Labour—Palmerston North): It is a pleasure to support this Outer Space and High-altitude Activities Bill on behalf of the Labour Party. I was not on the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee, unfortunately, and I consider that a great shame. I think I would have quite enjoyed hearing the submissions and having a conversation about New Zealand joining, perhaps not quite the space race—I think the space race is probably over—but the exclusive club of countries that have the capability to deploy into space. I think it is incredibly exciting. Although I have no particular expertise—I have heard other members stretch a pretty long way to suggest they have expertise. I watched Star Trek a couple of times when I was young, and I think that is about as close as I can get. But I do think it is incredibly exciting.

We in New Zealand are in urgent need of more industries that are high-skilled, high-technology, and high-value. Despite the fact that Rocket Lab has been developed in recent years, which is something to be applauded and celebrated, it is true that productivity in New Zealand is lamentably weak. In per capita terms, the last two quarters have seen GDP go backwards and that growth is anaemic and is based purely on the very rapid population growth that we have got in New Zealand, and it is only by focusing on industries like this that we are going to see real GDP growth—real economic growth that actually benefits people.

Growth that is based on population growth does not actually benefit anybody. It does not build houses. It does not put roofs over people’s heads. It does not increase people’s wages. It does not put food on the table or pay the bills. It is just kind of growth for growth’s sake. What we need is a focus on high-technology industries that actually add value, actually grow the economy, and actually offer higher-quality jobs that pay decent wages. Obviously, you know, it is not just the world of space technology that offers that, but this is exciting. This, I hope, will actually inspire youngsters to get involved in subjects like science, like technology, like engineering, and like mathematics to maybe aspire to perhaps be part of this industry.

What this bill seeks to do, of course, is not just allow Rocket Lab to continue doing what it is doing but to facilitate the development of a New Zealand space industry and ensure its safe and secure operation. That is exciting—that maybe we might see other competitors or at least other businesses entering this field and offering a new range of jobs that do not exist in New Zealand currently, so that we can see some real growth in the future. We do need to see a change. You know, we have had 9 years of a National Government and we have got this very low-growth, low-value economy—low skills, low wages. This is an opportunity, I think, with the passing of this bill, to see a shift—you know, the kind of step change that was promised. We saw lots of ambition when the National Party was in Opposition, but that ambition has not really come to much. This legislation is, perhaps, an opportunity to see the kind of growth that New Zealand urgently needs.

It makes sense—I suppose it is something that we in New Zealand have not given much attention to—that there are international treaties and conventions in relation to high-altitude activities that we have not needed to adhere to in the past, but we now need to, and we do so through this legislation. One area that I was interested in—as Labour’s defence spokesman, I was wondering what safeguards are being put in place to make sure that this is not a technology that can be weaponised in New Zealand or can be used for purposes that are not peaceful. I note that this legislation actually specifically denies people the opportunity to “place into orbit around the Earth any objects carrying nuclear weapons or weapons of mass destruction, install [any] such weapons on celestial bodies, or station such weapons in outer space in any … manner.” Obviously, in New Zealand there is not too much of an issue with nuclear weapons because we have got a long tradition of being nuclear-free. Even when one person tried to suggest that our nuclear-free status would be gone by lunchtime, that was utterly rejected by the New Zealand population.

The public of New Zealand are very proud of our nuclear-free stance, and so we would have no concerns about deploying nuclear weapons into space. But, actually, in reading this, I am not sure that we cannot send conventional weapons into space. I do not know if there is any point in sending conventional weapons into space. I do not have enough expertise in this area to know whether that is useful or not, but that might be something that would be worth considering at the Committee stage—whether we need to just be clear or whether there is any need to include any limitations on sending conventional weapons into space. Certainly, nobody operating under this legislation will be able to establish military bases, installations, or fortifications on celestial bodies or to test any weapons or conduct manoeuvres on celestial bodies, so there is really no apparent opportunity to use this for military purposes. That is good. I think that we have got a long tradition of being a peaceful, nuclear-free nation, and we would not want to in any way undermine that through this legislation.

I did notice in some of the material that Rocket Lab put out to celebrate the launching of its first rocket that went into space—not into orbit, I understand, but it did make it into space—that it describes itself, I think, and I am paraphrasing here, as a glorified transportation company, because its primary objective is going to be to transport goods and items into space. I know that one of the things that satellites are used for is communications technology, surveillance technology—technology that is used to listen in to people. That might be something that Todd Barclay is interested in—I do not know. But that is something that could be an opportunity for New Zealand to get into—the deployment of satellites and satellite technology into space. Again, it is an opportunity for us to grow that industry and to diversify the industries that we currently have into more high-skill and high-wage areas.

This does make New Zealand, I understand, the 11th country from which it is now possible to launch vehicles into space. What this legislation does is it requires operators who plan to be able to launch into space—maybe to deploy some of that communications and surveillance technology—to get a licence from the Government. So this is for operators who are going beyond the current regulated airspace, which I assume is covered by the Civil Aviation Authority and the legislation that governs that organisation. For those who want to go higher than that regulated airspace, there will be a requirement to secure a licence from the Government.

The bill as introduced provides that where the Minister is satisfied with specified criteria, in consultation with the security Ministers—i.e., the Minister in charge of New Zealand’s Security Intelligence Service or the Minister responsible for the Government Communications and Security Bureau—he or she or the Minister, may grant the launch licence. So it is just putting in place the criteria, the standards, and the expectations so that not just any old cowboy can suddenly rock up and start launching rockets into space. I suspect that would be a difficult task, to just suddenly sort of rock up and start sending rockets into space. It is probably a slightly more logistically difficult exercise than that, but it is important that we get the regulation right. As other members have said, it should be permissive regulation—regulation that has the right safeguards in place but that supports the development of this industry.

So this is a landmark piece of legislation, actually. It really is quite exciting for a little country seen by the rest of the world as being down the bottom of the world, with 4.5 million or nearly 5 million people, which is the size of most cities in the countries that are known as being involved in space technology. I think we should be incredibly proud of this. Finally, we see something from this Government that might actually grow the economy and make ordinary New Zealanders better off. I commend this bill to the House.

BARBARA KURIGER (National—Taranaki - King Country): Despite what the last speaker, Iain Lees-Galloway, said, the economy is growing. It is a pleasure to take the final call on the second reading of this Outer Space and High-altitude Activities Bill.

I do not have any claims to fame when it comes to high altitude or rockets, or anything like that, and Mr Lees-Galloway did make reference to making sure there are no cowboys in the industry. Well, I know quite a lot about cows, and there is a famous nursery rhyme about the cow jumping over the moon, so who knows? Who knows? But what I am very proud about is the fact that we are going to be the 11th country in the world to be able to launch rockets into outer space. Yes, it will be a huge growth phase and I am extremely proud of it. It is my pleasure to commend this bill to the House. Thank you.

Bill read a second time.

Bills

Point England Development Enabling Bill

In Committee

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Members, the House is in Committee on the Point England Development Enabling Bill, and the question is that Part 1 stand part. This debate is on clauses 3 to 5, and the schedule.

Part 1 Preliminary provisions

PHIL TWYFORD (Labour—Te Atatū): We are looking forward to a good debate this evening on the Point England Development Enabling Bill. If I may, I will use this first call to set out a bit of an overview of Labour’s position on the bill and our views, which we will set out in much more detail in the course of the debate. The bill deals with a section of land in Tāmaki in east Auckland, the Point England recreational reserve. It comprises 45 hectares of land, which we are going to discuss in some detail—the past, present, and future of this land. It is, in our view, a much-loved public recreational reserve needed for future generations.

What this bill does is cut across the Resource Management Act (RMA) and the Reserves Act. It revokes the reserve status of 11.69 hectares of the reserve and it legislatively compels Auckland Council to rezone this recreational reserve as mixed urban housing. So it takes a large chunk—about a third—of what is one of the most precious expanses of waterfront urban parkland in our country’s biggest city and plonks right in the middle of it a housing estate, and it cuts across, as I was saying, the RMA and the Reserves Act to do that. We will make clear in the course of the debate that we believe this presents an unacceptable loss to the community of a highly valuable public asset and a recreational asset that currently includes sports fields and a walkway and various other recreational facilities. It is used regularly by thousands of people in the community, and I think that explains why public feeling has been running so high in the community about this bill.

The other argument that we will explore is the precedent that this bill sets in Parliament by cutting across both the RMA and the Reserves Act to take away public parkland. It has been described by both Auckland Council’s governing body and the Maungakiekie-Tāmaki Local Board as setting an unfortunate precedent. In revoking the reserve status of the land and cutting across the RMA, it denies the public—

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): That is in a different part. What you are talking about is in Part 2. We are on Part 1.

PHIL TWYFORD: Sure. It denies the public the normal rights of participation to have a say.

So we will go into more detail on those things, but let me just make a couple of comments about some of the provisions in Part 1. There is an interesting cast of characters, which we are going to get to know a lot better, listed in clause 3 in Part 1—the interpretation clause. Auckland Council looms large in this debate. It is the owner of this land on behalf of the people of Auckland. Auckland Council has had quite a lot to say about this bill, and we will be hearing more about that.

I suppose it is worth just taking a moment to think about the descriptions of the different land parcels that are listed there. Point England Reserve, as I was saying, is 45 hectares of land. Clause 3 talks about “development land”, which is the 11.69 hectares that the Crown, through this bill, is essentially taking out of the reserve and turning over to housing status. So what that leaves is a parcel of land on either side of the so-called development land, which it refers to as the “remaining reserve land”. We will talk a bit more about that, because there are amendments on the Table that I think are very interesting in directing, some would say—we would say “micro-managing”—the Auckland Council as to exactly what it should do with land that it owns. I think that a theme that we are going to be returning to in the course of the debate is this highly intrusive micro-managing of Auckland Council and its administration of this recreational reserve land, cutting out the community that lives around this reserve.

The other character in the cast that is listed in the interpretation clause in these provisions is the “Housing Act Minister”. That character is particularly important in this drama because I think that he has brought to this bill a number of attributes that have become consistent with the style of his tenure as environment Minister and building and housing Minister.

What we are seeing, I think—and I want to quote from a presentation that was made at an environmental law conference yesterday that cited this bill. It talked about the fact that this bill is an example of an ongoing trend towards tinkering and ad hockery and towards the erosion of the rights of access to environmental justice, a contempt for conventional RMA due process, which appears to have become the norm under this Government—

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): I mentioned to the member before that anything to do with the RMA is in Part 2, so I will ask the member to come back. Part 1 has three clauses, and so I ask you to tighten it up and just concentrate on the substance of Part 1.

PHIL TWYFORD: Sure. Thank you, Mr Chairman. If I could just cite the source of that reference before, it was Simon Berry, who is a senior partner in the environmental law specialist firm Berry Simons.

The other provision in Part 1 that I thought was interesting and worth commenting on—and it might seem trite—is clause 4 in Part 1, which says that “This Act binds the Crown.” Students of jurisprudence will know that the default position is that legislation does not bind the Crown unless an enactment—a bill like this—expressly provides that the Crown is so bound, and that is contained within section 27 of the Interpretation Act. But the practice that we have with our legislation in this Parliament is that unless there are good reasons for it not to do so, legislation ought to bind the Crown. That makes sense.

The great irony in that provision in the context of this bill is that this bill might bind the Crown, but when it comes to binding, it is not the binding of the Crown that is so offensive to the public about this bill; is the binding by the Crown of the local community and of Auckland’s democratically elected representatives through their local council, including their local board, because this one of the most intrusive, micro-managing, unwelcome bills that we have seen for a very long time. That is why it has been characterised by one of the leading environmental law specialists as an example of the kind of ad hockery that has become the norm under this Government. Thank you.

MARAMA DAVIDSON (Green): It is my honour to stand and take a call in this, the Committee stage of the Point England Development Enabling Bill. At the moment, we are looking at Part 1, clauses 3 to 5, and I am really just going to, at this point, focus on one particular aspect of the Green Party position. We are abstaining on this legislation. While we absolutely support Ngāti Paoa’s visions and desires for their land and the rightful return of it, we also know that this bill is absolutely flawed and that there are deep concerns—valid concerns—that we have heard.

I wanted to pick up particularly on Part 1—I think it is clause 4—which goes through the various participants of the bill. It is the Crown. I wanted to pick up on Part 1, clause 4, which says this bill is binding on the Crown. One of the considerations that the Green Party has had to think carefully about is how this relates to the Treaty settlement of Ngāti Paoa, and the Crown as a character specifically mentioned in Part 1 was something the Green Party has had to discuss. While this bill is not specifically Te Tiriti legislation itself, the binding part on the Crown enables the Treaty settlement of Ngāti Paoa to happen, which in turn enables the visions for housing development from Ngāti Paoa to happen.

Keeping still on Part 1, clause 4—on the binding on the Crown—part of our concern about this bill is that it is absolutely allowing Minister Nick Smith to catch up and try to paper over the lack of building of affordable housing, which has been missing for far too long. We recognise that, but what we also recognise is Ngāti Paoa’s wish to be able to develop housing on their own land. For the Green Party, I acknowledge that what this bill gives an opportunity to do is rectify the original injustice, which is the fact that this was always Ngāti Paoa land in the first place.

So it is binding on the Crown. While the legislation does not specifically mention Te Tiriti o Waitangi, we understand that a letter from Chris Finlayson to the Ngāti Paoa Iwi Trust dated 13 October 2016 makes it very clear that there is an understanding that this land will be used as part of Te Tiriti settlement. While the Green Party has maintained that Treaty settlements themselves are not a form of justice, what we are wanting to uphold is Ngāti Paoa’s vision to develop housing on their land. The part that binds the Crown is a good-faith agreement and an understanding, also shown by that letter from Minister Chris Finlayson on 13 October 2016, that that is what this land will be used for, and in particular, the nearly 12 hectares put aside for housing development.

I wanted, in my first call, to address this particular point, which holds some credence for the Green Party, which has always preferred to support Te Tiriti settlements. But what we understand is that this is also a roundabout way to allow the Minister Nick Smith, on the Minister’s agenda, to try to catch up with the lack of housing that has been provided, particularly for Auckland. So we are in this position of abstaining, through wanting to support Ngāti Paoa and through recognising that this legislation, while not strictly Te Tiriti legislation, upholds and binds the Crown in respect of keeping aside that part of the development for Ngāti Paoa housing legislation. Thank you.

PEENI HENARE (Labour—Tāmaki Makaurau): Tēnā koe, Mr Chair. Thank you very much for this opportunity. First, can I just acknowledge the presence of Hau Rāwiri in the gallery, who, as the representative for Ngāti Paoa, is keeping a close eye on this particular bill as it proceeds through the House. I take the point they made in their submissions, which is that everything that Ngāti Paoa has done has been premised on aroha, pono, and tika. I think that is an important point, because as we debate this bill I think we will see some transgressions on the part of the Crown with regard to aroha, tika, and pono and to making sure that all those players who are community stakeholders and everybody across this particular issue were actually engaged with those principles in mind.

I just want to go to clause 3, “Interpretation”, and the definition of “Housing Act Minister”. If you look at the Housing Act 1955 it is actually very clear, but if I can, I will express to the Committee the confusion in the public with regard to who actually is the housing Minister and who is dealing with the issues of housing in Tāmaki-makau-rau. We have seen so many different roles made, and so many different actors and players from this Government, in the role of housing in Tāmaki-makau-rau, I wonder whether or not there can be questions about the interpretation of that.

We know, for example, that the Hon Dr Nick Smith has been leading much of the conversation on this, yet when other questions are asked about social housing, they are passed on to another Minister. If we read through the content of this bill, which we will get into a little bit later on in Part 2, we cannot help but question whether or not some of those interpretations can be blurred, or can be a little bit questionable, and we hope that we can return to the principles, as I mentioned, that bring Ngāti Paoa into the gallery here again today.

To clause 4, Part 1—my colleague Mr Twyford made a very good point around the “Act binds the Crown.” He mentioned in his contribution the need in terms of the engagement with all stakeholders. What the Crown is actually doing here, in this particular bill, is binding all of those stakeholders. Some have had a small voice on this particular issue and others have had their voices heard multiple times on this issue. Some are more vocal than others. I want to support Mr Twyford’s contribution on that, in saying that those are some of the concerns that we have with regard to the interpretation. From my understanding of the bill—and once again this will go to Part 2—it actually binds other stakeholders in this particular bill, in and around Point England.

There is not much more to go through on Part 1. I just want to reiterate the point about those principles of tika, pono, and aroha, as mentioned constantly by Ngāti Paoa. I also want to just touch on, once again, the definition of the “Housing Act Minister” and where exactly the roles of the Minister sit in this particular development from beginning to end. The content of the bill talks about social housing. Well, we know there is actually another Minister for social housing. Questions in the House on the one issue seem to be split across three and sometimes four different people. That is another point that I wanted to make in this contribution. Of course, finally, the other one is around the “Act binds the Crown.” and what that means as the bill progresses. I look forward to getting into Part 2, where I know there is substantial debate to be had. I will close my conclusion here.

MICHAEL WOOD (Labour—Mt Roskill): Thank you for the opportunity to take a call in the Committee stage of this bill. Along with my colleagues in the Labour Party, we are of course rising to speak against this bill. I might say it is not with any great sense of pleasure, because we thought this was a bill for which there could have been a good, mutually acceptable outcome. But an unwillingness to engage with the issues has led us to a point where we have no choice but to oppose this bill.

Part 1 is a very important part of the bill. My colleague Phil Twyford gave an excellent and pretty thorough account of some of the key terms that are defined in clause 3, “Interpretation”. There are just a couple of those that I want to delve into a little bit more to ensure that as we commence this debate we have all got a really good understanding about what we are actually talking about in respect of this bill. A couple of the key parts of the interpretation that I want to home in on, and reference a couple of the submissions here as well, are, firstly, the significance of what is termed the “Auckland combined plan” and, secondly, I want to delve a little bit into the definition of “Point England Reserve” itself, which is the subject, the heart, of this piece of legislation.

Let us turn, firstly, to the term “Auckland combined plan”. It is defined here in clause 3 as having “the same meaning as in section 116(1) of the Local Government (Auckland Transitional Provisions) Act 2010”. Of course, that was one of those pieces of legislation—and there are a number of them—that established the Auckland Council when we were going through that large amalgamation exercise. The “Auckland combined plan”, as defined in section 116(1) of that Act, is defined as a plan that means “the combined document described by section 122”. If we go to that section, it tells us that the combined plan is a document that “Auckland Council must prepare, implement, and administer … that meets the requirements” of being “(a) a regional policy statement for Auckland: (b) a regional plan, including a regional coastal plan … (c) a district plan for Auckland.” It is, in the common parlance, the Auckland Unitary Plan that we are referring to here.

The reason it is really important that we just pause and reflect on that a little bit is that that is the central planning document for the Auckland region. That region—of which, until recently, I was an elected member—has just gone through a massive planning and public consultation exercise to determine the planning rules that are in the Auckland Unitary Plan. It was a heck of a difficult exercise for Auckland to bring that together, but we got there in the end and came up with a document that allows for future growth and that balances the cultural and social and public open space needs of the community. That is what we are referring to here, in the interpretation clause—the Auckland Unitary Plan.

One of the really big concerns that we have on this side of the House is that having gone through that exercise and got to the goalpost of the Auckland Unitary Plan, this piece of legislation rides roughshod over parts of it. Instead of going through the careful processes in the Auckland Unitary Plan to determine what housing should go in what location, and at what level of appropriate density, we simply have a legislative fiat that comes down on top of that. That really concerns many of us in respect of the fundamental principles of democracy and community participation.

The second aspect of the interpretation clause that I want to touch on is the Point England Reserve itself. We should not lose sight of that in this debate. Of course there are political feelings in this Committee about this issue, but we are talking about a much-loved piece of reserve land, and I believe it is incumbent upon us that that piece of reserve land is given due respect. We listened to the people of the community, who actually care about that reserve land and care enough to really engage in this process. I was standing up in a community protest about this issue earlier this week, and the people of this community have come and they have submitted. They have given their views, they have engaged with their parliamentarians, and sometimes they have not been listened to. I do not think they have been heard well enough.

I just want to reflect on one of the submissions that was received by the Local Government and Environment Committee. This is the submission of Helen Momota, who is a very passionate member of that community. She spoke about Point England Reserve, which is defined here in the interpretation clause. She talks about how important it is to a growing community. She said that “When I enter Point England Reserve from Point England Road, the great expanse of flat green land is so inviting. It engenders a sense of freedom, offering so many possibilities—to feel the grass beneath your feet, to dance and sing with joy, to breathe in lungfuls of sea air, to watch the seabirds wading and soaring,”—yes, they do soar, apparently. That is what this bill is about. A growing community—and this community will grow under the Auckland Unitary Plan—needs that precious open space. I hope that we pay credence to that in the remainder of this debate.

Hon Dr NICK SMITH (Minister for Building and Construction): I am going to take a brief call, because I have leave this evening for an important meeting in Nelson and had not counted on the special debate earlier, but I wanted to respond to some of the questions that had been made on Part 1 of this bill. Can I too acknowledge Ngāti Paoa in the gallery, who came to me back in 2015, proposing that a pragmatic response to their Treaty issues, and to the issues of housing in Auckland, was to utilise some of the 18 hectares of land that has, effectively, been grazed for 60 years.

Hon Members: Nonsense.

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: The members can say it is nonsense. The grazing lease that currently exists goes back to 1977. I am advised that when the Crown first purchased the reserve in 1945, there was grazing right from that date. So the essential question for the Parliament is: when we have high levels of need for housing in Auckland, should we have 18 hectares of valuable prime land just 12 kilometres from the CBD being grazed by cattle? I am repeatedly challenged by members—the likes of Michael Wood, who screamed through the by-election that housing is the biggest issue, and then spends the other part of his time opposing the very houses that the city of Auckland needs, exposing the double standards of members opposite.

I want to refer quite specifically to the 45.4 hectares of Point England Reserve land that is referred to in Part 1 of this bill. This is land that was paid for by the Crown. This is not land that was paid for by the Auckland Council; it was paid for by the Crown. It is my view that where the Crown has paid for land it is entitled to use it for broad public use, including the settlement of the Treaty claim with Ngāti Paoa, and to use land for the use of homes. I know members opposite object to homes being built. They want to make a big issue of housing, but they just oppose the practical construction of homes. Effectively, Labour’s position is that it does not like cows in other parts of New Zealand, but it likes them on the Tāmaki reserve—it does not want homes constructed.

Can I respond very specifically to the question from Michael Wood. He argued and said that the Auckland Unitary Plan, which is referred to in clause 3 of this bill, should have considered the use of the Point England Reserve for housing at that time.

Michael Wood: I didn’t say that at all.

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: You said that was the proper time when it should have been considered. The member does not even understand the law. It would have been unlawful for the Auckland Council to consider zoning that land for housing in the middle of the Auckland Unitary Plan process—unlawful—because it was a recreation reserve.

The final point I would make—and I know it is in the next part—is that I have tabled Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) 321 in my name. I am not going to have the opportunity to be here this evening. It simply responds to two key concerns. Members opposite have said: “But how can you guarantee the grazing will end?”. Well, we have introduced an SOP to make that plain. They have said: “How can you guarantee that the recreation land and playing fields will be retained?”. Well, we have said: “Let’s make that plain and put it in the law.” So it just shows bad faith that when Labour members have raised concerns—the likes of “How can you guarantee you’re going to stop the grazing? How can you guarantee that there is not a retention of playing fields?”—they now scream that that somehow undermines the position of the Auckland Council.

The Government is acting with good faith. The Government is keen to resolve the Treaty settlement with Ngāti Paoa, and we respect their spiritual association with the land. The Government is keen to get housing, and what more practical place to build housing than an area that has been grazed by cows for 60 years. It is put to far better use with the plan that has been put forward by Ngāti Paoa.

EUGENIE SAGE (Green): Tēnā koe e Te Māngai o Te Whare. I also acknowledge Ngāti Paoa in the gallery. The Point England Reserve is a magnificent piece of land on the Tāmaki estuary. It is unusual because it is public open space right on the coast. With the huge intensification of settlement that we are seeing in the Tāmaki area—partly through the Tāmaki Regeneration Co. and the State houses there that are being bowled and then redeveloped; partly through areas like Stonefields—there is going to be an increasing demand for people to access open space, and particularly access the coast. A lot of the submitters on the bill, when they talked about the Point England Reserve—which is in Part 1, “Preliminary Provisions”, in clause 3—talked about the value of that area for recreation and to get the replenishment of spirit that being under the sky, next to the sea, enjoying the birds, and enjoying the open space enables.

Minister Nick Smith has talked a lot about the 34 cows that graze on the Point England reserve. Some people said that they enjoyed seeing farm animals so close to the city. Others recognise the potential of the reserve in the future, in response to the growing intensification, to actually cater for those needs for a regional park. Indeed, the Auckland Council identified the reserve as having regional significance in terms of being so close—12 kilometres—from the CBD, yet being a coastal reserve that is similar to other coastal reserves like Long Bay, which are so valued by Aucklanders for their open space and passive recreation values. The fact that it is used for cows grazing now protects its options for the future. But this bill, the Point England Development Enabling Bill is all about overwhelming the Auckland Council and its decision making, and circumventing the Auckland combined plan in terms of the rezoning that would normally happen under the Resource Management Act, where land that is currently zoned as open space is rezoned as mixed urban residential for housing.

The Green Party, as Marama Davidson mentioned, is abstaining on this bill because we strongly support the right of Ngāti Paoa to have their land go back to them. But, again, because this bill talks about the “Housing Act Minister”, it is not giving Ngāti Paoa self-determination in terms of the way they use their land. It is the only way that they can get their land back. The letter from the Hon Chris Finlayson from 13 October made it very clear that the Crown had certain preconditions that needed to be met, and if those preconditions were not met by Ngāti Paoa, then the Crown would be able to offer this land to another party—not just another iwi party, but potentially another developer. So this bill—and clause 3, with its reference to the “Housing Act Minister”—is all about enabling Nick Smith to sidestep and circumvent normal legal processes under the Resource Management Act and the Reserves Act in order to have housing built on the reserve.

So that is why we are only abstaining on the bill, because it does allow the land to go back to Ngāti Paoa. If this was a Treaty settlement bill, there would not be these preconditions on how Ngāti Paoa could use the land. They would have the right of self-determination to determine whether they wanted to use it for housing or whether they wanted to use it for other purposes. So it is very much about the Minister for housing determining what should happen to the land, and that is the reason we are not supporting it—because it sidesteps the usual legal processes.

Denis O’Rourke: But you’re abstaining. Not supporting means voting against.

EUGENIE SAGE: Yes, we are abstaining, Mr O’Rourke, because we can see the different factors at play in this bill—that it is the only way Ngāti Paoa can get their land back. But we are concerned, and I have a number of Supplementary Order Papers to try to ensure that the community, which has had such a strong interest in the progress in the progress of the bill, actually gets the opportunity to have a say in terms of the housing development that happens on the land, because the remaining reserve land, and the Minister—

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

LOUISA WALL (Labour—Manurewa): Tēnā koe, Mr Chair. Thank you for the opportunity to contribute to this debate on Part 1 of the Point England Development Enabling Bill. I really want to focus on two preliminary provisions under the interpretation clause. The first is about the definition of “Auckland Council”. It “has the same meaning as in section 4(1) of the Local Government (Auckland Council) Act 2009”. Essentially, that section says that a unitary authority has been established under section 6 of that Act. So Auckland Council, therefore, has the responsibilities, duties, and powers of a regional council. What do regional councils control? They actually control the use of land through policies and rules. The rules are about determining what activities can occur, and they are either permitted, prohibited, or they may be “other”. The “other” are controlled, discretionary, restricted, or non-complying activities. Essentially, what this particular clause does is empower Auckland Council as a unitary authority that is responsible for long-term planning.

I then want to focus on the “Auckland combined plan”—which is referred to under the interpretation clause—which “has the same meaning as in section 116(1) of the Local Government (Auckland Transitional Provisions) Act 2010”. What that particular section does is, as described by section 122—and I think my colleague Michael Wood highlighted that—provide that Auckland Council has responsibility for developing a regional policy statement, a regional plan, and a district plan for Auckland. That is what it has done. The involvement of local boards and communities in that process means that Auckland Council, to all intents and purposes, has a formal operative plan.

What this piece of legislation is attempting to do is change that operative plan. Under normal circumstances that plan change actually has a very specific process. That public process requires research, evaluation, and consultation. That consultation has to include the community. It is vital in that process that there is pre-consultation, notification, and submissions by the community, and that the steps in that plan change process—there are actually nine of them.

I am not going to outline what all nine are, but the fundamental one that is being transgressed within this particular piece of legislation is the requirement for a section 32 Resource Management Act (RMA) report. That section is “Requirements for preparing and publishing evaluation reports”. What that section says is that that RMA section 32 report must—must—“examine the extent to which the objectives of the proposal … are the most appropriate way to achieve the purpose of [the RMA]”. The purpose and principles of the RMA are, in section 5(1), “to promote the sustainable management of natural and physical resources.” Subsection (2) of the purpose is “… which enables people and communities to provide for their social, economic, and cultural well-being and for their health and safety—”.

We would contend that what this bill actually has done by making it a Treaty bill is transgress that process, which would normally have enabled communities to have gone through this process to change the Auckland Plan. So that is what this particular part of the bill has outlined and empowered the Auckland Council and the Auckland combined plan to do. I would like to know from the Minister in the chair, Scott Simpson, the justification for subverting what would otherwise have been a full process that would have enabled communities to have a say.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Chester Borrows): Order! I just want to just reinforce that what we are doing here is debating Part 1, which is about interpretation. That is where you started. Now the member is moving into a Part 2 debate. This is very tight. Part 1 is about the interpretation of these phrases, and, obviously, clause 4 binding the Crown, and clause 5 is transitional, savings, and related provisions. So we will not be able to be having a Part 2 debate during the debate on Part 1. I would just remind members that this is a tight part of the bill. It is only a small bill. I realise that it is very contentious—people have got a lot to say on Part 2—but can we just keep it to the parts that we are debating. At the moment it is Part 1, so it is about interpretation.

LOUISA WALL: Thank you, Mr Chair. That is really why I highlighted what the interpretation clause actually meant in terms of “ ‘Auckland Council’ has the … meaning”, which then makes it a regional council—well, the same designation as a regional council. That is why the relevance of the Auckland combined plan having the same meaning as in section 116(1) of the Local Government (Auckland Transitional Provisions) Act 2010 is vital. Within that context, it actually sets out an incredibly prescriptive process for altering a district plan, which is what we have. This bill completely undermines the process that the Auckland community has gone through to develop its local plan.

The point that I make in bringing it all up would have been a thorough assessment about the piece of land that we are talking about—I mean, Point England has been a reserve since 1945. The qualification for it to be a reserve comes from the Reserves Act. The lands that are included in the Reserves Act have been acquired for their conservation value. They have also been acquired for their recreation value and for their education value. By defining these parts in the interpretation, what I am trying to highlight is that the same processes that should have been employed—because we have had, to all intents and purposes, a plan change—have not actually occurred. So we have completely undermined the ability of the community to have a say. I think it is important that we note that.

The other aspect of the community not being able to have a say was actually because the Crown, even though it has not noted it in the bill—because it was and is to be used as commercial redress for a Treaty settlement for Ngāti Paoa, the council, which should have engaged in consultation with the community, and the local board, which should have engaged in consultation with the community, actually did not do so because of the confidentiality of it being a Treaty settlement. I have particular issue with that because nowhere in this bill—nowhere in this bill—does it mention Ngāti Paoa, does it mention Treaty settlements, does it mention rights of first refusal, or does it mention Ngā Mana Whenua o Tāmaki-makau-rau.

So, because of that fact, we have actually subverted a very structured process in terms of the plan change that would have been required if Auckland Council had have initiated this redefinition of this piece of reserve land, this piece of recreation land, in the first place. You would not be able to do it. What I am highlighting is that because of those interpretations that the Government has put in this legislation—I want the Minister to answer why he thinks that this piece of legislation should not have gone through the robust process that it should have gone through, based on the meaning of section 116(1) of the Local Government (Auckland Transitional Provisions) Act 2010.

If it had gone through that process, as I have highlighted, there would have needed to be a section 32 RMA report, and inherent in that report would have been consultation with the community, which would have enabled the community to challenge what this legislation is trying to do, in fact, which is to alienate reserve land, recreation land. They are lands that actually, when you look at the history of the Point England Reserve, include 25 hectares of a tāhuna tōrea, which is a specific reserve within Point England Reserve that the locals created in the 1980s, when there was talk of having a residential marina. In fact, the community, led by activist Ronald Lockley, persuaded the council—persuaded the council—to create that wildlife reserve. All of that history attached to this piece of land has been completely negated by what the Crown has done, so we on this side of the Chamber can see why the people have not been taken with the Government.

I have got some other things that I particularly want to bring up, because the reality of this legislation is that it actually stems back to Budget 2015. It is about the $52.2 million capital contingency fund that was created to facilitate the development of housing on Crown land. That is what this bill is really about. It is about that initiative that the Government created in 2015. Kia ora.

KELVIN DAVIS (Labour—Te Tai Tokerau): Mr Chair, tēnā koe. I would like to talk to Part 1 and, in particular, the definition of “development land”, which means “the land that is 11.6921 hectares, more or less,”. I have read here in the regulatory impact statement “Ngāti Paoa interests”. It says: “Historically Point England was an important Ngāti Paoa kainga or settlement. Missionary reports written prior to 1840 record extensive settlement and agriculture in the area.”

So the question is how historically important was this bit of land? Was it historically significant or important? I would say the answer is probably yes, but probably no more historically significant or important than any other bit of land within a 1,000-kilometre radius of Point England, because let us understand this: when Māori arrived here in whatever date it was—you know, we differ on the exact date—within about a hundred years or so of settling in any particular area, every rock, every hill, every valley, every river, and every nook and cranny was given a name everywhere. Wherever there was a flat bit of land, it would have been used for settlement or for cultivations. This bit of land is probably no more important or historically significant than the land that is a No. 8 wire - width away from it in the Tāmaki redevelopment project, because Ngāti Paoa would have settled there, they would have had their kāinga, they would have had their māra kai—their gardens. They would have named points of interest. People would have lived there, people would have been born there, people would have died there.

It would have just been a typical Māori kāinga, no more or less historically significant than any other bit of land in New Zealand Aotearoa at the time. So what makes this 11.6921 hectares more important than any other bits of land? Well, it is quite simply this. There are no houses on it—there is no nothing on it. So it is the only bit of land within cooee that the Government can use to fix up its housing crisis.

Sadly, this 11.6921 hectares is going to be needed within 20 years for the purpose that it has now—that is, a recreational reserve—because in 20 to 30 years, the population of Auckland is going to double, and where on earth are the kids in 20 years’ time going to run around and play? Is it in the corridors of their townhouses—their three-story, four-storey, and five-storey townhouses? You know, we—

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Chester Borrows): I interrupt the member just to reiterate what I said to the previous member when she was on her feet. This debate, under Part 1, is about interpretation. It is not about where the kids are going to play; it is about interpretation. It appears to me that the member who currently has the call is debating a Part 2 clause, and he should come back to clauses 3, 4, and 5, which relate to this part. I recognise it is very tight, but if you want to get on and run the debate that you are wanting to run at the moment, then let us move on.

KELVIN DAVIS: The Point England Reserve is what we are talking about. The Point England Reserve, meaning “the land that is 45.4259 hectares,” and the development land in particular, which is 11.6921 hectares—that is what we are talking about. It is the use of that land, and the use of that land is going to change significantly. The use of that land—

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Chester Borrows): Order! No, we are not talking about the use of that land. We are talking about the definitions that are there. Just because it happens to mention that land area or that piece of land, it does not then give licence in this part of the debate to take the debate where the member wants to go. This is about definitions and interpretation in this part of the bill. I recognise it is going to be controversial, I recognise a lot of people are going to want to speak on it, and every presiding officer is aware of that. But the debate that the member is running at the moment is not cognisant of what we are debating under Part 1.

MEKA WHAITIRI (Labour—Ikaroa-Rāwhiti): Tēnā koe, Mr Chair. Otirā, e ngā mema o Te Whare, tēnā tātou katoa. Mr Chair, I am happy to talk and take your advice about being specific on Part 1. I am happy to take a call—a very short call—on the Point England Development Enabling Bill, on Part 1, clause 3, and there are three particular definitions there that I do want to make some points on and perhaps get some answers from the Minister in the chair. That is where we talk about development land, under clause 3, and you will see that we talk about “ ‘development land’ means the land that is 11.6921 hectares, more or less, being Section 1 Survey Office Plan 503726”.

The words that get me and that spring out at me the most are those words “more or less,”. I could understand if we were in this House and it was 1817, or even 1917, when our tools of measuring the extent of the land would be under enormous pressure. But we are in 2017, and now we have got laser beams that can be so precise that it is either 11.6921 hectares, or it is not—or it is not. So my question to the Minister is why do we have “more or less,” in terms of “development land”? Why is there a need for “more or less,”? Do we not have confidence in our surveyors having the necessary tools to get that precise? I do not know, but that is a concern because, of course, 13.5 acres—or we could even go up to 30 acres—is still consistent with that term “ ‘development land’ … more or less,”. So I think it is a decent question to ask the Minister in the chair, as to why there is the need or the requirement to have a qualifier that is as long as a piece of string on those three simple words “more or less,”.

Then we go on to the next definition in clause 3, where we talk about the “Point England Reserve”. Again, we say it “means the land that is 45.4259 hectares, more or less,”—“more or less,”. There it comes again—that term “more or less,”. I think it is a really good question to ask the Minister in the chair. Why have we not got specificity around the acreage or the hectares required for development land? Clearly, what is remaining is what could be the Point England Reserve. There could be many of us, I am sure, in this Committee who might think that actually it might be all of the reserve that now becomes development land, because under this definition in clause 3 that is how I read it. Am I the only one who is reading it that way? So I think we do need to say actually that it is just 11.6921 hectares for the development land—end of story. We also need to say that “ ‘Point England Reserve’ means the land that is 45.4259 hectares”—end of story. And then those three words come up again in the “remaining reserve land” definition. Again, we say that the land is “32.9213 hectares, more or less,”.

Like I say, we are in 2017. We should have the tools, the expertise, and the precision in our surveyors to get what land is going to be development land, what land is actually going to be left in Point England Reserve, and what land is going to remain under the definition as remaining reserve land. That is the question I pose to the Minister in the chair, and, hopefully, he can give the Committee and give all those who are watching the debate on this contentious bill an answer as to why we have “more or less,” in the definitions of those three, under clause 3 in Part 1 of the bill. Kia ora.

JAMI-LEE ROSS (Senior Whip—National): I move, That the question be now put.

CATHERINE DELAHUNTY (Green): Tēnā koe, Mr Chair. Tēnā koutou e Te Whare. I will take a brief call. I acknowledge that Part 1 is not the substantive part of the bill, but, nevertheless, I thought the last speaker, Meka Whaitiri, made some interesting points about the definition of “more or less,”.

The point that I want to make is in relation to clause 3, “Interpretation”, which refers to the “Auckland combined plan”, the “Auckland Council”, and the “Housing Act Minister”. It is described in clause 4 that this is an Act that binds the Crown. What I want to say about that is that, actually, I am here tonight to mihi to Ngāti Paoa. There are things that have happened in this country that pre-date the Auckland combined plan, the Auckland Council, the housing Minister, and the Acts that bind the Crown. What happened in this country and what happened to Ngāti Paoa—I am here to mihi to them. I think that that needs to be our focus, as well as acknowledging the flaws in this bill—and there certainly seems to be some loose drafting here, which is an interesting point that Meka Whaitiri has made.

People talked in the debate on Part 1 before the dinner break about a much-loved piece of land. Let us remember who loved it first. Thank you.

Hon SCOTT SIMPSON (Minister of Statistics): I do want to just make a couple of comments on some questions that the member Meka Whaitiri asked about the interpretation of the words “more or less,” in a couple of the clauses in the preliminary provisions in Part 1. It is a long time since I studied land law at Auckland University, but, delving back into the memory banks, I can recall that actually the term “more or less,” is very standard legal terminology when it comes to land law. In fact, I would think that probably on just about every land title in the country, where there is a surveyed measurement, it will reference a point that says “more or less,”. My understanding of that is that it is historical and it is traditional. In this case, in the preliminary provisions of Part 1, the specificity of the area of land to be considered in each of the mentions of land in clause 3 goes to four decimal points. That is actually very specific, but I think that that term “more or less,” is a standard land law phrase that is used. I do not think that the member should be at all concerned about it. I think that the member can probably—as can the rest of the Committee—take some comfort from the fact that in the bill the pieces of land are measured to four decimal points in terms of hectares, so that is quite a precise piece of measurement.

I am mindful of a situation that occurred after the Canterbury earthquakes, when land actually moved and there were some issues to do with title. What was required there, rather than having a complete resurvey of the entire Canterbury and Christchurch region, was that a piece of legislation was passed in this House to account for those sorts of things. So I would like to give the member a little bit of reassurance in that regard. I do not think that there is anything in that area. I think she raises a good point; it is a worthwhile point, and I thank her for doing so.

Part 1 agreed to.

Part 2 Provisions to facilitate development

PHIL TWYFORD (Labour—Te Atatū): I want to speak to clause 7(3), which really goes to the heart of the purpose of the Point England Development Enabling Bill. What clause 7(3) says is that on the commencement date of this bill, on the register for the development land—that is, the 11.69 hectares—“the Registrar-General must record the following: (a) that the Crown is the registered proprietor of the fee simple estate in the land:”. So the ownership of this land that we are debating goes to the Crown on the passing of this bill, or, I should say, on the commencement date of this bill. Why does it go to the Crown? It goes to the Crown so that the Crown can then make it available for the commercial redress component of Ngāti Paoa’s Treaty settlement. I want to acknowledge in the gallery this evening Hauāuru Rāwiri from Ngāti Paoa, who is obviously someone who has a lot of skin in the game in this debate over the passage of this bill through the House.

I want to make it very clear in relation to Labour’s position that we have no beef with Ngāti Paoa on this issue. In fact, I can understand why Ngāti Paoa might take the view that, in the context of their historical experience, the status of 11.69 hectares of land at Point England may be far from the most significant thing for them when they consider the possibilities and the opportunities of their Treaty settlement. If they were to take that view, then I would find that very believable and very plausible.

But this bill is being passed by the Government of the day. It is incumbent on the Government to govern in the interests of all New Zealanders—of the whole community—and therefore the Government has an obligation to take seriously the full range of concerns that might be felt by the community about this bill. I think it is patently clear that the Government has not done that. It has chosen to ignore an obviously superior alternative plan that would offer for Ngāti Paoa, if it was put on the negotiating table, the same sized parcel of land just across the fence in land that is owned by the Tāmaki Regeneration Company, in which the Government is the dominant shareholder. It would provide that commercial redress a stone’s throw from the development land that we are debating in this bill. And, as Peeni Henare and I have proposed publicly, the Government could have offered to transfer the title of the entire recreational reserve to Ngāti Paoa on the basis, as has been negotiated in so many other places, of public access in perpetuity.

The Government could have offered co-governance of the entire Point England recreational reserve in acknowledgment of the special historical relationship and the feeling that Ngāti Paoa have for that patch of land. We propose that a reserve be set aside on Point England for the establishment of a marae so that, as part of this Treaty settlement, Ngāti Paoa would have a place to stand and a place from which to welcome in the local community. It is an obvious win-win, and it stands in contrast to the bulldozing, non-consultative, narrow vision that we have seen from the Minister, Nick Smith, in the way that this bill has been crafted and is being taken through Parliament.

Labour’s commitment to the Treaty settlement process is rock solid, it is mature, it is thoughtful, and it is considered, but it is not a blank cheque for every half-baked scheme that Nick Smith comes up with. The shame about this bill is that instead of a bright new chapter in Ngāti Paoa’s history, it risks poisoning the well of the relationship with the local community.

PEENI HENARE (Labour—Tāmaki Makaurau): Tēnā koe, Mr Chair, thank you very much. I too want to endorse the words of my colleague Mr Phil Twyford here about the alternatives offered throughout this entire process in a very clear way. It is interesting how my colleague Meka Whaitiri talked about “more or less” and was answered by the Minister in the chair, Scott Simpson. Why let a fence separate this? Why let a fence stop the particular offer that we were endorsing in our negotiations on this bill, which would allow a win-win?

I want to come to Part 2, clause 6(1)(b): “the reservation of the development land as a recreation reserve subject to the Reserves Act 1977 is revoked;”. I thought I would do a bit of due diligence and look into the Reserves Act, and in section 24(2)(c) of the Reserves Act it says that every person claiming to be affected by the proposed changes has the right to object—they have the right to object. If there is one thing that was a serious question from the outset of this particular bill, it was the limited scope the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) was given in its consultation—a very limited scope. It spoke to some stakeholders, not all stakeholders. As the bill progressed to the Local Government and Environment Committee, it was made clear by the 132 submissions that this was an important issue—that the process was a failed one, one that silenced voices and one that did not allow participation, something that we pride ourselves on in this country.

Yet here we are saying that according to the Reserves Act, every person claiming to be affected by the proposed changes has the right to object in writing and to have their submission heard. That is being booted out the door now, and we are relying on the select committee process alone. That is a great concern to me, the proposed process—which we have had from the beginning—that allowed MBIE only a limited scope of consultation. That is of serious concern, because that is evidenced by the sheer number of submissions on the matter—many for, some against, and some just clearly pointing out the flawed process, as pointed out by my colleague Mr Phil Twyford in debating Part 1. One of the quotes from the submitters was “the decay of quality decision-making”, pointing out clearly that the consultation process was seriously flawed.

I want to also talk, in Part 2, about clause 6(1)(d), and it says there: “the development land is set apart for State housing purposes (as defined in section 2(1) of the Housing Act 1955) and becomes State housing land under that Act;”. Having looked up that particular Act, it says in section 3: “The Minister may from time to time determine either generally or in any particular case what land or classes of land may be acquired for State housing purposes and the general scheme of development thereof, the number and classes of dwellings and ancillary commercial buildings to be constructed, and any other matters of State housing policy.”—any other matters of State housing policy. Well, if there is one thing I can say about housing policy from that side of the House—

Meka Whaitiri: There’s nothing

PEENI HENARE: There is nothing. There are ad hoc attempts to try to hide the crisis they have been denying. So if we have a look at Part 2, clause 6(1)(d), and we take the Housing Act 1955—and once again, I repeat: “and any other matters of State housing policy”—we are yet to see what a clear housing policy is. I mentioned it too in Part 1—we are yet to see who is actually going to take responsibility for this, because as social housing comes up, we have got a new face for it, there is a new Minister in charge of that, flipping from one Minister back over to Dr Nick Smith, then back over to another Minister for another particular matter on housing. That does not tell me that there is a clear housing policy from this Government, and what this particular bill is proposing to do is actually strip the rights of our people in Tāmaki-makau-rau to a solid housing plan, one that actually deals with the crisis and the needs of the community, as pointed out in the 132 submissions that were made on this particular bill. That is a really big concern for myself, for the stakeholders of Tāmaki-makau-rau, and, indeed, for those people who are concerned about the housing issue in New Zealand and, of course, in Tāmaki-makau-rau.

So—Part 2, clause 6(1)(d). In the definition given in the Housing Act 1955, Part 1, section 3, it gives quite a large scope around what the Minister’s powers are in relation to this particular development. While we might argue some of the limitations around interpretation in Part 1, and in the later parts of this bill, which I will get to in another contribution, it will talk about social housing and the needs of that particular community.

I will tell you one of the interesting things when the Māori Party—and I am disappointed that the Māori Party members are not here to take a call on this bill. One of the lines that was used by the Māori Party was that it will allow Ngāti Paoa to build homes for their people. I have read this bill backwards and forwards, and in Part 2 it does not say anything that gives Ngāti Paoa the power to make sure that they provide social housing for the housing needs of the people of Ngāti Paoa. Yet if we take the definition as given to us under the Housing Act 1955, and in this particular bill, Part 2, clause 6(1)(d), there is scope here for the Minister—whoever that might be, because, as I have pointed out, there are difficulties actually pinning this on a particular Minister in the House because of the complexities of this issue that this Government has not dealt with. There is scope in that particular part of the bill that is of huge concern, because it says in section 3 of the Housing Act: “classes of dwellings and ancillary commercial buildings to be constructed, and any other matters of State housing policy.” I reiterate the point: where is that State housing policy? Where is something that gives the people of Point England, that gives the people of Tāmaki-makau-rau, and, indeed, the voters of this country some kind of reassurance that there is a clear plan?

It was mentioned in the submissions, the adhockery in the nature of consultation and the decay of process. These are not my words; these are the words of far more intelligent people giving very good submissions on this particular bill—people who know the issues, people who understand the Resource Management Act, people who understand the environmental impacts of such ad hoc housing plans.

Just in conclusion for this particular part of my contribution, I just want to say that my point being made is: no policy, no clear Minister to lead it, and, in the interpretation part—I have already mentioned that—the scope here in Part 2, clause 6(1)(d), once again gives a wide scope for the Minister to do far more than what this bill is actually proposing. Once again, the Māori Party line was that this was to build homes for Ngāti Paoa descendants. I have not seen that in the bill, and I wonder whether the Minister in the chair, Scott Simpson, can answer why it is not there.

DENIS O’ROURKE (NZ First): New Zealand First continues to oppose this bill, and, actually, we oppose all the Supplementary Order Papers (SOPs) except one, and that is SOP 317 in the name of Eugenie Sage.

We support that for these reasons. First of all, this bill actually is nothing much more than a blatant land-grab by the Government, and, worse still, it is the theft—and I use the word “theft” deliberately—of irreplaceable park land from current and future residents of Auckland. [Interruption] I know the MPs opposite do not like that, because they do not like hearing the truth. Truth is their enemy, and if you listen to their speeches, you will know that. The truth is that this Government is taking this land by theft, effectively, off the people of Auckland by the most devious means: by using special legislation to avoid the usual Resource Management Act processes, which would require a plan change, and by attempting to sidestep the usual community consultation processes that should have taken place. The Government knows that what it is doing is wrong, it knows the community is upset, and it knows the community is diametrically opposed to this—that is why we are all getting so many emails about this—but it does not care.

The Government does not care for two reasons—because from its point of view, it is a good deal. It gets some land for housing—not much, actually; only 300 houses, which is a drop in the bucket—but also it gets a Treaty settlement, as well. That is a cheap way of getting a Treaty settlement for the Government. It is a win-win for the Government, but it is a lose-lose for the community, and that is what I particularly want to speak about in support of SOP 317.

The bill as a whole smacks of National Government arrogance at its worst. It treats the people in the community like dirt by ignoring what they have to say, by not even having a process that they could participate in. It treats the open space provided by the reserve like it does not matter—like it is just a piece of land that you can do what you like with. In fact, Nick Smith just talks about it as grazing land, as if that were the truth, which it certainly is not. It treats the conservation values of this land as though they were irrelevant, and shows just how little regard that party has for the environment and for conservation values. It treats the Auckland Council’s submission with utter disdain. That is the attitude of the National Government, and that is what this bill really represents.

SOP 317 would address at least part of the Government’s shortcomings. It requires the proposals to be treated as a discretionary or noncomplying activity, and I think that is appropriate. After all, this is not just any reserve land; it is reserve land with particularly high environmental and conservation values, and open space for the local community. It could not really be much more important as a reserve, and yet this Government is willing to ride roughshod over all of that. The SOP would require notification, it would allow the public to participate through a notification process, and it would allow public scrutiny of the proposal, which processes so far have not allowed. It would allow for the need for the residential land proposal to be balanced against the needs of the community for open space—not just now but in the future, including the longer-distant future—and, of course, the conservation values as well. That balance has not been discussed and that process has not taken place, and it should have.

The SOP would mean an examination of the adverse environmental effects that will no doubt, absolutely, be the case with this bill, and it would provide an opportunity for people to discuss mitigation measures—an opportunity they have not had so far. It would also allow an examination of possible alternatives. Many of those who have emailed me have said: “Look at this alternative, look at that alternative.” They should not have to email MPs asking for that. They should be able to participate directly in a process that allows them the opportunity to put forward proposals for alternatives. But that has not been done, because of National Government arrogance. Those processes really should have taken place, and they have not. In other words, what this SOP does is do all the things that the Government has deliberately set out to avoid, all for a paltry 300 homes and all because of an apparent proposed Treaty settlement, which is actually not the subject of the bill at all.

Having said that, although this SOP is proposed by the Greens, I am amazed by the Greens’ decision to abstain on this bill—not just amazed but extremely disappointed by it, because that is hardly a commitment to preserve the reserve. It is hardly a vote to keep the open space. It is hardly a vote for conservation. It is certainly not a vote to support the community. What has happened? Have the Greens gone wimpy about the environment all of a sudden? If so, they had better change their name, because this is not a green attitude to this particular bill. Maybe those members should have a look at how they vote on the third reading, because, quite frankly, I have listened some of their speeches and they are completely incomprehensible. They do not make any sense to me, and I think they should make up their minds as to what they really believe in. If they actually believed in the conservation values, the environmental values, and the support of the community, they would be voting against this bill, and not making some wimpy kind of fence-sitting abstention as they are making silly speeches about currently. I am giving them a good telling-off because they deserve it, in this case.

That is not New Zealand First’s attitude to it. We know what we want. We want the reserve to stay a reserve. We want to keep the environmental and conservation values intact. We want the open space kept intact, and we, for one, are certainly going to support the community.

I have said enough about that SOP and why we are supporting it. I want to go on in the last couple of minutes to talk about some of the other SOPs. The most important of the other ones is SOP 321, which the Minister for Building and Construction has put forward. Actually, this is just more National Government arrogance, because what it is going to do now, in this SOP, is tell the Auckland Council, and therefore the entire Auckland community, what it should do about this reserve, in a micro-managing kind of way—where the sports fields will be, how much area will be sports fields, and so on. That is in the face of the submission made by the Auckland Council, which actually opposes the loss of any of this reserve at all. So not only is the Government not listening to the Auckland Council and the people of Auckland, it now purports to tell them, in a micro-managing kind of way, how to deal with the rest of the reserve.

I have a map here that reflects what the breakup of this reserve is going to be. What you see is a great chunk of the middle of the land taken for housing, little bits of reserve around the edge, and one new playing field area, in addition to the existing ones. It actually makes a mess of the entire reserve—makes a dog’s breakfast of it. It is not sustainable, much, as a reserve in nearly the way that the existing one would be, and yet this Government and this Minister are so arrogant. They know best! They do not want to have any process whereby a change of the plan for this reserve would take place with public input—oh, no. The Minister knows what to do! He will just tell them what to do, and everyone can go and take a running jump. That is what he means: “Just do what I say, and we do not care about what you want.” That is what he is saying to the people of Auckland. That is National Government arrogance for you.

This SOP is just a poor excuse for the decimation of the reserve. It is an attempt to appease angry residents, who will not be appeased by it, because they know the truth. It is an admission that the land actually is needed for recreation purposes now, and much more of it will be needed in the future, and that is the opposite of what the bill actually does. This is a disgraceful bill. It should never have been contemplated in the first place, and we will certainly—we will certainly, undoubtedly—be voting against it.

EUGENIE SAGE (Green): Tēnā koe, Mr Chair. Well, I thank Mr O’Rourke for explaining my Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) 317. This is because Part 2 goes to the real heart of the bill. It is in clause 6, of course, that the bill overrides the normal processes that would apply under the Reserves Act and the Resource Management Act (RMA). So the Supplementary Order Paper , because there is no plan change process, because the bill sidesteps that—in a plan change process where you are rezoning what is now open space to residential mixed housing urban land, you would normally get an opportunity for public submissions and for those submissions to deal with issues like what the impacts of that zoning change would be and how the plan should have new objectives, new policies, and new rules to guide the future use and development of the land. The provisions in the Resource Legislation Amendment Act, which Parliament debated earlier this year, make a much faster process for the way in which subdivision activity takes place, and there is no guarantee that applications for subdivision consents are actually going to be notified.

So the SOP, as a minimum, requires that there is a resource consent application for the housing development that is a notified activity, and puts in play a number of provisions: that it must protect the habitat of the dotterel and the shore plover, and avoid adverse effects from land disturbance. We have got no certainty, given that the bill sidesteps the plan change process, that there will be adequate provisions to ensure that the development does not lead to quite significant sedimentation in Omaru Creek and in the Tāmaki estuary. We are certainly aware of Ngāti Paoa’s major commitments to enhancement of the people, the land, and the community, but from experience with a number of big resource consent applications and developments, you need those sorts of commitments to be put in as conditions of the consent or as clear plan objectives.

So a question for the Minister is: if this SOP is not supported by the Government, how is the Government going to guarantee that the local communities in Tāmaki, Point England, Panmure, and Glen Innes actually get a say on this housing development and how it happens? How can the Government guarantee that the consent will be notified? The council has said there will be a consent process, but there is absolutely no guarantee, because of the Government’s changes to the RMA, that people will actually get the opportunity to have a say on that.

So we encourage members to support this SOP to make sure that the community can actually participate in how this housing development happens; what sort of density it is; what provisions there are for connectivity, walkways, cyclists, and pedestrians; how the major earthworks that are likely to be required on this very wet site will be dealt with; how sediment measures are to be put in place; and things like site hardening. Given Omaru Creek is a very polluted waterway, if there is a lot more asphalt and there are more large roofs there will be a lot more stormwater generated. The Auckland Council is providing some tens of millions of dollars to improve catchment management for Omaru Creek, but there will be significantly increased stormwater volumes if there is a lot of site hardening with this development.

We would also like to go on and talk to some of the issues around the loss of the reserves and the loss of the playing fields, and the SOP that is in the Minister the Hon Nick Smith’s name. We heard a lot of submissions concerned about the effect of the housing development in doing away with areas that are used for sports. Point England Reserve currently has six full-sized sports fields in the southern part of it. There are four kilikiti wickets. Those kilikiti wickets are used during the week and during the weekend. They are very popular with the Pasifika community, and the Auckland Council, in its sports network needs-analysis report, went through and looked at what the impact would be on the Tāmaki area from the loss of these sports fields and the kilikiti wickets at Point England when they are overcome with housing. That needs analysis shows that there is no potential within the existing sports parks for the kilikiti wickets that are displaced at Point England being accommodated there. That is because of the large scale and size of these kilikiti wickets. It also found that most of the other sports parks in the vicinity have already been developed to capacity, through things like having sand carpets and floodlights, so there will be a significant shortfall in terms of playing hours if this land is sacrificed to housing.

So what has the Minister for the Environment done in response? Well, we have Supplementary Order Paper 321, which cuts across, once again, the decision making by the Auckland Council. Instead of allowing the Auckland Council to look at how the lost sports field capacity should be dealt with, the Minister, through his SOP, will amend the bill to insist that the council provide another 5.3 hectares on the balance of the Point England Reserve, which is not going to have houses put on it, for sports fields. That increases after 12 months to 8.4 hectares.

Mr O’Rourke called it micro-management, and I agree. It is the Minister, once again, as is characteristic of him, imposing his will on Aucklanders, rather than allowing the democratically elected council to deal with this issue of the shortfall in sports fields. We have the Government not responding to submissions, because a lot of the concern amongst many submitters was about the loss of open space. There were fewer submitters who were concerned about the loss of sports fields, but those who were, were concerned. This SOP of the Minister’s has come out of left field. It was not signalled in the Local Government and Environment Committee, and it is the Government attempting once again to be seen to be doing something when all it is doing is undermining democracy.

The loss of the sports fields is significant, because the Auckland Council paid out over $60 million to Auckland University in 2016 to buy Colin Maiden Park. That has got a number of sports facilities in it. The council does not have the resources to keep doing that—to buy more land for sports fields. The Government has completely understated the impact on, particularly, the Pasifika community, through the loss of the kilikiti area, when the Pasifika population in the Tāmaki area is expected to increase by 42 percent by 2038. It has not looked at how the Auckland Council is supposed to deal with the loss of the sports fields for housing, and, instead, is just doing this quick and dirty SOP to require that the rest of the reserve be sacrificed for sports fields instead of the open space that it currently is. The regulatory impact statement notes that the changes in the SOP are unusual, because, once again, they are being done through primary legislation, which is overriding the normal processes in the Reserves Act and the RMA for the council to actually decide what should happen on the balance of the land, which remains as council land.

So this SOP of the Minister’s is really symbolic of the provisions of the primary bill, which cut across local democracy and cut across local decision-making. I do want the Minister in the chair, Scott Simpson, to answer what guarantee there is, if the bill goes through without my SOP, that the community in Tāmaki will actually get to have a say on the resource consent application. We are not having that normal plan change process and there is no ability to constrain the housing development to ensure that it is sustainable, to deal with issues like coastal hazard, sediment, density, public transport access, connectivity to other reserves like Tāhuna Tōrea, and connectivity to the local shopping centre, unless those sorts of issues are discussed through the resource consent process. At the moment there is absolutely no guarantee that that consent application will be publicly notified or that there will be any opportunity for locals to actually have their say.

MICHAEL WOOD (Labour—Mt Roskill): I am very happy to take a call on this part of the bill, Part 2. I am reminded of a situation I have on the domestic front at the moment. We have debated Part 1, which is the entrée to the bill. The domestic situation I have at home is that upstairs there has been a bit of a stink. I had not quite been able to work out what it is. I did a bit of investigation on Sunday morning and found out we have got a blocked drain downstairs full of putrid, fetid water. We found the source of the contamination, and Part 2 is the source of the contamination in this bill, because it is the odious part of this bill that does the business of stripping away precious public reserve land from a community that treasures and needs that land. I just want to work through some of the key sections of Part 2, particularly clause 6, with a bit of reflection on some of the very good submissions that were produced and then summarily ignored by the Government as this piece of legislation has made its way through the process.

If we read through Part 2, particularly clause 6—and clause 8 as well, which I will come to—it is all there in pretty sort of technical and bureaucratic language. But, fundamentally, what it does is stomp all over community interests and the due process that we normally expect people to be given in this country when major changes are made to their community. It stomps all over provisions that we would usually see enacted through the Resource Management Act (RMA) and the Reserves Act. I want to turn to some of the very good submissions we received that spoke to these points.

The first one was from the Auckland Council. I have got to say that I think it is pretty significant that we have got Auckland Council—the largest local authority in our country and the unitary authority set up by this Government—speaking in extremely forceful language about the way in which this bill cuts across what are, quite frankly, pretty close to constitutional arrangements in our country in terms of the relationship between local and central government. Here is what it says first up. It says “Use of special legislation to lift reserve status and provide for housing development outside normal statutory processes sets a concerning precedent”, and in other points it is called a “dangerous precedent”. For a formal council submission, that is extremely strong language from a council that needs and wants to have a good relationship to use with the Government. I think that shows the level of alarm in local government about these steps from the Government, and we have seen plenty of them over the course of this year, but in this bill there is indeed a very concerning precedent that we see coming through.

Further on in Auckland Council’s submission, it goes on to talk about the way in which the bill and, in particular, clause 6 of the bill, really cuts across the Reserves Act provisions that usually govern any changes to our precious public reserves. In the Reserves Act we set a high bar. We deliberately set a high bar for changes to public reserves because they are so important. They are really important because, generally speaking, once public reserve land is gone, it is gone. So it is extremely important that it is protected and that the community that benefits from it is able to have a real say over those changes and that the interests of the reserves are protected.

What the Auckland Council says in respect of this is “The Reserves Act sets out stringent steps that the Minister of Conservation must follow before revoking the reserve status of part or all of the reserve.”—and, of course, it is clause 6 here, which by fiat revokes that reserve status of part of Point England Reserve. “If that process had been followed in this instance, the Minister would have been required to set out the reasons for the proposed revocation and invite comment from Auckland Council. Public notification of the proposed revocation would have been required. Affected members of the public would have had a right of objection. The Minister of Conservation would have been obliged to take any such objections into account and would also have been subject to the principles of administrative law—the decision could have been reviewed by the courts.”

I wonder, where is the party of people like Jim McLay, who once would have stood up for those kinds of principles—the principle of the rule of law and due process and people being able to have a say about these kinds of things? Instead, we have a bill that is going through and cutting across all of those sorts of rights that people in our community can reasonably expect.

The Maungakiekie Tāmaki Local Board, in its submission, talked on this further, alongside, I think, five other local boards, including a number of local boards primarily dominated by National Party members. It has expressed its concern about what it terms the “dangerous precedent” in line with Auckland Council’s comments. It has noticed that this is a fast-track development and that it avoids a robust public consultation process, including a right of appeal. These are extremely serious concerns from a local board that is the most local form of democracy in this community, and those concerns have been completely ignored. The local board did a patch-up job by trying to have some local consultation of the kind that the Government did not have when it tried to slip this bill through its early stages over the summer period. It is actually interesting to read in the submissions and in the notes of that public meeting the serious concerns of the community, not just about the loss of their reserve but their concerns that in the future the public reserves of other communities may be taken away by this kind of approach as well.

Continuing through the submissions that point to these very serious process concerns, there is another excellent one from Forest & Bird. Forest & Bird is a serious organisation that for 70 or 80 years has fought for our ecology, has fought for public open spaces. It is not politically partisan; it is interested in the common good and it is interested in fair and due process as well. Here is what Forest & Bird says: “Of significant concern to Forest & Bird is the removal of the [RMA] statutory requirements around consultation, public engagement and environmental assessment for subdivisions.” Again, I would ask the Minister, actually, about this, because it has come through in submission after submission: where, actually, are the environmental assessments that we would expect to see on a piece of public reserve land that has notable environmental and ecological values that have been assessed by a number of experts? We have seen absolutely none of that.

Another submission, by Julie Chambers, who has led the Save Point England group and is a person who is very well known in the community for serving the community over many, many years—

Phil Twyford: A long-time National Party member.

MICHAEL WOOD: A long-time National Party member—not any more. But she makes the point that “The inclusion of Section 8”—we turn to clause 8 now—“forces Auckland Council to carry out a major Plan Change”, and this is the bit that imposes a particular kind of zoning, mixed urban housing, on the land that will have reserve status revoked, “that will convert the use of treasured public open space into residential housing”. So not only are we taking away the reserve status, but then, through an Act of Parliament rather than public consultation, we are also dictating exactly the kind of urban form that will go on to that public land, whereas across all of the rest of Auckland we have had a thorough consultative process through the unitary plan to determine what form of housing should go on what site. There has been none of that in the case of Point England.

I want to touch on a couple of Supplementary Order Papers (SOPs) that go to these points as well. Eugenie Sage’s SOP 317, which we fully support, tries to backfill some of the deficiencies of process that are embedded in this bill. It does that by asking whether, after all of these egregious breaches of process, we can at least ensure we have a basic RMA process, in terms of the development that will occur on what everyone acknowledges is a sensitive site in many ways. I think that is the least that the people of the community could expect after having all of their other rights trampled over in this process.

I always like contrast, and in contrast to that good SOP, well, we have got Dr Smith’s SOP 321. It is less an SOP and more a doodle on the back of an envelope done over at Bellamy’s one night, I think. It is absolutely pathetic. It is about the Minister trying to get an extra 500 votes for Denise Lee in the coming election in that seat—trying to save a few votes for her by banging an extra playing field on the reserve, with absolutely no background work done on that whatsoever.

What has the Minister done—this is a question for the Minister in the chair, Scott Simpson, actually—to understand Auckland Council’s sports field development capacity project, which has actually worked out on an evidential basis where sports fields should go and what kinds of sports fields there should be? Should it be a grass turf or an artificial turf or a hybrid turf? Has any of that work been done as Nick Smith put forward this SOP? What engagement has there been with Auckland Council around its open space development strategy, which actually determines the kinds of open spaces that we want in different places? There is absolutely nothing in this SOP. It is simply not worth the paper it is written on, and from a public policy point of view, I think that even that Minister, Minister Smith, who is responsible for so many cack-handed pieces of legislation, should be ashamed of that particular SOP.

In finishing my comments at this stage—and I would like to come back and take another call on some of the environmental aspects later on—I do have a couple of questions for the Minister in the chair, in addition to those ones that I have already offered. The first one that I would like to ask is, in respect of clause 8 of the bill, can the Minister explain why once reserve status is revoked we would not simply have a plan-change process that would be open to public consultation to determine the appropriate form of density and urban form on that site? I think the people of the community of Point England would like to know that. Thank you.

PHIL TWYFORD (Labour—Te Atatū): I want to address my comments to Supplementary Order Paper 321 in the name of the Hon Nick Smith. What this amendment does is that it legisla—legislative—oh, I will try that again; it legislatively directs Auckland Council to devote 3 hectares of land that it owns at Point England to be turned into sports fields. And, secondly, it directs the Auckland Council to ban the Point England Reserve from having cows on it. This is wacko stuff. Dr Smith has wandered off the reservation once and for all. There is a kangaroo loose in the top paddock. The Minister is using the time of this Parliament to tell Auckland Council not to run any cows on its parkland that it owns. This Supplementary Order Paper 321 is telling Auckland Council that it must turn over 3 hectares of land for playing fields. It is absolutely wacko stuff. I have never come across anything like this in 8 years in Parliament—thank you very much, Dr Smith.

If there is a sign of how exasperated Auckland Council is about this, it is that the Mayor Phil Goff today took the unusual step of releasing a letter to the media that he has written to Dr Smith. The language that is used in this letter is very strong. He points out that the lack of consultation is simply not acceptable. It is clear from this letter that Dr Smith tabled this Supplementary Order Paper in the House without even consulting Auckland Council, but he purports to use the law to tell Auckland Council how to manage the detail of its parkland.

The letter from the mayor points out that there is a total lack of consideration of the technical feasibility or the environmental impacts of what Dr Smith’s Supplementary Order Paper tries to do. The Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment has confirmed that it has done no technical work to assess the feasibility of establishing the 3 hectares of playing fields on the only bit of the reserve that could accommodate them, and that is the headland. Open space on the precious headland at Point England is going to be turned into playing fields, by the edict of Dr Nick Smith. This is the Bizarro World of the Minister for the Environment in this National Government. I cannot believe what is going on here.

As it stands, the Point England Development Enabling Bill, if passed into law, will halve the area currently available for the dotterel. We are going to have more to say about the dotterel, the northern New Zealand dotterel, in this debate. This heightens the importance of the headland for these species, because that is the only bit of land that is left for them, but Dr Smith, under this bill, wants to turn that last remaining bit of habitat into playing fields. It absolutely beggars belief.

The other really bizarre thing about this Supplementary Order Paper from Dr Smith is he is telling the council that it has to turn over this land into playing fields. The law will require—the Resource Management Act (RMA) will require—the council to seek a resource consent for that. The legal advice that the council has had is that it will not get resource consent to do what Dr Smith’s Supplementary Order Paper requires it to do. So Dr Smith wants to tell it that by law it has to do this thing, the RMA tells it that it has to get resource consent to do it, it probably will not get resource consent, and, therefore, it is going to be in breach of Dr Smith’s law. This is wacko stuff.

This is what it has come to, under Dr Smith’s tenure as the Minister for the Environment and as the Minister for Building and Construction. It is an absolutely bizarre and weird circumstance that we find ourselves in. Government members should be embarrassed to be sitting here in the House tonight, debating this Supplementary Order Paper in the name of Dr Nick Smith. It makes a laughing stock of the Minister and this Government. If Government members have got a shred of self-respect—if they have got a shred of self-respect—they will vote against this Supplementary Order Paper from Dr Smith and consign it to the dustbin, which is where it belongs.

PEENI HENARE (Labour—Tāmaki Makaurau): That was a great contribution from my colleague Phil Twyford, and I want to continue on Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) 321 in the name of the Hon “Dick-ter”—ha, ha! “Dick-ter”! I apologise—Dr Nick Smith. It is interesting; there is this big fuss being made about cows grazing on a marae, and, in the same breath, the Minister says that Ngāti Paoa will have the opportunity to have their own marae, to do what it takes to maintain the marae. Well, I suggest to that Minister, and to his SOP, that you allow them to graze cows still on that land. Let me tell you why. Approximately a year ago, when Te Puea Marae actually helped this country in a housing crisis, I, on behalf of that marae, wrote to many farms, wrote to many tribal entities, and asked them for fresh meat and fresh produce. And guess who replied? Nobody. Guess who sent meat from all the flash Māori farms we have got, which the Minister for Māori Development is trying to boost with Te Ture Whenua Māori Bill? Nobody.

This particular SOP by the Minister is proposing that the council will stop grazing on that land in a management plan in the future. I would suggest letting the cows graze. I would suggest giving those cows to the marae that is being proposed to be built on Point England. Why? To sustain the people of that marae, because that is what it takes. As a member in a Māori electorate and a person who grew up on a marae, I can tell that Minister that that is what is required if you are going to take this seriously—to give Ngāti Paoa the opportunity to actually sustain their own people, not build houses for this Government’s failure to build houses and deal with a crisis that has been looming for however many years. Let the cows graze, I say, and give them to Ngāti Paoa.

This particular SOP will say “No, no, cows are no longer welcome there.”, and it is going to be the council’s obligation to actually have a management plan that will get rid of them—to get rid of them.

Sue Moroney: Banning cows.

PEENI HENARE: Banning cows. Well, it is the two-legged cows I am worried about. Some of them are trying to push through legislation in Tāmaki-makau-rau to solve this housing crisis that the Government has ignored for so long, and it is just not working. So this particular SOP says there in proposed new clause 10, “Management plan for remaining reserve land deemed to be amended”, in subclause (1)(a): “on and after the expiry of 6 months from the commencement date … of the Reserves … farming or grazing are not permitted on any part of the remaining reserve land;”.

In support of Ngāti Paoa, I want to once again acknowledge them, and as a member of Ngāpuhi—and it is important that we mention this, because my colleague Mr Kelvin Davis talked about the particular interests in Tāmaki-makau-rau. I want to acknowledge Ngāti Paoa, because Ngāti Paoa actually gave my tupuna Patuone land over on the North Shore, in acknowledgement of Ngāpuhi’s place in Tāmaki-makau-rau. That is an important link that cannot be forgotten. So it is not just this particular land we are talking about; we are actually also talking about the relationships of Ngāti Paoa across Tāmaki-makau-rau—across Tāmaki-makau-rau. That is of importance to us, because if we carry on with this bill, and if we consider the ability for Ngāti Paoa to build a marae, there is a wider conversation to be had here. This particular bill and this SOP being promoted by the Minister actually do not allow for that to happen. It puts the onus on the council to try to tidy up some of the failures of this particular bill—namely, no more cows grazing on the land.

My colleague Mr Michael Wood had a great interjection, I thought, on one of the contributions earlier, talking about: “Well, there goes Cornwall Park.” There goes Cornwall Park: cows, sheep—they all graze there at Cornwall Park. If time permitted—because I have only 30 seconds left—I would give the history of what my connection is to Cornwall Park, which actually goes the point that Mr Davis was talking about, about these places being important to all of us. I think that in this particular SOP the Minister is actually trying to tidy up a failed piece of legislation that has gone through, and I think the contributions on this side have highlighted those failures.

CATHERINE DELAHUNTY (Green): Tēnā koe, Mr Chair. Tēnā koutou e Te Whare. I find this a very complex and interesting bill, and I am really wanting to just point out a couple of things in the very interesting debate that we have had tonight and the excellent Supplementary Order Papers that Eugenie Sage and the Opposition have put up.

I also want to bring us back to something, and I just want to quote the words of the kaihautū of Ngāti Paoa Iwi Trust and co-negotiator of the iwi’s Treaty settlement, Hauauru Rawiri: “The bill is Treaty settlement legislation. For Ngāti Paoa to regain ownership and control of significant customary land at Te Tauoma is central to the historical Treaty settlement between the Crown and Ngāti Paoa. Without this land there will be no Treaty settlement between the Crown and Ngāti Paoa.” That is where it gets complicated, because this has undoubtedly been a messy process. It has undoubtedly upset the local people who live there at the moment, very much. It has undoubtedly been a bad use, in a way, of the legal process, because of all of the people who have been shut out. But there is a deeper issue as well, which is why it is a nuanced and complex situation, despite the failures of this bill.

I live in Hauraki, and I look across to Ngāti Paoa. There is not a lot of land under their control and they do not have all the opportunities in the world. Many people who are settled, living in the city with their good homes and their gardens and their lovely views and their right to enjoy themselves, need to also think about the history of colonisation in this country and how the Reserves Act, in its previous iterations, has been used to actually strip Māori land from people. So if we are going to talk about the word “reserve”, we need to acknowledge some of the history.

The other day I was up at Ngāti Whātua ki Ōrākei, and I said to them: “What’s your view of this bill? Because it’s really complex and difficult and seems to be very badly designed.” The people I talked to said: “It’s Ngāti Paoa land—end of story.” That does not make it any easier when the Crown has actually got another agenda, but that is their view.

I think it is interesting to consider the whole question of good faith here. Because this bill is so poorly designed and has created so much negativity, it actually impacts on Te Tiriti settlement that Ngāti Paoa are trying to advance, and this bill is part of that for them. That is where we need to be a lot more sophisticated in this country in the way that we deal with this, because we do not want the population who currently live in Auckland to have a complete lack of understanding about what is possible. I think Ngāti Whātua ki Ōrākei give a good example of how you can have housing for income streams, housing for papakāinga, and how you can have high standards of environmental protection—in fact, I would say that Ngāti Whātua have got some of the highest standards of community-based environmental protection across Tāmaki. Ngāti Paoa have indicated that they want to go down that track as well and have talked about how they might do it, but that has become lost in the conflict over the inability of the Crown to design a bill that actually has good process in it.

So it is ludicrous to pretend that this is a simple issue and that it is just about people having green space in Auckland, because it is not. Once upon a time, in Tāmaki-makau-rau, that land was all land belonging to different iwi. Now they are forced into these situations where people are talking about them as if they could not possibly manage their land with conservation values—because only we have conservation values? I think that is really problematic, and it is not helpful to the local people. Because they have felt really deeply excluded by the way that this has been gone about, it is not going to help them to understand Te Tiriti o Waitangi, and that is really bad for our country.

It is really important, actually, that we look at Point England and everywhere else in terms of other mana whenua people, who were there before, who suffered the same if not far worse alienation from their land as the people in that area are feeling like they are experiencing now. It concerns me deeply when I see Pākehā people protesting on the reserve, saying: “We’re having our land taken off us.” It concerns me deeply that people are saying that, not understanding—because they feel abused by this process through this Parliament—that, actually, they need a relationship with the mana whenua, that the mana whenua have legitimate expectations around their own land, and that this is a pre-settlement bill, but it has been done in such a way that it has caused people to feel like they are the most aggrieved party. But, actually, we have to understand history. If we look at the Reserves Act, which is mentioned throughout this bill and has been treated cavalierly in many ways, it has done some pretty bad things. If you look at Hauturu—Little Barrier Island—they did some pretty bad things to create that nature reserve.

So let us try to actually include everybody in this conversation, and let us have some faith that Ngāti Paoa and the local community, with the right support, could actually craft a solution to this that does not polarise everyone against each other and does not turn into, supposedly, the Treaty versus the dotterels, which it should never be characterised as—and it is not, because they also have a whakapapa connection to those manu. We have to be more sophisticated than this. We have to try to look at this bill and say that, from the point of view of the manu whenua, they are trying to work towards their Treaty settlement and this is the shot they have been given in Auckland, where there is very little whenua. It is OK for them to want to have an economic base as well as a marae, as well as a reserve, which they have shown no interest in excluding people from in terms of its long-term future.

But that has got lost because of the way that this bill has been structured, the way it has been worded, and the way the process has been managed. It has pitched the people—mana whenua and local people—against each other, when instead the Crown needs to take some responsibility for this mess. It concerns me deeply because, actually, Te Tiriti is a good thing. Historical grievance needs to be resolved, land that was taken should be returned, and trust that has been broken should be supported, on all sides. We need our local communities living on the coast in Tāmaki to understand that, yes, they want to keep their space, but they can have that in relationship to other people’s needs as well, and recognise manu whenua and recognise Te Tiriti. But that has all got lost, and it is very, very disturbing.

There are better ways to go about this. I was at Parihaka 2 weeks ago. That is a better way to go about it—where there was a genuine and careful process whereby the manu whenua got to advance their need for reconciliation before they got to settlement. This legislation is another form of pre-settlement, but I just feel very deeply for all the people involved in this who feel they have been abused. But do remember who lost their land originally and how that happened, and what pittance they were paid so that they could be alienated from that beautiful coastal land, that lovely bit of coast. It is amazing around there.

So if we are going to be precious about it, we need to have a bigger conversation and be capable of more than just talking about one set of interests in the 21st century. We cannot escape our history. We do not want to escape our history. We want to uplift it and do better. This bill is written in such a way and has created such a lot of confusion that all it has done is make people feel that they should prescribe for Ngāti Paoa how they should be and what they are capable of, which is actually not the Treaty of Waitangi, Te Tiriti o Waitangi. It is not article 2 at all. So we have a problem, and we need to be more creative than this bill is, but not at the expense of recognising the legitimate and absolute right of the mana whenua to assert their relationship to their whenua. They have never said they are going to exclude everybody else. Sometimes when things have been done badly, the people who have done those things assume that the other culture would do the same back. Let us actually be a bit bigger than that, and let us have a bit more generosity.

So I say it is complex. It is not simple, and it is not going to be easily resolved through this bill. I am afraid of what gets left behind, after the bill passes, but I am absolutely committed to supporting Ngāti Paoa, because they do not have the homes, the land, the income streams—

KELVIN DAVIS (Labour—Te Tai Tokerau): I would like to talk to clause 6(1)(b), which is about the reservation of the development land as a recreation reserve, subject to the Reserves Act 1977 being revoked. There is a lot of information in the regulatory impact statement. In particular I refer to paragraph 34, where it says that “It must be clearly established the land is no longer required for its present purpose or any other reserve purpose.”

The Government is both blind and dumb—and I do not mean dumb as in “mute”; I mean “stupid”. Surely it can see that the reserve is being used for the purpose it is meant to be used for—i.e., for sports fields, for recreation, and for people of the area being able to just enjoy it. I say “stupid” because it just shows such short-sighted thinking—that the present purpose, using the land as a reserve, is not going to be necessary in 20 to 30 years’ time, when the population of Auckland is expected to be something like 2 million, and that area in particular is going to grow by 20,000 over the next few years. Where on earth are those people going to be able to use a reserve in the way it is meant to be used?

Somewhere else in this regulatory impact statement it says that the scope within the wider reserve network to absorb some of the impacts of the loss of the development land will be impacted on. So the land is being used as a reserve. The population is going to grow over the next 20, 30 years—it is going to double in Auckland by 2043, I think—so we are going to have even more need for reserve land. How crazy it is just to say: “Well, there’s a bit of green grass. Let’s go and build houses on it.” There are many, many other ways that we could have actually achieved the same thing.

In fact, under Labour’s plan, Ngāti Paoa would have got their housing development. Under Labour’s plan, Ngāti Paoa would have got a marae. Under Labour’s plan, they would have got recognition of their special interest in Point England. But, of course, the National Government did not think of anything along those lines. Really, the Government just wanted to push this through, because it has run out of ideas. It did not listen to anybody who submitted. The Government is at a loss here.

My colleague Peeni Henare has raised the issue about the cattle being on the Point England Reserve. He also stole a bit of my thunder, because I was going to talk about Cornwall Park and the sheep. Last time I—in fact, it was not the last time. The first time, in about 1985, when I was at teachers college, I jogged through Cornwall Park—

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): That is not in the bill. Focus on this bill.

KELVIN DAVIS: OK, Mr Chair. I heard Nick Smith say that the reserve land was being used for cattle. If you use that rationale to build houses on a reserve, then what else is up for grabs within Auckland? What about the park down the road where the kids have their swings and slide? Can the reserve status of that land be revoked? What is next? Is this the thin end of the wedge?

If this is what the Government has got up its sleeve to create more housing, is it going to just take all the reserve bits of land around Auckland? The Riccarton Racecourse was an example of what it has done. Now it is the precedent that has been set. The thing is that it says it has used the precedent of the Riccarton Racecourse legislation. That is exactly the issue. That is exactly the problem, in terms of a precedent. If it can do this to Point England—if it can revoke the reserve status of Point England—then it can revoke the reserve status of any other land around Auckland. Of course, we need all the reserve land that we can, for the simple use of—

LOUISA WALL (Labour—Manurewa): Tēna koe, Mr Chair. Thank you for the opportunity to speak to Part 2 of the Point England Development Enabling Bill, and I specifically want to talk to my Supplementary Order Paper 320. I want to read out what this Supplementary Order Paper is seeking to do. It says: “In clause 7, after subclause (4) (page 4, after line 2), insert: ‘(5) Section 136 of the Ngā Mana Whenua o Tāmaki Makaurau Collective Redress Act 2014 does not apply if notice under section 120 of that Act is not given in respect of the development land following the registration of the memorial under subsection (3)(c).’ ” The relevance of this particular Supplementary Order Paper actually rests on what section 136 of that settlement Act says. What it does is provide that right of first refusal land can be disposed of where it is held for State housing purposes and the Minister considers the disposal is to achieve or assist in achieving the Crown’s social objectives in relation to housing, which is exactly what this bill is going to do. It is going to provide this land for social housing.

We have heard that this bill is all about Ngāti Paoa’s Treaty settlement. I want to acknowledge Hauāuru Rāwiri, who is here representing Ngāti Paoa. We have seen letters—well, I have seen letters—from the Minister for Treaty of Waitangi Negotiations dated 13 October 2016 stating that. But nowhere in this legislation is that recorded, because before that can actually happen, this legislation needs to pass.

The relevance of this Supplementary Order Paper needs to be looked at within the context of the 9.5-hectare Moire Road development in Massey—which was Ministry of Education land—because, in fact, the justification for that land not being right of first refusal land was essentially that it was to be used for State housing purposes, as I have quoted above. So the intention was to sell it as residential - mixed housing urban to Fletcher’s, and when Ngāti Whātua heard about that, they decided, along with Waikato-Tainui, to take the Crown to court.

What resulted from that has been incredibly interesting. A couple of weeks ago, Ngāti Whātua went to the Court of Appeal, because originally they had gone to the High Court, which decided it was not going to hear the case. So the case in the Court of Appeal is really about clarifying overlapping iwi boundary issues from Ngāti Whātua’s perspective. Those issues are really relevant if you look at lands that the Crown has in Tāmaki-makau-rau and at what it chooses to do with those lands, because under that 2014 collective settlement redress Act, the mana whenua of Tāmaki-makau-rau actually do have right of first refusal over all lands, except for those that are designated for social housing purposes. I am not sure what the Court of Appeal is going to find. Presumably, because the Crown is using this piece of land as a Treaty settlement, what the court is going to say is that this House, and ultimately Parliament, has jurisdiction—the court does not have jurisdiction, but the House does.

So we have struggled all along with this piece of legislation. From Ngāti Paoa’s perspective, this is Treaty settlement legislation, but when you look at the regulatory impact statement prepared by the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment, it is really clear that this proposed legislation remains outside Treaty settlement policy, and therein lies all the conflicts in what the Crown has said to justify this piece of legislation.

In fact, in justifying this as Treaty settlement legislation, as I pointed out before, it has managed to circumvent what would have been an Auckland Council process of consulting with the people of Point England. Who was consulted? Actually, from the information that I have gathered, it was Auckland Council under Mayor Brown, who is no longer the mayor; it was the previous chair of the Maungakiekie-Tāmaki Local Board; and it was the Tāmaki Redevelopment Co. But because this was going to be used for a Treaty settlement, the council did not want to breach confidentiality, and it actually chose not to do what it should have done, which was engage and consult with the community. So we are here totally by design, and totally by the design of the Government.

We do have a problem with the process. We do not have a problem with Ngāti Paoa at all. Actually, I do believe that in 2015, Ngāti Paoa came up with this idea themselves, because they knew that the Government had identified 500 hectares of land across Tāmaki-makau-rau. They saw what had happened at the Moire Road development in Massey, which, by the way, is now a joint venture between Fletcher’s and Ngāti Whātua—Ngāti Whātua Ōrākei Whai Rawa Ltd. Ngāti Paoa said “There is an opportunity for us here and we are going to take it.”, and the Crown has decided that it will use this land for the Ngāti Paoa Treaty settlement. But that is why I believe my Supplementary Order Paper is vital, because what this will mean is that only Ngāti Paoa can get this piece of whenua as part of their commercial redress for their Treaty settlement. Without this, the Minister for Building and Construction can do what he did in the Moire Road development and actually put it out for tender and give it to somebody else acting as a third party—Fletcher’s. I know there are three preferred providers, but Fletcher’s is the one that has been mentioned by the local community.

This bill is now about some form of reconciliation. Do I think Treaty settlements have a special place in the Parliament and in the history of our country? I do, actually—it is part of our truth and reconciliation process. But the manner in which this bill has been progressed through the House has actually hugely compromised that process because of what the Crown has done deliberately by not ensuring that Ngāti Paoa have taken the public with them.

I am very supportive of Treaty settlements that will enable our mana whenua to create a capital base for us to be independent, and I know that the housing that Ngāti Paoa will build on that property actually is going to house some of the whānau in State houses that are part of the Tāmaki development. They are interlinked. There is a relationship between the housing development that Ngāti Paoa will lead and the Tāmaki development, because Tāmaki needs to move people from State houses into this development to then develop those lands. That is a 7,500-house development and 2,500 of those houses are State houses, so the only positive from my perspective is that the people who are living in those State houses are going to have an opportunity to actually remain in the community that they have called home. So if there is one positive that I want to highlight, it is actually that. But, other than that, I know that for a lot of people who live in that community this has been incredibly stressful and distressing.

We have put everything on Ngāti Paoa to try to address the lack of process through this bill. We have asked them to go and talk to the community, and, actually, when we had the Minister for Treaty of Waitangi Negotiations before the Māori Affairs Committee a couple of weeks ago, I asked him what is his responsibility. What is the responsibility of the Office of Treaty Settlements to do some of the work that Ngāti Paoa has had to do, because they are not the ones whom people should be angry with. The only people to be angry with in this process are Nick Smith, the National Government, the National caucus, and their coalition partners, who have allowed this situation to occur.

So I implore my colleagues across the House. I know New Zealand First has said it will not support the Supplementary Order Paper, but I am hoping the Government will. It is a sign of goodwill. I think that would also allay some of the fears that the community has that this could be developed by somebody else. I do think that the community will enjoy working with Ngāti Paoa, who will build a marae and will continue to have a relationship with that community beyond the development of these houses. Kia ora.

BARRY COATES (Green): I rise to address clause 6 in Part 2, and particularly Supplementary Order Paper 321 submitted by the Minister, the Hon Nick Smith. Supplementary Order Paper 321 prescribes the form of development that should take place on this land. It says there should be no cows or grazing. It says that after 6 months there should be at least 5.3 hectares of sports fields. It says that then there should be no less than 8.4 hectares of sports fields. What gives the Minister the right to dictate these precise terms for the use of land and override the democratic process and the interests of others? This is, from our perspective, an example of high-handed dictatorship by the Minister on the use of this hugely important land.

I echo my colleague’s interventions in talking about how important this land is. It is vital for a just Treaty settlement for Ngāti Paoa, and we respect that. But it is also vital land for the local community and open space in an area that is increasingly going to become short of open space. It is important ecological habitat for two endangered species.

My concern is about having those considerations overridden by the Minister dictating to Ngāti Paoa about having to use their land for particular purposes—for housing and other purposes—and dictating to the local community and to Auckland Council. As we have heard earlier in the debate, the Mayor of Auckland has been forced to write in strong terms to the Minister. This is vintage work from the Minister Dr Nick Smith. It is, in short, a mess. It is another example of the Government using legislation to tell mana whenua, local people, and the Auckland Council what to do. But we are not North Korea, and the Minister is not Kim Jong-un. We oppose this overriding of democracy.

I support Supplementary Order Paper 317 put forward by Eugenie Sage. This would ensure there are basic consultation processes that are applied by using the resource consent process. That would bring some considerations of consultation and would guard against some of the haphazard and dictatorial methods that have been applied to this bill so far.

This bill has pitched mana whenua against the environment and against local people. This should not be the case. We should be able to work out a satisfactory arrangement for the benefit of all. This is unique open space. It is habitat for the northern dotterel and shore plover. It is Treaty settlement legislation by another name. But it is bad legislation. We support Ngāti Paoa in reclaiming a small part of their land as redress for their land having been stolen. But we also support open land for conservation, and we support maintaining the habitat and protecting two endangered species. This bill is a mess. It has created division where there should be none. It is bad legislation, and we should rightfully be concerned as a House when legislation like this gets forced through by the Government. Thank you.

MEKA WHAITIRI (Labour—Ikaroa-Rāwhiti): Tēnā koe, Mr Chair. Thank you very much for this opportunity to make a contribution in this debate on Part 2. I would like to make some opening comments around clause 6, and I want to acknowledge the submitters who appeared in front of the Local Government and Environment Committee. They raised some important issues that I would like to acknowledge in this Committee tonight. Of course, the key issue that many submitters shared in front of the select committee was the loss of open space and green space. We had 132 submissions received on the bill, and 84 of those submitters raised serious concerns around the loss of open space. Of course, the bill facilitating the rezoning of 11.69 hectares of the reserves into development land was clearly, for those submitters who appeared, of grave concern. I want to acknowledge those who took the time to come and share their concerns around the loss of space.

Then I want to talk briefly on the second issue. A critical issue that was raised was the impact on the bird habitat. I want to acknowledge our Green colleagues here but also those who took the time, again, to appear in front of the select committee and raise the concern about the impact that this, if this legislation goes through, will have on the life of our native birds that inhabit that area.

Brett Hudson: What about the houses?

MEKA WHAITIRI: For the member who is calling out on the other side of the Chamber, it is important that we acknowledge submitters who take their time to come in front of our select committee, because it is part of our democratic process in this country, so I do not waver because of that member’s interjection from acknowledging those who came. Of course, another key issue is the loss of sports fields, and many, again, came in front of the select committee and raised that it would impact on them. And, of course, the other key issue was the precedent and the process that we are about to undertake with this bill going forward.

But I want to acknowledge and draw the Committee’s attention to clause 7. There has been a lot of talk in this House about this being a Ngāti Paoa Treaty settlement enabling bill. Nick Smith would want us to believe that. The Māori Party has attacked the Labour Māori MPs—particularly my colleagues—and said that this is a Treaty bill we are opposing, but I only have to look at this bill. I look at this bill from page 1—a very small bill—and do I see Ngāti Paoa’s name in this bill? Does anybody see Ngāti Paoa’s name in this bill? No. It is not there, and the only iwi referenced in this bill is in clause 7, under “Computer freehold registers”. There you go. Under clause 7(3)(c) we are talking about “a memorial under section 148”, and as far as this bill goes, the first right of refusal on the development land does not go to Ngāti Paoa. It does not go to Ngāti Paoa; it goes to the Ngā Mana Whenua o Tāmaki Makaurau Collective group as part of that Treaty settlement, Ngā Mana Whenua o Tāmaki Makaurau Collective Redress Act.

We have been advised in the select committee that there was a letter between the Minister for Treaty of Waitangi Negotiations and Ngāti Paoa saying that this enabling bill will go to meet some of their commercial dreams, but the issue is whether we have got an agreement between the Ngā Mana Whenua o Tāmaki Makaurau Collective group and Ngāti Paoa, because that is what the bill says has the right of first refusal over this development land. Maybe the Minister in the chair could get up and say that there is a letter or an agreement between Ngā Mana Whenua o Tāmaki Makaurau Collective and Ngāti Paoa. If he can get up and say that, then that may give some assurances to the Committee that this development land is actually going to end up in Ngāti Paoa’s hands, because as the bill in front of us is written, there is no mention of Ngāti Paoa.

I would like the Minister to get up and take a call on what guarantees there are, because the entity that receives the right of first refusal under the development land, and then—further on in clause 4—for the remaining reserve land, is not Ngāti Paoa. The question I have is why we have not got Ngāti Paoa in this bill. If it is a Treaty bill, or if it is an enabling bill for Ngāti Paoa to complete its Treaty settlement, then I would like to know from this Minister in the chair—

Hon SCOTT SIMPSON (Minister of Statistics): I have been sitting listening carefully to contributions from members on the other side of the Chamber, and I have to say that the debate has been more measured than I perhaps thought it would be earlier on. I particularly want to comment on several of the contributions from Green Party members, who I think—particularly, Catherine Delahunty made a very good historical analysis of the dilemmas and situations that we find ourselves in. I am not one who normally agrees with much of what Catherine Delahunty has to say, but I thought her contribution in this debate was actually very thoughtful and useful.

Members have made a number of points in various speeches about ownership of the land, and clearly some of them have not even read the second paragraph in the explanatory note, which makes it very clear that the development land is Crown-owned. Minister Smith, in a contribution in this debate earlier this afternoon, made it very clear that this is land that has been funded and purchased by taxpayers, and, as such, is entirely appropriately available for housing, for Treaty settlement issues, and for the purposes of this bill.

What I have found particularly unusual is that not too many months ago, in this very House, Labour members supported the Riccarton Racecourse legislation—which was a reserve piece of land—for exactly the same types of purposes as are being explored by this piece of legislation, and now, on this piece of legislation, they simply do not. What I am keen to know is what has changed. What is it in amongst the Labour Party that has changed from its support for the Riccarton Racecourse legislation that it now finds itself unable to support this legislation, which seeks to achieve very similar objectives and goals?

Phil Twyford, in his contribution, made the point that Labour actually has no beef with Ngāti Paoa, but then he went on to say that it was important that Governments govern in the interests of all New Zealanders, which is exactly what this bill seeks to achieve—not for any other reason than that. Ngāti Paoa came to Minister Nick Smith seeking this opportunity, and they did not actually want another piece of land. So it is arrogant, I think, of Labour members to assume that they know best what Ngāti Paoa want and that they themselves should be making decisions about Ngāti Paoa’s aspirations for this piece of land. This is a historic situation where, for the first time in this Parliament, Labour will not be supporting what is, effectively, a Treaty situation.

I want to talk to the Minister’s Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) 321, where the Minister has actually gone to some considerable lengths to listen to the submitters who submitted in the very good and thorough select committee process. His SOP is aimed and directed exactly at addressing many of the issues that were raised by those submitters. So there will be, as a result of the Minister’s SOP, a guarantee that Auckland City will cease grazing. The SOP from the Minister makes sure that that will occur.

The second thing that the Minister’s SOP seeks to achieve is that it requires that the area of playing fields be retained. That is exactly what submitters wanted. The Minister’s SOP gives an absolute assurance that 8.4 hectares of playing fields will be retained, and it provides certainty for that community.

This bill has had the total support of Ngāti Paoa, and I think that some members across the Chamber seem to have forgotten that. There were a number of contributions from members. Peeni Henare, for instance, asked about the right not to object. Well, this bill has been part of a very full, appropriate, and normal select committee process. There were hearings held in Auckland, there have been submissions that have been available, and it was well submitted on by members of the public. So it seems that Labour has been happy to rely on the same process on some pieces of legislation but not on others, and it is this selective picking of sometimes supporting an open and full select committee process and sometimes not that allows it to be, I think, somewhat conflicted in this kind of legislation.

Denis O’Rourke from New Zealand First made a very typical New Zealand First kind of speech and contribution to this debate. I do not think that it added anything to the debate at all. He spoke about the conservation values, but, on the other hand, he would much prefer to have cows grazing on this piece of land—and so too, it seems, would members of the Labour Party. He said that he wanted to support the community, so I guess what that actually means is that, really deep down, New Zealand First does want to support this bill.

Eugenie Sage made a point about what guarantee there was that there would be a notified consent process. Well, that is a matter that Auckland Council will address. I cannot speak on behalf of Auckland Council, but I do think that it probably will take it on board. I understand that the mayor has written a letter to the Minister Nick Smith, and Auckland Council will, I am sure, take on board the issues raised by Eugenie Sage. So the Minister has, I think, addressed most of the issues that have been raised by submitters in his very good SOP.

Michael Wood gave an interesting contribution, because here is a relatively new member to this House, who barnstormed his way through the Mt Roskill by-election saying that “housing, housing, housing” was the most important issue. Now, suddenly, he comes to the Parliament and he finds that—under the whip of the Labour caucus, actually—suddenly housing is not the important issue for Auckland after all. Housing is not the issue that he came to Parliament to support, and suddenly now he wants to support cows rather than houses.

So I think that as we have heard from a number of speakers in the debate, Louisa Wall has been the one who has most coherently and articulately really summed up the conflicted and difficult spot that the Labour Party finds itself in. Louisa Wall has really tried to find as much justification as the Labour Party could for not supporting this bill, and she acknowledged that she found it difficult and that it was a difficult situation for the Labour Party to struggle with this piece of legislation. I think that that just typifies the internal wrangles and difficult philosophical positions that the Labour Party finds itself in.

I have been interested in listening to these speeches, and I guess we will listen to a few more yet to go.

PHIL TWYFORD (Labour—Te Atatū): I am not going to waste any time in this call responding to that mumbling mediocrity from the former chair of the Local Government and Environment Committee Scott Simpson. I want to directly address the claim that Nick Smith has made that this bill represents somehow an attempt to address Auckland’s housing crisis. This is the Minister who has spectacularly failed to build any houses. Two years ago he promised 500 hectares of Crown land would be used—

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Keep it focused on this bill, though.

PHIL TWYFORD: —and 10,000 houses, and I think that promise he made is somehow some kind of inspiration for this bill, which would take 11 hectares of prized public parkland and turn it over into housing development. This is the Minister who promised 39,000 houses in his special housing areas and has seen, 3 years later, only 2,000 houses built. This is the Government that has presided over a shortfall of 40,000 houses in Auckland, but it has the gall to come to this House and pretend that taking public parkland to build 300 houses is some kind of credible solution to the housing crisis. Well, it is not.

It is not a solution, and it is not a solution for a community that is about to get 20,000 extra people living in it thanks to the intensification that is going to be taking place as part of the Tāmaki regeneration—an extra 20,000 people. Where are the kids going to play in that community when Nick Smith has sold off one-third of one of the most precious expanses of open waterfront urban parkland in the middle of a city that is going to get an extra million people in the next generation? Many of those people will be living in high- and medium-density housing. They need open spaces. This is absolute—it is the height of stupidity, of short-sighted, narrow vision, from the Minister from Nelson who thinks it is OK to tell Aucklanders that houses should be built on their parkland.

This is not a credible response to the Auckland housing crisis that has built up on this Government’s watch. This is Nick Smith thinking that he is being clever. He thinks that he is making a point. He thinks that he is making a point—that Michael Wood and I call for houses to be built in Auckland, and yet we oppose his madcap scheme to turn precious parkland into housing. He thinks that is clever and that he is making some kind of political point. It is not; it is just sheer stupidity.

One of the things that really concerns me about this bill is that we need lots of urban redevelopment in Auckland. We need investment in communities like Glen Innes (GI) and Tāmaki. We need more warm, dry homes. We need better parks and open spaces. We need a better-built environment for communities like GI that, frankly, have been neglected. They have suffered from under-investment in their houses, their parks, their town centre, and their transport infrastructure. But this bill is not doing them any favour. In fact, it is the historical neglect of GI that means that its parkland has not been properly looked after for decades, but that is no excuse to take it away. That is not a reason to take away its parkland, because this generation needs that parkland and future generations need that parkland. It is so incredibly short-sighted.

But when the Government does what it is doing with this bill—when it rides roughshod over local communities; when it takes away parkland but gives nothing in return—all that does is create cynicism and resentment. It divides the community. It creates cynicism and resentment against a Government that will not invest in the community; it just takes things away. We need more good quality redevelopment in Auckland. The danger with a bill like this is that it takes away the public’s willingness to go along with redevelopment. We need development by a Government that will take the community with it and that will give it more than it takes away, but that is the opposite of what this Government is doing. It is damaging the social licence for Government to do urban renewal and urban development, and that is a dangerous thing.

BARBARA KURIGER (Junior Whip—National): I move, That the question be now put.

PEENI HENARE (Labour—Tāmaki Makaurau): Thank you for this opportunity. I want to draw the Committee’s attention to Part 2, clause 9, “Exercise of powers under Housing Act 1955”. I first turn to the submission made by Te Matapihi, the Māori housing network established under Te Puni Kōkiri. Its submission says, and I agree with this wholeheartedly: “It is our position that iwi-led, non-market approach to regeneration with strong Government support”—with strong Government support—“holds the key to solving Auckland’s housing crisis.”

I turn to clause 9, “Exercise of powers under Housing Act 1955”, and it says: “… unless the Housing Act Minister has consulted the following bodies about the proposed development:”. It lists the Auckland Council, which makes sense to me—the Tāmaki Redevelopment Co. Ltd—hmm, yeah, I guess that makes sense to me—and “the Maungakiekie-Tāmaki Local Board established under section 10 of the Local Government (Auckland Council) Act 2009.” Where in there is the strong support from this Government for Ngāti Paoa, for the mana whenua o Tāmaki-makau-rau?

If the Government was serious about allowing iwi-led developments to ease the housing crisis in Tāmaki-makau-rau, it would have in that particular clause Ngāti Paoa. It would also have in that clause Ngāti Whātua. It would also have in that clause ngā mana whenua o Tāmaki-makau-rau, allowing a precedent that forces this Government—which supposedly supports these initiatives by iwi to solve the housing matters in Tāmaki-makau-rau—to work with them. But it is not doing that in this particular bill.

In fact, just as I mentioned earlier the limited scope by the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment in the consultation on this bill, this particular clause, clause 9, will continue that—it will continue that—by making sure that only the Minister has consulted the following bodies: the Auckland Council, the Tāmaki Redevelopment Co. Ltd, and the Maungakiekie-Tāmaki Local Board.

Meka Whaitiri: Where’s the iwi?

PEENI HENARE: Where are the iwi in that conversation? Where is this supposed support from this Government to allow the iwi, to allow ngā mana whenua o Tāmaki-makau-rau, to actually have a meaningful part and leadership to play in solving the housing crisis in Tāmaki-makau-rau?

I want to repeat that submission from Te Matapihi: “It is our position that iwi-led, non-market approach to regeneration with strong Government support holds the key to solving Auckland’s housing crisis.” I agree with that 100 percent. If that is the case, I would ask the Minister in the chair whether he could get up and explain, then, after his contribution previously, why Ngāti Paoa and why ngā mana whenua o Tāmaki-makau-rau are not clearly a party that the Minister, under their powers, must consult with—must consult with. The others are easy to understand, but if this Government wants to try to tell us that it is supporting wholeheartedly the iwi engagement in solving and contributing solutions to the housing crisis, can the Minister please rise to his feet and tell us why they are not included in clause 9. I think that is a pretty fair question.

Mr Hudson seems to be in full support of Ngāti Paoa. I would encourage him to make a contribution too, and answer why they are not included in this, to make sure that the Minister’s powers cannot override them—to make sure that the Minister must consult with mana whenua, and, in this particular instance, Ngāti Paoa. I will leave that question for the Minister to consider.

BRETT HUDSON (National): I move, That the question be now put.

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): I am going to hear from Meka Whaitiri, because she is on the select committee.

MEKA WHAITIRI (Labour—Ikaroa-Rāwhiti): Because I am a member of the Local Government and Environment Committee, I do want to touch on the same line I was saying in my previous contribution, and that is the commitment to this bill, under Part 2, to Ngāti Paoa. I just want to draw the Committee’s attention to the report tabled in the House by the Local Government and Environment Committee, which obviously received not only the submissions but considered the bill and reported back to the House. I do want to acknowledge the members on the select committee, particularly as we try to be constructive members on that select committee in terms of getting ourselves really clear on where Ngāti Paoa’s Treaty settlement sat with this particular bill. I do want to draw the Committee’s attention to the fact that we did ask officials, to ensure that we understood Ngāti Paoa’s Treaty settlement per se, and how it related to this bill, because we knew from what submitters were saying, and what the Minister was saying in his first address, that this was an enabling bill for Ngāti Paoa’s Treaty settlement.

What I want the Committee to know is that despite members asking for copies of Ngāti Paoa’s Treaty settlement so that we could answer some of the questions, and the confusions we have had in this Committee in tonight’s debate, we were unable to get a copy. We were told it was outside the brief or scope of this particular bill. We wanted to investigate all possible options that the Crown, in the negotiation of Ngāti Paoa’s Treaty settlement—that all options around commercial redress, particularly around land return, were actually addressed. We were unable, as select committee members, to receive a copy, despite asking through, obviously, our officials, the Office of Treaty Settlements whether we could please have a copy. The upshot is that we were left—well, I can speak for myself as a member of the select committee—extremely confused as to whether this bill actually had a relation to Ngāti Paoa’s Treaty settlement, and we had to trust that it did. But I want the Committee to know that there were many members asking for copies of it.

In that vein, we were asking whether other land was considered as part of Ngāti Paoa’s Treaty settlement. It is an important point to make, because we are not just getting up here and debating to be difficult for difficulty’s sake. There are some members in here who are mandated and we support Ngāti Paoa’s Treaty settlement, and we want to make sure that all avenues are explored to ensure we have a full and final settlement when it comes to that point.

Coming back to this bill under Part 2, and particularly the work of the select committee, all I want to inform the Committee of is that I felt that I was not fully equipped because we were not given the information we sought to ensure that this bill actually formed a part of Ngāti Paoa’s Treaty settlement. That was denied to select committee members, and I thought it was an important piece of work that we should have had in front of us to then come to this Committee fully informed with how this fitted in with Ngāti Paoa’s Treaty settlement.

So my statement stands—Ngāti Paoa is not included in this bill. I have yet to hear from the Minister in the chair, Scott Simpson, to say that I am wrong. I have yet to hear. I have asked the Minister, because the right of first refusal in Part 2, clause 7, does not reflect Ngāti Paoa; it reflects the collective. So I have yet to have an answer. I have come and I have asked of the Minister in the chair whether he would please take a call to make it really clear for all members in the Committee that Ngāti Paoa has an agreement with the collective so that the right of first refusal over both the development lands in clause 7 and the remaining reserve lands in clause 7 actually goes to Ngāti Paoa. That is not clear in this bill.

PHIL TWYFORD (Labour—Te Atatū): I want to make some comments in my final contribution on this part, on the part of the bill that revokes the Reserves Act. In Part 2, it is clause 6(1)(b) that, basically, revokes the reserve status of the land under the Reserves Act. I make the point that in cutting across the Reserves Act, what this bill does is, basically, circumvent an established democratic process that is written into the legislation that is there precisely for the purpose of dealing with a situation where the Government wants to repurpose some reserve land in the way that the Government has the intent of here. The point I want to make is that it is unnecessary—the bill is unnecessary—given that that democratic process already exists. By cutting across those rights that are enshrined in our legal system, it undermines the rule of law and confidence in the legal and the planning system, and that is very unfortunate.

So what is the existing statutory process? Well, it exists under the Reserves Act 1977. All it requires is for the Minister to undertake consultation with the administering body—that would be Auckland Council—and the public before issuing a Gazette notice advising that the reserve status will be revoked. Affected parties have the right to object to the revocation, and decisions of the Minister may be judicially reviewed. Well, if the Government is so sure of itself that this is a good thing to do with this particular bit of land, if it is so convinced that the public policy purposes stack up, and if it is so convinced that it is going to be socially and environmentally the right thing to do for the community, then why will the Government not subject this proposal to the normal statutory process that exists under the law?

The next thing I want to do is talk about the cutting across of the Resource Management Act (RMA) in this proposal, and the provision in the bill that essentially changes the zoning. From the commencement date it changes the zoning from public open space to mixed urban housing—it just cuts right through the provisions of the RMA. So what is the existing process to do that? Well, what would happen normally is that a developer would request that the Auckland Council makes a plan change under Part 2 of schedule 1 of the RMA, and that plan change would have to consider a number of factors: the effects on the neighbourhood and the wider community; the physical effects on the locality, including the landscape and visual effects; the effects on the ecosystems; the effects on natural and physical resources; and a description of the mitigation measures to prevent or reduce those effects. Would you not think that was a good thing? Would you not think that all of those factors, which are enshrined in the RMA and the established democratic processes for a proposal of this sort, were good things to be considered? I would.

I want to quote from a submission to the Local Government and Environment Committee by Jen Vella, who is a resident of Point England. She lives there with her family. She is a resource management lawyer with over 15 years’ experience. She told the select committee that there are existing processes available to achieve all of these outcomes. They would ensure a robust assessment of this proposal, but the bill and the select committee process have done none of those things. There was no robust consideration of the evidence on all of those factors that I have just set out. She makes the point that overriding the normal, established processes to achieve the Government’s objectives in this case undermines the rule of law and undermines public confidence in the Resource Management Act.

Finally, in this contribution, I want to acknowledge Shaun Lee, who made a number of submissions to the select committee on the environmental consequences and the effect of this bill on the breeding habitat of one of New Zealand’s most endangered species, the northern New Zealand dotterel. There are only 2,000-odd of these birds left on the planet, and, actually, about 20-something of these birds live and nest on the land at Point England. The development that this bill will enable will destroy 50 percent of their breeding habitat. There has been no consideration of the environmental consequences of this bill.

BARBARA KURIGER (Junior Whip—National): I move, That the question be now put.

Motion agreed to.

The question was put that the amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 321 in the name of the Hon Dr Nick Smith to Part 2 be agreed to.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendments 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.

Amendments agreed to.

The question was put that the amendment set out on Supplementary Order Paper 320 in the name of Louisa Wall to clause 7 be agreed to.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.

Ayes 45

New Zealand Labour 31; Green Party 14.

Noes 74

New Zealand National 58; New Zealand First 12; Māori Party 2; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.

Amendment not agreed to.

The question was put that the amendment set out on Supplementary Order Paper 317 in the name of Eugenie Sage to insert new clause 8A be agreed to.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.

Ayes 57

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

Noes 62

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

Amendment not agreed to.

The result corrected after originally being announced as Ayes 45, Noes 74.

The question was put that the amendment set out on Supplementary Order Paper 318 in the name of Eugenie Sage to insert new clause 10 be agreed to.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.

Ayes 45

New Zealand Labour 31; Green Party 14.

Noes 74

New Zealand National 58; New Zealand First 12; Māori Party 2; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.

Amendment not agreed to.

A party vote was called for on the question, That Part 2 as amended be agreed to.

Ayes 62

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

Noes 43

New Zealand Labour 31; New Zealand First 12.

Abstentions 14

Green Party 14.

Part 2 as amended agreed to.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the schedule be agreed to.

Ayes 62

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

Noes 43

New Zealand Labour 31; New Zealand First 12.

Abstentions 14

Green Party 14.

Schedule agreed to.

House resumed.

Progress reported.

Report adopted.

The House adjourned at 9.57 p.m.