Wednesday, 16 August 2017

WEDNESDAY, 16 AUGUST 2017

WEDNESDAY, 16 AUGUST 2017

Mr Speaker took the Chair at 2 p.m.

Prayers.

Oral Questions

Questions to Ministers

Climate Change—Economic Impact

1. JAMES SHAW (Leader—Green) to the Prime Minister: Does he stand by all his policies?

Rt Hon BILL ENGLISH (Prime Minister): Yes; in particular, we maintain our policy that we would not introduce a series of new taxes—a water tax, a capital gains tax, and higher income taxes. We also stand by our policy that if we are going to talk about tax, we would not hide the details or pretend we are going to use working groups to do the dirty work for us.

James Shaw: Is it responsible economic management to leave the country with a bill of a billion dollars a year for the next 10 years, to pay other countries to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions, so that we do not have to?

Rt Hon BILL ENGLISH: The costs of the emissions trading system are something that I thought the member would understand because the Greens helped to invent the emissions trading system, and I compliment them on it because it is the most comprehensive emissions trading system in the world. The beauty of it is that it does recognise the fact that global warming is a global problem, and it is therefore set up in a way that allows it to link to international markets. He describes that as paying other people to reduce their emissions. Well, that is exactly what the Greens intended by setting it up.

James Shaw: Can he confirm that the cost of big floods in Wellington, Whanganui, Dunedin, Northland, and Edgecumbe, the Port Hills fires, and the 2013 nationwide drought all add up to at least $1.45 billion?

Rt Hon BILL ENGLISH: They certainly do add up. The Government has assisted in paying the bills, and so have others. Of course, in New Zealand we have the benefit of pretty intensive coverage of insurance, which enables many people to manage their own costs of the impact of those disasters.

James Shaw: Given that the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research has said that these floods and fires and droughts are now twice as likely to happen as a result of climate change, how has he factored that into his Government’s economic programme?

Rt Hon BILL ENGLISH: In the first case, there is a climate change policy where we are signed up to the Paris Agreement. Secondly, as a result of a number of those natural disasters back in 2010-11 and 2012, there has been intensive work on how we can make sure that local government and central government understand where the risks fall, that they can get the right kind of insurance for them, and that the risks are understood and managed, particularly through the resource management and planning processes. In fact, we have got a strong focus on resilience—probably better than most developed countries.

James Shaw: Speaking of the resilience of other countries, how many of the 179,000 people living in Kiribati, the Marshall Islands, Nauru, and Tuvalu will he take in when sea-level rise renders those countries uninhabitable?

Rt Hon BILL ENGLISH: All that has yet to be seen. I mean, if there was a genuine humanitarian crisis then of course we would perform our role as a country in the Pacific. I have to say that in the discussions I have had with people connected to the challenges in those countries, what they want is (1) to be able to stay where they live, where they come from, and (2) sensible aid from other countries to assist them with issues like access to high-quality clean water and protection from rising sea levels.

James Shaw: Does he accept the 19 percent rise in net greenhouse gas emissions on his watch is a sign of his failure to shift our economy towards a carbon-neutral future?

Rt Hon BILL ENGLISH: We would certainly contest the numbers. I mean, the rate of increase in greenhouse gases was strongest through the period from 2000 to 2008, when the Labour Party was in there with the support of the Green Party. Since then, of course, we have had a growing economy and a growing population. These are signs of success, and we believe that with a stronger economy we can have growth and we can have higher environmental standards, unlike the member’s party, which just simply wants to stop the economy going anywhere so that it can slow it down to the standards he wants.

James Shaw: Is he concerned that some of the smartest long-term investors in the country yesterday pulled the plug on investing in fossil fuels while, at the same time, his Government continues to subsidise deep-sea oil exploration and to promote coalmines in national parks on conservation land?

Rt Hon BILL ENGLISH: Given that the Government announced its target for electric vehicles last week to have 25 percent of the fleet as electric vehicles, any investor, I would have thought, would see that as a signal that across the world the internal combustion engine is going to come under pressure and that investing in the production of it or its fuel represents a commercial risk. So I am pleased to see investment funds taking account of those risks, because the New Zealand Government is part of the risk to the fossil fuel and car industry.

Economy—Family Incomes Package, Tax Changes, and Government Surplus

2. JONATHAN YOUNG (National—New Plymouth) to the Minister of Finance: How is the Government ensuring New Zealanders share in the benefits of a growing economy?

Hon STEVEN JOYCE (Minister of Finance): New Zealanders benefit from a growing economy first of all through rising wages and job growth. Real after-tax wages have increased by 19 percent so far under this Government, and we now have more than 2.53 million people employed—that is a 17.6 percent increase from when we first took office. Budget 2017’s Family Incomes Package will also help low and middle income families in particular. As of 1 April next year, 1.3 million families will be better off by around $26 a week on average, through a combination of tax threshold changes, family tax credit increases, and additional support through the accommodation supplement, ensuring families benefit further from the benefits of growth.

Jonathan Young: How do the tax threshold changes in particular help New Zealand families?

Hon STEVEN JOYCE: The tax threshold changes in Budget 2017 are focused on the bottom two thresholds, and they mean that anyone earning over $22,000 a year gets an additional $11 per week, or, for those earning over $52,000 a year, they get $20 per week more. These changes will significantly help, in particular, low and middle income families who have been pushed into higher tax brackets because the thresholds have remained unchanged as incomes have risen. Some people may be ideologically opposed to these tax threshold changes, but 1.3 million families will be better off by $26 a week and, actually, 750,000 superannuitants will also benefit by $13 a week per couple.

David Seymour: What is the size of the forecast 4-year surplus after these tax changes take effect?

Hon STEVEN JOYCE: Well, I do not have that exact figure to hand for the member, but I can tell him that of that surplus, we are reinvesting all of it, actually, back into infrastructure over the next 4 years—including that I have allowed an additional $4 billion for currently unallocated matters that may come up over the next period of time. But it is a very big investment in infrastructure—$32.5 billion. It is like the country investing in its own growth, and it will bring great infrastructure for New Zealanders.

Jonathan Young: How is the Government able to afford the $2 billion Family Incomes Package?

Hon STEVEN JOYCE: By ensuring that the economy is growing, which allows us to not only invest in the Family Incomes Package but also make very large investments in public services and infrastructure. That is only possible because of the strong economic plan. Through that plan, businesses have the confidence to make investment—investment is up again—and hire more people. We are seeing the results of this with 181,000 new jobs created in just the last 2 years. What businesses do not need, of course, is uncertainty, whether it would be through a water tax, a fuel tax, or a capital gains tax.

Jonathan Young: How else is Budget 2107 helping Kiwis to get ahead?

Hon STEVEN JOYCE: A benefit of economic growth is that more Kiwis are choosing to stay home and make their futures in this country, rather than over in Australia or the UK. That, of course, means building more houses in our cities—residential construction is at record levels—and Budget 2017 helps that further with initiatives like the Housing Infrastructure Fund and the Crown Building Project, which together will facilitate the building of 94,000 new houses over the next 10 years. We recognise that the way to get more Kiwis into homeownership is to build more houses, which is why we are making these investments—and because we know a capital gains tax would not build a single extra house.

David Seymour: How can the Minister be Minister of Finance and not know that his own Treasury documents forecast a $21 billion surplus over the coming 4 years?

Hon STEVEN JOYCE: Because the member asked it as a supplementary question this afternoon and I did not have the figures, and I would not want to mislead him. But given the numbers are as they are, I would point out to him again that the reality of it is that that money is allocated towards infrastructure investment over the next 4 years.

David Seymour: Is the Minister saying that Treasury has it wrong when it counts infrastructure investment as part of the capital account and says that the Government has $21 billion in surplus over the next 4 years?

Hon STEVEN JOYCE: I have to explain this to the member. The operating surplus is operating expenditure before capital, and then capital is invested out of the operating surpluses. That is where that money has been allocated. Once the surplus is declared, it is then spent on capital expenditure. If the member would like to look at residual cash over the 4-year period, which is, effectively, the Government’s bank account, it is approximately neutral over those 4 years.

David Seymour: Why then, that being the case, was the Minister’s predecessor happy to claim a surplus even when the capital account was in deficit only a few years ago?

Hon STEVEN JOYCE: Well, an operating surplus is what it says on the tin: it is an operating surplus. That is what it is, and then after that you decide whether you pay down debt or you make capital investments, or whatever you would like to do with the money that you have made through the surplus. That is how it works.

David Seymour: Supplementary question. [Interruption]

Mr SPEAKER: Order! The member has a right to ask supplementary questions.

David Seymour: So given the Minister cannot have it both ways, can he confirm that in the operating account he has $21 billion over 4 years that he could deliver substantial tax cuts with, but he will not; if that is not true, why did he not know what the surplus was at the start of this series of questions?

Mr SPEAKER: There are two supplementary questions, and the Minister can address one.

Hon STEVEN JOYCE: For the member’s benefit, we are, of course, allocating $2 billion a year to the Family Incomes Package over the 4-year forecast period, which is just about $6.5 billion in net terms, given it starts 1 April next year. But, yes, we have taken the decision to invest the surplus that is in the books into infrastructure, for New Zealand’s future. We are a growing country, and we have taken the decision—the member is right; you could take a different decision. That is the decision we have taken.

Economy—Labour Productivity and Commentary

GRANT ROBERTSON (Labour—Wellington Central): My question is to the Minister of Finance: is Brian Fallow wrong when he says—[Interruption]

Mr SPEAKER: Order! I am just going to invite the member to start again with a little less interjection.

3. GRANT ROBERTSON (Labour—Wellington Central) to the Minister of Finance: Is Brian Fallow wrong when he says in reference to labour productivity, “zero growth over four years in what has to be foundation of any sustainable gains in living standards is not encouraging. Nor is it a record the Government can boast about”; if so, is the Treasury also wrong given they are the source of the labour productivity data?

Hon STEVEN JOYCE (Minister of Finance): As I explained to the member yesterday, since 2009 one measure of productivity, real GDP per capita, has grown 9 percent. Another measure, which is also the one used by the OECD, is GDP per hours worked, which has increased 9.6 percent since 2008. In terms of the last 4 years that Mr Fallow refers to, real GDP per capita, which I know has been the member’s preferred definition in the past of productivity, has, in fact, increased 4.2 percent. So if you look at that measure then Mr Fallow would be incorrect.

Grant Robertson: Does he accept Brian Fallow’s view that labour productivity is the foundation of how to create sustainable gains in living standards?

Hon STEVEN JOYCE: Over time that is correct. Labour productivity is measured a number of different ways, and if you measure it the way the member has chosen to in the past—GDP per capita—that has increased 4.2 percent. If you measure it as GDP per hours worked, it has increased 6.2 percent since 2009 and 2.4 percent since 2012.

Grant Robertson: Is it not true that what Brian Fallow, Bernard Doyle, and other commentators are telling him is that New Zealand is relying on population growth and people working longer hours to create economic growth rather than lifting the value of what we do, and that is why it is not sustainable?

Hon STEVEN JOYCE: No, Mr Robertson and his friends are wrong. The reality of it is that New Zealand’s productivity is growing faster than the UK, faster than the US, faster than Canada, faster than the EU, and, in fact, faster than the G7 and the OECD. That is what New Zealand’s productivity has been doing. It has also been growing faster in the last 8 years than in the 8 years prior to that. So for those two commentators who have chosen to be—let us face it—fairly glass half empty, they should look at the wider record of New Zealand’s productivity in respect of other OECD countries.

Grant Robertson: Further to that answer, can he confirm that since 2010, growth in New Zealand’s labour productivity has been slower than Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Spain, Sweden, and, indeed, the average for the euro area and the European Union?

Hon STEVEN JOYCE: Well, we could play this game all day, but I can tell him that in the 8 years that we have been in Government, which I think is a reasonable test of time in terms of productivity performance, if you look at the OECD figures of GDP per hour worked, we are growing faster than the UK, faster than the EU—which includes France, from memory—faster than the US, faster than Canada, faster than the G7, and faster than the OECD average. That is a reasonable performance, particularly when you compare it with the earlier period between 2001 to 2008, when we were behind most of those countries.

Grant Robertson: To assist the Minister in the House, I seek leave to table a data set gained from the OECD that shows that New Zealand’s growth in GDP per hour worked is lower than Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Spain, Sweden, and those other places.

Mr SPEAKER: Leave is sought to table that particular OECD information. Is there any objection? There is objection.

Grant Robertson: Why does he think that a number of economic commentators have seen the weak labour productivity of the last 4 years as something significant, and would it hurt him to admit, just for once, that maybe someone other than him is right?

Hon STEVEN JOYCE: There are any number of commentators, most of whom, in fact, actually say that the New Zealand economy has been performing better than most developed world economies over the last few years. That includes the OECD, that includes the IMF, that includes Moody’s, that includes Standard and Poor’s—both of which have a passing interest in the New Zealand economy, given that they rate the debt agencies and the banks—and a range of other commentators, including most of the banks and the Reserve Bank. I understand the member has worked very hard to find that Mr Fallows and JBWere’s Mr Doyle are a little bit glass half empty, which they have been traditionally, but talk to New Zealanders. There are 181,000 more jobs over the last 2 years, and also a growth in incomes that is double the rate of inflation over the period we have been in office.

Grant Robertson: After 9 years of a National Government, is it not time for him to admit that he has squandered an opportunity to deliver to New Zealanders a fair share in prosperity, and instead he is drifting along delivering stationary real wages, weak productivity, and rising wealth inequality?

Hon STEVEN JOYCE: This might be a slightly longer answer, given all the inaccuracies in the member’s question. So, firstly, real wages have grown at about double the rate of inflation in this country since 2008. I know it is not in your talking points, Mr Robertson, but it happens to be true. Productivity is also growing, and, in fact, it has actually been growing faster than the equivalent period under the previous Labour Government. I can say something else to the member, which is that if you voted for tax changes, then, actually, New Zealanders would be a further $26 a week per family better off on 1 April of next year, and I note that the Labour Party voted against those. Finally, if the member thinks that adding taxes on the productive economy is a way to improve productivity, he is sadly, sadly mistaken.

Justice System—Government Initiatives

4. MAUREEN PUGH (National) to the Minister of Justice: How has the Government’s justice agenda helped to hold offenders to account, reduce the number of victims of crime, reduce offending, and ensuring our laws are fit for purpose?

Hon AMY ADAMS (Minister of Justice): Our relentless focus on wanting New Zealanders to be safe in their homes, at work, and on the streets has seen us, over this term of Government, deliver initiatives like the introduction of public protection orders for high-risk criminals, enhancing the powers of judges to send some of our most serious young offenders to the adult court, improve protections for victims of crime through the victims code and better sharing of information in the justice system, and expanding the use of alcohol and drug treatment courts, rangatahi, and specialist courts to address offending. Through these and other initiatives, we have seen a decrease in total crime by 14 percent, a reduction in youth crime by 31 percent, and the number of offenders who go on to reoffend has dropped by 27 percent.

Maureen Pugh: What initiatives has the Minister undertaken to address family violence?

Hon AMY ADAMS: Better dealing with family violence is my top priority as justice Minister, and this has seen a wide range of initiatives over the term, including the launch and extension of the Integrated Safety Response pilot, which has helped over 28,000 vulnerable people to date; overhauling the legal framework through the Family and Whānau Violence Legislation Bill; rolling out the National Home Safety Service scheme across the country; better information sharing between police, courts, and victims to better support the safety of those at risk; and enabling police to video victim statements at the scene to reduce the trauma of court proceedings and improve the quality of evidence.

Maureen Pugh: How has legislative reform supported the Minister’s work programme over the past 3 years?

Hon AMY ADAMS: A significant legislative reform programme has seen 56 pieces of justice legislation passed over the last 3 years, including major reform in many areas. Some of these include passing the anti - money-laundering phase 2 legislation to strengthen and expand the existing anti - money-laundering regime; the Judicature Modernisation Bill, which was one of the largest law-making exercises ever undertaken by this Parliament; the Returning Offenders (Management and Information) Act, which allows agencies to appropriately deal with and reintegrate returning offenders; the Coroners Amendment Bill, to improve the coronial system; and the Organised Crime and Anti-corruption Legislation Bill to strengthen New Zealand’s response to organised crime at home and abroad. As well as this, we have introduced the Trusts Bill, the Courts Matters Bill, the historic homosexual convictions legislation, and, of course, the Family and Whānau Violence Legislation Bill, which we are looking forward to seeing progress during the next term of Parliament.

Andrew Little: What does she say to the 610 additional robbery victims in the year to June this year, the additional 1,286 assault victims, and the additional 5,720 victims of burglaries about her so-called successful strategies, and just how many more Kiwis is she prepared to see robbed, bashed, and burgled before she and her Government take the issue of rising street crime seriously?

Hon AMY ADAMS: What I would say is that this Government’s social investment programme is targeted exactly to reduce that pipeline of offending. This Government’s extreme focus through Police and other agencies on combating, following up, and arresting those who have committed assaults and burglary has led to more of them being held to account. And the policy announced by National, which we will introduce if re-elected, addresses exactly what that member is talking about, which is the refusal to accept that we continue to allow that hard core of serious young offenders to terrorise their community. This is the party that is prepared to do something about it. This is the party that will not sit back and let the status quo continue.

Housing Affordability—Ability for Renters to Buy and Dwelling Growth

5. PHIL TWYFORD (Labour—Te Atatū) to the Minister for Building and Construction: What percentage of renters are able to afford to buy a home, according to the latest Housing Affordability Measure Report?

Hon Dr NICK SMITH (Minister for Building and Construction): Twenty-three percent of renters in the latest Housing Affordability Measure have a residual income, after housing costs, over the national average. This 23 percent compares with 22 percent in the previous report and, actually, 18 percent at the time of September 2008, when Labour was last in Government—i.e., 5 percent more renters today can afford to buy their home than when National came to office. I would also remind the member that this figure out today is for March 2016, when house prices were growing at 15 percent per year, and 18 months later house prices are now flat.

Phil Twyford: Can he confirm that since he became housing Minister, the percentage of first-home buyers in Auckland spending more than 30 percent of their income on housing has gone up by 29 percent?

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: No, and that is about as accurate as the member’s claims on Chinese-sounding names, for which his leader has now apologised. And we are all waiting for the member to apologise.

Phil Twyford: Does he think that $220 a week is enough for a family to live on given that the Housing Affordability Measure shows that since he became housing Minister there has been an increase of one-third in the number of potential first-home buyers in Auckland who would have only $220 left per week after their mortgage payments?

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: I can confirm that since I have been the Minister for Building and Construction, the number of houses being built in Auckland has more than doubled. It has gone, nationally, from 14,000 to over 30,000 homes per year. I think every member in this House knows that the core of the solution to our housing challenges is getting more houses built, and that is exactly what we are doing.

Alastair Scott: What measures has the Government taken that would substantially improve housing affordability, as measured by the experimental index?

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: In Budget 2017 the Government announced the largest increases ever in the accommodation supplement, with 136,000 households receiving an average of $36 a week, and with some households receiving an extra $145 a week. It is hard to take the member opposite’s criticism seriously when his party voted against those increases, which will actually substantially improve housing affordability for over 100,000 households.

Phil Twyford: Does he agree with Fletcher Building, which said today that, in the last year, 5,000 fewer houses have been built in Auckland than are needed to keep up with population demand, and does that constitute a building “boom”?

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: I woke up this morning to hear reports that there was a shortage of builders, of plumbers, and of electricians, and that there was a shortage of cranes and of concrete trucks. That is because the building industry is in an all-time boom, and in the pipeline are more than 100,000 homes over the next 3 years—the biggest building boom in New Zealand history.

Phil Twyford: Can he confirm that only a few hundred affordable homes were built in Auckland last year; if not, what is the official number of affordable homes built in Auckland last year?

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: I can confirm that more homes were built in Auckland in the last year than there have been for more than a decade, and that there is a record pipeline of new homes coming on stream. I can also confirm that, in the last year, Auckland house price inflation was minus 1 percent, the lowest in 10 years, showing that with the growth in supply, housing affordability issues are being addressed.

Phil Twyford: Does he realise just how ridiculous it is that he is still blaming Helen Clark’s Government when, after 9 years in office, 77 percent of potential first-home buyers cannot afford to buy and 60 percent of renters cannot afford to rent without going into financial hardship?

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: The member’s numbers are garbage. If he listened to what Statistics New Zealand said on this index released today, he would know that they have got about as much credibility as the fiasco that embarrassed his own party over Chinese-sounding names.

Regional Economic Development—Infrastructure

6. RON MARK (Deputy Leader—NZ First) to the Minister for Economic Development: Does he believe that infrastructure is vital for regional New Zealand’s economic development?

Hon SIMON BRIDGES (Minister for Economic Development): Yes, and this Government is making particularly significant investments in the areas of transport, communications, and tourism infrastructure.

Ron Mark: If infrastructure is vital for regional economic development, then where are the 10 bridges he promised in Northland over 2 years ago?

Hon SIMON BRIDGES: This is so predictable from that member. They are being built. If he goes to Matakohe he will see the very strong progress on those two bridges, and the other ones are in the process of consent and design. It was always a 6-year commitment that we made, and we are making really good progress in Northland on those projects and many others.

Ron Mark: When he announced the upgrade of 10 Northland bridges at a cost of $69 million, did he anticipate spending over $62 million 2 years later with not a single bridge being built; or will he just admit that his by-election bribe was poorly planned?

Hon SIMON BRIDGES: What that question makes quite clear is that the member knows full well that we are making progress, because he has just talked about the $62 million of investment that we are doing. If he wants to go to Matakohe, he will see the very significant works that are going on there and the progress that we are making.

Ron Mark: Does he agree with the following statement by a National Party candidate: “We have a number of challenges facing us, but, in my view, core infrastructure needs additional investment.”—sic—“Lack of infrastructure may have limited our economic development, and we can do better.”; if not, why not?

Mr SPEAKER: There are two questions there. The Minister can address one.

Hon SIMON BRIDGES: I do not know where that comment has come from, but of course we could always make more progress. That is why we continue every year to invest more, why over the last few years we have invested more in core infrastructure than any Government in history—

Hon Members: In Auckland.

Hon SIMON BRIDGES: —and why over the next 4 years we have got $32.5 billion invested—not just in Auckland; all over New Zealand. Whether it is Pūhoi to Warkworth, whether it is the Matakohe bridges, whether it is the Tauranga Eastern Link, whether it is Mōtū Bridge, whether it is the Kawarau Bridge, whether it is Transmission Gully—I could list projects for the next 15 minutes. There is so much happening, the length and breadth of New Zealand.

Ron Mark: Will he admit that after 9 long years in Government—9 long years in Government—he has failed to deliver on its promises for better roading, bridges, and ultra-fast broadband in Northland, given a National Party candidate has already admitted that Northland’s infrastructure has limited economic development?

Hon SIMON BRIDGES: I appreciate that the member has got his cutesy little fairy tale story, but in the real world the regions are booming. They have got growth like they have not seen in many parts of New Zealand for 20 or 30 years. They have got investment in transport like they have not seen before, and in broadband and tourism infrastructure. They are growing strongly. They have got high employment and low unemployment, and we are putting the platform of growth in that is really making a difference.

Ron Mark: In respect of the Manawatū Gorge, is he considering all options openly, honestly, and without prejudice—including option D, the hybrid tunnel—given the needs of future generations and the increasing population; if not, why not?

Hon SIMON BRIDGES: Yes, we are investigating all options. As I have made clear, in December this year we will have a preferred route for a greatly improved, much more resilient road throughout the Manawatū. I think that is progress. It is moving with a pace that is very difficult to do, but we are committed to doing it.

Ron Mark: If regional infrastructure is so important and the gorge is still closed, can he explain to the House why he and his Government have not picked up the maintenance tab on Ballance Valley Road, the gorge road, the Mangamaire bypass, or the alternate roads at Woodville, Woodlands, and Oxford; why is that still being carried by the Tararua District Council?

Mr SPEAKER: Again, there are two questions. The Minister can address one.

Hon SIMON BRIDGES: Well, I would have to check on those facts. I presume it is because, quite simply, they are local roads. But, of course, what the member knows, but omits to say, is that at Saddle Road, $8 million of work has been taken over by the Government. Right now, over the next period of months, we are re-aligning it into Woodville, at very significant cost, and we are putting in a bypass at Ashhurst, at very significant cost. It is many millions of dollars of improvement for that critical link, and, of course, we are committed to what I think will be a very significant project—we cannot say the dollars right now, but certainly in the hundreds of millions, you would think—for the Manawatū Gorge. On top of that, there are many other projects across the area, whether it is Whirokino Trestle Bridge—a $70 million investment—or many others. We are investing like no other Government has in that region—in fact, across regional New Zealand. I know that does not suit the fairy tale world that the member lives in, but that is what is happening and New Zealanders know it.

Clayton Mitchell: If what the Minister says is true, why then has Tauranga City Council just approved the widening of 15th Avenue to fix a roading problem his Government committed to complete back in 2008—9 years ago?

Hon SIMON BRIDGES: I appreciate that Tauranga has had members who have been less effective in the past, but right now it is having the highest spend per capita on roading in New Zealand. Whether it is Tauranga Eastern Link—a half a billion dollar road—whether it is Tauranga Northern Link, whether it is Bayfair to Baypark, it is hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars of investment into a high-growth part of New Zealand. And, sad to say for that member, the voters well know it.

Clayton Mitchell: If he is the local MP for Tauranga as well, why has he not lifted a finger to complete this important piece of infrastructure, specifically the four-laning of Turret Road and 15th Avenue, including the bridge, despite he and his Government promising to do so over 9 years ago?

Hon SIMON BRIDGES: A bit like Mr Twyford, the member is entitled to his own opinions but not his own facts. If he goes out there, what he will see is the Hairini Link and underpass being built at some tens and tens and tens of millions of dollars. The member is just plain wrong, and the voters of Tauranga know it.

Health Services—First Specialist Assessments and Access

7. SIMON O’CONNOR (National—Tāmaki) to the Minister of Health: Can he confirm that First Specialist Assessments have risen by 148,000 over the last nine years, and what other improvements have been made to the health services over this time?

Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN (Minister of Health): Yes. This Government has lifted the number of first specialist assessments from 404,000 per year in 2008 to 552,000 in the 2016 year, an uplift of 36 percent. Every one of the 20 district health boards (DHBs) has contributed to this 148,000 lift in access to specialists under National, which compares with an extraordinary drop of 2,000 between 2001 and 2008. In addition, elective surgeries are up 50,000, which includes an increase in the number of orthopaedic surgeries from 18,200 per year to around 25,000 per year, an overall increase of 37 percent. However, there is always more to be done.

Simon O’Connor: Can the Minister advise whether this increase in first specialist assessments has been seen across most specialties; if so, what specific specialty increases has he seen?

Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: I can confirm that this increase of 148,000 specialist assessments has been seen across nearly all specialties, including an increase of 11,600 orthopaedic assessments, a lift of 15,500 more ophthalmology specialist assessments, and 8,500 more ear, nose, and throat assessments per year. That is the result of hard work by our health professionals across all our district health boards, and an example of how targets, increased focus, and increased resourcing have improved access to health services for New Zealanders.

Dr David Clark: Does he think it is acceptable that any member of the public should be forced to spend their retirement nest egg on a life-saving operation that is normally expected to be delivered by their local DHB?

Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: What I think was really unacceptable were the 700 people who were sent to Australia for basic cancer treatment between 1999 and 2008.

Dr David Clark: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. That was a very direct question, which I do not believe was addressed.

Mr SPEAKER: It was not; it was very much an opinion question, and I invite the member to look at Speaker’s ruling 195/6. If you ask an opinion question like that you are likely to get an answer that does not particularly satisfy the person who asks the question.

Hon Dr Jonathan Coleman: You shouldn’t ask the question if you can’t do it properly.

Mr SPEAKER: Order! [Interruption] Order! I do not need that sort of advice from Dr Jonathan Coleman.

Emissions—Divestment from Fossil Fuels

8. JULIE ANNE GENTER (Green) to the Minister of Energy and Resources: Does she stand by the former Minister’s reported statement that oil exploration was a long-term game and New Zealand had to press on?

Hon JUDITH COLLINS (Minister of Energy and Resources): Yes. The transition to a lower emissions economy needs to be managed smoothly, and the reality is that oil and gas will be needed for many decades. In fact, the International Energy Agency is forecasting that oil and natural gas will account for almost half of the world’s energy needs until at least 2040.

Julie Anne Genter: Given that she accepts there is going to be a transition to a lower carbon economy, why is growing the coal and oil industry in New Zealand still one of her priorities, particularly when the New Zealand Superannuation Fund has just divested $950 million from the sector, due to the risk of these investments becoming stranded and worthless?

Hon JUDITH COLLINS: Because, according to the International Energy Agency, oil and natural gas will account for almost half of the world’s energy needs until at least 2040, which is quite some years away yet.

Julie Anne Genter: Is she aware that the Rockefeller fund, the Norwegian superannuation fund, the universities of Wellington and Otago, the Anglican church of Aotearoa, the University of Glasgow, and 746 other major institutions are all divesting from fossil fuels to avoid a loss and to prevent climate change, and does she not think that maybe National is on the wrong side of history?

Hon JUDITH COLLINS: I am reliably informed that today I am the most green MP in Parliament, apart from Dr Kennedy Graham. I can tell that member that individual investors will make their own decisions, just like she will.

Julie Anne Genter: Given that the Superannuation Fund chief investment officer, Matt Whineray, said yesterday that he was dumping oil and coal companies for commercial, not ethical, reasons, why is her Government continuing to back these same companies—is it for ethical reasons?

Hon JUDITH COLLINS: Actually, it is because of the International Energy Agency’s prediction that oil and gas will continue to be used for at least half of the world’s energy resources until 2040, which is quite some years off. And just as that member will be, no doubt, flying back to Auckland very soon using those same resources, I think it is wise to actually have some on hand.

Julie Anne Genter: I seek leave to table an analysis that shows that 80 percent of all existing coal and gas fossil fuels in the ground cannot be burnt.

Mr SPEAKER: I just need the source of the analysis please.

Julie Anne Genter: The analysis is from 350.org.

Mr SPEAKER: Well, if it is available on the web, members can search for themselves. There is no need for it to be tabled.

Emergency Housing—Government Purchase and Motel Use

9. CARMEL SEPULONI (Labour—Kelston) to the Minister for Social Housing: How many motels has the Government purchased for the purpose of emergency housing and how many other motels, if any, are they intending to purchase?

Hon AMY ADAMS (Minister for Social Housing): As the member was told in answer to the same question on 29 June, the Government has purchased four motels for transitional housing. There are two more that we are intending to purchase.

Carmel Sepuloni: Is there a connection between the Government buying a motel in Gisborne, where there has been the loss of 62 State houses; buying a motel in Hastings, where there has been the loss of 14 State houses; or buying a motel in Napier, where there has been the loss of 137 State houses?

Hon AMY ADAMS: No. The transitional housing needs are quite different, and where State houses have been sold it is because they have been in poor condition, they have been in the wrong place, or they have been the wrong configuration. The needs for transitional housing that have developed are quite different. Furthermore, the purchases are by the Ministry of Social Development and the sales are by Housing New Zealand.

Carmel Sepuloni: What is the total amount that the Government has given to motels in New Zealand for emergency accommodation in the last 3 years, and how much of this could have been saved if it had not depleted the number of social houses around the country?

Hon AMY ADAMS: If I understand the member’s question correctly and she is asking the amount that we have spent on the new programme of emergency housing special-needs grants—which for the first time ever provide for short-term needs to make sure people are not sleeping in cars, and the like, as they were under Labour—from memory the number currently sits at around $34 million. That is what this Government is prepared to do to make sure people do have somewhere safe to sleep.

Carmel Sepuloni: Does the Minister think that if her Government had acted faster in response to the housing crisis over the last 9 years, the purchasing of motel accommodation to house an increasing number of homeless New Zealanders would still have been necessary?

Hon AMY ADAMS: I think the member may be quite confused as to what we are talking about here. When we purchase motels, it is not for emergency special-needs grant, short-term placements. It is for creating a brand new class of housing, called transitional housing, which is not just about putting a roof over people’s heads. It is about ensuring they have somewhere safe and secure to stay while they wait for a long-term placement and ensuring they have wraparound social services to support them. That has never been done before. This Government has added it into the social housing options, and we are very proud of that.

Carmel Sepuloni: Does the Minister think that the purchasing of motels for emergency accommodation, on behalf of the New Zealand taxpayer, has been good value for money?

Hon AMY ADAMS: As I just mentioned in my last answer, we have not purchased motels for emergency housing. We have purchased four for the purposes of providing up to 12 weeks of transitional support, as part of our $354 million programme to support people in need of housing, in a way that has never happened. I think the people of New Zealand are very pleased that this Government has made a commitment to support homeless people in a way that never happened under Labour, where they, frankly, were happy to leave them sleeping in cars, in parks, on park benches, and under trees.

Homeownership—HomeStart Grants and Rates

10. MATT DOOCEY (National—Waimakariri) to the Minister for Building and Construction: What level of support has been provided to first-home buyers under the Government’s KiwiSaver HomeStart scheme in its second year, and how many New Zealanders have been assisted into homeownership?

Hon Dr NICK SMITH (Minister for Building and Construction): KiwiSaver HomeStart is just going from strength to strength. In the last year 15,400 first-home buyers received a HomeStart grant, with grants of $75 million. This is up $10 million on the previous years and shows we are on track to assist 90,000 first-home buyers, over 5 years, as promised in election 2014. Even more significant is the growth in KiwiSaver first-home withdrawals. This has increased from $200 million a year to $495 million a year, to $655 million in the last year. We all know that the most difficult hurdle for a first-home buyer is pulling together a deposit, particularly when we have such low interest rates. So far KiwiSaver HomeStart has contributed $1.4 billion towards first-home owners’ deposits.

Matt Doocey: Is it correct that every quarter since the last census in 2013, homeownership has got worse; if not, what does the latest data show?

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: Some members have made the claim that homeownership has got worse every quarter in terms of the household survey, but I would point out that Statistics New Zealand says this about that data series: the owner-occupied proportion applied is reduced each quarter based on the trend between 1991 and 2013 and is not based on any new data beyond the 2013 census. CoreLogic data is collected every quarter on actual home sales. The proportion of first-home buyers has consistently increased every quarter since KiwiSaver HomeStart was introduced, from 18 percent 3 years ago to 21 percent. The combination of high rates of new home builds, flat house prices, and the KiwiSaver HomeStart scheme shows that New Zealand has turned the corner on improving homeownership.

Mental Health Services—Funding and Staffing Levels

11. Dr DAVID CLARK (Labour—Dunedin North) to the Minister of Health: Did he authorise the Director Service Commissioning at the Ministry of Health to write to DHBs seeking confirmation that they would not pay their mental health workers additional amounts for providing mental health services “at the minimum wage rates of care and support workers”; and does he support the prohibition of such payments and the cessation of payments if they have already begun?

Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN (Minister of Health): Authorisation was not required as this is an operational issue that I would expect the ministry to handle. To be clear, the ministry was reminding district health boards that they could not use money appropriated for the care and support workers’ settlement to pay another group of workers. It was also pointed out that mental health workers have lodged a pay equity claim with the Employment Relations Authority, and, as such, there is a process being followed. The ministry’s approach is perfectly reasonable.

Dr David Clark: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. This was a question on notice. Am I to take from that final sentence from the Minister that he thinks it was reasonable, that that means he supports the prohibition of such payments?

Mr SPEAKER: No, no—[Interruption] Order! I think, on this occasion, if the Minister could address the second part of the question, because I am not sure whether that has been answered. [Interruption] Order! I am asking whether the Minister—he does not have to, but I do not think the second part of that question has been clearly addressed. I invite the Minister, if he wants to, to address it.

Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I thought you had to address one question, and there are two there.

Mr SPEAKER: No, no—I just want to explain so there is no more difficulty in the future. If a primary question is put down, it is quite in line for it to be two parts—and it often is—and it is expected that the Minister, in preparing for the answer, will address both parts. So I accept that the first part has been absolutely addressed, but I am unsure as to the answer to the second part, so I invite the Minister—

Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: Well, as I said, the ministry’s approach is perfectly reasonable, and I support it.

Dr David Clark: Why were twice as many assaults happening per month at Wakari Hospital in Dunedin in the first 5 months of this year as compared with the previous year, and does he think it might have something to do with a mental health service under pressure that has difficulty attracting and retaining senior staff?

Mr SPEAKER: And then there are two supplementary questions there, so the Hon Dr Jonathan Coleman can address one.

Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: No, I do not.

Dr David Clark: How does he respond to psychotherapist Kyle MacDonald’s assessment of yesterday’s mental health announcement of $25 million shared across 17 pilots, which he described as “tinkering”?

Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: Dr MacDonald’s views are well known, and the election period is a time when people like Dr MacDonald start to express their views, so I am really not surprised.

Dr David Clark: Does he continue to describe Dr MacDonald and the presenters of the People’s Mental Health Review to this Parliament as left-wing, anti-Government activists?

Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: Well, the member might say that but I could not possibly comment.

Dr David Clark: After 9 years of his Government, why will he not agree to a short, sharp review of mental health provision in New Zealand, adequate funding to support any recommendations for change that would come from such a review, additional public education, and independent oversight of the sector—all recommendations of the People’s Mental Health Report delivered to Parliament this year?

Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: Well, I am not sure where the member was earlier in the week but we announced a $100 million package on Monday—a very comprehensive approach. Informed by the science advisers, 17 initiatives that take a long-term approach, a life-course approach, look to build resilience across the population, as well as dealing with some of the most acute pressures in the system. So I suggest that the member goes and has a look at it. It is actually very good work that has been very well received, apart from, of course, by Dr MacDonald.

Dr David Clark: I seek leave to table a paper showing that the additional money spent represents one-tenth of 1 percent of the health budget.

Mr SPEAKER: Order! I just need the source of the paper.

Dr David Clark: It is from the Parliamentary Library, prepared for my office today.

Mr SPEAKER: Leave is sought to table that information. Is there any objection? There is none.

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

Dr David Clark: Will he join with Labour and commit today to funding additional front-line mental health workers in Canterbury schools beyond the seven who are currently serving 136 schools? [Interruption]

Mr SPEAKER: Order! Because of the interjection coming, the Minister has been unable to hear the question clearly and I did not either. I am going to invite the member to repeat the question.

Dr David Clark: Will he join with Labour and commit today to funding additional front-line mental health workers in Canterbury schools beyond the seven who are currently serving 136 schools?

Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: Well, look, once again I would encourage the member to go and look at that package that was announced on Monday, and I am really surprised that he is not familiar with the detail but amongst that $100 million package there is a $23 million schools package, which includes front-line workers, and some of those will be in Canterbury. As well as that, of course, since the earthquakes there has been an extra $106 million put into Canterbury to support its health system through a very difficult period, including $20 million that was announced in February 2016 in response to the Valentine’s Day earthquakes. A lot of that actually went towards 27 front-line workers. It was a package consulted on with the front-line workers themselves and the community, and, furthermore, $4.26 million was put into that region for mental health after the Kaikōura earthquakes at the end of last year. So there is a lot being done, so there you go.

Schools, Auckland—Capacity

12. MELISSA LEE (National) to the Associate Minister of Education: What recent announcements has he made in relation to increasing capacity at Auckland schools?

Hon TIM MACINDOE (Associate Minister of Education): Last week the Hon Nikki Kaye and I announced that an additional $18 million from Budget 2017 will be invested to provide 30 new and replacement classrooms at four Auckland schools, including eight classrooms at Ōwairaka District School in the Mt Albert electorate in which the member is based. This is on top of the $21 million for 41 classrooms that we announced in June, and further underlines the National-led Government’s major commitment to investing in infrastructure.

Melissa Lee: How does this announcement contribute to the Government’s plan to increase student places in Auckland?

Hon TIM MACINDOE: This $18 million will provide an extra 460 student places for the region. This announcement is part of a suite of Budget 2017 announcements, which, in total, will see 4,000 additional student places created in Auckland. As part of our commitment to accommodate Auckland growth, we are on track to deliver 21,000 new student places for Auckland by 2021.

General Debate

General Debate

RON MARK (Deputy Leader—NZ First): I move, That the House take note of miscellaneous business. The question is that the motion be agreed to, and the question is going to be answered very firmly on 23 September. But before I get into a bit of a reality check for this outgoing Government, I want to, on behalf of my colleagues in New Zealand First, thank you, Mr Speaker, and thank all of the parliamentary staff for the wonderful support that they have given us, whether they are in the Parliamentary Library, whether they are in security, or whether they are the messengers in the House. And we are mindful and thinking of those staff who have departed the Parliamentary Service over this last triennium. I also want to specifically thank the wonderful New Zealand First staff up in the offices right now listening to this contribution.

It is ironic that on this day in 1930, in the United States, President Hoover gave a press conference where he announced plans to combat drought and economic depression. Last week, New Zealand Labour leader Jacinda Ardern gave a speech where she announced plans to create a drought and cause economic depression. So it is food for thought. Is Labour’s food and production tax on water an economy-crushing $100 a cubic metre, as Stuart Nash told a meeting in October 2015? Is it a $500 million increase in food prices, as per what Mr Parker told Radio New Zealand last week, suggesting 10c a cubic metre, which actually raises $583 million? Is it “perhaps one or two cents” a cubic metre, which Grant Robertson told The Nation 4 days later, which increases food prices by $58 million, to $116 million a year? Or is it, in fact, all of the above?

Hon Member: We don’t know.

RON MARK: We do not know. Like questions for comrades, done at the behest of the Australian Labor Party, Labour here is in a tangle of its own making, and thoroughly deserves to be so. It gives Coca-Cola a free pass but wants to make milk more expensive at the counter. It is probably appropriate that it wears the same colours as Coke, being the party now, we know, that says: “Let’s do this.” We are saying that it is really the party that says: “Let’s tax this.”

So what about the incumbent Pepsi of New Zealand politics: the National Party—although some would probably want to call it the “International Party” because it seems more interested in other people offshore making oodles of money in this country than in hard-working New Zealand business people and workers. Some might actually call it the “Globalist Party” because it represents everybody on the globe except people here in New Zealand.

The “Party of the brighter future.”—well, that did not work out too well, did it? Now it is the “Party delivering for New Zealand.” The question is: delivering what? Since December 2008, merchandise exports—after big words about free trade, the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement cul de sac, and export booms—have grown only 1.5 percent in real terms after 9 long years of this Government. This proves that Mr Joyce is now the Basil Fawlty of finance Ministers—whatever you do, do not mention the imports. In December 2008, national median house prices stood at $330,000; in July this year, they blew out to a whopping $518,000. In December 2008, migration was 3,814—that is net—but this year in June it exploded to 72,304. People are totally hacked off with open-door immigration driving up house prices and creating infrastructure chaos, which negatively impacts on the regions, as we now know in Woodville.

So while National walks around praising itself as an economic genius, saying “real after-tax wages have risen 19 percent under their stewardship”, it omits to mention that inflation over this period was 14.4 percent. There is a lot more we could talk about here, but my colleague Fletcher Tabuteau will. We are so looking forward to 23 September, when the people will get a chance to pass judgment on these statistics.

Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN (Minister of Health): There has never been a better time to be a New Zealander. This is a country moving nicely towards the top of its game: confident, internationally competitive, outward looking, and looking to build on the foundations of 9 great years of achievement and growth. The economic settings are right, and it is vital that the country continues to move forward.

“Unrelentingly positive.” might be an election slogan for some, but on this side of the House, it is about the culture and the mind-set that has carried us through some of the toughest times in New Zealand’s history. It got us back on our feet after the global financial crisis, it got people back into jobs, it got us back to surplus, and it meant we were able to tackle the natural disasters that the country was faced with. The challenge now is to sustain that growth, build the growth, and act for the people most under pressure. It is still a fragile and a difficult world out there economically.

Voters want stability, they want leadership, they want that proven track record. They are wary of political parties that cannot manage themselves. The country needs planners not plotters. It needs parties focused on the issues that matter to the electorate. Getting ready for Government takes hard work. You need to get around the sector. You need to produce the discussion documents. And I tell you what, when the work has been done, the evidence is plain to see. So where are the Opposition discussion documents? Where are the policies informed by years of hard slog? They are nowhere to be seen. They are grabbing stuff off the shelf. They are pulling stuff out of David Parker’s brain and serving it up as the complete product.

Hon Simon Bridges: It’s like scrambled eggs!

Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: It is. It is like an omelette: scrambled eggs and nothing backed by substance. So I am not surprised, because they have just not got their act into gear.

I am very proud to be the Minister of Health in this Bill English - led Government. This is a portfolio that really matters to New Zealanders, because the health system touches pretty much everyone across the country in any given year. It is really interesting to have a comparison of the records of National and Labour over the past 18 years. What did Labour do around first specialist assessments? It cut 30,000 patients off waiting lists. Meanwhile, we have increased first specialist assessments by 150,000 per year—a rise of 37 percent compared with 2008. If you look at emergency departments (EDs), I well remember, as MP for Northcote, going to North Shore Hospital and seeing people waiting on trolleys under the harsh fluorescent lights. We brought in that emergency department target: everyone in and out of the ED in 6 hours. And do you know what? That has saved 700 lives per year. There is the research to back it, so these are not just arbitrary political targets; these are targets that have made a real difference to the quality of care and that have, literally, saved lives.

What happened with elective surgery under Labour? There was a minimum, minimal increase in elective discharges. Under National, we have made elective surgery a priority. We have set that target of a 4,000 uplift per year, and we have increased elective surgeries by 40 percent—by 50,000 operations per year since 2008. Going to your GP: what did Labour do to increase access to general practice? Nothing. It did zero. It took a National Government to bring in free under-13s GP visits and prescriptions, benefiting 700,000 children. Cancer care: what did Labour do? It sent 700 people to Australia for basic care. We took a structured approach with our $63 million cancer plan, which has seen the international gold standard set as the target: everyone treated within 62 days after the first serious suspicion of cancer. What did Labour do on bowel screening? Nothing. We are now rolling out a comprehensive programme. What did it do on pay equity? Zero. We have delivered a pay equity settlement that is going to benefit 55,000 of the hardest-working people in New Zealand. What did Labour do on immunisation? It had Third World levels—67 percent. Under National, the target of 95 percent of 8-month-olds—we are reaching that target. A serious achievement.

So you can see that this Government is delivering for New Zealanders. We are getting on with the decisions that make a difference to the lives and quality of life of citizens across the country. In the end, when you look at what people will weigh up on 23 September, that is what is going to count.

Hon DAVID PARKER (Labour): So flat—Jonathan Coleman spelt “wary” wrong. It has got an “e” in it when he uses it. On the other side, look at them. They know the end is nigh. They are even hiding their polling, their internal polling, from their own caucus because they do not want to depress them further.

Hon Simon Bridges: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. This is Parliament, not the Comedy Club.

Mr SPEAKER: And that is certainly not a legitimate point of order. It has always been a robust debate, and I am looking forward to the contribution.

Hon DAVID PARKER: Thank you, Mr Speaker. You know, that intervention—that is another example. National has the unmistakable smell of a dying Government. There is nothing those members can do about it. The game is up. No matter how many billions they spray around and no matter how much scaremongering they do, they know it is over. They know there is a new Government coming that is excited and energetic. It is a new Government led by Jacinda Ardern, who represents the future—the future—not the past.

To voters, the contrast shouts out every day. Every day, they see burnt-out and tired Ministers lashing out in desperation and frustration, but it is not working—it is not working. The tide has turned. There is nothing they can do about it. They are like King Canute—the tide is going to run over them.

After 9 years, National has had a good run. It has had a good run, and we should thank those members for some of the good things that they have done. But it is inevitable—the end is upon them. We should be thanking them for their service, and everyone should now be preparing for the new Labour-led Government and the new New Zealand that Jacinda and her team will build.

The only thing that National members have left is fearmongering and scaremongering. Just like their hero Muldoon, who came out with the dancing Cossacks and was flinging around the bribes and the falsehoods—just as that did not save him at the end, it is not going to save them, either.

Let us look at where we are. Child poverty is a national shame. People living in vans and under bushes is a national shame. People living in pain and under the threat of death is a national tragedy. The unswimmable rivers are a national disgrace. New Zealanders know we can be better than this. They know we can do this. They know we can build houses, we can ban foreign buyers, and we can invest in our people. We can invest in our hospitals, which are overstretched and understaffed. We can clean up our rivers.

In the last week, nothing has been clearer than what those members did in respect of water. We announced our water policy, and they threw everything at it. They scaremongered and they misled. Do you know what they did? They amplified our win. They do not know what to do. They are flailing around. One week they are possums in the headlights, stuck and not knowing how to react to Jacinda Ardern, and the next week they flail around.

What did they say? The exaggeration—well, it made them look foolish. Let us list them. Nathan Guy said it would cost $75 extra for each bottle of wine. What was the answer? One or two cents. They said there would be $18 cabbages. Nick Smith said there would be $600 billion in royalties—twice New Zealand’s GDP. How foolish. Then we had the somewhat sad spectacle of the Hon Christopher Finlayson—who has a proud record on Treaty matters—scaremongering, and that did not work, either. Those members amped things up, and so did their surrogates—the irrigators and the water bottlers—who do not think they should contribute to the clean-up of our rivers. They think that other people should pay for the clean-up.

Voters are going to have a clear choice at this election. They can choose the future or they can choose the past. In the last day—under Jacinda Ardern—we have been under attack in respect of these Australian issues. We did not cause the Deputy Prime Minister of Australia to be a New Zealander, we did not cause Australians to have prejudice against New Zealand citizens, we did not cause that information to be known to the Australian media, and we did not cause Julie Bishop to overreact, but, by goodness, what another test for Jacinda Ardern, and she passed. She passed with flying colours. We are ready for a change of Government, led by Jacinda Ardern: “Let’s do this.”

Hon TODD McCLAY (Minister of Trade): David Parker, the previous speaker, was certainly excited, if nothing else. If the octave level of his speech had gone any higher, the lovely windows here may have fallen in. That is the problem with speeches like that, because they tell you a lot about what is really going on behind the scenes. That member is now leaving the seat that is actually normally occupied by Chris Hipkins. I think that Chris Hipkins has gone off to Australia to apologise for meddling in other people’s politics rather than focusing on what that speaker said the Labour Party is all about.

But it is not so surprising that he decided to come out and attack the productive part of New Zealand—our rural sector—and say that whilst this Government has been off doing trade deals to give them better access, an incoming Labour Government would tax Kiwis out of business. That is because if we think about all those years ago when he was rejected by the electorate, he said he was a very proud rural member of Parliament, and so I think that he, along with all of his colleagues, has decided to focus on the part of New Zealand that generates income for the country and that delivers jobs up and down throughout the regions, and those members have decided to tax New Zealanders out of business. That will not be the only tax we will hear about from them. There will be many, many more, and each one of them will show just how out of touch they remain after 9 years in Opposition.

This week there was good news for New Zealand, and that good news came from Moody’s, which said that New Zealand is expected to be one of the fastest-growing economies out of any triple A economy in the coming years. It will be better than Australia and Britain and the US—countries whose economies are facing challenges because of political upheaval.

Our unemployment rate continues to fall. It is now at 4.8 percent, on the back of a strong economy and a rural sector that continues to deliver up and down New Zealand. There are 180,000 jobs that have been created, inflation is low, and interest rates are low. We are the first developed country in the world to get back to not only Government surpluses but sustainable surpluses, on the back of a hard-working Government and a former finance Minister—Bill English—who got New Zealand through the global financial crisis. He was the rock that the success of the New Zealand economy is being built on.

There is strong growth in every part of New Zealand, and the regions, particularly, are stepping up. Every region of New Zealand is doing well, and the Opposition wants to tax New Zealanders out of business.

As the Minister of Trade, I am proud to represent overseas all New Zealanders and go off to fight for a better deal for them and for better access, so that when the Government backs Kiwis, we level the playing field and they can do well everywhere they go to. There are 620,000 jobs due to exports and the export economy in New Zealand. Many of those are in the rural areas, and this Government will not stand by when others want to tax rural New Zealand out of business. Within that, for the first time, we have had $70 billion worth of exports, up from $29 billion in 1995. There are 620,000 jobs that deliver for Kiwis and that provide for them and their families.

We have an ambitious programme of work ahead of us because there is always much more to do in trade. We have set an ambitious target of 90 percent of the trade of New Zealand’s goods being covered by free-trade agreements (FTAs) by 2030. We have launched a trade negotiation with the Pacific Alliance—the countries of Chile, Peru, Colombia, and Mexico—and agreed with it just a short month ago that we want to work hard and deliver that within the next 12 months.

The party on this side of the House, the Government, is committed to delivering for New Zealanders through the Trans-Pacific Partnership 11 (TPP11) to give access for Kiwis to level the playing field in 10 other markets—first FTAs in four countries—and, most importantly, the world’s third-largest economy, Japan. And, by the way, Japan has just signed a deal with the EU, and if New Zealand does not have access through the TPP11, our exporters will be worse off. They will not be competitive compared with the Europeans.

We are committed to launching an FTA with the UK. Its Foreign Minister was here a short while ago confirming we are on track for that. The European Union, with $20 billion worth of exports—two-way trade—is important to us. We have launched upgrades to the China FTA that will deliver jobs for New Zealand, to Singapore, and to ASEAN countries. And, finally, we are committed to working with the US to make sure that Kiwis get a fair deal there—they can get access.

Rural New Zealand is important to New Zealand. It does not deserve to be taxed out of business, and this Government will fight for it here and around the world, for jobs for New Zealanders through trade. Thank you.

JAMES SHAW (Leader—Green): The Prime Minister recently posted a beautiful photo of himself on social media. He was standing on the beach on a calm, clear Auckland night. What made this all the more remarkable was that at the exact same time the 1.3 million residents of Auckland were also experiencing one of the most violent thunderstorms in recent memory.

So just as there were two Aucklands that night, there are also two different New Zealands in our country today. There is a New Zealand of calm nights and clear skies—a New Zealand in which the National Government is delivering for New Zealanders. It is a country of economic growth and a brighter future. And then there is the country that most of the rest of us actually live in. It is a country that this Government does not like to talk about. It is a country in which private sector wages are declining in real terms, disposable household income is declining, productivity is declining, and people are working harder, for longer hours, just to stand still. There is a New Zealand that is the greatest place in the world for kids to grow up, and there is the New Zealand in which kids are living in cars and garages.

How did we get to this place in our history, where New Zealanders share the same country but live in different worlds? How? It has not happened overnight. I mean, the truth is that we have been growing apart as a country for decades now, and what is driving this division is a political and economic system that is disconnected from the values of most New Zealanders. Instead of investing in business, instead of investing in people and technology, New Zealanders’ money is inflating away in a speculative housing bubble, to the point where the value of our residential housing stock has increased by almost a trillion dollars over the course of the last 17 years. National’s trillion-dollar housing debt is now worth more than eight times as much as the sharemarket, and that is why an empty home in Auckland earns more in capital gains across 1 year than the average household income.

But the Government says everything is fine. And yet every winter 1,600 people die in New Zealand because their houses are too cold and too damp because they cannot afford to heat them. And National says everything is fine.

New Zealanders were told last week that our drinking water is amongst the least safe in the developed world—over three-quarters of a million New Zealanders are being supplied with drinking water that may not be safe to drink. Last year 5,000 residents of Havelock North were violently ill, and three died, because their water was contaminated. In Dunedin, people are boiling their water as we speak. But if private companies want to take clean water out of our aquifers, bottle it, and sell it off overseas, they can have it for free, because National says everything is fine.

Ninety thousand children in New Zealand live in poverty. Over 40,000 people are homeless, and half of those are families with children. But National says everything is fine because this Government has a brilliant plan to solve this problem: it is going to fine the parents. The mental health system has been gutted and we have one of the highest teenage suicide rates in the world, and this Government has spent all year fighting to prevent a public inquiry into the sexual and physical and psychological abuse of the 100,000 children who were raised in State care. And now we know why—because National’s solution to the problem of troubled children is boot camps. And it says everything will be fine.

The reason that I am in politics, the reason that the Green Party is in Parliament, and the very reason that our Government actually exists is to solve the big, hard problems, not to airbrush them out of existence and pretend that everything is fine. At this election, the Green Party will fight and campaign on real solutions to the real challenges that the real New Zealand faces. That is why we need to change the Government, and change is coming. Thank you.

Hon NICKY WAGNER (Minister supporting Greater Christchurch Regeneration): I rise to celebrate the strong economy in New Zealand and National’s exceptional financial management. A strong economy underpins a healthy and happy society. A strong economy provides more jobs, and good jobs provide security for individuals and their families. That translates to a better quality of life and giving people more choices about how they want to live their lives. So we should all celebrate the 181,000 new jobs that were created in New Zealand in the last 2 years, and the future 200,000 jobs predicted to be created in the next 3 years. And we should celebrate that the unemployment rate is dropping. It is now down to 4.8 percent. Significantly, at the same time, after-tax wages have increased by 19 percent. That is important because that increase not only supports the workers and their families but flows through to superannuitants.

It often surprises me that people are not more interested in the workings of the economy. I think it is because the linkages between a strong economy and the well-being of individuals and their families are not well understood or regularly discussed, and I think they should be. We all want New Zealanders to be able to make good financial decisions for themselves and their families so that they can have a good quality of life. The bottom line is that unless a country’s economy is well managed and financially secure, it does not have the resources to provide the public services that we all want and need. If you do not have a strong economy, you do not have the money for a quality education system. If you do not have a strong economy, you do not have the resources to provide the hip operations for Granny. It is the richer countries that can provide the best opportunities for their people, that have the highest environmental standards, and that can contribute most to the world’s social issues.

Fortunately, the National Government, with Bill English and Steven Joyce as its Ministers of Finance, has actually done a great job of managing New Zealand’s economy, and we are now back in surplus. That means that we have more resources to tackle some of the long-term challenges in our society, and with our social investment approach, we can deliver really good outcomes for New Zealanders. The surplus has also meant that, in the 2017 Budget, the Government provided a $2 billion family support programme, which includes tax credits for low and middle income families and additional accommodation support, as well as record funding for social services—for example, health, in particular, and education—and a record $4 billion of infrastructure investment for across the country to make sure we can keep our economy growing and provide more jobs.

But I am not the only one who is impressed by the National Government’s financial management. The international organisation Legatum Institute has ranked New Zealand No. 1 in the world for prosperity for the last 6 years. The interesting thing about its definition of “prosperity” is it includes the natural environment, quality of health and education, governance, community safety and security, personal freedom, and social capital—all things that Kiwis embrace and cherish. All are underpinned by a strong economy. So you cannot do much better than that.

The financial future for New Zealand looks very good, as long as National continues to manage the economy well. We cannot be diverted by new taxes or by old policies reheated—taxes and old policies that will hinder growth and raise the cost of living for ordinary New Zealanders. New Zealand is a great place to live, and it will remain so as long as you vote National on 23 September.

POTO WILLIAMS (Labour—Christchurch East): Tēnā koe, Mr Speaker. Thank you very much for the ability to give a contribution to this general debate. I want to talk about a group of people—a group of constituents—whom I support through my portfolio work, and that is people with disabilities. They have been asking me and petitioning me over the course of the last few months to discuss issues of participation. So I had a look at the Justice and Electoral Committee’s Inquiry into the 2014 general election, and I want to commend the Electoral Commission and the submitters who submitted in that particular process.

I want to quote from the report, which said: “A strong theme in the submissions relating to voters with disabilities was about media coverage around the election. Submitters call for a greater use of captioning on political media coverage and more media content aimed at voters with disabilities. Some submitters argue that interpretation, captioning, and election advertising targeted at voters with disabilities should be publicly funded or not count towards electoral expenditure limits.” What this speaks to is some of the issues that people with disabilities have raised with me, and those are around their inability to participate fully in the democratic process.

When we look at the issue of accessibility, one of the first things we need to look at is how we define accessibility. When we look at polling places, they are listed as being “accessible”, “fully accessible”, or “accessible with support”. Accessibility in that case means the ability to get a wheelchair into a polling place. But accessibility in terms of being a person with a disability has a much wider context, and it is about access and participation. Currently, there is a petition being run by Deaf Action that is calling for all the televised public debates for the election to be fully live captioned and to have sign language interpreters. You would think that, in this day and age, it would be an easy task to facilitate.

When we think about people with vision impairment, I note that in the 2014 election we had, for the first time, the ability for voters with a disability who typically needed assistance marking their ballot paper to be able to use a telephone dictation service. But I have recently spoken with people who have vision impairment who talk about the desire they have to be able to enter a polling booth and to mark their own ballot if that ballot were in Braille. So what are we going to do about it? What are we going to do about it?

What Labour believes is that there should be no barriers to participation for anyone who wants to engage in the democratic process and that when we find those barriers, we should do everything we can to eliminate them. What we are going to do—what we have committed to do, and what I know the Greens have also committed to do—is sponsor accessibility legislation. What that means is co-creating with the disability sector a piece of legislation that ensures that we provide accessible public information and communications; that we create accessible workplaces and employment; that we offer accessible goods and services; that we ensure accessible transport; and that we provide accessible customer services, access to justice, accessible housing, and, most importantly, accessible participation in the democratic process. One of the things we will do to ensure that is we will make sure that the level of live captioning is 100 percent of public broadcasting, and we will work with those providers’ online platforms to ensure captioning of their online content.

We commit to supporting children with special needs to participate fully in the education system. We support healthcare for all people with disabilities. We support ensuring that public transport is accessible, and we will ensure resourcing transition services from school to tertiary education and employment. Together we know we can do this, so let’s do this.

MELISSA LEE (National): It is a great pleasure to rise to take part in the last general debate of the 51st Parliament. Time does indeed fly when you are having fun, as my son says, and working hard. I am very proud of the National-led Government, which has been delivering for New Zealand and New Zealanders over the last 9 years. Despite natural disasters, the global financial crisis, and international political upheaval, we here in New Zealand have a rock star economy compared with other OECD countries.

I know that some people have actually called him “the Rock”, and we do have a rock of a Prime Minister. He is steady as she goes; he is a stable man who has delivered for New Zealand in his previous role as the Minister of Finance during the global financial crisis, and now as the Prime Minister. He is firm, unlike some people. I am very proud to be part of the National team—a very stable National team.

It is a little bit different from the excitable Labour team. I think it was Mr David Parker who rose to his feet and was really excitable and talked about how they were right behind their leader, the brand new leader of the Labour Party. But they did that before. They actually did that for Phil Goff, going back to God knows how many years ago. They were just as excitable for David Shearer, and he was No. 2. Then another one came along, and that was David Cunliffe—No. 3. Then No. 4 was Andrew—

Hon Members: Little.

MELISSA LEE: —Little. They were just as excited for all of those leaders—Phil Goff, David Shearer, David Cunliffe, Andrew Little, and now we have the No. 5 leader of the Labour Party, and they are very excited. Good for them—it is about time. I would have preferred the Hon Annette King as the leader; I think she is a fantastic woman, and a woman whom I admire greatly. It is a real shame that she has given her valedictory and that she is retiring—shame about that.

You know, I talk about how I am excited about the work that this Government has delivered for New Zealand. It is not an easy effort, but we are working to keep debt down, to support job creation—which is really, really important—and for better business across our country. The economy is probably one of the most important things in this country to deliver for New Zealanders, because if we do not have a growing economy, we do not have the jobs for New Zealanders, and that means people do not have increasing pay packets that they could take home to support their families. It is very important.

It is really important to remember that the economy is front and centre of everything that this Government does, and this is because New Zealand must keep the economy growing so that we can all share the benefits of better schools. Today, the Associate Minister of Education was talking about the number of school classrooms that he is delivering for many, many parts of New Zealand, including one in Mount Albert. We need to provide roads and connectivity. We are also working hard to make Kiwi voices heard on the world stage, and to support the aspirations and dreams of the country and its people.

One of the things that I am very proud of—and I have actually mentioned this before—is that yesterday the Hon Hekia Parata, who is the former Minister for Education, gave her valedictory, and there were a few tears there from quite a few of us who came to Parliament with her back in 2008. In the work that she has led, and all the innovative approaches of our current ministerial team, led by the Hon Nikki Kaye, education is one of the most important as well. The fact is that we have delivered for our students—looking at the record, 85 percent of students attained NCEA level 2 in 2016, and that is actually up from 74 percent back in 2011.

Other important gains in education include the great achievement for Māori and Pasifika students, with results increasing to around 74 percent, up from 57 percent back in 2011. More work needs to be done, but the improvements are a fantastic result for our children, and children are important because children are the future of this country. This National Government has been delivering and will continue to deliver for New Zealand, for all New Zealanders up and down this country.

Also, the amazing infrastructure projects that we have delivered for Auckland are really important. Of course, the Waterview tunnel is really important, and it cuts travel time. It has been a fantastic Government.

MICHAEL WOOD (Labour—Mt Roskill): I am very pleased to rise to speak in this general debate and, firstly, to confirm that I am very proud, as a member of the Labour Party, to have a leader who is not a rock but who is, in fact, a fully formed human being. Of course, I am speaking about the new Labour Party leader, Jacinda Ardern, who, up and down the country, is receiving a rapturous response from the people of New Zealand, who are responding to her warmth, her genuineness, and—most importantly of all—the incredibly positive, forward-looking vision that she is laying out for our country.

On 24 September, when we come back into this Chamber, I am very pleased to say that I will not be the newest member of the Labour caucus, because there will be at least a dozen other caucus members coming in behind me. When the new Labour Government comes into this House, if we are given that privilege by the people of New Zealand, we will be going forward with that positive vision that Jacinda Ardern has set out for the people of New Zealand over the past few inspiring weeks.

In Government, the starting proposition of a new Labour Government will be that New Zealand is a good country—not just good, in fact; that this is a great country. This is a place that people have been coming to for 800 years to build their lives and to live their dreams. It was called “God’s own” by that man who is immortalised out the front of this House, Richard John Seddon. It was called the last, the loneliest, the loveliest by Rudyard Kipling. Across the decades, people have known and identified this as a wonderful, wonderful place to live, and it is in that spirit that the next Labour Government will go forward. We are going to take those strengths that we have in New Zealand—our commitments to equality, to social justice, to a fair go for all, to giving our entrepreneurs a start, to being innovative and forward-looking and progressive. We are going to take that history, we are going to take those principles, and we are going to make this country an even better place.

I just want to touch on two important areas in which we will make a difference under the next Jacinda Ardern, Labour-led Government. The first is giving our young people a fair shot, because, unlike the Prime Minister, we do not think they are pretty damn hopeless. Unlike the Prime Minister, we do not think that the Government has reached the limits of what it can do for our young people. We believe in our young people and that inside every single one of them—inside every single one of them—there is the ability to become something great, to reach their potential, and to contribute to our society.

We are not going to accept 75,000 young people not in employment, education, or training; we are going to come up with a plan for every single one of those kids to help them reach their potential. It will start when they are at school, when, through our school-leavers’ kit, which was announced this week, we are going to give those young people a strategy and a plan so that they know what they are going to do when they go into education and they go into the workforce. We are going to give them life skills, we are going to give them the ability to get a driver’s licence, and we are going to teach them something about how our society and our democracy operate. We are going to take those 75,000 young kids not in employment, education, or training, and we are going to offer them the opportunity to take up an apprenticeship instead of just getting paid the dole—to give them a job, to give them some income, and to give them some hope for the future.

We are going to make sure that every single one of those young people can have the hope and the dream of homeownership in our country. We say that it is unacceptable that we have fewer people, as a percentage of our population, owning a home than since 1951, when Sidney Holland was the Prime Minister in this House. Under those circumstances, it is no wonder that some young people in our country do not think that we care anymore. We are going to give those young people some hope by moving towards free tertiary education, by bringing in 1 year’s free tertiary education in the next Labour Government’s very first term, opening the opportunity for every young person to reach their potential through education.

More on our positive vision: I want to talk about our positive vision for Auckland, because for too long our biggest city, Tāmaki-makau-rau, the first city of the Pacific, has been held back by a Government that does not recognise its potential. It is looking back to the transport solutions of the 1950s: more motorways, more sprawl, and a lack of investment in the kind of productive infrastructure that Auckland needs. It is a Labour Government under Jacinda Ardern that is going to have a revolutionary plan for Auckland. We are going to turn it on its head. We are going to invest in modern light rail. We are going to connect our city, Auckland, to its airport, because that is what the people of Auckland are crying out for. It is extraordinary to us that over the last couple of weeks, as we head into an election, with the Government splashing around billions of dollars, it will not even connect Auckland to its airport.

Well, we believe in Auckland, we believe in our young people, we are going to put the investments in that unlock the potential of everyone in this country, and I am really looking forward to a new Labour Government under Jacinda Ardern that will be relentlessly positive for New Zealand. Thank you.

KANWALJIT SINGH BAKSHI (National): First of all, I would like to take this opportunity to thank you, Mr Speaker, for your leadership in this term. This is the last general debate. I would also like to thank all the staff in Parliament who have been helpful in this term.

I am proud to be part of this National-led Government, which has helped this economy to grow. It has brought the economy back on track. This is the Government that embraces growth because it delivers more jobs, higher wages, and greater opportunity for New Zealanders. We are the Government that believes in New Zealand and knows what the challenges of growth are, and we know New Zealanders also accept that. Our opponents, on the other hand, would shut down growth because they are not up to tackling the challenges that success brings. These are the very important things that we need to understand.

In the past few days, I have accompanied the Prime Minister on some of the major announcements he has made. The first one, which I am very pleased about in particular, was the announcement on law and order and tackling youth crime. That is one area that the Indian diaspora and the ethnic community are very concerned about. The Prime Minister announced that we will be tackling it, and he made some major announcements about how we are going to tackle these youth offenders. We are going to make sure that if we are back in the Government, we will make it happen.

The other announcement was when the Prime Minister announced that the infrastructure investment in South Auckland, particularly the electrification of Papakura to Pukekohe, will make a lot of difference to infrastructure, and that will help to reduce congestion on the roads.

The third announcement, which made the Indian community, particularly the Sikh community, very excited, was when the Prime Minister said that if National forms the Government, it will amend the Crimes Act to ensure that the Kirpan is recognised and is not included in “offensive weapon”. I am disappointed with some of the hypocrisy that happens around here. About a year ago, a delegation of Sikhs met the Rt Hon Winston Peters and presented him with a Kirpan, which he accepted. The day before yesterday, he said he will oppose that bill when it comes through the Parliament. So I cannot understand which way he is going.

Hon Amy Adams: Whichever way. It depends on the group he’s talking to that determines which way he’s going.

KANWALJIT SINGH BAKSHI: Exactly. The people of Indian origin are really disappointed with his comments and, moreover, it was a disappointment when he said that Hindus want to have the trishula, or trident, that they want to carry. When I see the news coverage today in the Indian Weekender, it has quoted some of the Hindu leaders who say—I would like to quote some of the quotes they have made, particularly from Roshan Nauhria, the trustee of Balmoral temple; he says: “Every religious cultural group have their individual cultural aspirations. If aspirations of one cultural group are being fulfilled by the government of the day, then there is no need for other cultural groups to sulk or worry about [it]”. That is what the Rt Hon Winston Peters said the Hindus are demanding.

I would like to quote from Mr Vinod Kumar, who is the president of the Hindu Council; he says: “I can confirm that the Hindus in New Zealand do not have any such aspirations to carry a trident,”. I do not know from where the Rt Hon Winston Peters got this information, where he said that Hindus are also demanding. He has got some very wrong advice, and I think he needs to have better advice.

What he is trying to do is to divide the Indian community. He wants to create the division between the Hindus and the Sikhs, and he is playing. I understand that he is going to attend another event this weekend with the Indians. When it comes to asking for the vote, he wants to go to the Indians; when it comes to supporting them, he does not want to support them. It is totally, totally inappropriate for him to do this. He is totally anti-migrant. All his speeches and all his team are anti-migrant. Whenever you see his team, they will just target the migrants and want to blame—that migrants are responsible for anything happening in this country. I think it is totally incorrect—it is. Thank you.

FLETCHER TABUTEAU (NZ First): It is a proud opportunity I have, to be one of the last contributors in the House in this, the last general debate of the 51st Parliament. I want to acknowledge you, Mr Speaker, and I would like to acknowledge the staff in Parliament here for the work that you do and for the work that they do. This will be my last opportunity to do so.

Chris Bishop: Ever.

Hon Amy Adams: Yes, it will, that’s true—for ever.

FLETCHER TABUTEAU: In the 51st term. Come on guys, loosen up—far out. Chris, that might be true for you. Relax. I would like to acknowledge my Wellington staff and I would like to acknowledge my Rotorua staff. We have learnt a lot together, and we have achieved some wonderful outcomes for the people of New Zealand and the people of Rotorua.

I am particularly proud to be a member of the New Zealand First caucus. We have been an incredibly disciplined and hard-working team this term, and I am proud to be able to say that in this House this afternoon. More so, we have listened to the people of New Zealand, as we have moved around the country, and talked to them and heard them. What we say to them is we have heard you, and we have written policy, and we bring to you in this election—moving forward—a vision of New Zealand that represents all New Zealanders.

Our deputy leader spoke earlier about a broken Government and a broken economy. I wish I could go into all of the detail, because what the members over there have said needs to be fact-checked in this political environment because nothing they have said stacks up.

Today, as someone who has spoken around the country on regional development and who has followed Minister Joyce’s absurd regional development reports—which kind of have some good ideas every now and then but are so disconnected from the regions whence they came and have no funding attached—I say to New Zealanders: take heart. New Zealand First has heard you, and we say to you that, yes, we do live in a beautiful country. We are made up of a diverse group of people who, in the main, want the same outcomes. Actually, we all want to grow and we all want to do better for the people of New Zealand.

What we should acknowledge, and what I would like to speak to, is our primary industry. I would like to acknowledge the regions as our heartland and the economic powerhouses of this country we call home. Let us hope, actually, that that never changes, because, in our vision and as we move forward, a New Zealand First Government would look to play a part in growing value-added business in New Zealand. We would—

Hon Ruth Dyson: So you’re going to pick the winners?

FLETCHER TABUTEAU: Yes, actually, we would be part of picking winners. We would see our fish stocks processed here on shore. We would take our trees and have them turned into building materials to build our homes and our commercial towers here in Wellington and Auckland, for example. We would take our dairy products and help Kiwis turn them into valuable finished products. We would take our meat and have it processed here with state-of-the-art facilities.

First of all, and foremost amongst that, we would actually have to stop the sale of our land, of our forests, and of our assets to so-called foreign investors. It is not investment; it is a buy-up, and it must be stopped if New Zealand is to have any kind of future that will actually benefit the people we presume to represent. The difference between New Zealand First and that Government, apart from ad hoc, catch-up, laisar-faire economics is that we have a plan.

Chris Bishop: Laissez-faire.

FLETCHER TABUTEAU: Yes, I did have that written down. I did not want to confuse some of your members there. We have a plan. That Government will only react, like it is doing now, to emergency after emergency. We are hurting, and the economy and the people of New Zealand, unfortunately, are going backwards.

As a New Zealand First caucus member, I am excited about the future under a New Zealand First Government, and I look forward to engaging with Kiwis across the country in the coming weeks, when we will show them what we can do and what—as a country—can be achieved together. A party vote for New Zealand First is a statement that we have had enough and that we must grow as a country. Thank you.

PAUL FOSTER-BELL (National): E Te Mana Whakawā, tēnā koe. Tena koutou katoa, e ngā mema o Te Whare. For the second time in 2 months, I feel compelled to correct Mr Tabuteau’s French. It is pronounced “laissez-faire”, Monsieur Tabuteau.

This is going to be my final contribution in this Chamber not only in the 51st Parliament of New Zealand but for the immediate future and the time being, and I want to do a couple of things in this 5-minute contribution. Firstly, I want to thank everyone who has supported me so much in coming into this place and trying as best as I have been able to make a difference for New Zealanders.

In particular, I want to acknowledge my family, my mother, soon to be Dr Alyse Foster, whom I am incredibly proud of in her efforts towards gaining her PhD in her 60s.

I want to acknowledge all the staff who have given me such good support in my offices in Parliament and in the constituency office: Aaron Hape, Chloe Oldfield, Christian Hermansen, Nicola Yong, Jackson Freeman, Joshua Whitford, Beth McEwen, Logan Morton, Luc Powell, and Jono Webb.

I want to acknowledge the National Party—in particular, the leadership of the Rt Hon Sir John Key and now the Rt Hon Bill English. I can think of no better people to act as New Zealand’s Prime Ministers in the interests of all Kiwis, and it has been a pleasure and an honour serving under them.

I want to acknowledge all of those many people in the National Party—the volunteers, the executives, the chairs, but also the fundraisers, the people who are out there in the cold weather putting up hoardings, who have helped me across two campaigns. I want to acknowledge in particular, at the leadership level, Malcolm Plimmer, board members Roger Bridge and Alastair Bell, and my regional chair Rachel Bird.

I want to acknowledge those in Parliament whom I have grown to be friends with and have been supported so well by, particularly the class of 2011 in the National Party: the Hon Maggie Barry, the Hon Scott Simpson, the Hon Mark Mitchell, the Hon Alfred Ngaro, the Hon Paul Goldsmith, Simon O’Connor, Ian McKelvie, Dr Jian Yang, and Joanne Hayes.

Mr Speaker, thank you and your team of presiding officers for the forbearance you have shown to me over 4½ years. It is an absolute honour and a privilege to serve in this House in what must be the best country in the world. This is truly a realm of the superlatives. Not only were we the last place in the world to be colonised by humans, not only do we have the largest exclusive economic zone per capita of any country in the world but I am very, very proud of the fact that we are the least corrupt country in the world as measured by Transparency International, an organisation that I am pleased to be a paid-up member of. How is this relevant to our economic status? Actually, being an uncorrupt and transparent country in which people have respect for and trust in the institutions is so important if we want to attract that foreign investment that Mr Tabuteau so disparages. I think, going forward, it will serve us very well in terms of engaging with the rest of the world.

I also want to touch on our engagement with the rest of the world. We are a trading economy. We are very reliant on being able to sell our products offshore. I thought it was very interesting last week—a remark that I completely agreed with in the valedictory statement of the Hon Clayton Cosgrove: I think the bipartisan agreement on trade that has existed in this House for decades does need to be restored. We cannot get rich by simply selling to ourselves, and with the opportunities in the world today, some of which were referenced earlier by the Hon Todd McClay in his speech as Minister of Trade, the opportunities that exist for New Zealand with Brexit and the fast-paced development of the Asia-Pacific region are huge. So it is my hope that, in the years ahead, New Zealand will seize these opportunities rather than wish to shut out the rest of the world, as I know some in this House perhaps might prefer to do.

It has been a pleasure to be able to work cross-party on a number of issues, and I would like to acknowledge colleagues who have been on the Rainbow NZ Parliamentary Network, such as Louisa Wall. I would like to acknowledge Poto Williams, the deputy chair—vice president, internationally—of the Commonwealth Women Parliamentarians. As New Zealand’s Commonwealth Parliamentary Association representative, I have really enjoyed my time working with the Commonwealth. There is a Commonwealth advantage—up to 20 percent, we are told by Baroness Scotland—in trading with those countries that have our shared heritage and our compatible legal and governmental systems.

I go from this place having put through a member’s bill, having achieved some things, and knowing that New Zealand, as a country, will continue to do well into the future. I hope the New Zealand public see that National has tried incredibly hard to deliver for New Zealanders, and I am sure it will continue to go well in the future. Thank you.

The debate having concluded, the motion lapsed.

Bills

Enhancing Identity Verification and Border Processes Legislation Bill

Third Reading

Hon AMY ADAMS (Minister of Justice): I move, That the Enhancing Identity Verification and Border Processes Legislation Bill be now read a third time. This bill is designed to ensure that the agencies tasked with managing offenders and monitoring our borders have the right information at the right time. The bill will improve public safety by providing these agencies with real-time access to identity information that is unalterable and is up to date. Before I discuss the bill and the changes that the Law and Order Committee has recommended, I think it would be useful to remind this House how this bill came about.

Phillip Smith was convicted of murder, child sex offending, extortion, and kidnapping in 1996, and sentenced to life imprisonment. In November 2014, while on a 74-hour temporary release from prison, he was able to board a plane for Chile using a passport he had obtained issued under his birth name, Phillip John Traynor. He had a ticket for onward travel to Rio de Janeiro in Brazil, where he remained at large for 4 days before he was recognised and deported back to New Zealand. Of course, this is totally unacceptable.

The Philip Smith inquiry was established in order to investigate the events and processes that had led to Mr Smith’s escape. The inquiry found that there were some vulnerabilities in the system that had failed to prevent Mr Smith escaping. Many of these vulnerabilities were operational and have already been addressed through a sector-wide strengthening of processes. The remaining weaknesses required legislative amendments, which are contained in this bill. I want to recognise those who made submissions during the select committee process, and I also want to take the opportunity to thank, once more, the Law and Order Committee for its diligent consideration and the number of valuable recommendations it has made to strengthen the bill.

I want to highlight two of those recommendations in particular, as they relate to the way we support victims of crime. Under the current law a victim or their representative is notified if the person who offended against them escapes from prison or absconds from home detention. The committee recommended that the victim should also be notified in situations where the offender escapes temporary release. A second recommendation related to situations where a representative is to receive notifications on the victim’s behalf but cannot be reached. The committee considered that Police and Corrections should have the discretion to alert victims directly when their safety is at risk. These two clauses represent small but significant changes that we can make to ensure the safety of victims are duly incorporated into the bill.

I now turn to the substantive elements of the bill. It represents a move towards a single shared record of information about offenders for law and border enforcement agencies. This record will shift away from reliance on name and date of birth records as the principal records of identity verification and instead make greater use of biometrics, such as fingerprints, facial recognition, and iris scans. By taking a whole-of-system approach to offender identification and management, we can ensure that the right information is accessible to front-line agencies at every touch point in the criminal justice system and out to the border.

The bill is focused on enabling offenders’ identities to be quickly and accurately established by authorising specified agencies to collect and share this identity information. This will ensure that offenders will comply with the conditions of their sentences and do not mislead the public sector agencies or cross the border without authorisation. As an example, Corrections will be able to access biometric information, collected by police in real time, to verify that the person reporting for a community-based sentence is who they say they are. The same information can then be accessed again by customs to identify offenders, like Philip Smith, if they were to attempt to depart New Zealand. In addition, the bill will give key agencies access to births, deaths, and marriages information and the database of drivers licence photographs for law enforcement purposes. These forms of identity information are central to ensuring law enforcement officers can be certain they know the identity of the person presenting before them.

I want to emphasise the fact that the sharing of this personal information will be safeguarded by legislative protections built into the bill. The types of information that can be shared, the agencies that can access it, and the purposes for which it can be accessed are all for the purposes specified in the bill, to ensure that the agencies do not overstep their mandate. The Law and Order Committee also recommended that agencies be required to report annually on the sharing that takes place under the bill. This recommendation has been adopted to bolster agency accountability and public confidence.

I am pleased this bill has enjoyed widespread support as it has passed through the House’s stages. The changes contained in this bill are vitally important to ensuring public safety, and will significantly improve the quality and use of identity information across the justice and border sectors. I commend the bill to the House.

ANDREW LITTLE (Labour): I rise to continue Labour’s support for this bill, the Enhancing Identity Verification and Border Processes Legislation Bill, in this, its third reading. As the Minister has just pointed out, the origins of this bill relate to the events concerning Phillip John Smith, or Phillip John Traynor, depending on which identity he wanted to use. It was the latter identity that he used to abscond from the custody of the Department of Corrections and take off, and he found himself in Chile before he was eventually detained by the authorities there and returned to New Zealand.

But I have to say, we have to be honest with ourselves and ask ourselves why it is that an event that happened nearly 3 years ago has had its ultimate conclusion in the House just today—the third reading of this bill—after events that, upon review at that time, led to a report that said: “There are gaps that need to be filled.” Here we are, 3 years later, now finally putting the finishing touches on filling those gaps.

I think the Government is open to criticism, justifiably—a tired old Government that had this matter that was considerable, and that put victims at risk. It was a case of clear gaps in the management of prisoners and in the management of our corrections system, and it has taken the Government 3 years to fix it. It did not have to take that long. The primary conclusion of the report on the review of the failures of the system was that somebody from the Department of Corrections needed to phone up the person sponsoring the guy’s weekend release, and that would have brought the whole thing to an end, there and then. He would not have been released.

Anyway, we had the review. We had that glaring failure pointed out, and then we had the other systemic failures that the reviewer recommended be filled. We had all that within weeks of these events, and it has taken nearly 3 years to get them filled. So, you know, it is good that it is being done, it is good that the time of this House is being used, eventually, to remedy this problem, but, actually, a Government that had a sense of urgency and priority about the threat to victims of crime would have acted on this pretty much straight away.

We should have passed this bill, done its third reading, a good 2 years ago. We could have done it if we had had Ministers who were on the job. But they were not. They dragged the chain because they were not interested. They did not think they were under any pressure to do anything meaningful. Mr Deputy Speaker, as you will know from your background, justice delayed is justice denied.

In the time that it has taken us to review the events of Phillip John Smith, and do the review, and get this legislation up, and get to the third reading, there have been other crimes committed by people who have absconded and got through the very net that we are in the process of trying to close up. We had the case of Daniel Titcombe, a UK citizen who was working here, on a working holiday in Queenstown. He ripped off his employer to the tune of $3,000 in 2016. He was sentenced in December last year, 2016, and the very next day left the country. There was no border control advice. There was no requirement, as this legislation provides for, for Customs and others to have information about those who owe fines, have penalties outstanding, and ought to be restrained from leaving the country.

So because of the tardiness of this Government and the lackadaisical approach it has taken to this legislation, more victims of crime have been created and they have not seen justice done. The case of Daniel Titcombe in 2016 is just the latest of those. You ask Daniel Titcombe’s employer, Escape Quest in Queenstown, how it feels. Well, I know how it feels because the newspaper report made it pretty clear. His employer is stunned and gutted that that criminal got away with what he did, because this House, under this Government’s stewardship, has been too tardy in filling the gaps and remedying the problem.

In legislation of this nature, which cuts across the inherent rights to privacy and human rights, it is incumbent on this House to get the balance right between ensuring the safety and protection of citizens and victims of crime and ensuring that the powers of the State are such that it can properly do its job of providing safety and security to the community, without undue intrusion into innocent citizens’ lives. That was an issue that the New Zealand Law Society brought to the attention of the select committee considering this legislation, the Law and Order Committee. The New Zealand Law Society was concerned about any erosion of the privacy rights and privacy principles in the legislation. Nevertheless, as this House ought to do, it considered what the problem was that it was remedying, and even though the legislation does entail the erosion of those basic human rights, it is possible to contemplate that, if there are proper and effective safeguards in place.

The reason why the Labour Party will continue to support this bill in its third reading is that we believe that, by and large, it does get those checks and balances right. One is that Government agencies that will have the right to access information under this legislation will have to report in their annual reports the number of occasions on which they have done that, so that there is a level of transparency around that. They will also have to justify their actions for what would otherwise be a breach of privacy under the Privacy Act, ensuring that the purpose for which they are seeking information or providing information is for the purposes set out in this particular legislation.

So those checks and balances are right. This legislation adds a power that does not currently exist, and that is the ability to collect biometric information from prisoners, but also from mental health patients. That is about ensuring the safety and security of those patients, and so that the authorities are able to track the movement of people as they go through borders or through other places where their identity is required. It means the authorities can track people to make sure that the safety and security of the public is maintained to the best extent possible.

I would be remiss if I did not once again record the concern of the Labour Party in relation to new section 109F of the Privacy Act, which is provided for in clause 6 of this bill. That allows a schedule to the legislation to be amended or altered, and even to be completely replaced. That is a very, very large power to have in the hands of the executive without having to come back to this House, because of the principle that what this House does this House must be in a position to undo.

Giving the executive the power to make those changes to a schedule to the legislation through an Order in Council is a big step to take. I just record, once again, Labour’s ongoing anxiety about that particular provision. We will have to monitor that very carefully because it is not right that legislation passed by this House ought to be altered in form through processes that sit outside this House. We have to be alert to the erosion of that constitutional principle.

As I said at the beginning, the Labour Party will support this bill in its third reading. I do note, also, that one of the other changes it makes is in relation to victims’ rights. If victims of crime have notified the authorities that they have a representative who can be, and ought to be, the first recipient of information about the perpetrator of the crime against that victim, then the authorities are justified in communicating directly with the victim. If, in the case, for example, of an absconding prisoner, there is a real risk to the safety and security of that victim, the authorities can go directly to the victim, as opposed to the representative, if they think that they are justified in doing so. That is probably a sensible provision to have, without causing any concern to the victim. In the end it is about doing the utmost to ensure the safety and security of citizens.

Labour will support this bill in its third reading. We will monitor it very carefully around how the new provisions operate to make sure that innocent citizens are not victimised by it.

KANWALJIT SINGH BAKSHI (National): Thank you for the opportunity to participate in the third and final reading of the Enhancing Identity Verification and Border Processes Legislation Bill. This is an omnibus bill that has the ability to strengthen the Government agencies, including the justice sector and border control agencies, to effectively perform their functions related to law enforcement, including the detention of restricted patients, special patients, special care recipients, and other offenders.

This is, as the previous two speakers have mentioned, the result of the escape of Phillip John Smith, who escaped from prison and was able to cross the border. There was an inquiry, which resulted in recommendations, and some of the recommendations—most of the recommendations—have been implemented, but there are some loopholes, which this legislation will fix to ensure that no one can escape from prison or cross the border in due course. National is acting to keep the public safe from offenders through ensuring that high-risk individuals cannot leave New Zealand without permission or hide who they are through their multiple aliases. That is one of the loopholes. The bill responds to the legislative weaknesses around offenders and special restricted patient management, as identified in the Government inquiry into the matters concerning the escape of Phillip John Smith.

Some of the amendments that were recommended by the Law and Order Committee have been accepted by the Minister of Justice. First of all, the one that I would like to touch upon is the amendment of the Victims’ Rights Act 2002 to require Corrections to notify victims when an offender absconds from temporary release, not just after an escape from prison or home detention. This is important because the victims are the ones who are the most vulnerable, and we want to ensure they are informed immediately if there is any change in the circumstances.

This bill will also amend the Victims’ Rights Act to allow relevant agencies to contact victims directly to protect their safety, even if the victim has nominated a representative to receive notifications on their behalf. During the select committee process it was raised that sometimes the representatives are not contactable, and, in those cases, Corrections or the agency can directly contact the victim to inform them if the circumstances have changed again.

There are amendments to the Sentencing Act 2002, the Parole Act, and the Corrections Act 2004 to explain the purpose of the collection of biometric information, including allowing collection from offenders on community work and prisoners. This point was also discussed during the select committee: that it is important that anyone who is convicted, whether in prison or in community service—we should collect their biometrics so that we can identify them. These biometrics can be shared with the agencies.

There was another point raised during the process about privacy. That is why the agencies are required to disclose how much information has been shared among agencies and for what reason. That will bring transparency, and that was the reason why we recommended that. With these words, I would like to commend this bill to the House.

AUPITO WILLIAM SIO (Labour—Māngere): It was 3 years ago, on 6 November 2014, that Mr Phillip Traynor, also known as Phillip Smith, fled New Zealand on a flight to Chile while on temporary release. He is subject to a life sentence for murdering the father of a 13-year-old boy he had been convicted of sexually assaulting, being sentenced in 1996. Prior to this he was subject to a number of charges, and he was detained in Brazil on 13 November and returned to New Zealand on 28 November. That is the incident that set off the inquiry and essentially led to this bill being introduced into the House.

I think there were initially some concerns from some members of the Law and Order Committee when you look at key aspects of the bill. It inserts into six Acts a definition of biometric information that includes photographs, fingerprints, and iris scans to identify identity. It amends the Parole Act 2002, the Sentencing Act 2002, the Mental Health (Compulsory Assessment and Treatment) Act 1992, and the Intellectual Disability (Compulsory Care and Rehabilitation) Act 2003 to allow for the collection of biometric information from offenders, special care recipients, special patients, and restricted patients. When you look at that, it just seems really, really broad and all-encompassing when it was actually to do something very small—a released prisoner who was somehow able to get a passport and went overseas without any red flags at all at our borders.

The bill also amends the Customs and Excise Act 1996 to allow the New Zealand Customs Service to collect, use, and disclose biometric information about persons arriving in, or departing from, New Zealand. The other two key things in this bill are that it amends the Births Deaths, Marriages, and Relationships Registration Act 1995 to authorise the disclosure of birth, death, marriage, civil union, and name change information with specified agencies for law enforcement purposes and then it inserts new Part 10A into the Privacy Act 1993 to authorise agencies to access and use identity information, which includes biometric information that is held by other agencies, to verify the identity of individuals.

This insertion of new Part 10A, by clause 6, did raise quite a lot of questions in the committee and, certainly, by those who made submissions. Some argued that there were already existing arrangements by Government agencies for sharing information. The concern that was raised there was that this bill seemed to avail extensive powers to a number of Government agencies.

In the end, I am pleased and happy that the select committee did agree in unison that one way of ensuring that there was accountability was to ensure that new Part 10A was amended by inserting new section 109EA, which would require agencies to report annually on the operation of the sharing provided for in the schedule. I think that was critical for gaining unison from committee members, because if we did not have that oversight, I think some of us would be very nervous about the extensive powers that we were granting to a number of organisations.

The Minister has made reference to a number of changes that the select committee recommended, one being to the Victims’ Rights Act 2002, which requires the Department of Corrections to notify victims of specified offenders, or their nominated representative, when an offender escapes from prison or absconds from home detention. There is currently no such requirement if an offender absconds from temporary release. I did not realise how a small matter still required legislation to specify and enable that power. That is the one thing that I learnt through this particular committee. So the committee recommended that we amend the Victims’ Rights Act to require the Department of Corrections to contact victims of specified offences, or their nominated representatives, when an offender absconds from temporary release. It is so minor, but significant, and so that change was made.

Also under the Victims’ Rights Act, a victim may appoint a representative to receive notifications on their behalf, and victims might nominate a representative because they do not have the capacity to fully understand notifications, or because contact regarding the offender could re-traumatise them, and under current law, where a representative is appointed, information must be provided to the representative, rather than the victim. Again, I did not realise that you needed formal approval for an agency to make direct contact with the victim if their representative could not be contacted. So again, it was minor, but still quite important. And so the bill was amended by the committee to provide that victims who had nominated a representative may be notified directly where the relevant agency believes it is necessary for their safety.

The point I am making is that by and large the Labour Party supported this. They were changes that were required—minor but necessary. And I suppose, despite the concerns that were raised by many of the submitters and raised by some of my colleagues on this side of the House as well, it was important that you have that further accountability so that there is a requirement made for agencies to report on an annual basis.

The final point I want to make is that the incident involving Phillip Traynor happened in 2014. This bill was introduced 3 years ago, and I am still baffled as to why the Government dragged its feet on this bill, which we are now passing, very, very late—2 days before Parliament rises. It is a concern, because when you read all the reports that were provided by the officials, this was an urgent matter. This was of serious concern, and my thought was: “Why did they not move quickly enough? What if something similarly happened?” What if there was an escaped prisoner, either on release or temporary release, and somebody’s life was lost? Who would be at fault? Who do we then blame for that? Ultimately, it would be all of us.

But I would say, if anything had happened, everyone on this side of the House would be pointing a finger directly at that side of the House, because those members have the legislative agenda and they have the power and the resources to either move this quickly and pass it or drag their feet, as they have done.

MAUREEN PUGH (National): I stand in support of the Enhancing Identity Verification and Border Processes Legislation Bill in its third reading here today. This bill is in the name of the Hon Amy Adams, and it comes about as the result of an inquiry into the matters raised around the escape of Phillip John Smith or Phillip John Traynor, who did manage to find himself a passport, acquire for himself a passport, and leave New Zealand while he was on temporary release from prison.

Out of that inquiry it was found that there was inadequate sharing of information between various agencies—as well as that some of the operational processes were a wee bit lacking. And so this gentleman was able to find himself free of the country. So the inquiry made 39 recommendations, which were accepted in full by the Government—the majority of those recommendations—and it came to support the 13 recommendations that were also enacted immediately after the incident happened. Corrections moved very quickly to adjust its processes so that these temporary releases were made more rigorous and filled the gap that was obviously found wanting.

This is an omnibus bill and it amends a variety of Acts and strengthens a variety of requirements that must now also be made before a Minister can make Orders in Council. The bill also streamlines how the agencies must work together to identify these offenders and ensure that their sentences are carried out properly. It moves away from simple name-based recognition, and into a variety of other details called either the biographical or the biometric information. Biographical information means simply the name, address, date of birth, place of birth, and gender. Biometric information includes either a photograph, a visual image such as iris scanning, and some of the technology that is becoming more regularly used in other jurisdictions. It also includes other distinguishing features such as tattoos, amputations, and birthmarks, etc. Those agencies now are required to share this information, and those agencies that are called accessing agencies are the Department of Corrections, Department of Internal Affairs, Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment, Ministry of Health and district health boards, New Zealand Customs Service, and New Zealand Police. And the holder agencies are all of those agencies including the New Zealand Transport Agency.

The public does expect their Government to be able to share this information for the purpose of keeping everyone safe and for preventing these types of abscondments from justice. We are aware now that the border alert processes are significantly improved as a result of the tightening-up of some of the processes, and there are now 11,000 more people under the management of Corrections who are to be stopped should they try to leave the border. This bill contributes to this Government’s policy of delivering better public services by reducing crime and reoffending, and I have great pleasure in commending it to the House.

DAVID CLENDON (Green): I am pleased to make some brief comments on this bill. Sadly, I need to disrupt the unanimity of support for this bill by saying that the Greens will continue to oppose the legislation, as we have done throughout. I would certainly acknowledge that the bill is in better shape than after its first reading. The Law and Order Committee did a good job and entered some new provisions that are useful and amended some of the provisions in it. It was a good committee, but it did not quite deliver a bill that the Greens could come to support.

Could I, in passing, just acknowledge the chair of the committee, Mr Bakshi. I always admired his calm and respectful approach to chairing that committee, which sometimes was marginally volatile, and he also was very reliable in the provision of biscuits and refreshments, which is always an admirable quality in a chair. He was an excellent chair, and I do acknowledge that.

We have heard many times that this legislation was in response to Mr Phillip Traynor/Smith’s escape to South America. Oddly enough, I see very little in this bill, actually, that would have contributed to preventing that fellow from escaping the country. The fact that he was able to get what was, in essence, a legal passport illegally procured, but actually a passport in a legal name, was due to a bureaucratic blunder going back many, many years. I am not by any means convinced that anything in this bill would prevent that sort of human error from recurring. His escape could have been very easily prevented had the Corrections department followed its own processes.

Maureen Pugh, in her comments, made the point that Corrections has adjusted its processes. It has a little; she is entirely correct. But, actually, if Corrections at the time had simply complied with existing checks and balances; had they bothered to listen to the advice of their own senior police officers, who were very sceptical of the trustworthiness of this fellow; had they bothered to make that one phone call, which I think Mr Little mentioned, to the sponsor, who actually had no idea that Mr Smith was being released—so Corrections made a series of errors.

At any point in that chain of errors, this escape could have been prevented, and an unfortunate consequence was, initially, the complete ban, the halting, of the temporary release, release-to-work programme, and even now that programme is not back to the volume it previously was at. That is most unfortunate, because release-to-work particularly, and temporary release, does provide a staged transition of offenders back into the community that has proven to be very positive. Simply being in prison one day, released to the community the next, is actually less ideal in many cases than having these people able to have a staged return, a managed return, back to the community.

Mr Little also made the point that this bill has been 3 years in the passing. Arguably, it has been rather a slow progress through the House, but, in a sense, we have had the worst of both worlds. If you read the advice to the committee from the Justice officials, the early analysis of the problem, the framing of the apparent solution, the drafting—it was all done in considerable haste, and that is made apparent in the advice from officials, who have made it quite clear that this was the advice, the best analysis, they could offer in the time that had been given them, and, implicitly, if they had had more time, they may have presented a much broader analysis of what the issues were and suggested some solutions to them.

We are under no illusions. We entirely agree that there is an issue around information sharing within and between agencies—not least of all in the justice sector. I know that there are some very hard barriers preventing exchange of information between the Family Court and District Court, which, on occasion, has had the effect of actually endangering people, for example, when a protection order is being applied for in the Family Court, but they are unable to access information about other matters being dealt with in the District Court. That is entirely unhelpful, and there are many other examples of that. I have heard from lawyers, from the judiciary, from stakeholders that we need to do better in that space. We do need to find solutions where we can ensure that Government agencies that legitimately need particular information and can apply that information to improving or ensuring public safety—we need to enable those flows and those connections. We also need to find those enablers in a way that does not compromise people’s reasonable expectation of privacy in information that they give to multiple Government agencies.

So, on balance, while we agree there was an issue here, and there continues to be a problem around information sharing, we are not convinced that this bill provides the solution to it, and therefore cannot support it. Thank you.

MAHESH BINDRA (NZ First): Madam Temporary Speaker.

The TEMPORARY SPEAKER: Ah, Mr Bindra.

MAHESH BINDRA: Madam Temporary Speaker King, this is your first call, I think, and it is to be given to a small Opposition party member, so congratulations on that. Now, it is Mr Deputy Speaker in the Chair.

I rise on behalf of New Zealand First to take this very brief call on the Enhancing Identity Verification and Border Processes Legislation Bill. I first acknowledge the hard work put in by the Law and Order Committee members, from both sides, and also the able assistance given to us by the select committee staff and also by the advisers.

Maureen Pugh has been a very valuable member of the select committee. However, I do not agree with her when she describes Phillip John Smith as a gentleman. He was far from it. He is a hardened, manipulative criminal, and that is what he deserves to be called. So we call a spade a spade, unless it is a shovel.

Coming back to the bill, we note that we had a few concerns and we had a few queries, and we were quite satisfied with the explanation that we got for those queries. One of those was on the validity of the information that would be shared by various agencies, and we were assured that the agencies that will be coordinating with Corrections will be able to hold that biometric information for only the period of the sentence of that criminal. So that was one thing that convinced us to support this bill.

The other thing is also that when Maureen Pugh said that Corrections acted very quickly, I think that was a bit too generous. Corrections took 24 hours to realise that the criminal had escaped all the way to Brazil, then it took a further 48 hours to inform the police—that much we have been told—and then the police acted on it only after the criminal was found in Brazil. So he was brought back, after it had resulted in international embarrassment for us. We were thoroughly embarrassed in the international arena, and then this Government took about 3 years to fix that fault.

So, after 3 years, this is what we see now. It is a reasonably sound piece of legislation. We have contributed to it. We have supported it in its various stages, and we will continue to support this bill.

JONATHAN YOUNG (National—New Plymouth): I am very pleased to stand and support this very important piece of legislation. As we know from previous speakers, this bill came about through that event when Mr Smith/Traynor escaped the jurisdiction of New Zealand. That sparked an inquiry because, of course, it was of great concern, and, as the member who previously spoke, Mahesh Bindra, said, it was something that we did carry some sensitivity about in terms of our Corrections and our border control systems.

It is good to know that when the inquiry came back and highlighted some vulnerabilities that needed to be addressed, there was a very quick response from the Government. The Government accepted in full the majority of the 39 recommendations and then a number of refinements across agencies were already under way prior to that report coming back. So there was attention, and even though this bill has taken a number of years to come through the House, probably people would say “Rightfully so.” because, in terms of monitoring and biometric data, we have been very careful in the Law and Order Committee to ensure that there is a good balance. The Privacy Commissioner came in and addressed the committee as well and, you know, it is very important to get the fine balance right in these areas. We want the public of New Zealand protected. We want to have fool-proof systems. Yet we need to ensure that this level of surveillance occurs only in those limited situations that are necessary with those limited people whom we deem need to have this measure of surveillance.

Corrections implemented 13 recommendations after its urgent review after this event, such as making the temporary release process more rigorous and there were some very good measures taken. So while this bill did take some time to go through the House, can I assure you and the public of New Zealand that there were immediate responses to this situation that made it incredibly difficult for that sort of incident to happen again. But we need to futureproof legislation. We need to make sure that legislation is updated and this is what this process has been about.

It is very import to note that this response has been supported right across the House with the exception of the Green Party. I am not sure why they continue to hold their support back on this particular bill. I am very pleased. I want to just finish very briefly to let other members of the committee speak. The Law and Order Committee did a very good job, I believe, well led by Kanwaljit Singh Bakshi, a very good chair. It is a very collegial committee on most matters, and in this matter, when it comes to protecting the public of New Zealand, I believe indeed we worked well together to bring this matter to a satisfactory conclusion in this bill. I commend this bill to the House. Thank you.

ADRIAN RURAWHE (Labour—Te Tai Hauāuru): Tēnā koe e Te Māngai o Te Whare. Can I first of all in this speech—which is likely to be my last contribution to the 51st Parliament—acknowledge you, Mr Deputy Speaker, and acknowledge your retirement. Ngā mihi nui ki a koe.

I am happy to take a call on the Enhancing Identity Verification and Border Processes Legislation Bill in its third reading. As I said in my first contribution in the first reading, I wondered about whether the measures being taken through this bill and the magnitude of the response were appropriate for the issues that were being addressed. Having seen the report from the Law and Order Committee—and I support the contributions of my colleagues Mr Little and Mr Sio on this, as well—Labour still supports this bill. I think the issues did need a response, but I wanted to go back to my first contribution and pose that question, and obviously, on this side of the House, in the Labour Party, we believe that it needs to be done.

Reflecting on everything that actually went on with this, if he was not so illegal and so daring you could almost say that what this man did—and I have not mentioned his name yet—was not only daring but tenacious, in a way. It is a great shame that he put his skills to this and tested the whole system, proving, I think, that something needed to be done. The sad thing about it is that if it was not only so illegal but devastatingly dangerous, it would be laughable, and I think my colleague Kelvin Davis made a statement at the time it happened that it was almost farcical. So I am really pleased that New Zealand is able to now put a piece of legislation in place that allows information to be shared amongst those agencies and those departments that really need to know what each other are doing. I think that is a definitive improvement on the way that things can be done for issues like this.

I remember reading some of the submissions through the select committee stage—and I want to acknowledge the Law and Order Committee—but I remember one in particular that stood out because of its concerns about how far the sharing of that information would go. I think those were valid issues at that time, but I am satisfied that the select committee has considered all of that information, and now we get to the stage of debating the bill as approved by the Committee of the whole House. I think it is incumbent upon members of this House—and it is good to hear that most of the members and parties in the House are supporting this—to actually consider seriously those issues, and I believe we have. So, hand on heart, I am happy to support this bill in its third reading, and I commend it to the House. Kia ora.

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: Ian McKelvie.

IAN McKELVIE (National—Rangitīkei): Sorry—

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: You forgot my name, didn’t you?

IAN McKELVIE: Ha, ha! It is like Friday afternoon. It is a pleasure to get up and support this piece of legislation, which, interestingly, is quite a difficult piece of legislation to put together because it has brought together a lot of strands. Like so many things that happen in this place, it was put together as a result of the actions of one very clever and rather crooked man, and I guess that is what happens with a lot of legislation we have in this House.

I want to comment on only about three things. Two of them have been raised by speakers previously, and I want to comment a perspective on that. Also, I want to acknowledge David Clendon, who has been on the Law and Order Committee for all the time that I have been in this House. Even though the Greens often disagree with the pieces of legislation we are putting through the House, he has brought a very measured approach to that committee, and he has been a very valuable part of the committee in the time I have been on it. He will be missed, I think, because he has got a way about him that is pleasant and he makes a great contribution.

I want to talk about the privacy issue that has been raised, and it was certainly raised by Andrew Little earlier in the debate. He made some points that the committee considered at length. It was quite a difficult issue for the committee, because we were really trying to get the balance here between people’s right to privacy—and, on the whole, they are people who have been convicted of a crime of one sort or another—people’s safety, and the rights of victims to protection as well, and that is the critical piece of this. So it is a very difficult balance for this Parliament to get. As we gather more and more information on people—and technology has enabled that—it becomes more and more difficult for the legislators to put in place safeguards around how that information is used. Given the circumstances, I think this piece of legislation has got to the right balance in that area.

The other issue that was raised by an earlier speaker was the issue of executive power. If you think about the amount of legislation that goes through this Parliament—and all other parliaments, I expect—in this day and age, it is extremely difficult, given the pace of change that we see in life today as opposed to the pace of change some years ago, for those legislators to keep up with the changes required in legislation by bringing pieces of legislation back to the House every time you need a change. Hence the need for the considerable amount of executive power that is put into some of these bills. And by “executive power”, obviously I mean the ability to regulate and change regulation at a reasonably frequent pace. That is pretty difficult, again, for committees to get their heads around, I think.

Those two changes have both been brought about by the massive increase in the pace of life that we live and the increasing technology and many other things that are happening in life today, so there will always be challenging legislation that deals with people’s rights. I think it is something that will have to be considered in the future as to how we deal with this sort of issue as a Parliament, because it is complicated. It is giving some power, in a lot of these cases, to one or two people to make some quite significant judgments.

So I have got no problem with the bill. I think it is well put together and I certainly support it. Thank you.

STUART NASH (Labour—Napier): Of course we support this bill. Anything that keeps communities safe we are obviously going to support.

First of all, let us go through the problem definition and how this came about. We know that in November 2014 a prisoner serving a life sentence for murder—he was a convicted paedophile—escaped New Zealand while on a temporary work release from prison, and he was arrested in Brazil and was returned to New Zealand. People say this man was intelligent, but I think he was as thick as two short planks. Anyone who gets arrested in Brazil—there is something terribly wrong with their plan. I think his arrogance was his undoing, which had sort of characterised his whole life. So let us not say that this man was intelligent, because he was anything but. In fact, he was a predator who should be—you know. Anyway, let us leave it at that.

The other thing is that the Privacy Act meant that it was very difficult—well, the Privacy Act determines how agencies collect and store data, what they can share, etc. The Privacy Act at this point did not allow a sufficient level of sharing to optimise keeping the police and other agencies well informed, so that was changed. The other thing, of course, is that there are legislative and technical barriers that hinder information sharing. So what this bill does is it looks to rectify the situation that allowed someone like the gentleman we have mentioned to escape.

I suppose the concern I have—and, like I said, do not get me wrong; I am completely supporting this bill—is that when I looked at the original regulatory impact statement, it highlighted a number of issues. The first one was that the Ministry of Justice had limited opportunities for detailed agency consultation. What it actually said—this is the Ministry of Justice—is: “We have not had sufficient time to collect definitive information from agencies regarding their information needs, but we have worked closely enough with key agencies to gain clarity for the purposes of designing a legislative mechanism.” It said it had been unable to consult with the Privacy Commissioner. It said that the scope of change for the purposes of the analysis was restricted to identity verification. It said the Smith/Traynor review made useful evidence available, but its scope was limited. It also said it had not been able to assess the definitive fiscal cost that may result from the options.

Now, the reason I point this out is—one of the reasons, of course, a bill goes to select committee is that it allows experts, or just Kiwis who have an interest in this, to submit in front of MPs and make sure that the bill that goes through first reading can then be brought up to speed at the select committee process. But I think we run a bit of a risk if what we do is sort of say “OK, we have had an issue here. The Minister has investigated; she’s come out with 39 recommendations. We must rush this through.” It is a little bit knee-jerk, I suppose, and it is a shame that, after 9 years, it actually took a serious incident for this sort of bill to be drafted.

I mean, we understood the issues. We know the problems. It might have been highlighted by a particular case, but these existed for a long time. And I think we have got to be really careful—and this Government is pretty bad at it—that we do not write legislation in a knee-jerk fashion. When I read the regulatory impact statement I sort of got the impression that that might have happened. But, luckily, there was a good select committee that it went through, the Law and Order Committee, and I think the bill is now up to scratch and it will achieve the purposes that it was supposed to achieve.

We do acknowledge that the systems surrounding offender and prisoner management needed amending and updating. The key parts of the bill are common sense—changes that will allow Government departments to better share information. And I suspect that a lot of New Zealanders did not realise that, in fact, these agencies could not share information in the first place. I mean, we understand the role of the Privacy Commissioner, and we definitely know that information has to be kept private, because if it is shared for nefarious means—or any other means—then it could end up creating unintended consequences, and we certainly do not want that.

But what we do want, I think—and what we require—which, of course, this bill addresses, is for agencies to be able to share information that will (a) allow them to their job better and (b) allow us to make sure that our communities are safe. And this bill does address that.

The inquiry, actually, into the escape of the man, whose name I shall not mention, did show a chain of failures by Government departments. And a lot of those, actually, could have been—I mean, my understanding of the incident report into this is that a simple telephone call could have, in fact, prevented this. So whilst this bill puts a lot of checks and balances in place to make sure this does not happen again, we also need to understand that those who are responsible for implementing this—the men and women on the front line—actually understand the processes and they are following them in a way that is robust and retains the integrity of our prison system and our court system and our other agencies that deal with these sorts of characters.

The inquiry into this chap’s escape did show that the levels of vigilance and communication could have been a lot better. Now, you cannot legislate for that; you really cannot. If the people are not talking to each other or agencies are not talking to each other or communicating, even though the processes and procedures are there, then this is not going to stop this. One thing that we do need to know—and I do admit I was not on the select committee, so I am assuming this has been communicated—is that there is a set of procedures in place, and the staff who are responsible for implementing these procedures do need to understand what their roles are when a prisoner is out on, for example, work release, etc., etc.

I mean, my understanding is the victim of the crime was not even notified that this chap was on work release or had escaped. There were no comprehensive systems in place where the Department of Internal Affairs was supplied with information about New Zealanders not allowed to leave the country. It did note that the police deal with the information they have got in front of them, but we do know that, often, these criminals will change their name simply to avoid the sorts of checks we are talking about. So, again, this needs to be flagged with the Department of Internal Affairs, and the Police, and Corrections at the appropriate time and as soon as is practicable, so we are not just dealing with a John Smith or a Clive Smith or whoever; we are actually dealing with the person whom Births, Deaths and Marriages has information on.

Corrections noted that it had strong inadequacies in the way that it administered temporary release. I suspect that this chap has now had to spend a lot of time in solitary confinement, not because he was a bad boy and ran away to Brazil, but simply because a lot of temporary releases were cancelled at the time. The prisoners who were actually using these or were on temporary release for the right reasons, i.e., integrating them back into the community, which is what we want—there is no doubt about that—had their temporary releases cancelled. I think that was probably a bad thing; there is no doubt about that.

So what I would just say, to sum up, is that we do support this. We support anything that keeps our communities safe, and we support any bill or any measure that actually allows our various agencies to communicate in a way that is meaningful, that drives efficiencies, and, most importantly, once again, keeps our communities safe. Thank you very much.

TODD MULLER (National—Bay of Plenty): I rise to take a short call this afternoon on the Enhancing Identity Verification and Border Processes Legislation Bill in its third reading. If I may, before I dive into my small amount of contribution on this topic, I do just want to acknowledge you, Mr Assistant Speaker Tisch. This is my last speech, I suspect, in this Parliament and your second to last day here. Our paths crossed back in the late 1980s when we were involved in the National Party, and I have worked with you in your roles at both a regional level and a national level. You have always been a mentor to me, and I just want to acknowledge the over 25 years of close connection between me and you. I wish you all the best for your future.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): Thank you.

TODD MULLER: Like Stuart Nash, the previous speaker, I too have not been involved in the Law and Order Committee deliberation on this very complex bill and the quite significant layers of improvement that are being put in place and enabled through this piece of legislation. But, unlike the previous speaker, I am not going to immediately dive into trying to lay blame on individuals or agencies, or look for political points, because I think what we see here in this legislation is the Government actually working.

Every single one of us will have been appalled by what happened with this individual—and, like the previous speaker, I am not going him the kudos of being named—but, clearly, a significant number of operational deficiencies were identified, and this is often the way, actually. These things are not big, silver bullet, major failures. What happens in organisations—and I have been involved in a commercial context over the years—is that you have, as they call it, the Swiss cheese model. You have a whole lot of relatively minor actions or inactions that result in something that is clearly not acceptable.

But what we have seen here is very much a whole-of-Government approach around acknowledging this was an issue and doing an inquiry to identify the breadth of changes, both culturally and in terms of process, that needed to be brought into place. A number of them were immediately enacted, but, of course, to support that cultural change and focus on excellence, there needed to be a piece of legislation put in place to ensure that the legislative framework to encourage that sharing of information was in place and that it set the right legislative direction and underpinning for that change of culture. I thought Ian McKelvie actually spoke very well on this topic just before, when he talked about the inherent tension between freedom of information and personal information, the freedoms that are expected around that personal information, and the extent to which that gets traded away when you have committed a crime against the community that, as a consequence, sees you jailed.

Again, I am not close to this, but what I have listened to in this debate and read shows that the initial bill, I think, had very close to the right balance, and the collective efforts of the select committee—almost in unanimity—has got this piece of legislation to a very good position. So I am very pleased to see that as we conclude the 51st Parliament, we have got another example of the Government working and the Government delivering and getting a good outcome. I commend the bill to the House.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the Enhancing Identity Verification and Border Processes Legislation Bill be now read a third time.

Ayes 104

New Zealand National 58; New Zealand Labour 30; New Zealand First 12; Māori Party 2; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.

Noes 14

Green Party 14.

Bill read a third time.

Bills

Maritime Transport Amendment Bill

Second Reading

Debate resumed from 10 August.

MICHAEL WOOD (Labour—Mt Roskill): Mr Assistant Speaker Tisch, while I do not have the same long association with you, can I just echo the comments of the previous speaker, Mr Muller. I think this is probably going to be the last speech that I am able to give in this House, and, as the newest member of the House, can I just note that I have appreciated the guidance and encouragement that you have given me, as you give to many members of this House, in your role as Assistant Speaker and sometimes as the Chairperson. I really do wish you the very, very best in the next challenges that you will no doubt embark upon. Thank you.

We come now to the Maritime Transport Amendment Bill. This is a bill that the Labour Party has considered based on the evidence that was presented to us at the select committee stage. In the first reading of this bill the Labour Party was prepared to support the passage of the bill through to the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee so that we could really hear what the maritime transport community had to say about the provisions within it. There are a number of quite distinct provisions, and we thought there was enough in there that we needed to get those submissions so that we could come to a fully informed view on the matter. Having worked through that process, it is the view of the Labour Party that we cannot support the further passage of this bill.

The bill has a number of key provisions—three key provisions, effectively. The first is around managing the risk of alcohol and drug impairment in the commercial maritime sector. We think that is a good goal—I am going to talk about this in a bit more detail later on—but, fundamentally, we think that the provisions in the bill, especially in respect of mandatory drug and alcohol testing, are not justified and will not necessarily deliver to us the benefits that we would all want to be delivered.

The second significant part of the bill relates to international compensation arrangements for maritime incidents. That part of the bill is one that we think the Government has pretty much got right. There is no doubt that we need to strengthen the requirements in that area because of the significant commercial and environmental risks that are posed in the event of a maritime incident.

The third major area in the bill relates to, effectively, the deregulation of shipping services to the Chatham Islands. Again, based on the submissions that we have heard at the select committee, we have real concerns that there might in fact be some perverse outcomes arising out of what is proposed in the bill in that area. So, basically, there are two crosses out of three for us in terms of the main provisions of the bill, and on that basis we are not prepared to see it proceed.

What I might say before I go into more detail on each of those aspects is that the Labour Party really, really strongly supports a more integrated national transport system and far greater onus being placed on the maritime transport sector, and particularly coastal shipping. This is a sector that has actually been really, really neglected for quite a long time. In 2008 the Labour Party, when we were last in Government, launched the Sea Change strategy, which was about really energising and investing in the coastal shipping sector. Why is that? Because the potential of moving freight efficiently and in significant volumes around our country on the blue highway of the open seas is there for a small island nation like ours, and the more freight that we can move around by coastal shipping, the more that we get off our congested and very busy regional roads. So we really support the sector—I think probably everyone in this House does—and we want to see some good rules to support that sector, but, as I say, we do have real concerns about two of the aspects of this bill.

Let me start by talking about aspect No. 1, which is the shift towards a mandatory system of random drug and alcohol testing within the maritime transport sector. We have got a real concern about this, because every single submission, virtually, that we heard on this aspect was opposed—from the workforce, as represented by the various unions in the sector, but also from the employers, in fact. There was not really any significant support from submitters for what was being proposed at the select committee. It was actually really difficult for us to understand what the driver for this particular change is. Was there any systemic evidence of a massive problem that will be solved by the particular policy that is being proposed here—mandatory random testing? There was no real rationale that was set out.

Actually, one of the in principle concerns I have got is that it is my view that we should have, as far as possible, a level of consistency of law across important areas. In this area only 2 or 3 years ago the House passed a major piece of legislation to reform health and safety law in our country, the Health and Safety at Work Act, which, of course, came in the wake of the Pike River tragedy. It had wide support across this House. It set out a modernised and revised legislative framework for how we manage health and safety risks in the whole range of workplaces across New Zealand. It is a risk-based framework, where in every single workplace you have to assess the risks, you have to work out how you are going to deal with those risks—whether you are going to eliminate them or whether you can minimise them—and you have to set out plans for doing so. It puts responsibility on the employer, in particular, for ensuring that those plans are put in place, and there are real penalties that come in behind that.

I suppose in respect of this area my question is: why would we not simply be using that framework to govern the real risks that we all recognise of people being impaired by drugs and alcohol in this particular workplace? There is actually no piece of evidence before us that that is not an appropriate framework. Instead, we are picking out this particular sector and saying we are going to have mandatory drug and alcohol testing on the employees in that sector. I, for the life of me, cannot understand why that is, and, actually, on this side of the House we think there is a level of injustice in picking out one particular group of workers for what is, effectively, quite an invasive and virtually compulsory testing regime.

One of the concerns I have got is that I think we are a little bit mealy-mouthed in terms of the compulsion that is involved here in the bill. The bill sort of suggests that employees can choose not to proceed with the random drug and alcohol testing, but in reality we know what happens if the employees do not consent to that. Effectively, it is a compulsory regime, and I think when you are putting in place a compulsory and invasive regime like that, where someone’s employment is, effectively, on the line, there should be some very, very strong policy reasons and an evidential basis sitting behind that. Once again, we simply did not hear that at the select committee stage, and so we strongly reject that part of the bill.

I just really want to hammer home this point. This was not just the self-interested position from employees in the sector. It was the employers, as well, who were very strong in this area. What they said to the select committee was that they were already working on this in a very proactive way. They said that they had already got plans in place, that they had got significant education being rolled out across their workforce, and that it was in everyone’s interests—the employer and the employees—to work collaboratively on this. As soon as you start setting up compulsory testing regimes like this, you create a divide in the workplace between the employer and employee. We have real concerns that that might, in fact, be quite counter-productive.

The second real area of concern that we have is the opening up of the Chatham Islands shipping route to foreign-flag vessels. Again, this is one where the people themselves who are most affected spoke to us at the select committee stage. Every single submission that the select committee heard coming from people and organisations on the Chatham Islands said that they did not support this. To me it really feels like there is just a bit of ideology at work here, because what we heard from submitters is that people on the Chatham Islands currently have a very good service, and, of course, it is an important service. The Chatham Islands is extremely isolated and it relies on a maritime service to get goods to and from the island. It is extremely important for lifestyle reasons, for health and safety reasons, for just being able to live on that island. But, of course, there are only 600 people who live on the Chatham Islands. If Annette King were in the seat here she would be able to tell us a whole lot more information about the Chatham Islands, for which she is the very proud member. But only 600 people live there. I think there might be something like 400 people working in this entire complex. So the population of the Chatham Islands is not that much bigger than all the people who work in the parliamentary complex.

So you have got to ask yourself: could that small population possibly sustain multiple operators? It does not take very long to come to the conclusion that it probably cannot. So the real fear that the people of the Chatham Islands have is that if we open it up to foreign-flag competition, that will have operators coming in who potentially run knock-down prices to begin with to get market share, getting rid of the existing operator that people have relied on for a long time. They are very happy with the service they currently have, and it just does not seem like there is any particular rhyme or reason, or evidence that this is going to benefit anyone whatsoever. So we stand with the people of the Chatham Islands who have said: “Just leave us alone. We have got a good service. We know how this works. Keep out of it, Mainlanders, and leave us with the service we have at the moment. We don’t need foreign-flag vessels here.”

I am coming to the end of my time, but I think I have covered off the two major concerns that the Labour Party has about this bill, and the reasons why we will be voting against it at further stages. I am not sure what progress we are going to make in terms of getting towards the end of the bill before the end of this parliamentary sessions, but I beseech other members of the House to consider those concerns that have come through at the select committee and vote against this bill. Thank you.

JONATHAN YOUNG (National—New Plymouth): Thank you very much for the opportunity to speak on the Maritime Transport Amendment Bill. Mr Assistant Speaker Lindsay Tisch, can I, as other previous speakers have done, acknowledge your incredible service to this Parliament and to this nation. We will miss you. Thank you very much for your very good guidance as you have presided over this House, and for the fact that you have not interrupted us too much but you have kept us on the straight and narrow—not like some other members who take that seat.

Thank you very much to the previous speaker, Michael Wood, for your comments. This bill went through the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee probably prior to your entrance to Parliament, so there may have been some background—which I think you have alluded to—that you were not sure of.

Can I say that our officials did say to us that the whole area of drug and alcohol testing is not just in regard to the safety of people on vessels. The maritime industry has a health and safety system called the maritime operator safety system, which operates alongside the Health and Safety at Work Act but is a little bit distinct and different because of the issues it faces, particularly on the high seas. So there is a matter there of actually looking at two regimes of health and safety, which we did find very interesting.

But our officials talked to us also about the tragedy that happened in Carterton back in 2012 with the hot air balloon that struck the power lines. As they investigated, toxicology analysis determined that the pilot was under the influence of cannabis at the time—THC was found in his system—and surmised that that could have led to an error of judgment. They made a recommendation to the Government to enact stricter measures in regard to drug and alcohol use in the aviation, marine, and rail industries. So that was part of the background of this as well, though that was not a marine environment. We are concerned about the safety of passengers as well as people who are in the commercial space. So it was reasonably broad ranging in that regard.

Also, we understand that there are measures that the member said that Labour can support, which are around the provisions enabling New Zealand to exercise its right, as a party to the protocol of 1996 to amend the Convention on Limitation of Liability for Marine Claims, to make reservations that exclude limitation of liability for three different categories of maritime claim, those being wreck removal, cargo removal, and damage caused by hazardous and noxious substances. It is quite clear and obvious that New Zealand has a very strong coastal environment in which there are many hazards. Much of our coastline is hit by quite strong storms, and we want to protect our environment, and we also want to have the ability to be able to claim costs so that if there is an incident, we do have provision to ensure that we can capably do the work to mitigate any environmental impact on that environment. So I am very pleased that the member opposite said Labour could support this part of the bill.

As we come to the end of this 51st Parliament, we will, hopefully, be able to get this bill through, which is why I am going to keep my contribution short. But I just wanted to give a little bit of background to that, and thank Labour for the fact that it can support the second part of that. I do commend this bill to the House. Thank you.

IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY (Labour—Palmerston North): I appreciate the enthusiasm that the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee chair, Jonathan Young, has for passing this piece of legislation before the election. But unless the Leader of the House is planning to take us into urgency, I do not think that is going to happen, but never mind. As my colleague Michael Wood said, Labour is opposing this legislation with a heavy heart. There are aspects of this legislation that we absolutely do support, but then there are other aspects of it that are fatally flawed in our opinion, and that leads us, unfortunately, to having to vote against the whole bill.

Just to reiterate, we do support the bill allowing New Zealand to increase the level of compensation available to meet the claims for oil pollution damage. I think we are all acutely aware of the incident with the Rena and are acutely aware of the fact that because New Zealand had not acted quickly enough in terms of international treaties and the passing of legislation through this House to ratify those treaties or enact those treaties in New Zealand, we actually left ourselves in a vulnerable position in relation to the Rena, and the taxpayer ended up wearing more of the cost than was necessary. So it is good—we certainly support that aspect of the legislation.

But as other members have pointed out, at the select committee we heard repeated messages from both operators and employee groups, including unions, that requiring operators to carry out random drug- and alcohol-testing regimes is unnecessarily onerous and does not actually address the issue of drug and alcohol impairment. I suppose an important distinction to make is the distinction between drug and alcohol use and drug and alcohol impairment. Many tests for various drugs do detect low levels of drugs in people’s systems. That does not necessarily mean that they are impaired. Unfortunately a lot of these tests are very blunt instruments and it is difficult to detect the difference between impairment and use.

With alcohol it is fairly straightforward. We have an alcohol limit. We can be tested in our vehicles, on ships, at work, and we can generally tell whether someone is impaired or not. With cannabis it is a little bit more difficult. In fact, because of the fact that cannabis stays in people’s systems, that actually often drives people to use higher-class, more potent drugs that move through the system more quickly, and are out of the system, despite the fact that they have a more detrimental effect in the short term and the long term, and can have a more detrimental effect on their ability to work. People can be impaired, but those drugs might not be detectable in their system.

This is a tricky area to get the law right, and it is a tricky area to get testing right as well. Often the detection of drugs can be used against workers, even when they are not impaired. So this is an area where I think we have to be fairly nuanced in our approach, and we do not need to be unnecessarily heavy-handed in our regulations. From a Government that likes to tell us about how it does not like to put unnecessary and onerous red tape on employers, this is one where we heard from both employers and employees that the regime that was being suggested was (a) not going to address the problem that has been identified, and (b) was unnecessarily onerous. So it is on those grounds that we in the Labour Party have chosen to oppose this legislation, and also because of the concerns around opening up the routes to the Chatham Islands to foreign-flag vessels.

The people who came and spoke on behalf of the Chatham Islands industry made a very good case that that industry needs some protection and that it is simply not economic to expect multiple operators to be able to operate in that space, and that, ultimately, what then happens is that large operators can simply push out the domestic operator. That just does not seem to have any obvious benefit to domestic operators, especially Chatham Island operators, and it actually does not seem to have any obvious benefit to New Zealand as a whole. We appreciate those submissions that were made by the Chatham Islands operators, and we support them.

What could have been a good bill—had the Government members on the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee been prepared to actually work with members of the Opposition and to make some amendments that would have satisfied the concerns raised by submitters—unfortunately has been slightly let down by these aspects of it. There is still the Committee of the whole House, and we will have an opportunity to traverse those issues again.

I am sure members from the Labour Party and the Green Party will take the opportunity to offer up Supplementary Order Papers if we address the bill at the Committee of the whole House before the adjournment for the election. If we are dealing with it after the election, well, then things might look very different, and we might be able to sort the bill out and we might be able to pass a good piece of legislation. From this side of the House, we are looking forward to that prospect, but for the time being, sadly, it is our duty to oppose the bill at second reading.

ALASTAIR SCOTT (National—Wairarapa): I too, Mr Assistant Speaker Tisch, would like to acknowledge you this afternoon. I am assuming you are sitting, not on your feet—yes, you are. So I will carry on, thank you.

Iain Lees-Galloway: It’s an oldie but a goody.

ALASTAIR SCOTT: Well, he mentioned it in his valedictory, so I thought I would make the most of it.

The last speaker, Iain Lees-Galloway, was not very convincing, was he? He was not very convincing when he talked about his opposition to random testing of drugs. He talked about the difficulty in measuring the drugs, but then he gave the example of alcohol where it is quite clear and transparent, and where we are able to measure and quantify the amount of alcohol—for example, in the bloodstream of a driver. Whether one is impaired or not is not that relevant. The point is that we can measure it and we can set limits, and we can decide whether or not that person is able to operate a piece of machinery, for example, on a boat and whether, therefore, he or she is able to or not able to operate it. It is the same for THC, the same for methamphetamine, the same for a number of drugs one can measure independently.

Of course, random testing is necessary and there should be no concern about having random testing, because the Opposition should be concerned about the safety of those people in the boat or in the balloon or in the car or in whatever vehicle—particularly marine vehicles, which we are talking about here today. They should be concerned about the state of the operator. Random testing is nothing new. We are able to do that in the workplace; why should we not be able to do it on a boat? Why should we not be able to do it on a boat to ensure that those who are using heavy machinery, particularly, are safe to do so, for the benefit of themselves and for the benefit of those travelling in that vehicle? So I just do not get the logic of the previous speaker, Mr Iain Lees-Galloway, opposing the bill.

The most striking—this is in the report—information was the lack of evidence of a systematic problem with drug and alcohol impairment in the marine sector. So what? So what if there is no evidence? The point is we should be able to test and be able to be sure that there is none. That is the point. We should be able to test and be sure that there is none, and random testing enables that to occur to a high level of satisfaction and confidence by those who matter—that is, the employers and the employees and the passengers in the vehicle.

For that reason I am looking forward to more debate with the Opposition members and I hope, at some point, they support this bill, as we do on this side.

JULIE ANNE GENTER (Green): Well, that was an amazing quote from National Party member and backbencher Alastair Scott: “So what? So what if there is no evidence?”. I think that pretty much summarises the entire National Party’s approach to governing. It does not care about evidence. It is totally driven by what benefits its constituents. In this case, it is very clear to see what the link is: National is, basically, generating business for the companies that are doing random drug- and alcohol-testing. That is what this is about.

We heard comprehensively at the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee from a wide range of stakeholders and submitters an excellent case for why the random drug- and alcohol-testing regime that it was proposing was not necessary, was not going to be helpful, and was not actually going to improve the safety and well-being of people in the maritime sector, in part because they already have an approach within the maritime sector. If you actually wanted to make a difference, in terms of ensuring there was not impairment out on the seas, it would apply to recreational boaties, not the commercial sector, which already has its own approach. We heard comprehensive evidence, and I would welcome people watching at home—I am pretty sure that the submission from the Council of Trade Unions would be public. It was excellent, it was very well substantiated, it was to a much higher standard than anything we heard from the Ministry of Transport officials, who were shockingly—shockingly—unable to answer our questions in the select committee.

The actual financial impact of the random drug-and alcohol-testing regime that is being put forward in this bill was not included in the regulatory impact statement. When we asked the officials to try to quantify the impact, they were unable to do so. But we did hear from the Rail and Maritime Transport Union, the Council of Trade Unions, the New Zealand Maritime Transport Association, and a number of tourism operators that the new requirement for random drug-testing was not necessary or the best way to ensure safety and reduce the risk of impairment in the commercial maritime sector. So the Green Party is going to oppose this bill.

Initially, we thought that elements of the bill were strongly aligned with Green Party policy and enable the Government to request more compensation if there is a maritime oil spill. We still agree with that, but the rest of the bill—the substantive part of the bill—is about the random drug-testing of staff, which is not substantiated by any evidence. The member Alastair Scott himself told us that National does not care if there is no evidence; it will just do it anyway.

This bill enables flagged foreign vessels to run services to the Chatham Islands even though the only affected party that showed up and submitted to the select committee told us that they opposed this particular change in the legislation. The officials were unable to tell us why the change was proposed. There was a comprehensive argument set out as to why it was not a helpful change. Frankly, one thing I can say is that we have got to change this Government, because these people are asleep at the wheel. God knows what they are on about, but the officials were unable to provide any logical, coherent argument in favour of the majority of the substantive changes in this bill, and the Green Party is, therefore, going to oppose it.

DARROCH BALL (NZ First): It is a pleasure to rise on behalf of New Zealand First to speak very briefly to the Maritime Transport Amendment Bill. I am speaking on behalf of Denis O’Rourke. Although there are quite a few things within this bill that make sense and are logical and that New Zealand First would support, we will not be supporting it through this reading. That is for a very important reason. It is that New Zealand First is a party that listens to our people in our regions, and you cannot get more regional than the Chatham Islands.

I think it has been mentioned before that, while I was not sitting on the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee at the time, every single submission that came through on this bill opposed the provision in the legislation that states that foreign-flagged ships would be able to go to ports like the Chatham Islands. Specifically, the people from the Chatham Islands and organisations from the Chatham Islands and representatives of those organisations came in, and they actually gave quite a compelling submission.

It has been covered before—and previous members have stood up and spoken on it—the fact that the size of the Chatham Islands, the population of the Chatham Islands, and the very nature of the island itself would not be able to sustain the multiple ship routes going to their port. The amount of investment that the organisations and the people of the Chatham Islands have actually put into their shipping company and the surrounding organisations—

Mr SPEAKER: I do apologise for interrupting the member’s contribution, but in accordance with Standing Order 360(3), I call on Dr Kennedy Graham to make his valedictory statement.

Debate interrupted.

Valedictory Statements

Valedictory Statements

Dr KENNEDY GRAHAM (Green): Kei te mihi nui, ngā mihi o te rā ki a koutou, ngā rangatira, ngā kuia, ki te hunga ora. Kia ora tātou kua hui mai nei; tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā tātou katoa.

[A huge appreciation and the acknowledgments of the day to you collectively, the esteemed ones, the elderly womenfolk, and the healthy ones. Salutations to us gathered here; acknowledgments, accolades, and congratulations to you collectively, and to us all.]

It is my privilege to have been a member of the New Zealand Parliament over the last 9 years. I have appreciated the opportunity to be here, and wish first to thank all parliamentary staff for their unfailing courtesy and professionalism. I shall always remember the spontaneous hug I received last Friday.

Let me extend my love and thanks to the wonderful people up in the gallery—Green members and close friends who have come here to be with us today. Following the passage of time, Doug and Bruce and Angela, and Jenny and Diana and Claire, all from Christchurch; Sue and Denis, and Ann and Paul from Wellington; Bruce and Ingrid and Lynda from Waiheke; Felicity and Anna from the North Shore—I think you each have an inkling of just how much it means to me to have you here.

I am honoured to acknowledge the presence in the Chamber of Sir Geoffrey Palmer, one of New Zealand’s greats. And I am touched that Mike and Robin are here from Auckland—our memories together stretch back to childhood.

I gave my maiden speech from the seat immediately in front of me. The distance between there and here is 1.9 metres. You might not think that is a long distance for a 9-year stint. It is about half a centimetre per sitting week—in my case, backwards. The common snail proceeding leisurely but forwards at 2.4 millimetres per second can achieve more. Not only is the snail faster; it carries a shell on its back as it goes—another thing to note.

I have not carried a shell as I have gone through life. I have carried instead the belief that respect towards others will almost always be reciprocated, and that this is preferable to carrying a concealed dagger. I maintain that approach to this day, notwithstanding an election campaign and the recent political events in which I have been somewhat intimately involved.

I joined the Green Party of Aotearoa / New Zealand in January 2005, from the UN Secretariat Building in New York, moments after accepting a position at Canterbury University that enabled me to return home following 34 years overseas. I have been active in the party for the 12 years since, including those representing it here in Parliament.

Such a time in politics presents a challenge as to how to conduct oneself from day to day. In my time here I have learnt to admire most those colleagues who show courtesy and respect across the traditional lines of division. We all carry our own deeply held convictions, but it is important to remain open to the views of others.

At the global level, in our tumultuous age, this is arguably the most critical thing we each can display. I have worked and lived in nine countries beyond my own, in Asia, the Middle East, Europe, and North America. Living in societies that are Buddhist or Islamic weaves a tapestry of what is common to us all and what is not. Each is as rich as the other; each is distinctive from the other.

The far-reaching disruption in our present age is due not only to the quickening pace of change; it is due to a lowered readiness to embrace each people’s values and customs as equally valid. Here in Aotearoa we have made some progress in reconciling our own value systems, albeit with some way still to go. But for the world as a whole, that is more challenging by an order of magnitude. With 200 nation States and 10,000 communities, how do we develop a coherent and legitimate system of global self-governance from this as we seek to solve our ecological crisis? This is the defining challenge of our century.

In my professional career I have focused primarily on the two existential threats facing humanity: climate change and the untamed use of force, especially with nuclear weapons. In that context, I treasure a few special experiences in my life.

The first was in the mid-1980s, serving on the New Zealand delegation when we negotiated the South Pacific nuclear-free zone. A second was in the late 1990s, conceiving and editing the book The Planetary Interest, which argued for global solutions to global problems and for each country’s legitimate national interest to derive from its share in the global solution, rather than pursuing an obsolete version in competitive style at the expense of the global commons.

More recently, in 2013, was setting up on Waiheke Island the New Zealand Centre for Global Studies, a thinktank that institutionalises the planetary interest. We had Sir Geoffrey give our third annual global affairs lecture last year, and we have Gareth Evans coming in a few months’ time from Australia to give the fourth. Jim Bolger has agreed to do it next year.

A fourth special experience, most recently of all, in 2015, was setting up GLOBE-NZ, our cross-party group of MPs working together on climate policy, with our Vivid Economics report on net zero domestic emissions, the unique parliamentary debate in April, and our recent common statement of collaborative purpose. I think, as an executive of six MPs from different parties, we are most proud of our statement of purpose, which we announced last month after a series of discussions following the April debate. It was the first time our cross-party group was speaking with one voice. We accepted the goals of the Paris Agreement and the long-term strategies to achieve them, including the 2050 Pathways Platform initiative agreed at the last UN conference in Marrakech; we welcomed the Vivid Economics report that would have New Zealand reach net zero domestic emissions on, or shortly after, 2050; we undertook to evaluate the merits of the Vivid Economics scenarios; and we plan now to develop an indicative, broad-banded pathway to that goal and to commence a dialogue on the policy measures to ensure its achievement.

I believe that this represents the best kind of politics that a democratic Parliament can display, and I look forward to seeing those goals realised over the next few years. I am certain that GLOBE-NZ has an effective future that will live beyond me and my immediate colleagues on the executive.

More generally on policy, if we can witness during the 52nd Parliament the following three achievements by New Zealand, I believe we shall all be able to take pride: a climate target for domestic emission reductions equivalent to an independently calculated share of the global carbon budget, ratification of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons and serious work in persuading the nuclear powers to join as part of the obligation under the treaty, and legislation that makes aggression in violation of the UN Charter a leadership crime, placing any Prime Minister or Deputy Prime Minister in prison if found guilty—no hard feelings, James. Those goals reflect deeply held principles cherished over the past century and more.

Principles are developed to guide us through life, without which we are alone in the dark. Life on Earth is naturally raw. Through our evolution we have developed technology to understand reality and even direct it, and principles to understand and direct ourselves. It is not perfect, because we are not. Each principle reflects a slice of that understanding, so it is inevitable that they compete and occasionally clash. After moments of crisis, we seek to reorder them and embrace a clearer set of principles for the future, and, in so doing, we evolve towards a higher level of insight and a wiser state of being, as individuals, as societies, and as the human group.

There are three central political principles of our age, and they are here in this Chamber today: freedom, equality, and sustainability. My experience in leading GLOBE-NZ for the past 2 years has brought home to me how each MP embraces a mix of all three, how we hoist one to the top of our own flagpole, and how we need to respect one another’s. There is no room for unbridled anger in New Zealand politics.

But principles are simply signposts to a common destination. In that, they differ from conscience. The reason I am leaving Parliament is the stance that I and my colleague Dave Clendon took on grounds of personal conscience. This is not the moment to explore the issues that arose, and both of us were prepared to accept whatever fate was in store when we made our decision. Once you make a decision on a matter of deeply held conviction, the rest is consequential, subject to a collective fate that the individual cannot orchestrate.

What I should say, however, is this. There are two dimensions to the task of political representation. The first is political judgment. That is empirical, relative, contestable, and open to negotiation. It is 99 percent of our daily job. The second is when an issue of personal conscience arises. That is ethical, absolute, non-contestable, and not open to negotiation. If politics transgresses conscience, politics must cede. This is the decision we took—simple as that. Yet decisions taken on conscience can, of course, have political consequences.

The fate of any political party will wax and wane—that is the nature of politics—but a party is simply an institution. An institution is a vehicle for the pursuit of ideals and principles. Like any vehicle, it requires ongoing maintenance. Sometimes the way ahead is difficult to discern. Parties can lose their way, but they can also recover. I believe the Green Party will do so, on behalf of the Green movement around the world. Individuals come and go, but the institutions remain to serve the ideals they cherish.

A consultant colleague was in touch a few days ago. “I have been deeply distressed all week,” she wrote, “given the political turmoil. I’ve assumed it was best not to disturb you, but you have been in my thoughts and I hope you are keeping your spirit resilient through all of this. I practise faith that says things will evolve, for the highest good, over time.”

When I entered Parliament in 2008, I had two granddaughters. Mia was 4 and Kahli was 2. Now I have six. Grandchildren have a way of lighting up our lives; pushing us to be more aspirational, more resolute, in forging a better future. I have done my best here for them, as I know we all aspire to do for future generations.

And now, I look up to Marilyn, with whom I celebrate 25 years of marriage next Tuesday. I did not know it was possible to be so close to another human being. Your beauty and grace, your forbearance and your love—they overwhelm me.

My great-grandfather was present in this Parliament from 1855 to 1868. He has come and gone, but I feel his spirit. My brother came, made his contribution, and left.

Now it is my turn. Farewell, my colleagues; it has been such a privilege.

[Applause]

Sitting suspended from 5.58 p.m. to 7.30 p.m.

Bills

Maritime Transport Amendment Bill

Second Reading

Debate resumed.

Dr JIAN YANG (National): I rise to speak briefly in support of this bill, the Maritime Transport Amendment Bill. It is about maritime safety issues, and it deals specifically with the alcohol and drug use issue in our maritime commercial sector. Just recently it was reported that a ship’s captain was found more than five times over the legal alcohol limit while he was trying to bring his logging ship to dock in Northland. It highlights the issue of alcohol in our commercial maritime sector. Consuming alcohol and also using illegal drugs could adversely affect people’s behaviour and performance. It was reported a few years ago that nine of our 17 deceased commercial fishermen returned a positive result for drugs and alcohol. That, again, highlights the issue of the problems in our maritime commercial sector.

This bill will strengthen our drug and alcohol management regime in the commercial maritime sector. Commercial maritime operators will be asked to conduct random testing of their staff carrying out safety-sensitive activities, and these specific requirements will make sure that our operators will make every effort to make sure that the operations are safe. This in turn will strengthen the safety culture in our maritime sector. This is the importance of the bill.

Then the importance of the safety issue in the commercial maritime sector is that—a few years ago we experienced the Rena oil spill incident. That was one of the most significant environmental disasters in New Zealand waters. New Zealand is well known for its clean environment, and this clean environment reputation has added much value to our various industries, including tourism, the food industry, and even international education. We have vast coastlines and also exclusive economic zones. It is particularly important for us to make sure that we have really genuine safety in our maritime commercial sector.

On the other hand, shipping is a particularly dangerous industry, and that is widely recognised, but we are able to make measures to reduce the risks and also to make sure that all the operators behave in a responsible way. So this bill will ensure that our maritime commercial sector will operate in a safer way, and that is why I will support this bill and commend it to the House. Thank you.

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

GARETH HUGHES (Green): Kia ora, Mr Assistant Speaker. Nga mihi nui ki a koutou, kia ora. I rise, first of all, to acknowledge you in the Chair and your years of service to this Parliament and the country.

I rise to oppose this legislation, the Maritime Transport Amendment Bill. It was a tough choice for the Green Party to oppose it. I remember standing on those Tauranga beaches when the Rena hit the Astrolabe Reef and the heavy fuel oil hit those beaches. I remember seeing those people in the HAZMAT suits. Actually, I remember, early on, those people picking up the oil blobs themselves because there was no official response. There were not, in those initial days, the people in the HAZMAT suits organising the clean-up. Good old Kiwis just went on and did it themselves, picking up those oily blobs.

I remember the anger at the time that the taxpayer was going to have to pick up the tab for a company and a ship that had despoiled one of the most beautiful parts of the country, a place that was called the “kai moana supermarket” for Te Whānau-a-Apanui and other iwi and hapū in the region, who had their kai moana taken away from them. There was the environmental, the spiritual, the social, and the economic dislocation, but it was doubly galling that the taxpayer had to pick up the tab.

I think it is quite a fair principle, which everyone in this House can agree with: if you make a mess, you clean it up. What happened in this case was that because the Government had not signed up to these international maritime liability agreements—the 2003 International Convention on the Establishment of an International Fund for Compensation for Oil Pollution Damage had not been acceded to—we were not able to access the full amount of money there would have been otherwise. The taxpayer spent more than $100 million cleaning up a mess that it could have got the company to pay for.

It was triply galling when our out-of-date Resource Management Act had a $10,000 maximum daily penalty. For the worst environmental disaster we had seen, a $10,000 penalty was simply laughable when the taxpayer was forced to pick up the tab of $100 million. It is good that we are finally signing up to this agreement. I wish we could also be modernising our resource management legislation at the same time. I also wish we could be beefing up our oil spill response capability, which was seen to be so woefully unprepared. So that is the good; the bad, however, is the outcry from the experts regarding the compulsory drug testing in the shipping industry and the potential damage to the Chatham Islands shipping service.

We have heard a debate about evidence. The Government often talks about evidence. What we heard from the experts and the submitters—the actual evidence—was that these drug tests were not necessary, they were not helpful, and they were not there to improve safety in the sector. So we are going to listen to the experts; we are going to listen to those involved in the industry. And that is why we are opposing it. For a small island with a population of only a matter of hundreds, it is important that they have an affordable and reliable service to the mainland. Opening this up to unflagged ships is risking that affordable, reliable service that they aspire to. Those are the two reasons that outweigh the positives of this legislation, and that is why the Green Party is opposed. Kia ora koutou.

JOANNE HAYES (National): I stand to take a brief call on the Maritime Transport Amendment Bill. For the first part of the previous speaker Gareth Hughes’ speech, I totally agreed with him—the second part not so much, but I did agree with him in the fact that, you know, if somebody makes a mess in our waters then they should be made to clean it up and we should be able to get compensation. I am pleased that this is what this bill is amending the Maritime Transport Act 1994 to do.

The second part of the bill addresses the alcohol and drug use in the commercial maritime sector. A few years ago, I used to work in the seafood industry, on the training side of things, and I met a number of fishermen. Yes, they like to have their drink and things like that, but one of the training providers actually introduced alcohol and drug testing among some of their students. Whilst it was all up in the air and he was told that you should never do that, and all of those things against testing people on some of those fishing boats, what it did was it actually increased safety on those boats for the workers, because working on a fishing boat in a fishing factory can be quite dangerous, especially in seas that are tossing.

When we start to look at this particular bill and the drug and alcohol testing, I am actually all for it. I think we need to make sure that the people who are operating these big vessels—and they are huge vessels. I have had a go—I went on a simulator while I was working for the seafood industry, and I can tell you it was really quite difficult on a simulator. It was a container ship, and, yes, it was the cliffs of Dover that I was trying to manoeuvre this big ship through, and it is quite difficult. When you start to add alcohol and drugs to the staff, the captains, and skippers who are actually in charge of these boats, it can be quite difficult. So I totally support drug and alcohol testing, and maybe not just as a drug and alcohol test every now and then; maybe make it a little bit more compulsory as people go on duty. I mean, they have gone through most of the alcohol and drug testing for a number of our industries that deal with people and with product, and I do not see why this cannot be part and parcel of this regime as well.

So, without any further ado, I have stood to say my piece on this bill, and I commend it to the House. Thank you.

PEENI HENARE (Labour—Tāmaki Makaurau): Thank you for this opportunity to speak on the Maritime Transport Amendment Bill in its second reading. I was part of the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee that heard many of the submissions on this particular bill. I want to start by speaking to one in particular. One of those submissions was, of course, from the people of the Chatham Islands. It was quite interesting because I recall, after their having explained the shipping arrangement that they do have, that they once had, and that they actually aspire to, I was very, very confused. There were different shipping organisations mentioned, there was a lack of service, there were issues with fuel, and there were issues with a constant and regular sustainable supply of good shipping for the people of the Chatham Islands. I recall after their submissions that as a committee we asked for some further information, simply just to seek clarification around the arrangement that they had.

I recall that once that clarification came through from the offices and we sat there and deliberated—I deliberated with my colleagues Mr Iain Lees-Galloway and Sue Moroney—we were really concerned with the provisions of this particular bill. In particular, we thought that the people of the Chatham Islands were actually saying to us that there was an insufficient freight volume to the Chatham Islands to make sure that more than one service was economically viable. That became quite clear. And opening up the possibility to foreign-flag vessels to run a service was a big challenge to that financial viability. While I have never been to the Chatham Islands, sadly—I hope to go some time in the future—it was quite clear that the arrangement that they had at the time had to be better supported, not just by this Government, but I think by the industry as a whole.

There are other issues in their submission that spoke about the poor infrastructure that they have actually coped with for some time, and how only a certain sized vessel could service the people of the Chatham Islands economically. My colleagues on this side of the House have all expressed the concerns that we have about this particular issue around the profitable, economical sustainability or viability of a service to the Chatham Islands, and the fact that if it is opened up, of course we run the risk of, I guess, endangering a good supply of freight services to the people of the Chatham Islands. It was clear from them that they were not keen on that particular part. We heard those submissions and certainly hear their pleas. They are one of the reasons why, sadly, we will not be supporting this bill.

I pick up on the point made by the Green member about the Mōtītī Islands, where the Rena wreck destroyed a lot of what they call kāpata kai or food stores or food cupboards or—as I mentioned in one of the bills earlier today—mātaitai where they are able to harvest seafood. I think the provision in this particular bill, which is why it is with a heavy heart that we will not be supporting it, is one of those better steps in the right direction about making sure that those who do use shipping, who ship freight across or around the country on a network, actually must pay. They should be held culpable for any accident or any maritime disaster, because of either a bit of negligence or just unfortunate circumstances, which saw the Rena disaster that affected the people of Tauranga, and wider, actually. I read one report, when we were considering this bill, that stated that the effects of the Rena disaster have actually spread right down the East Coast.

More importantly, I think one of the bigger issues was actually the effect that that had on the land dwellers. It was made quite clear, the environmental impact, but what happened was just the divisions it caused amongst the people, not just Māoridom but local authorities. There was a heck of a lot of finger-pointing, and in the end, I think, still, to this day, many of those people are rather upset at the outcome. But one of the provisions in this bill was certainly, I think, a step in the right direction, and it picks up on a point that my colleague here Mr Stuart Nash always makes, that they might be subtle changes in bills but they actually mean a heck of a lot. So this particular bill replaces “shall pay” with “must pay”, so that you are held culpable for any kind of maritime disaster that you might actually have had a hand in, and it forces you to actually pay—not a “shall pay” but a “you must pay.” They sound small, but they make a big difference in the scheme of things.

The other issue was around drug and alcohol management plans and testing, to make sure that those who are in charge of a vessel, any vessel really, are able to carry out their duties properly and without being impaired. The random drug-testing part was probably one of the bigger issues. I recall reading the departmental report and, of course, discussing it with the advisers around the random drug-testing aspect of it and how it would impact on some of the rights, but also how, with controls such as these, the compliance costs—and it is one of those points that I raised regularly on the bills that came through the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee. It is fine to put compliance on particular issues or businesses or ventures, but it is important to make sure that the Government and the Government services actually have the infrastructure and capacity to enforce them. Otherwise what is the point?

So those were other issues that were raised. We also spoke about the lack of information, or the lack of any evidence of a systemic problem with drug and alcohol impairment in the maritime sector in New Zealand. Sure, we want to make sure that those who are in charge of vessels are actually capable of doing so, but we only heard a heck of a lot of anecdotal evidence about how widespread the problem might be in the particular industry, and that is hardly the kind of evidence that we feel is able to, I guess, force us into making legislative changes. We want to make sure that the proper evidence is there and the need for it is there, otherwise we are changing law just simply for the sake of changing law instead of actually making a positive impact on not just this particular sector but on all New Zealanders.

I heard one of the earlier speakers on this particular bill mention a particular incident, on a different bill but through the same select committee—they spoke about a particular operator of a hot-air balloon, it was, in this particular incident, who was impaired by drugs. It was harrowing to hear the evidence and the submissions from the families who were affected by that particular incident, which was the hot-air balloon incident where, sadly and tragically, so many people lost their lives.

To hear those particular submissions—one of the problems that was identified was that the person operating the hot-air balloon was impaired due to drug use. The evidence was quite clear on that one, and this one is really to reiterate my point about the fact that we need evidence to make sure that we are able to understand the full scale of the problem across the maritime sector.

I think one of the undertones of all of the submissions that came into the select committee on this particular bill was just simply the lack of infrastructure in the maritime industry, both on land and out at sea. There were undertones in the submissions about the lack of infrastructure that would allow a more sustainable, a more economical, and certainly a more efficient maritime sea freight business and industry in Aotearoa New Zealand, and one of the problems is that it is due to a lack of funding.

Anyway, like I have said, we will not be supporting this bill, sadly, and we hope that in the future we can change it again more meaningfully.

SIMON O’CONNOR (National—Tāmaki): I am pleased to take a call on the Maritime Transport Amendment Bill in its second reading. I had a little bit to do with this very early on, but have since left the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee. I am pleased to see it progressing through the House and to particularly acknowledge the Minister of Transport, Simon Bridges, who is seeing this through, and the work of the select committee. I know that the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee works incredibly hard on bills like this.

I do have to take umbrage, though, with my colleague who has just resumed his seat, Peeni Henare. He has suggested that there has been a lack of funding for infrastructure, particularly in the Chatham Islands. It may come as news to the member that we are investing something like $55 million into the Chathams at the moment to replace its wharf. I know, and not because he is sitting in the House, that the list member resident in Rongotai, the Attorney-General, the Hon Chris Finlayson QC—

Carmel Sepuloni: Name-dropper.

SIMON O’CONNOR: Yes, you have got to get all the post-nominals in as well—QC, MP. He has been actually very, very keen on this sort of investment—again, $55 million into a new wharf there—and that does not take away from the advocacy, either, for a new wharf that has been put in place on Pitt Island. For those in the House who do not know, the Pitt Islands are about 20 kilometres south of the Chathams. I am reliably informed by Chris Finlayson—in that marginal seat of Rongotai—that, actually, the investment is in play and there are dynamics, if you will, between the shipping player, or players, and the Chatham Islands. I know that he and others, certainly on the Government side, are keeping a close eye on that.

Look, I am conscious that this is the last speech on this bill, so I do not want to prolong it too much. It is always great to get the support of the entire House on these matters. The bill is doing a couple of very basic but rather important things. One has been well traversed—around the whole element of alcohol and drug testing. That can be done at the moment, somewhat on an ad hoc basis. This provides a legal framework to it and, really, it is analogous to the likes of what we do on the roads with the police. This provides a legal framework to work and support that. I think, actually, the previous speaker and others before him have acknowledged there have been a number of incidents involving drugs or alcohol in transport environments that we need to address. And perhaps, through this bill, there are some wider ones to look at.

The Government has been very aware for a long time now of the importance around health and safety. Speaking as the chair of the Health Committee, I say that one of the greatest impairments to one’s health and to one’s safety is the use of alcohol and drugs, which always puts an interesting question to certain parties who are advocating more drugs in society. We will not quite get into that tonight. So it is good to see that this framework is in place.

The other has been a response to the Rena incident off Mount Maunganui a few years back. This bill in effect allows the Government to get more compensation. Its primary mechanism is to exclude certain costs, such as wreck removal, cargo removal, and other remediating damage. As I understand things, at the moment there is, effectively, a cap and those liable can reduce that cost, or how much they actually have to pay out in cash, by saying that they spent this much money on the cargo removal, this much money on wreck removal, and so forth. We are saying now through this piece of legislation that we can still claim X amount of dollars and a hefty fee at that, but we will also charge you for the removal of the wreck and so forth.

So I think this bill is in a good space. I note that the select committee has made a number of recommendations. I think that is fairly normal for a select committee—not unusual. It is a robust part of the dynamic of this Parliament. Reading my very quick notes here, because I did not sit through the whole time, I see we have had about 25 people come and submit—I think that is particularly helpful—and 11 of those were in person. So that gives a little bit of context to the changes that the select committee has made.

One particularly of note is the amendment of clause 28, which is now amending the new schedule 1AA. It is specifying commencement dates for drug and alcohol testing and around the oil pollution compensation amendments. The long and the short—the two provisions now have to come into force on different dates because of the later transition period required. Put another way, it is just an appreciation, through the work of the select committee, that, putting these two elements in place around compensation and around testing, they are not going to be able to come into effect on the same day. So it is just a bit of a change there.

Look, I said I would not go on for too long—I probably have—but I just want to acknowledge all those who are working on this bill and those who are supporting it. Thank you.

The question was put that the amendments recommended by the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee by majority 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 54

New Zealand Labour 30; Green Party 12; New Zealand First 12.

Question agreed to.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the Maritime Transport Amendment Bill be now read a second time.

Ayes 62

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

Noes 54

New Zealand Labour 30; Green Party 12; New Zealand First 12.

Bill read second time.

Bills

Telecommunications (New Regulatory Framework) Amendment Bill

First Reading

Hon TIM MACINDOE (Minister of Customs) on behalf of the Minister for Communications: I move, That the Telecommunications (New Regulatory Framework) Amendment Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Commerce Committee to consider the bill. This bill amends the Telecommunications Act 2001 to modernise the Act and establish a stable and predictable framework for fibre access services in New Zealand. It removes unnecessary copper fixed-line access service regulation and streamlines regulatory processes to enable a rapid response to any competition problems, particularly in the mobile communications market. It also provides more regulatory oversight of retail service quality and wider consumer protections.

The telecommunications market is changing, with new technologies, shifting consumer behaviour, and evolving business models. Alongside this, consumers have vastly improved connectivity through the Government’s $2 billion roll-out of world-leading communications infrastructure. The Telecommunications (New Regulatory Framework) Amendment Bill will ensure that regulatory settings continue to be fit for purpose and support the evolution of this fast-moving sector. Connectivity is increasingly important for every aspect of New Zealanders’ social, economic, and working lives. Access to faster communications services and infrastructure is a great enabler of economic growth and contributes to increasing the depth and vibrancy of New Zealand’s digital economy. To enable this continued growth and wider demand for connectivity, our regulatory arrangements need to be modernised.

The bill will implement a number of new regulatory arrangements and key changes—firstly, the new utility regulation framework. The new regime will ensure that ultra-fast broadband (UFB) providers cannot make excess profits at the expense of consumers while being able to expect reasonable rates of return and incentives for ongoing investment. Under this new fixed-line regulatory framework, Chorus will be subject to a revenue cap, and the company will be required to provide certain anchor services to its wholesale customers. The revenue cap gives Chorus flexibility in how it sets prices for most of its products, but it also ensures that Chorus does not earn excessive returns on its fibre assets.

One safeguard built into the system is that Chorus will be required to supply price-regulated anchor products. These will initially be an entry-level broadband product—100 megabits per second upload, and 20 megabits per second download—and a voice-only product. These products should ensure that there is price stability for consumers and retail service providers, and they should also anchor the price of other products that Chorus offers. Chorus and local fibre companies will also be required to disclose information publicly to enable scrutiny of their performance and profitability. Local fibre companies will face competition from copper and cable networks and are not subject to revenue caps, but can be regulated if problems arise.

Consistent with Part 4 of the Commerce Act, the bill provides for the Commerce Commission to establish new input methodologies and regulatory arrangements to institute the new framework. A clear value will be set for regulated assets at the outset, with a predictable process for updating this over time. There will also be a clear process for approval in advance of new investments, similar to that which applies to the electricity grid operator Transpower.

Secondly, the deregulation of copper services—in the areas where fibre services are available, the copper network operated by Chorus will be deregulated, subject to some protection for consumers. The telecommunications service obligation that provides for price-capped landline and dial-up services will be removed. Consumers will have a wide range of choices in these areas, including the option of moving to fibre networks with better services and similar prices.

The withdrawal of the copper network by Chorus in given areas will be regulated by a copper withdrawal code that sets out minimum conditions that must be met before a copper line can be withdrawn. In areas where UFB or other fibre is not available, the telecommunications service obligation will be retained, and Chorus will be required to continue supplying copper services at prices capped at 2019 levels, with inflation adjustments over time. This will ensure consumers continue to have access to basic telecommunications services at competitive prices, even when alternative networks are not available.

Thirdly, the streamlining of the process for regulation of services—the bill will encourage further competition in telecommunications services through streamlining the process for commission investigations into regulating telecommunications services in schedule 3 of the Act. These changes allow for more timely intervention by the commission when issues are identified, and they further encourage commercial settlements as an alternative to regulation.

Fourthly, greater consumer protections—the bill improves the Act by enhancing consumer protection. It has become increasingly clear that outcomes for telecommunications consumers are not satisfactory. For example, the results of the New Zealand National Consumer Survey 2016 showed that nearly a third of all consumers reported having a problem with either their fixed broadband or their mobile services, and 11 percent had problems with both.

To lift consumer service quality across the sector and improve the responsiveness to consumer needs, the bill augments consumer safeguards and provides for more regulatory oversight of retail quality standards and dispute resolution processes. These arrangements require the Commerce Commission to collect information and report on the quality of retail service delivery in a way that is accessible to consumers, require regulatory codes to be established to improve retail service quality if industry self-regulation is inadequate, and require the periodic review of the industry-led dispute resolution scheme by the commission.

Fifthly, in final minor changes enabled by the bill, the bill repeals some unnecessary and expired provisions.

To sum up, the new regulatory framework enabled by this bill will modernise the Telecommunications Act so that it is fit for purpose for New Zealand’s new fibre-focused telecommunications environment. It will put in place a balance of incentives so that ongoing investment by network providers will continue to be encouraged while consumers will be protected. It will create a more predictable telecommunications environment, target regulation more effectively, and support consumers. I commend this bill to the House.

STUART NASH (Labour—Napier): For anyone who is still awake after that speech, it is time to hear a little bit of positivity. What we heard there was the difference between MPs on this side and MPs on that side. What you have got here is relentless positivity, and what you have got there is—well, I am sorry, Mr Macindoe, but even you have got to admit that that speech was downright boring and tired, was it not? Was it not? Where is the positivity? Where is the enthusiasm? Mate, you are about to go home and campaign. I mean, we are out of our skins—ready to go.

Mr Assistant Speaker Tisch, what I would like to say is that it has been a pleasure being a member while you have been in the Chair. I wish you the very best of luck in your future endeavours, and I know that your wife is probably looking forward to you being at home a little bit more. But just best of luck, and thank you very much.

Now, back to the relentless positivity. Goodness me, when you are doing something like this, which is so important—it really is. I should say that we support this bill. I should say that this is the Telecommunications (New Regulatory Framework) Amendment Bill, and there is one thing that Mr Macindoe said that I completely agree with, which is that this is a fast-moving sector. It really is. It is a game-changer. In fact, it changes not only education and business and connectivity; it changes the world and how we go to the world, where businesses can locate. But this is not a fast-moving Government, and that is part of the problem.

This bill is the outcome of a 2-year consultation process, from 2015 to this year. This is its first reading, so, of course, the bill cannot pass until the 52nd Parliament—until the next Parliament—when I suppose we will be looking after the commerce portfolios and we will drive this through with vigour and positivity—

Hon Louise Upston: Good luck with that.

STUART NASH: —in a way that means a lot for provincial and rural New Zealand. I know that Louise Upston knows what I am talking about, because she is from the provinces, and she must be getting a whole lot of constituents who ask: “When is it going to arrive on my doorstep? When is it going to happen?”—

Peeni Henare: “Let’s do this.”

STUART NASH: —“Let’s do this.” Absolutely—let’s do this. So it does beg the question of what this Government has actually achieved in this Parliament for progressing the fibre agenda. I must admit that the cynic in me—the small cynic in me—says that we are here, giving a first reading speech on this bill, so that the Government can actually claim that legislation is in the House to reform the sector. Well, what I would like to say is that a first reading speech on the second to last day of the parliamentary term is not progress.

It is not progress, and New Zealanders expected more. The reason I say that is that 3 years ago, before the 2014 election, there was a lot of hoopla made by this Government about the next phase of ultra-fast broadband (UFB). It called it UFB2 and the Rural Broadband Initiative (RBI), or RBI2. Three years later, it has only just got UFB2, or ultra-fast broadband 2, under way, and we still do not have an announcement on rural broadband. Some of my communities—

Meka Whaitiri: Oh, our communities.

STUART NASH: —our communities; Meka’s and my communities—are rural. These are good, hard-working farmers. They need to have rural broadband. It is part of what drives their business, and they have not got it.

I have been up at Matawai three times talking about this. This is a rural community that does well. These people are the backbone of the country, and they are missing out. They are missing out. I have been working with Telecom, actually—oh, Spark—with some really innovative solutions to actually get them at least some form of—

Peeni Henare: “Telecom”?

STUART NASH: Yes, I know. It shows my age, does it not?

Peeni Henare: No, it was when the bill was introduced.

STUART NASH: Yes, it was. Good call—good call. That was to get them at least some form of ultra-fast broadband. But there is a practical application here. You know, these guys are all part of a volunteer fire brigade, which is the heart and the soul of the local community, and, as we well know, in rural communities the fire brigade, by and large, puts out very few fires but it attends accidents. These are the first men and women on the scene when something goes wrong, and most of the time they have not even got service anywhere. If they are out on the farm, the phone does not work and the pager service is a little bit dodgy, so if something is going down, they are not aware of it. That is wrong. In fact, not only is it wrong; it is just not safe.

I know Mr Ian McKelvie will know what I am talking about. He is from the rural sector, and he must have his constituents come up to him and say: “Come on, Mr MP. What is taking your Government so long?”.

Tens of thousands of New Zealand homes are no better off than they were 3 years and even 6 years ago in terms of their connectivity. Rural New Zealand, I believe, in this sphere, has really been let down by this Government. For those communities lucky enough to qualify to get the second phase of ultra-fast broadband, 130,000 of these people—New Zealanders; good, hard-working New Zealanders in the regions and the provinces—will be waiting until 2022-24 to get it. I do not think that is good enough.

Actually, I suspect that if the Hon Chris Finlayson had anything to do with it, it would be all over the country by now. He is a good, hard-working Minister who gets things done. In fact, it would not surprise me if the Chatham Islands probably has UFB before anyone else.

Hon Christopher Finlayson: We’ve been looking—yeah, the Chathams would be fine.

STUART NASH: Exactly—exactly. And for some communities, like the fringes of Auckland, believe it or not, and the fringes of Napier—so there might be Matawai up north, but even around the fringes of Napier, Ahipara in Northland, Piopio in Waikato, Edgecumbe in the Bay of Plenty, Kaikōura, and Waimate in Canterbury—the completion date for UFB2 is as late as 2024. That is 6 years from now. It is simply too long to wait for decent connectivity. I know there are challenges. I know we are a country of only 4.8 million people and we are long and we have a lot of isolated communities, but that is no excuse to not get it out, because it is holding us back.

The communities that are affected are often small and geographically isolated. They are vulnerable to not being connected, and 6 years is longer than it takes for a child to complete their secondary education. Businesses cannot benefit unless they have UFB2, and it is not until it reaches their area—in some cases, 7 years from now. There was a report written where economists talked about some rural towns becoming ghost towns because their reasons for living were no longer there, businesses were moving out or not relocating, and the young were going away and not coming back. That will change only if they have decent infrastructure, and in this case I am not talking about roads; I am talking about ultra-fast broadband. With ultra-fast broadband, a company can work anywhere.

We are doing a little bit of this in Wairoa at the moment. There is a film editing company there that needs to send massive files across to the other side of the world. Now, with ultra-fast broadband, they can do it. They can sell their million-dollar homes in Auckland and they can go to the outdoor capital of New Zealand, old Wairoa—it is a fantastic spot. There are beautiful beaches, lakes, rivers, hot pools, Rocket Lab, scenery, and that sort of carry on. But do you know what? If we have not got the infrastructure there to support this, then people have not got a reason to sell their million-dollar houses, go down to Wairoa, and buy a mansion for $400,000.

We have got to get this sorted, and the thing for me is that great education, I believe, is a fundamental human right. If we are not delivering that, then we are not giving the kids who live in rural and provincial New Zealand a fair chance to play on an even playing field. We have got to get this sorted—we really do—and it is taking too long.

The digital divide in New Zealand, like I said, is very real. In 2014 the Government committed $150 million—good on it—for the second phase of rural broadband and improving mobile blackspots. We supported that. We were all for it. But do you know what? Now it is 3 years later—3 years later—and it has yet to announce how it will spend it. That is a long time when you are a community waiting for ultra-fast broadband when the money is actually there. It is not as if it has to come from another budget or be found somewhere else or dug up from the ground. It is there in the Budget for this project, and it has not even been spent. That is a waste of money and a waste of potential, and it is wrong. There is no time line for how the Government will spend it. I know this: the people of the communities who have not got this service are sick of waiting. They really are. It needs to be better.

The regime proposed under the legislation we are talking about makes sense, and Labour supports it—there is no doubt about that. It does three things. It introduces a predictable utility regulation model for ultra-fast broadband fibre. Where fibre is available, copper lines will be deregulated from 2020. The bill includes measures to improve the quality of service for consumers by increasing regulatory oversight, and all those other things the Minister spoke about. But there is one reality here: we have heard this before from this Government. I remember in election 2008, it made a whole lot of promises about ultra-fast broadband and rural connectivity. It has been 9 years, and it just has not happened. It is not good enough.

What we promise on this side is relentless positivity. It is about backing the regions, it is going hard on the issues that are important, and this is a very important issue for our rural and provincial communities around New Zealand that have not got this service. We need it now. Thank you very much.

MELISSA LEE (National): I am trying to figure out which microphone I am supposed to be speaking into. It was turned the other way. It is normally facing the other side, so I had to sort of figure that out. Sorry about that.

I would like to take a leaf out of the book of the gentleman who took his seat, Stuart Nash, to thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker Tisch, for your leadership in this House. As a new member coming into Parliament in 2008, I still remember the cheat sheet that you provided for me in terms of which Speakers’ rulings and which Standing Orders I should familiarise myself with. I thank you for the guidance that you provided me as a young, new MP, and I wish you a fabulous retirement from this place.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): Thank you.

MELISSA LEE: Do you know, Stuart Nash talked about the relentless positivity on that side. I was wondering where he was actually going to get to in terms of what the positivity was about. I guess Labour has to try to keep positive. It has had so many trial runs at the positivity. I mean, you know, before this current leader there were four others. It started off with Phil Goff, David Shearer—I quite like David Shearer—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): Order!

MELISSA LEE: —and then it was, you know, David Cunliffe. Talking about this bill—yes, I am getting to the bill. Thank you for the opportunity to take a call on the first reading of the Telecommunications (New Regulatory Framework) Amendment Bill.

This bill seeks to update the Telecommunications Act of 2001 and establish a regulatory framework for fibre fixed-line access services in New Zealand by removing unnecessary copper fixed-line access service regulations, streamlining regulatory processes, and resolving the potential competition problems in the market between mobile communications companies. This bill is designed to make our telecommunications law fit for purpose and modern day for the new fibre-focused environment, and will put in place a better balance of incentives so that ongoing investment by network providers will continue to be encouraged while consumers are protected. The bill will also deal with a number of unneeded and expired provisions as part of the Government’s commitment to cutting red tape—cutting red tape is always good—and removing outdated legislation.

It is important to acknowledge, as Minister Macindoe said earlier, that connectivity to the wider world via fast internet speeds is increasingly important for New Zealanders, who actually live at the bottom of the world, as people see us. We are at the bottom of the world and are so far removed from the rest of the world that we actually do need fast internet speeds—and that is what this Government is providing—for our social lives and for our businesses to thrive.

I just remembered something from childhood. Children growing up now probably do not quite know how fast things have actually progressed in terms of technology and how we have actually changed. I remember as a child growing up in Korea in the 1970s when the telephone really had only one function. You just needed to turn the knob and all you got was an operator who actually connected you to your next-door neighbours, or whatever. That was how the telephone worked—I am remembering quite a few years back. Talking to people across the world on FaceTime was something that people never even imagined that they could possibly do back then, but children nowadays take it for granted that they can ring their cousins across the world. Whether they are in London or in Paris or in Australia or in Korea or in China, they can talk to each other face to face, and it is all thanks to the modern technology that we have developed as a world.

Earlier on Stuart Nash was talking about how this Government has taken so long to deliver this. I remember that during the Helen Clark era I think we had dial-up. But it is not just this Government that has delivered the fast internet; it is actually the global movement. The world is demanding faster internet. Technology progress is really fast, and in my lifetime, you know, from when I was a child to now, we have gone from turning the knob to ring people, to talking to people face to face via our telephones on FaceTime across the globe.

You know, it has become second nature, and I guess it is a very far cry from my childhood, when we had to rely on doing our homework research via the Encyclopaedia Britannica. Back then we did not think about Google or Naver. In New Zealand we get Google, but in other countries other services like Naver are actually more popular.

Simon O’Connor: Which countries?

MELISSA LEE: In Korea, actually, Naver is—yeah, yeah, I was thinking of Korea. Faster internet access supports the economy and contributes to the depth and vibrancy of this country and the trade and market options that people have. Recently I was talking to someone when I was doorknocking, and they were talking about their cousins who had moved back from overseas. The reason they were able to do that when they were doing trade across the world—they were living in a remote place in the South Island, but because of the fibre access that they had, they could access the world from a remote place in the South Island. Like, you know, in Invercargill you can do that.

The new regime that this bill will put in place will ensure that ultra-fast broadband providers cannot make excess profit at the expense of consumers, but it will allow for them to expect a reasonable rate of return on their investment, as well as provide incentives for continued investment into this important market area. I think that is really important, because any investor who is investing into technology or business must actually have a decent return on their business. A revenue cap will be introduced, as the Minister said, on Chorus as part of the bill, and the company will be required to provide key anchor services to its wholesale customers, such as entry-level broadband products and a voice-only product.

One of the things that I was really interested to read was the reaction from the industry. I think it was TUANZ—T-U-A-N-Z, which is probably not very well pronounced—or the Telecommunications Users Association of New Zealand, that said it “welcomes today’s long awaited introduction of the Telecommunications Amendment Bill which is the outcome of the review of the current regulatory framework.” That is what it actually said—I am quoting. This was on 8 August: “ ‘Earlier this year we stated our support of many of the proposed changes when outlined in an options paper, and it’s pleasing to see these make it to Parliament’ said Craig Young, Chief Executive of TUANZ. ‘The contents of the bill will have important implications for consumers and businesses not only in the short term, but most importantly in the post 2020 world of digital communications’.” I think it is really wonderful to get the support of the industry, and I am sure there are many others whom I could quote from.

The gradual withdrawal of the copper network over the next several years is also an important issue that is being addressed by this bill. Chorus will be regulated by a copper withdrawal code, which will set out minimum conditions before a copper line can be withdrawn from the service area.

The consumer protection clauses of this bill are also important. It is clear that the existing consumer protections are not satisfactory for telecommunications consumers. The 2016 New Zealand National Consumer Survey showed that nearly a third of all consumers reported having a problem with either their fixed broadband or mobile services, with around one in 10 having problems with both. It is important that we lift the quality of service performance in the telecommunications sector and provide a better service in the New Zealand retail telecommunications market by putting in place better laws and regulations designed to support the best interests of consumers. I think this bill does that. I do know that the Commerce Committee will no longer be in the next Parliament, but when we do receive it in a select committee I look forward to going through the process of select committee hearings and submissions from public. I commend this bill to the House.

GARETH HUGHES (Green): Kia ora, Mr Assistant Speaker. Ngā mihi nui ki a koutou, kia ora. I have got two words for why I am supporting this legislation—old Telecom. I remember old Telecom, a monopoly that was pretty slow and lethargic and the CEO of which once famously said deception was its major marketing tool. I remember the impact it had on New Zealand and on the price of consumer products in New Zealand and of those services. It is a testament to work done by, I think, both parties over time, over those years, to unbundle the services that we do not have an old Telecom. In fact, there is no such thing as Telecom New Zealand anymore.

In fact, there is a graph that I like to show as part of highlighting the electricity price rises we have seen the last 10 years that shows telecommunications spending as part of the consumer spending share rapidly dropping from the 1990s as electricity prices have continued to increase. I guess this is an opportunity for New Zealand, because what we want to see is Kiwis embracing new technologies, being empowered by them, and building businesses and jobs in a richer economy and country on the back of new technology. But electricity price regulation also provides somewhat of a salutary lesson.

The Green Party supports this, and we think this is the right approach to go down with Part 4 of the Commerce Act’s price-quality information disclosure regime in terms of the broadband and copper networks going forward post-2020. It is kind of surprising, because you would have anticipated a National Government—surely a National Government in the 1990s—would have actually gone for voluntary market arrangements of the participants. It is interesting that it jumped straight to a regulatory approach. It is one that we would support, but the devil is going to be in the detail.

As we have seen with those graphs—and I wish I had printed it out—one of the major price rises, or inflation in electricity price rises, over the last 10 years has in fact come from the regulated sector of the electricity industry. These are the 29 regulated lines companies and the national transmission monopoly Transpower. Basically, the way the system is run through the input methodologies as administered by the Commerce Commission has a huge bearing. What we have seen is the regulated component of a consumer’s power bill go from around a fifth, or 20 percent, of the bill to now around 40 percent, on average, for many consumers across the country. This has been the major reason why prices have increased, not in the competitive parts; in the regulated part.

I talk about these two options because, in a way, we want to get the benefits of not having an old Telecom - like system and seeing such significant unaffordability of telecommunications products for customers, but we also need to make sure that we do get the regulated price settings right. We are fortunate in the sense that in this legislation we are regulating only a single monopoly, which is Chorus. In the electricity networks you have got 29 electricity distribution businesses all being regulated. You have got some of the other local fibre companies, which now would face an information disclosure regime under this legislation, but not a price-quality path as administered by the Commerce Commission.

So, look, we think it is good. We think there are some benefits, but the devil is going to be in the detail, particularly in how those input methodologies are developed by the Commerce Commission, because that is how we are going to set prices going forward. So we are supporting the bill, because we think a regulatory-first approach is the smart, best solution for consumers to make sure we have affordable internet services going forward. But we need to make sure that the settings, the foundational structures, are there to make sure we are not just building in future price inflation and we are not just giving a fantastically high rate of return for the capital owners of Chorus, much above what you would normally get in a competitive sector of the economy, and also that we are not slowing down new technologies—maybe new packer technology to move data round on the fibre cables—as we could perhaps make an argument that we are in the electricity network. Because it is so heavily regulated by the Commerce Commission, it is very good at including expensive poles and wires in its regulated asset base, but less so when it comes to embracing new technologies—maybe solar or maybe battery technologies, which would be cheaper on a capital expenditure basis for the local lines companies. But because of the way that the input methodologies system has been run, it has not gone down this path, despite it perhaps saving its consumers money.

This is the big part of the legislation. It is going to be fascinating if we are in the fortunate position to work on it in the 52nd Parliament.

The other big changes—and I am sure members, if they are returned as well, will have lots of constituents asking them about their copper network, their copper telephone systems, being turned off. This is a big concern, particularly in provincial and rural communities, where they are unsure of the reliability of fibre in power cuts and all sorts of other circumstances. So the phase out of the copper network is going to be, I think, quite contentious and controversial. It is going to be interesting to hear those views around select committee. The Government has decided on a copper withdrawal code as a mitigating tool, with these minimum conditions. That is going to be very interesting to see how that works in practice, and we look forward to engaging with that.

The last part I want to touch on is the so-called anchor products, because while the Government has gone down a path of regulatory approach in terms of price quality with a revenue cap, when it comes to these baseline services it is going down a price-setting regulatory approach for those anchor products—these are the baseline fibre services. It is going to be very interesting to see how it sets it.

We remember the big debates we had when the copper prices were set—to go back 2 or 3 years ago—and just how a matter of cents, or tens of cents, would deliver hundreds of millions of dollars to Chorus’s bottom line but, equivalently, also take that out of consumers’ weekly pay cheques. So how those anchor products are set and the price point will be incredibly important. How that flows out across the other fibre services and products that are offered by the market will be incredibly important.

So I have talked about some of the benefits. It is going to be very important to go through in detail to make sure we get this right, because, as we saw with old Telecom, the way that these structures are built—and they are so fundamental to the New Zealand economy and society—if they are set up wrongly to not get the right outcomes, we are going to harm the New Zealand economy and harm our society and our ability to engage with new technologies.

I would issue a warning to those consumers who will be looking at telecommunications and internet policies this election and at which parties are going to stand up for a good, high-quality, fast, affordable internet and all the laws that make sure the internet runs. They just need to look at the way its Rural Broadband Initiative has been managed by the Government to provide another salutary lesson in how perhaps you need a different party to make sure you are looking in the interests of the internet community in this country. Here you have a policy—I do not know if this has ever happened in history—announced before an election that still has not been implemented before the next election. It is another policy up the sleeves of Steven Joyce and Simon Bridges to roll out—as if the community could not remember, or it somehow went down the memory hole—from 2014 that the exact same policy will be reannounced. It is absolutely staggering, the audacity of the political machinations of the Government when it comes to the Rural Broadband Initiative. We want to see rural broadband rolled out across the country. We want to see cell towers and repeaters making sure that our rural communities are connected to high-quality internet. What people do not want is rehashed policies relaunched without the actual substance.

We also want a whole country that is connected and able to access the internet, and that is why it is simply staggering and deeply disappointing that the Government has cut the Computers in Homes programme. Here you had a successful programme rolling out computers—particularly to low-decile communities who were missing out from accessing the internet at home—so kids could do their homework at home using the new technology. Instead, what has the Government done? It has cut this incredibly successful programme. It is deeply disappointing, it is deeply regressive, and what we are going to see is a two-track society where some kids can access the world’s information and the world’s knowledge of best-practice teaching using the computer and the internet services, and other kids miss out for simple price reasons. The Government needs to step up.

More importantly, the Government could—and a Green Government would—set a target to close that digital divide. In 2017 no New Zealander should be going without access to the internet. A few years ago I launched New Zealand’s first ever crowdsourced bill, the Internet Rights and Freedoms Bill, where I said that the right to the internet is a modern-day right. All of our other rights to express ourselves in our modern world and our democracy flow from the ability to engage with technology. It is a right to be able to access the internet, and it is a darned shame that some Kiwis are missing out when successful programmes were fixing it.

There is a huge number of issues about how our country harnesses new technology to build a modern economy. There is a limit to how many tourists we can cram into Fiordland, there is a limit to how many cows we can cram into our paddocks, and we are seeing it in the state of our rivers and waterways. There is no limit to the export of smart services, intellectual property, and software around the world. That is where I am focused in my work in Parliament—making sure that we can make the most of the new economy. I support New Zealand’s tech industries’ call for a “Minister for the Future” to grasp these issues, because while we are talking about regulating telecommunications going forward, let us also talk about how we take up the opportunity for the economy in our society. Kia ora koutou.

SIMON O’CONNOR (National—Tāmaki): Mr Assistant Speaker Tisch, as I begin taking a call on this Telecommunications (New Regulatory Framework) Amendment Bill, can I take a moment—because I suspect this will be my last speech in the House—to acknowledge you as Assistant Speaker and the retiring MP for Waikato for the service that you have given to this country. I am not sure, seeing as you have given your valedictory speech, whether you are now able to actually stop me speaking. It is a bit of a conundrum. Are you allowed to speak—who knows?

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): I still have all the powers.

SIMON O’CONNOR: Ha, ha! Can I also acknowledge as well—I am not going to go through all the members—my good friend and colleague Paul Foster-Bell, who is sitting next to me, and while he has not given his valedictory speech, he is leaving this House after many years of service. Paul, first and foremost, as a mate, you will be missed from this House, so thank you.

Modern telecommunications have become quite a norm for us. I would not go as far as the previous speaker, Gareth Hughes, did—to suggest that it is now a human right. Those in the House will not be surprised that I take a particularly philosophical view of what are and are not human rights and reject pretty strongly what are human wants masquerading as rights. I just want to put paid to the idea that somehow now the internet is a human right, by indicating that while in New Zealand we want to have it and it is a good thing, I think it would be very difficult to go into, say, sub-Saharan Africa and explain to people there that the need for housing or the right to water and clothing is now equivalent to having the internet. I think certain members who propagate that idea would be laughed off a certain piece of land.

I think I would also want to point out that, actually, there are some remarkably good projects out there in the telecommunications field, in those, let us say, poorer or less fortunate communities. It was mentioned by the previous speaker who sat down that somehow there is a complete absence, but, actually, I think of an area in my own electorate, in Tāmaki—Glen Innes—where a most amazing project called the Manaiakalani Project is in play. In the long and the short, within the telecommunications framework—and there are two elements to it—young children get their own digital devices. They get free internet access. Really importantly, they get free internet access in their schools—and there are 11 of them in my electorate at the moment—and free internet access at home for them and their families. Telecommunications—yes, it is run by big companies and it is supported by Government, but it is also run and supported by individual groups, families, and communities.

Can I take this chance, as we read this new amendment bill a first time, to acknowledge all those behind the Manaiakalani Project. There are particular individuals, but a number of companies have been mentioned tonight. Actually, Spark and Vector—two big companies that probably get decried at some level by opposition groups—are funding millions of dollars into providing telecommunications access to some of the most disadvantaged in our communities, and I think that is just tremendous.

This bill is ultimately about creating a system that is fit for purpose for our modern telecommunications. I know my stepson Ethan is watching at home, and he is probably the greatest advocate for ultra-fast or fibre broadband in the country. In fact, I think one of the best things I have done, other than marrying his mother, was to make sure we got—and she is probably watching, too; I will just put that on record—fibre connected to our home. What an enormous difference that has made, not only to our family and, I think, to your sanity, Ethan, and mine but, actually, to all those New Zealanders who are coming on board. We have a really proud record as a Government of rolling out this ultra-fast broadband.

I know that within my constituency, there are still areas demanding access to it. Unfortunately, we cannot install it all at the same time. What we are seeing now, and what this bill begins to address, is that we are moving to an ultra-fast broadband or a fibre set of communications and moving away from copper technologies. This bill addresses, well, four aspects, but two of them are of this.

Hon Christopher Finlayson: That child should be studying.

SIMON O’CONNOR: I am just hearing from my side one of my colleagues suggesting that Ethan should be busy studying at the moment and not on the internet. I just have to inform the honourable member—

Joanne Hayes: Latin.

SIMON O’CONNOR: He could be studying Latin. I have tried to teach him Greek as well, but that is actually not going so well, either. But, you know, they can use the internet for study now. They can—it is great.

The first thing that this bill is looking to do is introduce a new utility regulation framework. Basically, and the long and the short of it is, we are wanting to make sure that ultra-fast broadband providers do not make excess profits. It will surprise no one in the House—and I am very much a National Party person—that I have no problem with groups making profits. In fact—

Hon Member: Quite right.

SIMON O’CONNOR: —it is a normal and, as my colleague says, healthy and quite right dynamic. But we are not into excess profits. The benefit of profits, as I have already indicated, allows the likes of the Vectors and the Sparks to actually support their communities and give back, but excess profits do not help anyone. So we are putting in a new fixed-line regulatory framework, and Chorus in particular will be subject to a revenue cap to provide certain anchor services.

I am not mixing up my brands here when I talk about Chorus and anchor, but with anchor services, we are talking about the likes of very basic broadband capabilities and voice capabilities. We think back to the pre-broadband era, or even to dial-up, when the basic for anchor services was a copper phone line. Once we ended up with the likes of dial-up, VDSL, and ADSL, those had become basic services. So we are now saying that, actually, the likes of fibre and a voice connection—probably through Voice over Internet Protocol—are going to be a key and, as I say, an anchor service. We are hoping that in doing so, we will provide some price stability for consumers and, obviously, retail service providers as well. So there will be a market benefit there.

One of the elements of the bill is around speed, too, which will be demanding a minimum—sorry, not a maximum; I had better be very clear about that—of about 100 megabits a second upload. No, I am actually mixing everything up all of a sudden. I am going to get told off by Ethan back home. It will be a 100 megabit download and a 20 megabit upload. That is a good start, and a lot more is possible. I think, fundamentally, what people should understand as well is that fibre can work at a lot greater speeds than that, but we are saying that is an absolute minimum.

We are also looking through this bill to deregulate the copper services. It is quite natural that those investing in ultra-fast broadband or fibre are going to be moving out of the copper sector, so it does not make a lot of sense that any monopolistic dynamics continue. So there has to be withdrawal there, allowing others, if they choose to, to come into that market. We are wanting to make sure, though—and the bill is very cautious around this, but I think the select committee will take a bit of time on it—that the copper owner does not withdraw too early. It is going to be quite important—

Paul Foster-Bell: No premature withdrawal.

SIMON O’CONNOR: —yes—that it is not going to be too early. It is going to be quite important that the services required of the copper network—or what, rather, consumers expect of their copper network—remain. Put another way, we will have to make sure that the fibre services are providing the same, if not better, service to those communities before copper services are withdrawn.

We are also looking to streamline the process for the regulation of services. I am not going to go into all those details. They get a little bit complex, and I think they are better handled, actually, within the select committee. But the final side—the fourth element of what we are doing—is, basically, around greater consumer protections. In drawing this as No. 4, I do not think it actually takes away from the other three being important as well. As I mentioned earlier, it is almost like a bit of a see-saw. We are making sure that as the fibre services come in, copper declines or is used differently. That is for the benefit of the consumer, as too is putting some revenue caps around fibre providers to make sure that consumers get a good deal. But the bill itself is seeking to enhance consumer protection.

I think that if you were to ask many people, perhaps even in this House, what their experience has been of telecommunications services, it would not always be positive. I want to be very clear up front that this Government has put an enormous amount of taxpayers’ money into improving the services. We still have quite a way to go. I think of various mobile black spots. I think of even just the quality of the copper line. I could always tell when I was calling home, or I was getting complaints from home about internet services, pre-fibre—I could work out the weather in Auckland was raining. The long and the short is that if it is raining, the copper network begins to get compromised. So we are very keen to see how we can actually improve those services and increase people’s—I don’t know—expectations, but I also think there is an element of responsiveness.

The bill aims in this fourth section to lift consumer service quality across the sector and improve responsiveness to consumer needs. I think that is at the heart of this bill. I think it is going to be quite a substantial piece of work in the 52nd Parliament, particularly for those on the select committee. Going through the bill over the recent days, this is a substantial piece of work, but I commend it to the House.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): I call Michael Wood.

Hon Ruth Dyson: Oh, this will be good.

MICHAEL WOOD (Labour—Mt Roskill): Well, my colleague Ruth Dyson was just complimenting the House on the quality of debate about this important bill tonight, and I can only say things are going to get even better as it proceeds. I rise to speak in favour of the Telecommunications (New Regulatory Framework) Amendment Bill. It is actually one of those really, really important bills because, as is noted in some of the notes that, no doubt, other members have read, we are talking about what is now one of the major utilities in our lives.

When we talk about the utilities, historically we have thought about having access to clean running water, we have thought about access to electricity, and we have thought about access to sewerage and waste-water services, and we have thought that those are the core utilities that in a modern, civilised, decent society, basically, everyone should have access to. If we found out that there was a person or a community in New Zealand who did not have access to those basic utilities, we would think that something had gone wrong. What many of us now believe is that access to modern, high-quality fibre-connected internet really is also one of those utilities, and why is that? It is because so much of what we might want to do in our modern lives—whether it is personal interest, whether it is business, or whether it is connecting to people who are important to us—absolutely relies on modern, high-quality internet connectivity. So it is a utility that people have come to rely on.

When you are talking about utilities, it is important that you have a degree of equity. If we have those utilities and some people in our community and our country have access to them and others do not, you get a divide, and that is an inequality that simply should not stand.

This particular bill stems from an inbuilt review of the Telecommunications Act 2001, passed by the very capable fifth Labour Government. I cannot remember which Minister that would have been under the aegis of.

Jenny Salesa: Ruth Dyson?

Hon Ruth Dyson: No.

MICHAEL WOOD: Not Ruth Dyson, but no doubt a very capable Minister. That inbuilt review was put in place at that time really in recognition that this is a fast-moving environment—that the world of telecommunications changes immeasurably in 5-year blocks. Even if we went back to the year 2001, things would have been completely different in terms of the way that people communicate, so it is very sensible that in these major pieces of regulation in this area, we do build in these kinds of reviews.

It is also important that we do have good quality regulation. In respect of that, I want to turn to what I thought was a really good comment from InternetNZ, which participated significantly in the review that has led to this piece of legislation. So the review has been taking place over the past couple of years—since 2015. Pleasingly, it has been a relatively open process. That was one of the things that the Labour Party called for, that InternetNZ called for, and that the Telecommunications Users Association of New Zealand called for, to ensure that it was not just sort of locked up by the big players that might have had vested interests in terms of the way that prices are set and regulations are struck. We said it should be an open and engaged process in which people with an interest in this area can have a say. We commend the Government for going down that path.

Here is what InternetNZ had to say about why it is important that we have regulation in this area. Sometimes in this House there is a debate about whether we should or should not have regulation, and debates about the merits of regulation per se. Here is what InternetNZ Chief Executive Jordan Carter said: “It is … important that New Zealanders have confidence and predictability in Internet prices … InternetNZ believes that’s best achieved by proactive regulation of pricing for fibre and copper services to be in place by 2020—so we all know where we stand. Regulators are the vital protection for consumers. Commercial deals in environments like telecommunications access pricing never end up with the best deal for customers—in the absence of a contractual price (as initially set under the UFB programme) only a well-funded, capable regulator has the analysis and power to stand up to the interests of companies worth billions of dollars, and to encourage competition while driving the best possible bargain for those paying the bills.”

I think that is a really valid comment, because in the sector we are talking about large and powerful players. Of course, we have Chorus, which effectively operates a natural monopoly, and that natural monopoly is not something that we can test. It is not something you would want to duplicate. You would not want to have two or three different companies setting up a fibre network across New Zealand. It would not make any sense whatsoever. So having Chorus there as a natural monopoly makes sense, but it gives it enormous power and it is entirely appropriate that we therefore regulate it.

When we look specifically at the bill, what does it seek to do? There are a number of particular areas—and I will just pull out my notes here. There are four key things that it attempts to do. The first is to “establish a stable and predictable regulatory framework for fibre fixed line access”. Secondly, it is to “remove unnecessary copper fixed line access service regulation:”, and that is where we shift from copper to fibre, avoiding having a regulatory overlap. It seeks to “streamline regulatory processes to enable a rapid response to any competition problems,” that might emerge—and, of course, we cannot always foresee those at this point in time—and to “provide more regulatory oversight of retail service quality.”

I just want to now work through in a little bit more detail some of the provisions in the bill that give effect to those objectives, which certainly we in the Labour Party agree with. The first one is in respect of “Regulation of fibre fixed line access services”. These are about the particular regulations that we apply to Chorus, which is providing that fibre network across the country. There are two important things here. The first is what we call price-quality regulation, which is where the prices or revenue controls and requirements for service quality are placed on Chorus. So we are not just giving Chorus a free licence to set prices—potentially, when you are a natural monopoly, you could abuse that power—we are putting some controls over the way it sets its prices, which obviously then flows on to service providers and consumers.

Secondly, and this is really important, there is an information disclosure regime that comes into place, which means that we get publicly available information about Chorus’s performance and its financials so that we can assess that it is not making supernormal profits, that it is behaving in a reasonable way, and that it is not rorting people—including consumers, ultimately—further down the line. Then, in respect of the local fibre companies that are a tier down from Chorus, we say that they will be subject to the information disclosure regulation but not the price control regulation.

Another important aspect of this is what we call the “Establishment of input methodologies”, and that goes to how the Commerce Commission, which is ultimately overseeing and regulating this area, will determine what reasonable profits are and whether Chorus is behaving in a reasonable way that is not stifling competition and ripping off service providers and consumers. That means that Chorus is under an obligation to provide information about costs of capital, asset valuation, the allocation of costs, its taxation treatment, and certain other aspects of its business operation. These are things that we would not ordinarily expect of a business in a competitive environment, but when it is a natural monopoly like Chorus, it is reasonable that we ask these things so that we can assess that it is behaving in a reasonable way.

Importantly—and this has been touched on by a couple of previous speakers—we do also set in place a couple of anchor services. The way that I think about these, a little bit, is that under the old Telecom we had the Kiwi share obligation, which meant that Telecom had to provide for every household a very basic service of a landline—this was at the point when it was privatised. It was one of the few controls that we put upon it. It said: “OK, you’ve got a lot of power, effectively, as a monopoly. Here’s a basic level of service you have to provide to all New Zealanders.”

In the case of the anchor services, there is going to be price regulation around these as well, so it is going to refer to basic levels of internet connectivity, which is a basic service that you might have at home, and a basic voice-only service as well. One of the interesting points around this is that—and it is really important, actually—in this piece of legislation we are going to be setting certain standards in respect of what those anchor services should be. So these will be the basic services that all New Zealanders can rely upon. They might get more, but this is the minimum that will have to be provided by Chorus.

We have heard that that service has been set at, I think, 100 megabits per second download and 20 megabits per second upload. InternetNZ in its comments has actually queried that. It has queried whether that is setting the threshold a little bit too low, potentially, for New Zealand consumers. Given that we are aware that internet speeds are increasing all the time, I think it is really important that we get to the select committee stage, we get some expert advice, and we listen to the submitters to make sure that we are setting that anchor service at the right point. If we set it too low, then huge numbers of consumers across New Zealand are not going to get the best possible service.

One of the other important aspects of the bill is around review and enforcement. That is ensuring that the Commerce Commission has the chops, effectively, to go in, to look at what Chorus is doing, and to conduct investigations into its services where necessary, and then to have some real enforcement. So there is a maximum penalty, for example, of $10 million and compliance requirements that the Commerce Commission can use.

We do support the direction of this bill in terms of providing a modern regulatory environment. As previous speakers on this side of the House have said, the big concern that we have got, though, is that the Government has just been a bit too slow with the roll-out of high-quality fibre. I have got areas in my electorate in the middle of Auckland that are not getting access to fibre until 2019, let alone those people in the rural areas who face a wait until 2024, and that does stifle innovation and stifle choices.

We support this bill further, but we will also speed up access to high-quality broadband for all New Zealanders. Thank you.

TRACEY MARTIN (NZ First): Kia ora, Mr Deputy Speaker. I rise on behalf of New Zealand First to support the Telecommunications (New Regulatory Framework) Amendment Bill to the select committee only.

Before I begin my contribution, Mr Deputy Speaker, can I acknowledge you and your time in this House. There have been times when you have sat in the Chair and told me I am not funny. There have been times when you have sat in the Chair and told me that I am a bit shrill. But there have been other times—actually not in this Chamber—when, particularly in this term, you have poked your head in the door and said “Don’t let the … grind you down.”, and I appreciate that. You are a person whom New Zealand First appreciates, and I am sure that my colleague Fletcher Tabuteau has made sure that you understand how much you have been valued by him and by our caucus this particular term.

Can I also acknowledge Paul Foster-Bell, who is being smart enough not to make his valedictory in this term of Parliament because he will return at some stage in the future. People may not know that you only get one chance at it, so Mr Foster-Bell is putting some money on his future, and I am prepared to take that bet, Mr Foster-Bell. I believe you will be back. You have served this Parliament well in the time you have been here, and I personally have found you a joy to interact with. So I wish you well for the future.

Matt Doocey: What party is he coming back on?

TRACEY MARTIN: Not you, Mr Doocey—it is all right. Right, we will get back on to the—you see, I am trying not to be shrill. We will get back to the bill. As the explanatory note of the bill states, the aim of this bill is to amend the Telecommunications Act 2001; to establish a stable and predictable regulatory framework for fibre fixed-line access services in New Zealand; to remove unnecessary copper fixed-line access service regulation; to streamline regulatory processes to enable a rapid response to any competition problems, particularly in the mobile communications market; and to provide more regulatory oversight of retail service quality.

I pick up on Ms Lee’s contribution with regard to the Telecommunications Users Association of New Zealand and the long-awaited introduction of this bill. I pick up on Mr Wood’s contribution. I believe—I am sure it is in the regulatory impact statement; yes, actually, it is in the explanatory note of the bill—that this review has been going on since 2012. So that is actually 5 years that this has been in process. And I pick up on another member of the Opposition’s contribution—I think it Mr Nash, who started us off, who said that here we are, the day before the last day of the 51st Parliament, at the first reading.

This bill will go through. It is interesting. I think it has unanimous support; I am not sure. Is the Green Party supporting this bill? I cannot remember—yes, it is. So I am pretty sure that we have unanimous support for this piece of legislation, at least through to the select committee. So one wonders why it took this long to get here and why, the day before the last day, we are now having a discussion about it.

The reason why New Zealand First is a little hesitant to give it its full support—we will support it to the select committee—is this bit under the heading “Deregulation of certain copper fixed line access services”, in the departmental disclosure statement. The bill provides in relation to copper fixed-line access services—which is Chorus’s unbundling bitstream access and Chorus’s unbundled copper low frequency service—that from 2020: “In areas where fibre is available, Chorus will no longer be required to supply copper fixed line access services, or”—and this is the important bit—“meet the obligations specified in TSO instruments.”

What are the telecommunications service obligations (TSO) instruments? There are two TSO deeds right now, inside the Telecommunications Act. One is a telecommunications relay service (TRS) for the hearing-impaired, which is between the Crown and Sprint International. That is called the TRS. Then there is the local residential telephone services (LRTS) deed, which is between the Crown, Telecom, and Chorus, and that is called the LRTS.

I think Mr Wood started to touch on it. When Telecom was privatised in 1990, the Kiwi share obligation placed a number of requirements on Telecom in respect of the local telephone services. In December 2001 these requirements were suspended in an enhanced form, and became the TSOs. Chorus will no longer have to meet the obligations in this requirement. So the TSO was the TSO for the local residential telephone service. The local service TSO is primarily a consumer protection mechanism that ensures the availability and affordability of basic telecommunications services in New Zealand.

You might say “Well, it is covered somewhere else in this piece of legislation.”—you might say that. The local service TSO ensures that residential local telephone services are available to residential customers throughout New Zealand, and are available in rural areas at a price and quality—and quality—comparable to the local service available in the urban areas. The word “quality” is important, and again, I think we might find—but we want to hear from submitters—that this may end up being covered in another clause.

But the TSO deed further required Telecom to offer residential customers the option of toll-free calling. We have not got toll-free calling in Auckland at the moment. Te Hana, Wellsford, and Warkworth have to dial 09—it is not toll-free—to call somebody in Devonport or Tāmaki. And we are changing—we are removing—Chorus’s requirement for an obligation here under these TSOs. Will this be one of those obligations that are removed? Why has somebody not been enforcing it now for the city of Auckland?

The second thing they have to do is limit the price rises in the standard residential line rental to no more than the rate of inflation as measured by the Consumers Price Index (CPI). I think there is conversation inside the piece of legislation around making sure that the basic package has no price rises other than the CPI.

But the third is to enable residential customers to make emergency 111 calls. I want to go back: “Chorus will no longer be required”—this is once it does away with the copper fixed line—“to supply copper fixed line access services, or meet the obligations specified in TSO instruments.” Which obligation is really, really important—which obligation? I know that we get calls all the time from some of our older citizens who are concerned about this switch. You could say that they just need to move with the times, and that is fine. But we need to be able to assure all our citizens that they will be able to make a call in an emergency, whether the power is on or off. In lots of emergencies the power tends to go out.

The other bit that we have in the departmental disclosure statement is that the bill provides consumer protection measures for consumers of copper fixed-line access services if Chorus seeks to stop supplying copper network services. It says: “Before Chorus is permitted to stop supplying a copper service, comparable alternative fibre services must be available at similar prices, with similar functionality, and certain processes must be followed, to reduce transitional risks.”

It will take a little bit to convince us and those in the Far North—those who have been living on the copper wire up in the Far North, where the copper upgrades have not taken place. More and more connections have continued to be sold, so that what was originally a workable speed, even on copper, has now actually faded out to something that is less than dial-up.

KANWALJIT SINGH BAKSHI (National): Thank you for the opportunity to participate in the first reading of the Telecommunications (New Regulatory Framework) Amendment Bill. Before I contribute on this bill, Mr Deputy Speaker, I would like to acknowledge your leadership and your friendship. You will definitely be missed once you are gone from here.

I would also like to acknowledge Paul Foster-Bell and David Clendon. David was on my Law and Order Committee. Your contribution was always constructive, and you will also be missed on the committee, David.

This bill amends the Telecommunications Act 2001 to establish a stable and predictable regulatory framework for fibre fixed-line access services in New Zealand. The technology is changing, and I would like to quote one thing that Michael Wood has just mentioned, which is that the basic amenities that are required in the modern world are water, sewerage and electricity. I think that in the 1970s and 1980s, the telephone also became a requirement in every home. I remember when I was growing up in India, my friend who had come back after the summer vacation told me that he had learnt how to dial a telephone, and that was a shock to me. The telephone was a basic thing in my home. I did not learn; I saw everyone using the telephone. But for him, it was a totally new experience because his family did not have a telephone at home. He had gone to his aunt’s house and had learnt how to dial a telephone.

Similarly, the technology has advanced so much that today, broadband is a basic need in everyone’s work or at home. I remember about a year ago, I attended a seminar where a presentation was made that said that about 15 or 16 years ago, the total traffic from New Zealand on the internet was 40 gigabytes. The total internet traffic of New Zealand was 40 gigabytes. Today, each household uses that much data. The technology has changed so much. Even for the mobile phone, we used to have about 200 megabytes or 500 megabytes. Today, we are using 10 to 20 gigabytes on mobile phones. So the technology is changing, and that is why we need to have ultra-fast broadband (UFB) in every house, so that people can take advantage of it.

When I came to New Zealand in 2001, I bought a dish antenna that had a diameter of 1 metre. I got it installed to see the Indian programmes because the technology was not there, and that was the only way I could see the Indian programmes. Today, we just need a box connected to the fibre, which is internet protocol television (IPTV), and you can see more than 500 channels from India. All around the world—China, India, Korea; wherever you want—you can see those channels through that IPTV technology, and that is because of the fibre-optic.

We are very fortunate that this Government has invested billions of dollars to make sure that every house gets a fibre connection. We are looking forward so that by 2020, about 90 percent of the population will be able to get that access. We are also very fortunate that so far, whatever the fibre-optic layout has been, the uptake has been much higher than for other countries in the OECD. It is even more than Singapore. If we compare, Australia is far behind us in UFB uptake by the people.

The new regulatory framework enabled by this bill will modernise the Telecommunications Act so that it is fit for purpose for New Zealand’s new fibre-focused telecommunications environment. It will put in place a balance of incentives so that ongoing investment by the network providers will continue to be encouraged while the consumers will be protected. We can see that we have to have that balance where the investors get a reasonable return for their investment and consumers are not overcharged. They get the best facility at the minimum price, so that there is reasonable competition between the service providers. It will create a more predictable telecommunications environment, target regulations more effectively, and support consumers. These are the things that we need to keep in mind, and we have to have the right balance for the service provider as well as for the consumer.

Connectivity is increasingly important for every aspect of New Zealand’s social, economic, and working life. As I mentioned, most things are now done through the internet, whether it is television or telecommunications. Even if we look at some of the programmes that are available around the world from Netflix and other service providers, we can access those programmes while we are in New Zealand, but, basically, these programmes are from the US or Europe, so we have to have the technology available so that we can have access these things.

Access to faster communications services and infrastructure is a great enabler of economic growth and it contributes to increasing the depth and vibrancy of New Zealand’s digital economy. With these words, I commend this bill to the House.

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: Is this a split call on behalf of the Green Party? I go to Barry Coates first.

BARRY COATES (Green): Tēnā koe e Te Māngai. I join others in thanking you, Mr Deputy Speaker, for your service to the House. I have been here for only a short time, but I have much appreciated your calmness and your position, so thank you. I also pay tribute to others in the House, most notably my colleague David Clendon, who is leaving after many years of great service, and Paul Foster-Bell, whom I have enjoyed sharing select committee time with.

I rise to speak about the Telecommunications (New Regulatory Framework) Amendment Bill. To avoid a great deal of suspense, the Green Party supports it, as my colleague Gareth Hughes has already said. We agree broadly with the aims of the regulatory framework, which are to support long-term investment in infrastructure, ensure telecommunications services are provided in a competitive process, and ensure that providers respond to consumer demands for quality. It is particularly that last point, around a more consumer-oriented approach, that we welcome. I think previously we have seen telecommunications regulation not being handled well in our country, and we commend this legislation, which, at first glance, appears to have responded to some of the previous criticisms and has very much a pro-competitive and consumer orientation.

We also agree with the framework of the regulation in that the new regime will have sound measures to ensure that ultra-fast broadband providers cannot make excess profits—they are currently a monopoly—and can expect reasonable rates of return, which we feel is entirely justified. These provisions are welcome, and particularly so is the transparency that is included in the bill in the charging regimes and the price regulation of the anchor products. That seems to us to be a really important measure in order to stimulate competition.

We have some areas where we will be looking at the select committee stage for the bill to fully reflect our concerns. The first is in enhanced consumer protection. The previous speakers have talked about how the New Zealand National Consumer Survey 2016 showed relatively poor service. One-third of consumers had problems with one or other of their communication services and 11 percent had problems with both. That is too high. What we want to do is we want to use this bill to actually drive a far greater accountability to consumers, and we note that the submission from Consumer New Zealand into the options process had some very sound recommendations for how to do that. The key is the ability for consumers to be able to compare services and prices so that they can switch providers. That kind of provision is not yet included in this bill, and we think it should be.

There should be provisions around fair and complete contracts with consumers. At the moment, I cannot read my contract—and I think many cannot—without a magnifying glass. There needs to be access to effective and fair dispute settlement, rather than the voluntary industry dispute settlement at the moment. There need to be high standards for protection of personal data included in the core of the Act. A really important consideration is that there needs to be representation by consumer interests in the regulatory processes themselves, and funding for that. It is not only Consumer New Zealand that is saying that; it is also the submission by the Telecommunications Users Association of New Zealand. So we think that is really important.

Another consideration that we want is ambitious targets to drive further coverage. We want innovation and openness to new services. We want, particularly, support for those who are behind the digital divide, noting that that is particularly Pasifika and Māori communities, and we want a lift in digital competency across our country. With those considerations for the select committee, we support this bill. Thank you.

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: Raymond Huo—5 minutes.

RAYMOND HUO (Labour): Mr Deputy Speaker, I would like to reiterate what previous members have said about you and thank you for your many, many years of service to this Parliament. I thank you for your contributions towards maintaining and upholding the professional standards of this House.

I would also like to thank Mr Assistant Speaker Tisch, who was in the Chair earlier. For me, the most frequently used phrase from Mr Tisch was probably: “Come back to the bill.” So, to come back to the bill, we support this bill. This bill is the outcome of a mandated 2-year consultation process, from 2015 to 2017. The review, and indeed the bill, is very important.

The telecommunications market is changing. New technologies are changing our lives, and consumer behaviour and business models are changing and shifting as a result. In the old and gold days, probably the first thing in the morning was a newspaper or a talkback radio show, etc., but those have gradually been replaced by online news or social media such as Facebook, Twitter, or, for most Chinese people, WeChat, which is said to have more than 400 million subscribers worldwide. Therefore, Wi-Fi, broadband, and connectivity in general, and how effective or powerful that connectivity is, has become a kind of world benchmark or a kind of international standard to help gauge where a particular region or country is placed in the world.

Against that particular background, we have had the mandated 2-year consultation process. Broadly speaking, this bill, among other measures, establishes a new regulatory framework that will introduce stable and more predictable regulation for ultra-fast broadband (UFB), UFB fibre, and streamlined regulatory processes to enable a rapid response to any competition problems, particularly in the mobile communications market. The review is now completed. Stakeholders such as Chorus, 2degrees, Vodafone New Zealand, the Telecommunications Forum, etc., have made valuable submissions on the review. There will be a further opportunity to submit on the provisions in the bill during its examination by a select committee following the formation of a new Parliament after the general election. We look forward to that.

This is a first reading, so the bill will not get passed until the 52nd Parliament. In respect of the fibre agenda, this National Government has not achieved much in progressing the agenda, and, by the way, we have not heard anything about rural broadband or any plans in that regard. So tens of thousands of New Zealand homes are no better off than they were 3 years ago, or even 6 years ago, in terms of their connectivity, and rural New Zealand, in particular, has been really let down by this National Government.

Like with the infrastructure that has caused the traffic congestion in Auckland that we are facing on a daily basis, New Zealand lags significantly behind the reality of the world in terms of the fibre agenda. We are a great nation, but there is so much work to do to make this country better and fairer, and, hopefully, 23 September will make a huge difference. So let’s do this. Thank you.

IAN McKELVIE (National—Rangitīkei): Mr Deputy Speaker, at the risk of, I guess, making too much of your position, I just wanted to thank you for your contribution—

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: Knock yourself out.

IAN McKELVIE: —both to my electorate as my neighbour, and to this Parliament. I think you have done a fantastic job for both and so I thank you for that.

I want to talk about this bill briefly because one or two issues have been raised tonight that I want to talk about. I will probably be going into a territory that no one will know about: 1-2-D. Does anyone remember what 1-2-D was? Long-short-long. So you used to dial the phone long-short-long.

We have also been on about metadata today and we are hugely concerned about whether metadata is frightening for people or relevant to people. Of course, in the days of long-short-long, all the neighbours on the same line who were 1-2-D, 1-2-C, 1-2-A, 1-2-B—they all knew when the neighbour rang up and, if you were quick enough, you could pick the phone up quietly and listen to what was going on down the road. So the metadata has been around for a long time. So that is one of the things that when you think about the copper network—because that was where I was getting to—the copper network, of course, was what drove metadata.

Not only did the copper network drive it, but when the line went down, you went out with a piece of No. 8 fencing wire and joined it up, just like you do with a fence, and away she went again. That was simple, was it not? Nowadays we need fibre and we need all this stuff in the air. It is way beyond the average person to hook up their telephone and make it work. That was the issue that I wanted to get to, because the challenge—and one of the major reasons for this piece of legislation coming to the House—is actually to protect a piece of New Zealand society and a piece of New Zealand community that were it not for the copper network would not have any kind of communication. I guess that is going to change quite quickly now, but, none the less, we need to regulate that sort of thing to ensure that it remains there until an alternative is in place.

So throughout history in New Zealand we have had a great history, really, of ensuring that the most remote people had electricity and telecommunications. This legislation, to some extent, protects that.

There was some talk from Mr Nash earlier on about the Government being a slow-moving Government. The point he has got to realise, of course, is that we are here for ever. This House is here for 3 years at a time but, actually, we are here for ever. So what we put in place is quite irrelevant to the current generation, because while the copper network has been around for generations and generations, what we put in place today will not be around for generations and generations, because the world is changing so dramatically quickly that it will be usurped.

That is another issue that I wanted to get to, because, if you think about some of the challenges that the Government has had over the years implementing rural broadband and things like that—which is that you pick a spot in the market, and you take your choice on the spot in the market you have got to, and all of a sudden, technology goes way past the spot in the market that you chose. So it is quite challenging to implement new technology in any environment, particularly in New Zealand—and the reason why it is particularly in New Zealand I will get on to in a minute—because when you pick a technology and you go with it, before you know it, it has been usurped by a more modern technology. That is the challenge of getting these types of things implemented throughout the country.

The other big challenge that we have in New Zealand—and those of you who have ever been to the King Country will know there are thousands of kilometres of one-way metal roads, and down every one of those one-way metal roads runs a power line and a telephone line. That is the real challenge that we have got in New Zealand—that it is not simple to match those kinds of environments to modern technologies. We have got to pick the technology that suits where we get to. Of course, that is back to the reason why we are protecting the copper network with this legislation for those people. It is that it will take some time to replace that copper network with the new technology that will enable it to move on.

I think this bill has a very important part to play in New Zealand, but whenever we go down this path of quick change, the more remote people are inevitably the ones whom we need to protect. We have seen this with electricity, we have seen it with a lot of other things, and we are going to see it with the internet and phone connections and things like that as well. So this bill, hopefully, will protect those people. As I talked about in terms of the technology earlier, unforeseen events often turn up, and even with the best intentions, the level of service that we want to have into the future is not provided. So we are challenged by some of that sort of stuff.

So I think this bill is a sound bill. All of the facts have been dealt with by people who know much more about factual stuff than I do, but I do know what happens when you live out in rural New Zealand and you do not get a great connection. I live 3 kilometres from State Highway 1 and I do not even have any kind of connection in my house except for the telephone that Parliamentary Services has given me to use. That is because there is no broadband at my place, 3 kilometres off State Highway 1.

So that is the challenge that we face, and that is not necessarily a fault of the Government. It is a challenge we face because of the geography of this country. We are unique, we are good at what we do, and we will get there in the end. So I have got a great deal of pleasure in commending this bill to the House. Hopefully, it will get through in the next Parliament, and no doubt this might well be my last contribution to this Parliament. It may—who knows—be the last contribution I make in here. Thank you.

CLARE CURRAN (Labour—Dunedin South): Mr Deputy Speaker, first of all, I want to acknowledge you. Lots of people have. I want to do that acknowledgment with respect and I acknowledge all of the members who are leaving this House. This is likely to be my last speech in the 51st Parliament of New Zealand, and I want to talk about the future.

I want to say to the member Ian McKelvie, who just sat down, and to the Government—and I am really pleased that I made it back to speak on this bill—that I wonder what Julius Vogel would have had to say tonight about the last contribution, and what I see to be an apology to New Zealand for, really, an underwhelming piece of legislation, or the spirit that lies behind this. Labour is supporting this—absolutely we are supporting this—piece of legislation to the select committee, but in the next Parliament of New Zealand, let us hope that we can have some vision, true vision, that we can put behind this, because this represents the next really important piece of infrastructure that has to take our country forward. Not just parts of our country, I say to National; all of our country. All of it is as important as the rest. Rural is as important as urban. How about that?

The infrastructure that Julius Vogel stood for when he conceived the railways of New Zealand was about getting a means of transport out through and across our country. Every utility is about that, and I am afraid that we have not got there yet.

This bill represents a 2-year consultation process. It has been an important piece of consultation. This is an important piece of legislation in that it looks at a regulatory framework for fibre and copper from 2020, and that is an important piece of work that this Government has overseen. However, this Government has focused on getting needed ICT infrastructure built, but it has assumed—it has made a huge assumption—that if it puts in place a mechanism to get infrastructure built in part of our country, businesses will make good decisions about technology, and that has not happened in the recent past.

The reason that I wanted to talk about the future is that—and I notice that a number of speakers have talked about Netflix, they have talked about Facebook, and they have talked about various means of using technology. This is actually about New Zealand’s economic future. It is absolutely about New Zealand’s economic future. That is what the point of putting a new piece of infrastructure out into New Zealand is all about. But what this Government has not done is it has not been the advocate, it has not been the researcher, and it has not been the business operator in the sectors where it is directly involved. So, therefore, in terms of thinking about how the digital economy can drive our country forward into the future, it has been focused on delivering infrastructure into part of New Zealand but not all of New Zealand, and is not about how it can help all of the businesses, all of the parts of our economy, and all of the sectors to make the best use of that. That is the thing that is missing right now in our economy.

At the macro level, New Zealand is not improving on its international competitiveness in the use of technology. I want to mention the World Economic Forum’s Networked Readiness Index rating for New Zealand, which has improved marginally from 5.36 in 2012 to 5.50 in 2016. Meanwhile, our ranking in that index has slipped—actually slipped. Despite what Steven Joyce gets up in this Parliament and says almost every question time, our ranking has actually slipped from 14 to 17. We rate highly on infrastructure at 10th, on the regulatory environment at third, but not so well on the economic impacts of ICT at 25th, and business usage at 20th.

That is where we are lacking, and that is where any Government going forward into the 52nd Parliament of this country has to be focused—on how we can get our economy to use the technology effectively. That is what this Government has not done, apart from the fact that it has also treated rural New Zealanders as second-class citizens. This legislation provides a regulatory framework going forward from 2020, but it leaves a huge number of questions unanswered around how we are going to treat the copper network, what happens to rural New Zealand, how fibre is going to be rolled out throughout the whole of New Zealand, and the actual role of the infrastructure producer, the major infrastructure wholesaler—Chorus—and what its role will be.

But I do want to continue to say in my last speech in this House that the two biggest issues in this country for our economy are how a Government going forward will actually ensure that all of the sectors that it is responsible for can ensure that it will build a truly digital economy, and how we will achieve digital inclusion. The new measure of poverty in New Zealand will be the digital divide, not just between rural and urban New Zealand but within urban New Zealand, and the ability of people to access the digital economy, to access education, to be able to afford to be included, and to be able to have the skills.

What we need is a comprehensive action plan. We need industry groups to ensure that our productive sectors are focused on how they will manage in the digital economy. At the moment we have no plan for health, we have no plan for education, and we have no plan for transport. We have no goals that have been set by this Government for how people will access and improve in the digital economy. What we have is a Government that is focused on an ultra-fast broadband network, which the Labour Party supports, but there has been nothing that has been added on to it. The approach is: “We will build it and they will come.”

I am afraid that the end of this Parliament, the 51st Parliament, and this piece of legislation have not provided a visionary goal for our country in terms of digital inclusion and in terms of how the digital economy will actually succeed in this country.

Bill read a first time.

Bill referred to the Commerce Committee.

Bills

Food Safety Law Reform Bill

In Committee

MATT DOOCEY (Third Whip—National): I seek leave for all parts of the Food Safety Law Reform Bill to be debated as one question.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Chester Borrows): Leave is sought for that purpose. Is there any objection? There appears to be none.

Parts 1 to 4, schedules 1 and 2, and clauses 1 and 2

Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR (Labour—West Coast - Tasman): Mr Chairman, it may indeed be the last opportunity I have to speak in the House, and I would just like to acknowledge both the friendship and, I guess, the commitment to Parliament of the Chairman. I would just like to say that.

The farmers’ friends have failed. The National Government is bringing into the House, in its last dying days, a piece of legislation that is so important it should have been passed at least 9 months ago, and I do not know why the Government has not given it greater priority.

This is a piece of legislation that comes off the back of a major catastrophe for the dairy industry and the food industry in this country. It was a massive mistake made by us that undermined our international reputation, and that has cost us literally hundreds of millions of dollars in the international market place, because Fonterra, for a short time—thankfully, a short time—was deemed to have sold offshore food that was dangerous and that could have been infected with botulism. As it turned out, that was not the case, thankfully, but the inability for the systems that the National Government has overseen to properly test and clear that product meant that Fonterra, rightly, took a precautionary approach and alerted the international market place. But for a couple of weeks, people thought that we were producing food that could have botulism in it, and that was absolutely disastrous for our international reputation.

There was an independent Government inquiry that went through, and a report and recommendations that came from that, and this piece of legislation is the result of that. I understand that we are debating all parts of it, and so the debate is fairly wide ranging—I appreciate that—but clearly, the Government has got a message from Crosby/Textor that it should do something to make some token commitment to its friends across the agricultural sector and to at least progress this legislation one more step.

Unfortunately, this Parliament, having overseen this terrible situation and the inquiry and the recommendations, has failed to deliver the progress that that independent Government inquiry recommended. [Interruption] Those people there, the former Minister and the chair of the Primary Production Committee—which looked at this in a non-partisan way and made a few recommendations. But, basically, we supported the legislation going through as quickly as we could because we knew the importance of it, and the Government sat on its hands and has not brought this legislation back to the House for at least 5 or 6 months. It is an outrage, and any farmer and any food producer in this country should be outraged that the Government is not going to pass this legislation before this election.

I can commit the incoming Labour Government to progressing this as quickly as possible, because there was not too much political debate at all. I think the select committee looked at the legislation carefully, asked the questions, and made some minor adjustments to improve it, but, generally, we all supported this going through as quickly as possible. But the Government did nothing. It has now waited for a new Minister to come in, and I acknowledge his efforts. He may have lobbied hard or he may have been told by Crosby/Textor: “You’d better do something here, because we’ve got to look after our mates.” Whatever the reason, it has come back into Parliament on the second to last—no, it is the last night of the parliamentary sittings of the 51st Parliament in this country.

That is an outrage, because it is not a little piece of legislation. There is a huge amount of effort that has gone into this, as I say, starting with the independent Government inquiry and a whole list of recommendations that have, effectively, been put through into this legislation, and that the Labour Party is certainly prepared to endorse and support. But why has it come back in now? Why are we going to have just a token debate—with literally 18 minutes to go for discussion—when this should have been passed long ago?

So I do not know what Fonterra, the other dairy companies, or the rest of the food industry are saying to the National Government, but they should be outraged. It is an indication of the flippant approach that this Government has taken to food safety and to biosecurity from the time it came in. Remember, this is the Government that came in in 2008 or 2009 and it chopped the biosecurity budget, ignored food safety provisions, and allowed botch-ups, one after the other, to occur, to the point where we are no longer seen as the safest producer of food in the world. I have to say that this inquiry identified some of the problems that we have had in the system.

So I am not going to speak for too much longer, other than to say that the Labour Party will progress this legislation when we get into Government on 24 September, or go into a coalition Government with our partners. I am sure that our prospective partners will endorse our position, that this is an important piece of legislation, which the National Government has sat on and not progressed, for God knows what reason, and has now brought it back in an almost—

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Chester Borrows): Order! I would just remind the ex-Minister, who has been here for quite a long time, that the Committee stage is about debating the submissions made before the select committee, asking questions of the Minister, or speaking to Supplementary Order Papers. He is doing a very good stump speech at the moment, but it is not required within this debate. If tarted up, it could look a little bit like a first, second, or third reading speech, but it sure as eggs does not look like a Committee stage contribution.

Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR: I appreciate the advice from the Chair, and it is probably the last bit he will be able to give me. Ha, ha! But I will take it on board for the wisdom that it comes with.

This piece of legislation, as I say, is significant. It amends the Animal Products Act, the Food Act, and the Wine Act—the last one of which will be of concern for all members in the House. The legislation does move to put in place a more robust and secure food safety regime. Can I put on the record that when the Labour-led Government progresses this legislation, we will be working on having an independent food safety authority, or equivalent, as we will with a biosecurity agency equivalent—

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Chester Borrows): No, you cannot, really, because that does not conform to this stage of this speech, either.

Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR: —because we believe that the Government’s oversight, seen by the late reintroduction in Committee stages of this piece of legislation—that its lax approach will be changed.

We will focus on this. We will progress this legislation, and I am sorry to say that we will not have it passed before this Parliament lifts tomorrow.

RICHARD PROSSER (NZ First): Before I begin my contribution, I would also like to add my voice to those who have given their congratulations to yourself, Chairperson Borrows, and appreciation for your services, both in the Chairman’s Chair and the Speaker’s Chair, and through the Primary Production Committee, which I have very much enjoyed serving on with you and the chair of the committee and other members.

New Zealand First has supported this bill up to this point, and I do have to say now, as my colleague Mr Damien O’Connor has referenced, that in the dying stages of the 51st Parliament we are no longer supporting this bill. That is not a reflection on either the select committee process or the Minister, whom I do genuinely respect and believe has morphed—as I made mention of earlier—from being National’s attack dog to being really quite an amenable sort of a chap. I think he has been open to the representations that have been made to him.

But I reference back to a comment that my colleague Darroch Ball made in an earlier speech tonight, and also to something that Clare Curran said just before, and it is about talking to the provinces. Our initial objection to this bill—because we did initially object to some parts of it—was that it did not include country-of-origin labelling. However, when Steffan Browning managed to get his Consumers’ Right to Know (Country of Origin of Food) Bill drawn from the ballot, most of those objections went away.

However, since that time, and since the select committee process, we have been talking to people out in rural New Zealand, out in the provinces, out in the heartland. And like other people, we do listen to what the provinces are saying. The message that we have been getting back from those people—and partly as a result of the Rt Hon Winston Peters’ bus tour of this country, where he has been speaking to people in real New Zealand—is that we have discovered that their feelings about where this bill goes are not in line with the approach that the Government appears to be taking.

We fully understand that in the wake of the Fonterra botulism scare something did need to be done for operations of that scale, and for operations of that scale that were primarily directed towards export. But we have also become very, very cognisant of the fact that ordinary people out in middle New Zealand are very concerned about the repercussions, the effects, of legislation of this type on the ordinary activities of regular, everyday New Zealanders.

When we look at food plans as they are proposed and as they are suggested in this bill—food plans that are designed to apply to the likes of Fonterra, the likes of Synlait, the likes of the other big industrial export-orientated industries, and the fact that every stage of a process has to be subject to a specified schedule of activity and has to be tested and has to be certified—that is fine for operations of a large scale. But when we start talking about small operators—and I will refer to Biddy and her cheese, in Eketāhuna. It is people like Biddy and her cheese—the artisan producers, the creative people, the people who epitomise that innovative spirit that defines New Zealand. They are the ones who are going to suffer because of this bill, and there needs to be a clear distinction made between the approach that is taken by the Government and by the regulatory authorities to the large industrial organisations—between that and the approach that is taken to the small artisan producer, who does not export.

It is worth mentioning that Biddy’s cheese is ordered and purchased by Bellamy’s, to bring it here to Parliament when there are foreign delegations. Biddy has four cows on 10 acres near Eketāhuna, and she makes some cheese. Biddy’s turnover is about $50,000 a year, and her compliance costs under this bill are about $40,000. I am afraid that the feedback that we have had, not just from Biddy but from people out in the heartland, is that the regime that puts them all in the same basket is just not going to cut it.

I am not going to drag this process on, because this bill is not going to pass through the course of this Parliament anyway, but I do want to make the point that it is extremely important that the Government, whatever its flavour, does not lose sight of what it is that makes New Zealand New Zealand. Part of what makes New Zealand New Zealand is an appreciation of the innovative spirit of the artisans, of the creators, of the people out there in the heartland who make the primary industries what they are. For that reason, because of the impositions that this bill puts upon them, we cannot continue to support it.

STEFFAN BROWNING (Green): I rise to speak in the Committee stage of—well, partly on the proposed amendments to—the Food Safety Law Reform Bill. We spoke at the second reading about the bill in general, and covered a lot of the aspects of it. I floated at the time that I intended to do an amendment in terms of genetically modified (GM) food labelling, and irradiated food labelling as well. There is some coverage of that in the Australia New Zealand Food Standards Code—standard 1.5.2 for genetically modified food, and standard 1.5.3 for irradiated food. However, there has been woeful coverage in terms of monitoring and enforcement of both of those food codes. Since 2003 there has been no monitoring or enforcement of the genetically modified foods part. So while we are getting a huge amount of genetically modified foods in, consumers cannot identify it.

Someone said: “Hey, it’s not a problem.” This is what the ministry will tell you. This is a ministry, the Ministry for Primary Industries, that has run amok. It has lost its way, and it is hard to know whom it is answering to. I do not think it is answering to the Minister, I do not think is answering to the consumers, and it is certainly not answering to the health and welfare of New Zealanders. It is just about production at any cost, it would seem.

In terms of those who may doubt the need for genetically modified foods to be labelled, first, I would say that most of them are heavily, heavily sprayed with herbicides, because they have actually been modified to be resistant to herbicides. That is the point—you spray the crop, the weeds die, and the crop survives, but it gets loaded with herbicide residues. Beyond that, and this is why I am trying to win support across this Committee—for the future, it would seem, because we have so little time to cover this as this Parliament winds up—feeding studies on laboratory animals and farm livestock have found some GM crops, including those that are being imported into New Zealand for humans and animal livestock, have toxic or allergenic effects. That could be liver and kidney toxicity; enlarged liver; disturbed liver, pancreas, or testes function—these are all separate studies—or accelerated liver ageing. There are digestive system issues. There are altered gut bacteria and intestinal abnormalities, excessive growth in the lining of the gut similar to a precancerous condition, altered blood biochemistry, and the like.

Those are the reasons that I have brought my Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) 355 here. It is to actually get the Director-General of the Ministry for Primary Industries to make the changes, or to actually do what he—or she, if there is a change in the future—is meant to be doing. We need regular “monitoring and enforcement of food labelling requirements for irradiated foods and genetically modified foods.” That is the part there in my new section 4(g) of the Food Act set out in my proposed new clause 3A. I believe we have a large amount of support for this. The Government will probably be the main party lacking. The Māori Party will support it. New Zealand First will support it. Labour will support it, and, obviously, it is a Greens SOP. There are a couple of strays; we wait to see.

I want to touch on Biddy’s cheese as well. Mr Chair and members of the Primary and Production Committee will remember at our wind-up this year we enjoyed some of that cheese, and at my valedictory party we enjoyed the rest of it. It was a nice big round of cheese—

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Chester Borrows): I am sorry to interrupt the member on his last call, but time has come for me to report progress to the House.

House resumed.

Progress reported.

Report adopted.

The House adjourned at 9.56 p.m.