Wednesday, 31 January 2018

WEDNESDAY, 31 JANUARY 2018

WEDNESDAY, 31 JANUARY 2018

The Speaker took the Chair at 2 p.m.

Prayers.

Oral Questions

Questions to Ministers

Public Service Targets—Beneficiaries, Reoffending, and Youth Crime

1. Rt Hon BILL ENGLISH (Leader of the Opposition) to the Prime Minister: Does she stand by all her Government’s policies?

on behalf of the Prime MinisterRt Hon WINSTON PETERS (Deputy Prime Minister) : Yes.

SPEAKER: I think I will just ask the Deputy Prime Minister to answer in the normal form—on behalf of.

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: Ha, ha! I am delighted to answer on behalf of the Prime Minister by saying, as she would say, yes.

Rt Hon Bill English: Does the Prime Minister stand by her statement that she will abolish targets that were focused on better public services for families with complex social problems?

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: Yes. The Government is committed to genuine change to tackle poverty and help ensure New Zealand becomes the best place in the world to be a child.

Rt Hon Bill English: So if, as a result of the Prime Minister’s statement, the target to reduce long-term welfare dependency is abolished, what will be the Government’s approach to reducing long-term welfare dependency?

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: This Government is very much aware that last year, the concentration of wealth in this country in the hands of 1 percent was, in fact, 28 percent of the growth in real wealth. That leads to poverty. This Government seeks to build an enduring political consensus to act to reduce poverty among our children and improve well-being by—[Interruption] You’re not interested in the answer? So why did you ask the question in the first place, then?

Hon Dr Nick Smith: I’d like you answer the question on welfare dependency. The question was welfare dependency.

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: Well, there’s another leader leading from the rear. There’s probably eight of them up against the grindstone as we speak. But if I could finish the answer, the Government is seeking to build an enduring political consensus to deal with the improvement of well-being by requiring Governments to set their own specific targets, and we’re going to work hard to make sure we meet them.

Rt Hon Bill English: Is the Prime Minister aware that a target to reduce the number of children under a particular income level, which will be reported in 2 years’ time, is not the same thing as reducing the number of people who, for instance, have been on welfare for 15 years, and would prefer to work, but the Government hasn’t done anything to assist them in that desire?

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: The great difference between this Government and the previous one on this issue is we came to Government very conscious of the problem we had to face. That Government took nine years to discover it.

Rt Hon Bill English: So if, as a result of the Prime Minister’s statement, the target is removed that focused on reducing the reoffending of prisoners who were released from prison, then what will the Public Service focus on with respect to reoffending?

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: With the greatest of respect, the previous Government’s so-called efficiency targets in the Public Service were all talk. What we did see was all the figures getting worse, and that’s the reason why they’re sitting over there and we’re over here.

Rt Hon Bill English: If, as a result of the Prime Minister’s statement, the 30 percent reduction in youth crime is no longer, and the further reduction in youth crime is no longer a focus for the Government, then what is the Government’s approach to dealing with young people committing crime?

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: This Government does not believe in fictitious policies such as telling the police that when they catch someone offending, warn them and don’t charge them. That was the reason why the crime figures fell, and it was discovered around the country, and every provincial criminal lawyer will tell you about that.

Rt Hon Bill English: Is it now the Government’s policy that there will be no warnings from police to teenagers they suspect of having committed a crime, and that in fact from now the Government is going to instruct the police to arrest and charge all young people whom it suspects of committing a crime?

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: This Government’s policy is not “catch and release”, which was the previous Government’s policy when it comes to an offence. If someone has committed a crime, then the police will do their job. We’re going to ensure the police have the firepower, the man and woman power, and the resources to keep the law in this country.

Rt Hon Bill English: Well, can I ask the same question again, then: is it now the Government’s policy—as articulated by the Prime Minister in this House, altering 20 or 30 years of practice in New Zealand—that there will be no warnings from the police for a young person they believe may be an offender, and that in fact if the police believe someone is an offender, they won’t be “catching and releasing” but they now will be catching, charging, and seeking to prosecute?

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: It has definitely not been the policy of successive Governments for 30 years to just catch an offender and warn them. For the last 30 years—until the National Government changed it in the last administration to “catch and release”—that was the sound policy, followed all around the Western World, because if you commit an offence, then you should be charged for it.

Rt Hon Bill English: So how does the Prime Minister’s policy of charging all potential youth offenders and setting out to prosecute them fit with the announcements made by the Minister of Corrections that he wants to cut the prison population by 30 percent?

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: That is a total misrepresentation of the Prime Minister’s statement. The second thing is that it is astonishing for this country to be witnessing a so-called law and order party believing that crime should pay. We don’t have that view.

Government Financial Position—Credit Rating

2. KIRITAPU ALLAN (Labour) to the Minister of Finance: Has he seen any recent reports on the Government’s sovereign credit rating?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister of Finance): Yesterday, Standard & Poor’s released its latest global ratings for New Zealand, reaffirming our AA and AA+ credit ratings on New Zealand, having incorporated this Government’s policies in their economic and financial assumptions. Standard & Poor’s said, “The stable outlook reflects our expectation that New Zealand’s fiscal performance will remain sound, with a slowly improving net debt ratio during the next few years.” This is another endorsement that this Government can afford to tackle the big problems that we have inherited, such as child poverty and the housing crisis, while also being responsible with the Government’s books.

Kiritapu Allan: What does Standard & Poor’s say about New Zealand’s economic outlook?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: Standard & Poor’s states that the composition of New Zealand’s growth will likely change as a result of the new Government’s policies. The Government’s policies will transition our economic growth platform towards the productive sector and growth in the regions as we build an economy that is more productive, sustainable, and inclusive.

Kiritapu Allan: What did Standard & Poor’s say about specific Government policies?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: Standard & Poor’s noted that the new Government’s policies will not materially weaken the Budget outlook, and will be expansionary. On specific policies, Standard & Poor’s noted the Government’s KiwiBuild programme will underpin residential investment growth and help alleviate housing supply pressures. The Government is committed to tackling the social and infrastructure deficits that built up under the last Government, and to managing our finances responsibly.

Economy—Business Confidence

3. Hon STEVEN JOYCE (National) to the Minister of Finance: Does he stand by his statement yesterday that “the ANZ Business Outlook Survey showed that a net 38 percent of businesses have a negative view about the year ahead”; and considering the net 39 percent negative view recorded in November, what will he do to improve business confidence?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister of Finance): Yes, I stand by that statement, and we will be working with businesses as we roll out the Government’s programme, which is projected to lift growth to an average of 3 percent while lowering unemployment to 4 percent and lifting wages by 3 percent over the next four years.

Hon Steven Joyce: Rather than what he’s going to say, what will he actually do to improve business confidence?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: Business confidence about its own activity is extremely positive at the moment—

Hon Steven Joyce: No, it’s not.

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: It is, actually, Mr Joyce, if you read the surveys. In fact, business confidence is indeed a measure that is undertaken in a number of different ways. One of those is the overall economic indicators, but, in terms of businesses’ own activity, they’re confident. Consumer confidence is up. Employee confidence is up. The member should just cheer up.

Hon Steven Joyce: Further to that answer, does he accept that firms’ own activity confidence has actually halved in the last few months, and can he also advise whether he stands by his statement yesterday where he said that that had improved, and could he identify the survey he was referring to?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: I can confirm that business confidence in its own activity has increased in recent surveys. It has gone down over a period of time, beginning, as I said yesterday, a trend that started in December 2016, when that member became the Minister of Finance.

Willow-Jean Prime: What is the correlation between the ANZ Business Outlook survey’s headline business confidence measure and GDP growth?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: Since 2002, the correlation between the ANZ headline business confidence survey and GDP growth has been 0.2, according to former Reserve Bank economist Rodney Dickens—that is, there is only a 20 percent chance that the survey’s readings actually relate to future economic activity. There is, however, a far greater correlation in business confidence surveys between businesses’ own activity and GDP growth, which is net positive in all recent surveys.

Hon Steven Joyce: Further to that last answer, what does he think has changed within the New Zealand economy over the last five months that has led businesses to report that their own activity outlook is now less than half what it was in August of last year?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: As I said in my earlier answer, that is a trend that began in December 2016. What we’re seeing now is that businesses have a positive sentiment about their own activity. They can see—as Standard & Poor’s have— that the activity that this Government is going to undertake is going to be positive. I can understand why the member is feeling a little bit dark and negative today, but he should cheer up and stop talking the economy down.

Hon Steven Joyce: Does the member now have with him the current level of small business confidence—as in the ANZ Business Micro Scope survey—and how long has it been since the level of small business confidence has been this low?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: I’m sorry to report to the member that I don’t have that material, but if he puts it down as a question—a primary question—we might be able to get to the bottom of that.

Hon Steven Joyce: Does he understand how small businesses might be concerned at his interest in them when, for two days in a row now, he has come to the House on a question on business confidence and has shown absolutely no interest in the level of confidence, or otherwise, of New Zealand small businesses?

SPEAKER: Order! I am going to invite the member to rephrase it without the assertion in the middle.

Hon Steven Joyce: Does he understand how small businesses may be concerned at a lack of interest from the Government in their situation when the finance Minister has now come to the House two days in a row and failed to be able to answer questions around small business confidence?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: We’re working extremely closely with the small business sector. That was evident in the decisions that were made around the 90-day trials. The Minister for Small Business has been at a large small business conference today, where he’s been talking about the plans for the Government. What it is an indication of is that this side of the House is committed to growing the economy sustainably, seeing wages grow, and making sure that there’s a fair share in prosperity. I really do encourage the member to cast off the negativity that’s all around him, cheer up, and support me in talking up the New Zealand economy.

Hon Steven Joyce: The member should talk to Mr Peters. What step—

SPEAKER: Order! I’m very tempted to take the question off the member. I won’t this time, because, again, it’s early in the year and it’s a new thing for the member. All right?

Hon Steven Joyce: Thank you, Mr Speaker. I appreciate that. What steps will the Minister actually take—actual concrete steps—to reassure small and medium sized businesses and improve their confidence given that this week the Government he is a Minister of has introduced an employment relations bill that advantages union officials and undercuts business confidence to grow and invest in our jobs?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: Small businesses have reacted very positively to the Government’s decision around the 90-day trials. We remain committed to making sure that there’s fairness in the workplace and actually making sure that working people in New Zealand get a fair share in prosperity. That Government had nine years to do it; it completely failed. We’re getting on with the job.

Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership—Changes and Process

4. Hon TODD McCLAY (National—Rotorua) to the Minister for Trade and Export Growth: Will this House debate and vote on the revised TPP agreement before it is signed; if not, why not?

Hon DAVID PARKER (Minister for Trade and Export Growth): The member will be aware that the process for the parliamentary examination of treaties is set out in Standing Orders 397-400. The final text of the agreement, together with its national interest analysis, goes to the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee. I expect the committee to call for public submissions. The committee then reports to the House. In addition, the Government will introduce enabling legislation needed for the Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership. This will provide several opportunities for parliamentary debates and votes. In addition, this Government is willing to hold a parliamentary debate prior to signing—something that the National Government never did—but I do understand that the Opposition may have trouble deciding who will lead the debate for them.

Hon Todd McClay: Why didn’t he instruct negotiators to strengthen the Treaty of Waitangi clause in the revised Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement (TPPA) as promised?

Hon DAVID PARKER: We didn’t promise to change the text of the Treaty of Waitangi clause. The most important—[Interruption]—the Labour Party—

SPEAKER: Order! Order! Nick Smith will stand, withdraw, and apologise.

Hon Dr Nick Smith: I withdraw and apologise.

SPEAKER: I’m going to issue a general warning. This is a question that is very important to many New Zealanders, and I think the House deserves to be able to hear the answer.

Hon DAVID PARKER: As I was saying, we had five bottom lines; we met 4½ out of five. We thought 90 percent was a decent pass mark, and for us the most important issue was protecting the right of a future New Zealand Government and this New Zealand Government to ban foreign buyers of New Zealand homes.

Hon Todd McClay: Why didn’t he instruct negotiators to improve the labour and environment chapters in the revised TPPA as claimed?

Hon DAVID PARKER: The labour protections in respect of the revised TPPA are the best that we have had in any prior agreement, and they include enforcement mechanisms. The only change that has been made in recent times was one to enable Vietnam to have a transitional period to meet the rules.

Hon Todd McClay: Why didn’t he instruct negotiators to improve the market access chapter in the recently concluded TPPA negotiations as promised?

Hon DAVID PARKER: We made no such promise. What I would say is that in our negotiations we parried attempts that would have been detrimental to New Zealand’s interests very effectively.

Hon Todd McClay: So is the Minister saying that the market access, Treaty of Waitangi protection, and environment and labour provisions are the same as negotiated by the last Government in the Trans-Pacific Partnership 12 agreement—some of the highest standards ever negotiated in a New Zealand free-trade agreement?

Hon DAVID PARKER: What I’m saying is that we’re not North Korea. We don’t need to have a revisionist history. The last Labour Government had a parliamentary debate on the China free-trade agreement. The last National Government refused to debate its trade agreements in this Parliament. This Government is going to have a debate on the Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement. The Opposition is in no position to either lecture or hector us on fair process.

Government Tree-planting Programme—Land

5. MARK PATTERSON (NZ First) to the Minister of Forestry: What is being done to secure land for the Government’s tree-planting programme?

Hon SHANE JONES (Minister of Forestry): The Government has a robust campaign to attract land from iwi, where possible from the public sector, and from substantial numbers of people from the private sector, who are responding on a daily basis.

Mark Patterson: How can I, as an individual farmer, get involved in this important programme?

Hon SHANE JONES: Well, rather than using the pronoun, let me talk about the figurative farmer. There are already schemes that are available, such as the Afforestation Grants Scheme, which was poorly managed under the last regime, and the Erosion Control Funding Programme, but, most importantly, please get in contact with Crown forestry, which will morph into a separate Crown agency with a budget to begin planting millions of trees this winter.

Prisons—Prison Population and Reoffending

Hon AMY ADAMS (National—Selwyn): I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I seek leave for this question to be held over until the Minister of Corrections is available to answer it.

SPEAKER: Is there any objection to that? Yes, there is.

6. Hon AMY ADAMS (National—Selwyn) to the Minister of Corrections: Does he stand by all his statements?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Leader of the House) on behalf of the Minister of Corrections: Yes, in the context in which they were made.

Hon Amy Adams: If he stands by his statement that the Government will reduce the prison population by 30 percent over 15 years, and prisons are nearing full capacity, what have been his specific instructions to the Department of Corrections regarding short-term measures to reduce the prison population?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: The Government is still working through short-term measures as to how we will reduce the prison population as part of a wider programme of work to reduce the overall level of offending and reoffending. I want to endorse the comments made by the current Leader of the Opposition that the prison rate in New Zealand is a moral and fiscal failure—a failure of that member’s party in Government.

Hon Amy Adams: Does he intend to keep the former Government’s Better Public Services (BPS) target of reducing reoffending, given his own statement that removing BPS targets would mean that “There is no longer … accountability to the taxpayer for Corrections’ failures.”?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: We are reviewing the previous Government’s failure to meet their own Better Public Services target of a 25 percent reduction in reoffending. They didn’t even manage a quarter of that.

Hon Amy Adams: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I didn’t ask him to comment on the previous Government; I asked him whether he intended to keep the previous Government’s target, given that he had indicated himself that he thought removing them was a failure of accountability to taxpayers. He didn’t address that; he simply attacked the previous Government’s record.

SPEAKER: Ask the question again.

Hon Amy Adams: Does he intend to keep the former Government’s Better Public Services target of reducing reoffending, given his own statement that removing BPS targets would mean that “There is no longer … accountability to the taxpayer for Correction’s failures.”?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: As I indicated, in light of the previous Government’s failure to meet that target, or even get quarter of the way there, it is something that is under review.

Hon Amy Adams: How does he reconcile his target of—

SPEAKER: Order! There was another member who also called.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Could the Minister advise whether or not prison reforms and changes that this Government is making are likely to be fertile ground for potential leaders of the National Party?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: I’m very happy to comment on that matter.

SPEAKER: No, no. I can’t believe the Minister was seriously going to answer it.

Hon Amy Adams: We feel that way lots of the time. How does he reconcile his target of reducing the prison population by 30 percent with his decision to remove the BPS target, given now, in his own words, there will no longer be any accountability for failures by the Department of Corrections to the New Zealand taxpayer?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: As I’ve indicated—that is, that the target is under review as part of a wider range of work that this Government is initiating to reduce offending and reoffending and the imprisonment of New Zealanders within the prison system.

Hon Amy Adams: Does he stand by the statement that removing BPS targets is the equivalent of the Wallabies deciding not to keep track of the score so that no one could accuse them of losing—that statement being made by Kelvin Davis?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: As I indicated in my answer to the primary question, the Minister stands by all of the statements he has made in the context that he had made them.

Crown/Māori Relations—Iwi Consultation

TODD MULLER (National—Bay of Plenty): Thank you, Mr Speaker. My question is to the Minister for Crown—[Interruption]

SPEAKER: Order! Order! It is the third offence, Mr English, and I will take one supplementary from your team as a result of your joint offending with Amy Adams.

7. TODD MULLER (National—Bay of Plenty) to the Minister for Crown/Māori Relations: Does he stand by all his statements?

Hon MEKA WHAITIRI (Associate Minister for Crown/Māori Relations) on behalf of the Minister for Crown/Māori Relations: E Te Māngai o Te Whare, tēnā koe, otirā, e ngā mema o Te Whare nei, ngā mihi o Te Tau Hou, tēnā tātau. Yes, within the context in which they were given.

Todd Muller: Does he stand by his statement where he said, “If Government was to honour its relationships and obligations to Māori, it would consult properly and in good faith with iwi.”?

Hon MEKA WHAITIRI: The creation of the Crown/Māori relations portfolio confirms the Government is committed to healthy Crown/Māori relations. Myself, along with my colleague the associate Minister, are looking at new ways of working with Māori. This includes, of course, working with the iwi chairs in the future.

Todd Muller: So does he believe the Government is acting in good faith, when the Minister for Regional Economic Development states, “Halley’s Comet will be back before I meet with the Iwi Leaders Forum.”, and “Who are the Māori they are talking for? There is no upside in bluster and threats that carry no mandate.”?

Hon MEKA WHAITIRI: As much as I’d like to say I have responsibility for the comments of the Hon Shane Jones, unfortunately, I have no ministerial responsibility.

SPEAKER: But Mr Muller’s team has two extra questions as a result of Mr Jones’ interventions.

Todd Muller: Does the Minister believe that the Government is consulting properly with iwi when the Minister of Employment states in regards to iwi leadership, “I’m not interested in their strategies. They’ve never spoken for my constituency in Auckland so I don’t need to be advocating for anything that I’ve been involved with.”?

Hon MEKA WHAITIRI: I stand by the comments of a hard-working Minister of Employment, the Hon Willie Jackson, but, unfortunately, I have no ministerial responsibility, again, for his actions.

Child Poverty—Families Package

8. PRIYANCA RADHAKRISHNAN (Labour) to the Minister for Social Development: Will the Families Package help the Government achieve its goal of lifting children out of poverty; if so, how?

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI (Minister for Social Development): Absolutely. The Families Package will make an estimated 385,000 families with children better off by an average of $75 a week in 2020-21 when the package is fully implemented. This Government recognises that for too long, too many New Zealand children have lived with the burden of poverty. Under the Families Package, there will be a winter energy payment to help people on a benefit or superannuation, including sole parent families; a Best Start payment that gives families with a baby born or due on or after 1 July 2018 $60 a week until their first birthday, and up to age three for lower-income families; a boost in Working for Families; family tax credit payments; and increases to the accommodation supplement. This package recognises that caring for children is one of the most important things families can do. It helps families provide for their children.

Hon Paula Bennett: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I just wanted to get some clarification. Yesterday—and just check that we’re not being misled in the House—I asked questions because Treasury have had to redo the numbers of children that are going to be lifted out of poverty—

SPEAKER: And if you—[Interruption] No, the member will resume her seat. If she thinks I’m being misled, as I’ve advised other members—or the House is being misled—there’s a very definite process for dealing with that, and it doesn’t involve bringing it up in this way. There are other points of course: if the member is convinced there’s an inaccuracy in the answer, she can take it up with the Minister, and the Minister can come back and correct it. The difference between the two is whether it is accidental or deliberate, as I think the experienced member knows.

Priyanca Radhakrishnan: What feedback has the Government received on the impact that the Families Package will have on poverty?

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: The Families Package has been widely welcomed by organisations who work with, and for, families and children on a daily basis. UNICEF told media that they were thrilled, that it felt like a Christmas present for every family across New Zealand. Major Campbell Roberts of the Salvation Army said that the $60 grant “is a terrific payment and I think it will make a real difference.”, while his colleague Ian Hutson said the package was exactly what was needed to deal with the poverty they were seeing every day. The Child Poverty Action Group called the package a sea change for children, saying the Prime Minister is to be applauded for prioritising child poverty reduction with this package. When the very same people who have been fighting to improve the well-being of our children for years support our initiatives, I am confident that we are on the right path.

Hon Paula Bennett: In light of Treasury having to redo the numbers for both last year’s Budget and the mini-Budget under this currently, can the Minister please tell us what the numbers are that will be reduced, of children in poverty, because of the mini-Budget package last year?

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: Treasury have made it very clear that the error that they have cited will have no impact on the actual numbers of people receiving extra benefits in the package or their amounts of extra income, and that’s what I alluded to in my answer to the initial question.

Priyanca Radhakrishnan: What other action is the Government taking that will complement the Families Package in respect of lifting children out of poverty?

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: New Zealand has the opportunity and the moral obligation to ensure children are free from the burden of poverty. Our Families Package will increase the incomes of many families by meaningful amounts, and children will be much better off through our commitment to restore funding in education and health while also growing the economy. Just yesterday, the Prime Minister announced the Child Poverty Reduction Bill, which will drive a significant and sustained reduction in child poverty that lasts beyond successive Governments.

Hon Louise Upston: Did the Minister cancel her plans on sanctions that remove the father’s financial responsibility from the Families Package because the cost is estimated at over $100 million, or has she just realised it’s a bad idea?

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: We have made a commitment to removing section 70A of the Social Security Act, but at no time have we set a time frame for doing that.

Local Government, Minister—Correspondence with Whakatāne District Council

9. JAMI-LEE ROSS (National—Botany) to the Minister of Local Government: Does she stand by all her answers to written questions?

Hon NANAIA MAHUTA (Minister of Local Government): Yes, especially when those questions are coherent, well-thought-out—and even those that have been disguised as spam, as with the questions I’ve received from that member.

Jami-Lee Ross: Does she stand by her answer to written question No. 15106, where she said she had received no correspondence from the Whakatāne District Council between 26 October and 28 November 2017?

Hon NANAIA MAHUTA: Yes.

Jami-Lee Ross: How, then, can it be that she responded to correspondence from the Whakatāne District Council from her own BlackBerry work device on 16 November 2017?

Hon NANAIA MAHUTA: Before Christmas, I attended a rural provincial zone meeting and had a number of conversations. A number of conversations can drive responses to questions.

Jami-Lee Ross: How does the Minister reconcile her answer given today with the fact that she responded to written correspondence from her BlackBerry work device to the Whakatāne District Council on 16 November 2017?

Hon NANAIA MAHUTA: If I recall the conversation that I had, which may have preceded any correspondence, it was an invitation to a zone meeting in Whakatāne.

Jami-Lee Ross: If the Whakatāne District Council can’t have confidence in her, then how can any other council trust a word she says?

Hon NANAIA MAHUTA: I have not received any correspondence from the Whakatāne council expressing their lack of confidence in any engagement that they have had with me.

Jami-Lee Ross: I seek leave to table correspondence from the mayor’s office of the Whakatāne District Council and a reply from the Hon Nanaia Mahuta on 16 November, signed off by her BlackBerry work device, authorised by Nanaia Mahuta, Parliament Buildings, Wellington.

SPEAKER: Is there any objection to those documents being tabled? There appears to be none. They will be tabled.

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

Raymond Huo: What action has the Minister taken after advice given in relation to written question No. 20456?

Hon NANAIA MAHUTA: In relation to that written question, it is evident from the engagements that I’ve had with the local government sector that they are pressured with existing costs that they are facing. On that basis and as a matter of course in relation to our coalition agreement, I will be leading an inquiry into the funding of local government and it will cover a number of matters. I intend that that matter will be considered by Cabinet in March, and then we can engage with local government about a way forward on matters that have been vexing them over the past nine years, when that Opposition did nothing about it.

Raymond Huo: When will the funding inquiry get under way?

Hon NANAIA MAHUTA: As I said previously, I propose to consult with coalition partners and take a paper to Cabinet so that a decision can be made on how we approach the inquiry, the substantial terms of reference, and the matters that will be considered, and then we will engage with the local government sector on some very serious issues.

Question No. 3 to Minister

Hon STEVEN JOYCE (National): I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I seek leave to table the ANZ Business Outlook December 2017, which confirms that—

SPEAKER: Order! The member will resume his seat right now. That’s a widely published document.

Hon STEVEN JOYCE (National): I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker—a separate point of order. Can I just seek your advice—

SPEAKER: No. I just want to make it very, very clear here. If the member has a point of order, I’m not going to require him to quote the Standing Order or the Speaker’s ruling that it relates to, but I do want the member to use some sort of precedent rather than using the Chair as an advisory service during question time.

Hon GERRY BROWNLEE (National—Ilam): I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. This is a very simple matter. A Minister answering a question today relied on for his answer some statistical information in that report and then misrepresented it to the House. Now, when a similar thing occurred last year and a case was put before you, your ruling was that it was not of sufficient substance or importance for it to be considered a breach of the House’s privilege. Well, that might be all right, but if you’re saying that there is a tolerance now for Ministers being incorrect in the answers they give to the House, then we would like to know what the bounds of that is. All Mr Joyce was attempting to do was table a document, immediately this afternoon, so that everybody could see that what Mr Robertson was saying earlier was wrong.

SPEAKER: The precedents on this are long standing, and I’m sure that the member, as a very experienced Minister, knows the proper approach, and that is that the member draws to the Minister’s attention, not through the tabling of a document, the fact that there is inaccuracy, and if in fact there is an inaccuracy that will be corrected by the Minister.

Government Tree-planting Programme—Progress

10. Hon SIMON BRIDGES (National—Tauranga) to the Minister for Regional Economic Development: Does he believe the Regional Development (Provincial Growth) Fund is proving a success?

Hon SHANE JONES (Minister for Regional Economic Development): Yes.

Hon Simon Bridges: To date, how many trees have been planted under the fund’s billion-tree - planting programme?

Hon SHANE JONES: Trees are planted when mother Nature opens the natural window. That window will open at the end of autumn and in winter.

Hon Simon Bridges: Departing from the script—does that make him mother Nature?

Hon SHANE JONES: Mr Speaker, obviously you’re going to allow that question. I was recently married. Kia ora tātou.

Hon Simon Bridges: Does he accept, as indicated to Duncan Garner on The AM Show on 19 January, that rather than coming anywhere near the 100 million trees a year target in the coalition agreement and the Government’s Speech from the Throne, the forestry industry will actually plant little more—in fact, about the same as the status quo this year?

Hon SHANE JONES: You see, the member touches on a serious point. The industry currently plant over 50 million trees. The Government has a vigorous campaign to attract land to substantially grow that over a three-year period. The industry are incredibly impressed with the Government’s narrative about forestry, and here’s the proof. [Holds up bulletin] Thank you very much.

Hon Simon Bridges: Is all of this why he described the planting programme to Duncan Garner on that AM Show on 19 January as “aspirational”, despite the Prime Minister in the Speech from the Throne describing it as a “commitment”?

Hon SHANE JONES: I know the member is itching to get all the details. However, the figure is a very serious figure. We’ve all moved towards New Zealand planting 100 million trees per year. Over a 10-year period that will allow us to capture the figure of one billion. But these things, like mother Nature, take time.

Hon Simon Bridges: Well, is there still a commitment to plant one billion trees in a decade?

Hon SHANE JONES: Yes. The regional development strategy does include a one-billion-tree target. A significant number of those trees may prove to be native trees, not all exotics. After all, a tree is a tree, including a lemon tree. Thank you.

Hon Simon Bridges: Well, isn’t his tree-planting programme, like his “work for the dole” pledge, a case of big talk but absolutely no real action?

Hon SHANE JONES: The tree-planting ambitions will be realised. The Budget figures will reveal to the member the full extent not only of our ambition but our ability to execute such a figure. The industry is solidly in support, including private sector, Māori sector, and public sector, and they point out that in the former regime the nurseries creating pine trees were ploughing them in the ground.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Could the Minister confirm for the public interest that his plans are on target and that this is not going to be another case of all Brylcreem and no socks?

SPEAKER: Order! Order!

Civil Defence—Response System Review Recommendations

11. PAUL EAGLE (Labour—Rongotai) to the Minister of Civil Defence: What approach is the Government taking in order to form a response to the recommendations contained in the technical advisory group’s review into the Civil Defence response system?

Hon KRIS FAAFOI (Minister of Civil Defence): I have been engaging with various interested parties on this review since it was made available to me as the Minister of Civil Defence. We have identified that we work in particular with local councils, as they largely deliver civil defence emergency management to communities. It’s also a high priority for me to work with iwi on their participation in emergency management before, during, and after an event. I’m also keen to work with my old friends in the media, recognising that media have a critical role to play in how we educate and inform our communities about emergency planning and in the middle of an event. I am aiming to discuss a draft Government response with Cabinet around the middle of this year.

Paul Eagle: How will the Minister ensure cross-party involvement in the engagement process?

Hon KRIS FAAFOI: Today, I met with a cross-parliamentary reference group. Representatives from all of New Zealand’s political parties in Parliament were invited to attend, and I thank those parties for attending. Given its significance to New Zealand, I believe the public would be disappointed if politics got in the way of keeping New Zealanders safe in emergencies. I acknowledge the previous Government also had a cross-party group. I hope that through this forum, any legislative changes will have broad support across the House.

Paul Eagle: What does the technical advisory group (TAG) review recommend in regards to working with iwi to prepare for responding to emergencies?

Hon KRIS FAAFOI: The TAG recommends changes to legislation to provide for iwi to work with councils. Iwi are often at the centre of responding to welfare needs, given their role at the heart of many communities. They are also able—as we’ve seen in Kaikōura and other locations—to activate marae and to host and care for large numbers of people. The recommendation is about how iwi and hapū can be better recognised and supported to undertake their traditional manaakitanga role in times of need. I look forward to engaging with iwi groups on their response to the TAG report.

Child Poverty—Government Measures to Address and Statistics

12. Hon LOUISE UPSTON (National—Taupō) to the Minister for Social Development: How many children are currently living in material hardship, and how many children were living in material hardship in 2008?

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI (Minister for Social Development): In 2008, there were 170,000 children living in material hardship. In 2011, that soared to 220,000. In 2016, which is the most recent date for our most recent figures, it had dropped again to 135,000. What I do need to say is the same report that those figures are in warn that the figures are likely to underestimate the true figures for a number of reasons, including the fact that the household economic survey is light on sole parent households and on beneficiary households with children.

Hon Louise Upston: How many of the children currently living in material hardship are living in benefit-dependent homes?

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: I don’t have the figure off the top of my head, but what I do need to say is that, currently, around 40 percent of children living in material hardship are living in working households and 60 percent of children living in material hardship are living in beneficiary households.

Hon Louise Upston: Does the Minister accept that children are materially better off living in homes where a parent works and that don’t depend on a benefit for income?

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: What I would agree with the Opposition spokesperson on is that we need to support New Zealanders into work. However, there has been a growing number of New Zealanders who are categorised as working poor, and a growing number of New Zealand children who are living in poverty but living in households where there are parents, or a parent, that are working.

Dr Liz Craig: So what does the Government intend to do to reduce the number of children in material hardship?

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: We’re already making progress by passing laws to ensure families can live in warm, dry homes, and the Government’s Families Package will reduce inequality and reduce child poverty. Plus we’re freeing up more than $2 billion over four years to contribute to our investments in housing, health, and education.

Questions to Members

Misuse of Drugs (Medicinal Cannabis and Other Matters) Amendment Bill—Overseas Comparators and Support

1. Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER (Green) to the Member in charge of the Misuse of Drugs (Medicinal Cannabis and Other Matters) Amendment Bill: Is the Misuse of Drugs (Medicinal Cannabis and Other Matters) Amendment Bill modelled on any overseas examples?

CHLÖE SWARBRICK (Member in charge of the Misuse of Drugs (Medicinal Cannabis and Other Matters) Amendment Bill): Tēnā koutou e Te Whare. I thank the member—and the Minister, indeed—for her question and, of course, the bill that I have inherited from her. Yes, this bill is. It’s very similar to Canada and very much in the mainstream when it is compared to what other countries are doing—allowing production of cannabis of medicinal purposes—whereas the Government’s bill, which the House voted through unanimously yesterday, is incredibly restrictive on the freedoms of those in chronic pain and suffering, compared to jurisdictions who’ve moved—

SPEAKER: Order! I think the member needs to be quite tight in her answers to these questions. I could’ve stopped her when she said “Yes.”

Hon Julie Anne Genter: What feedback has she received from the public on her Misuse of Drugs (Medicinal Cannabis and Other Matters) Amendment Bill?

CHLÖE SWARBRICK: It’s proven to have wide public support. This bill has support from former Prime Minister Helen Clark and from Grey Power, who want to see this bill get to select committee so that we can have an open, mature conversation about the best legislative medicinal cannabis framework for our country, and, of course, it has support from Dylan Kelly, the late Helen Kelly’s son, whose mother experienced and subsequently campaigned against the effects of our current restrictions. And today’s Newshub poll is tracking at 81 percent support for the intention of my bill.

SPEAKER: I just wanted to check now with Julie Anne Genter. She just asked question No. 2 as a supplementary question. Does she still want to ask the question? You are allowed to, if you want to. [Interruption] OK.

Hon Julie Anne Genter: What is the intention—

SPEAKER: No, no. Question No. 2—not a supplementary. You’ve still got to ask the question.

Question No. 2 to Member

Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER (Green): What is the intention of the Misuse of Drugs (Medicinal Cannabis and Other Matters) Amendment Bill?

CHLÖE SWARBRICK (Green): This bill’s intention is to make medicinal—

SPEAKER: No. Order! Order! Let’s go right back. It’s a question about feedback that is question No. 2 on the Order Paper. The member did ask it.

Hon Julie Anne Genter: I already asked it.

Chlöe Swarbrick: And I’ve answered it—I’ve answered it, Mr Speaker.

SPEAKER: That’s dead right. If Chlӧe Swarbrick sits down, I will indicate to Julie Anne Genter that if she wants to ask a supplementary question, she’s got to ask that question again to put herself in the position to ask a supplementary question to it. She might just want to cut her losses. Right.

Questions to Ministers

Question No. 9 to Minister

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Leader of the House): I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. Earlier in question time, Jami-Lee Ross was granted leave by the House to table a document that he had described as correspondence to the Minister of Local Government. Under Speaker’s ruling 150/4, he has until the end of the day to table that document. My question to you is with relation to Speakers’ ruling 150/6, which is that if the member has tabled a document that does not meet the description that they used when they sought leave to table it, do we have to wait until the end of the day to see whether they table another document before a complaint for contempt can be lodged?

SPEAKER: Yes.

General Debate

General Debate

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister of Finance): I move, That the House take note of miscellaneous business.

What a great day for the Government, as we come towards the end of the first 100 days of this Government. On this side of the House, we see a Government cohesive and united in our desire to improve the well-being of New Zealanders. One hundred days of success: a Families Package that’ll boost incomes for 385,000 families; an extension of paid parental leave; a minimum wage of $16.50, starting on 1 April; KiwiBuild being set up; contributions to the Superannuation Fund restarted, nine years after that Opposition stopped them; a mental health inquiry established; free first-year training and education for secondary school students and for those who have never had that before; the end of national standards; the increase of student support; the establishment of the Pike River Recovery Agency, alongside those families; the setting of a zero-carbon emission goal; and even things that might not seem significant to the great majority of New Zealanders, like justice for Teina Pora, to make sure that he finally got the payment that he deserved.

A huge amount has been achieved by this Government in 100 days, and we are proud of that. But then we look across to the other side of the House to the desperate and divided Opposition. The problem with the seven stages of grief is that they affect people at different times. For instance, one of the stages of grief is shock. I believe that Sarah Dowie is exhibiting that at the moment, when she told Newshub today that there’d been “a bit of talk” about who would replace Mr English as leader—“a bit of talk”, from Sarah Dowie. Perhaps a slightly career-limited meaning. Who is it that she is talking to?

Another one of the seven stages of grief is guilt, and I believe that that is currently being carried by Steven Joyce. He is the man. He’s done the numbers to see if he can become the leader, and he’s counted 11.7 billion votes. So we know for sure that he’s in the running.

But the person who we all know is mainly in the running here is Simon Bridges. Now, there is to be a National Party caucus meeting in Tauranga, or, as Simon calls it, home advantage. That’s what he’s got at the moment. All summer we saw the behaviour of Simon Bridges. It didn’t exactly look like a loyal servant. He popped up in all kinds of puff pieces. He was on Matinee Idle, talking about Nina Simone coming to him recently—whatever that might mean.

But the sure sign when you’re in Opposition as to whether something might be going on: Simon Bridges grew a beard over summer. On this side of the House we know all about that. I want to clarify that Kieran McAnulty has grown a beard recently, but that’s only so he can get into pubs. But Simon Bridges, he grew a beard over summer, and we know for sure what that means: that the manoeuvring has started.

Simon Bridges is also suffering from another stage of the seven stages of grief, and that is anger. Anger is what we’re seeing from Simon Bridges, on a daily basis.

But the other seven stages of grief, particularly the ones around depression, reflection, and loneliness, belong only to Bill English. Today, we heard a state of the nation speech from that member that actually wasn’t about the state of the nation. The state of the nation is positive and optimistic and ready to see the impact of the Government’s policies. The speech we heard today was about the state of the Opposition: desperate, divided, in denial, tired, out of ideas, and carping about things that New Zealanders know are going to eventually lead to their wages rising and to their well-being increasing.

This is an Opposition falling apart. To be perfectly honest, I didn’t think it would happen this quickly, but it has. And Sarah Dowie is right—there’s a little bit of talk going on right now. I’m going to suggest to her there’s going to be a lot of talk going on in her direction sometime soon.

But what I can assure New Zealanders is that this Government is committed to implementing our 100-day plan and then, in the next 1,000 days, to improving healthcare, improving education, raising living standards, lifting wages—

Hon Phil Twyford: Building houses.

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: —building houses, Mr Twyford, and giving New Zealanders the confidence to know they have a Government that backs them 100 percent. We’re united; they’re divided—end of story.

FLETCHER TABUTEAU (NZ First): Can I add my words of congratulations in this, the general debate, for the first time this year in the House. It’s a pleasure to be here. I’m proud to be here. On one negative note—in the past I would normally follow one of the members from the other side, and I relished the opportunity because the contrast was great. That’s my way of complimenting the Minister of Finance on a fantastic contribution today.

I’m proud to be part of this New Zealand First - Labour Government, with the support of the Green Party. I want to congratulate all of these Ministers, all of these members, for the herculean work that they have undertaken in the last 100 days. We have worked incredibly hard for the benefit of all New Zealanders, whether they are business owners, whether they are employees, or whether they are struggling every day just to get by. Cheers to this Government.

I wanted to use the example of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). I am proud to stand up now and talk about the Trans-Pacific Partnership, or what is now called the Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership. It is a new deal, and it is really important for the people of New Zealand to understand that one of the huge principles—one of the guiding principles—that New Zealand First took into negotiations was to work with a party that understood what we were trying to achieve with trade, because New Zealand First is a party that absolutely supports trade. The problem we had was when that party was in power, they weren’t interested in trade, they weren’t interested in people; they were just there to sign a deal and sell it to the public as a win. That was the problem with the TPP under that party on that side of the House.

So I would like to commend the new trade Minister, because not only has he taken on board the angst that the Labour Party itself had with the TPP but he listened to New Zealand First, and here we are today, where I am able to stand up and congratulate, and say this is a new deal—this is not the old TPP that was being forced down the throats of New Zealanders by that party over there.

There are only a few distinctions that need to be made, because they are huge and they are vitally important. New Zealand First spoke to the sovereignty of our country. We railed against the investor-State dispute settlement (ISDS) provisions that that Government just flippantly accepted in their negotiations in the TPP. They just took what was given, but credit to this Minister: he went and he said to those parties, those partnership countries, that we don’t think this is acceptable to New Zealanders. In fact, we know this is not acceptable to New Zealanders.

So what we have now is—yes, we still have an ISDS provision, but what we have is a clause where multinational corporates cannot sue the Government, in terms of their work with the Government. We have an ISDS clause where this Government will tell multinational corporates to go and use New Zealand courts, like New Zealand businesses have to do. They don’t get, and they shouldn’t get, special privilege. So, in that, sovereignty in New Zealand has been hugely boosted by the work of this Government.

Can I also congratulate the Minister and his team on his work in terms of protecting New Zealanders and the very basic need—and right, I would put it to the House—of being able to own and afford their own home. What we have done in our negotiations—and we’ve actually taken a win on this—is something that that party wasn’t even interested in attempting: to protect the sanctity of the New Zealand home, and to say to overseas investors that New Zealand homes are not your investment tools to be used to make profits on. These are Kiwi homes, and they need to be protected for Kiwis. So I am proud to be standing here and congratulating the Minister on his work and taking up the message of New Zealand First and all of your supporters.

Pharmac biologic issues, in terms of protections there, are no longer an issue for New Zealand. Copyright and patent laws remain the same. This is not the same deal, and I congratulate this Government. Thank you.

CHLÖE SWARBRICK (Green): Tēnā koe e Te Māngai. Tēnā koutou e Te Whare. I’m not going to speak to the specificity or sections of the bill that comes up for vote later today, but I will, however, speak to the general thrust. Yesterday, in the reading of the Government’s bill—which, obviously, concerns a similar topic, that of medicinal cannabis—I heard a number of National Party MPs stand up and critique that Government’s bill. Today, they have the opportunity to fill those gaps. I heard Dr Jonathan Coleman refer to the Government’s bill as “half-baked”. I heard Dr Shane Reti refer to a conversation that New Zealanders want to have, saying that they, the National Party, wanted to have it as well.

All members in this House have experienced the pain and the suffering of a loved one—of a family member or of a close friend—and I ask the members of this House, in considering the bill later today, to put themselves in another person’s shoes. This issue is bigger than politics or the likes of the political suffering, with regard to the wounds of political pride that are so often dashed across the headlines in the media. What we are talking about today is the House of Representatives’ role as a gatekeeper to a broader conversation that New Zealanders can have at the select committee stage.

I ask the House: is it better, in the current situation, under the current legal framework, to be a bystander to the pain of a loved one when the only medicine that works for them is medicinal cannabis, or is it better—is it more ethical—to break that law? The reason that I mention this is because I think it is crucially important to raise the point that the law is not natural when people are in pain or are suffering—indeed, the law is man-made, and we in this House have the opportunity to make that law; to put it right when it is wrong.

Today I had the privilege to meet a number of patients, those who could benefit from legalisation around medicinal cannabis use, as is outlined in my bill, and those who are currently breaking the law in order to get the relief that they need. I spoke with a young woman, Grace, whose family currently is able to access medicinal cannabis only by way of fund-raising the $1,200 a month that it costs to get the product through the Ministry of Health. Her family believes that the best course for this House to chart forward is to vote my bill through to select committee so that members may hear their case.

SPEAKER: Order! Order! The member will resume her seat. I know that the member has been briefed on anticipating debates. I’ve been listening very carefully, and this is about the third or the fourth time that she has referred to her bill and asked members to consider matters relating to it. Can I ask her to stick to the general principles of the issue and not to refer to the bill again?

CHLÖE SWARBRICK: Absolutely, Mr Speaker. I will then refer to the point of conscience. This, as you have confirmed, will be a conscience vote. I ask that members consider their conscience. There have been many issues before this House where members have been asked to vote in conscience: the likes of gay marriage, for example. I think it’s important to note that our former Prime Minister Bill English mentioned recently—last year, I believe—that he probably would have voted differently now, knowing the impact that the passage of that law has had on society: that the sky did not fall in, that people had access to equality. I simply ask that members consider their conscience and vote in line with that. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

Hon AMY ADAMS (National—Selwyn): I think members across this House come to Parliament because they share in a very real desire to see New Zealanders have stable and happy and prosperous lives with good health and education, live in safe communities, and have a beautiful environment. But one of the differences, I believe, between this side of the House and this new, weak, disparate Government that we have is that, on this side of the House, we understand that all of those ambitions and desires we share for New Zealanders and their families require a strong economy—they require a strong financial base to pay for those things. The interesting thing is that things like the Family Income Package that this party developed and delivered in the 2017 Budget and that has been adopted by the new Government are possible only because of that strong economy.

At its very core, a strong economy comes from courageous New Zealanders who are prepared to get up, work hard, invest their money, put their own assets on the line, work 16 to 20 hours a day, and, hopefully, grow from that ambition, that hard work, and that confidence into creating jobs. It is the New Zealanders who take that chance who are our economy. They are assisted by a Government that creates rules and settings that encourage them to do that and give them the confidence to invest in New Zealand. That, fundamentally, is what determines how many jobs we have in our society, how high the incomes are in those jobs, and how good those jobs are. The most important thing to any New Zealand worker, I would suggest, first and foremost, is that they have a job. You have to have a job before pay rates or pay conditions or anything else are even relevant. So we must always ensure that what we do supports the creation of new jobs.

Now, let’s look at New Zealand’s record in this regard. In this regard, under the National Government, we’ve seen New Zealand creating jobs—new jobs; extra jobs—at the rate of 10,000 a month for more than two years now. That means New Zealand now has the third-highest employment rate in the OECD and New Zealand has the highest employment rate it has ever had. That is the reality of a strong economy and good—

Hon Simon Bridges: How many jobs a month?

Hon AMY ADAMS: That is 10,000 new jobs a month. Those are the conditions we have right at the moment.

But what have we seen since the change of Government? Well, interestingly enough, in the first 100-days, we have seen what I would have called a remarkable plummet in business confidence. My colleague Jacqui Dean, our spokesperson on small business, knows this very well. Up and down the country, what we are hearing consistently and what’s reflected in those business confidence surveys that Steven Joyce has been talking about in this House is that businesses are scared. They are scared of investing, they are scared of growing, and they are scared of employing people, because they know this Government is going to make it harder and harder to employ people. I’ve lost count of the number of businesses who’ve said to me “Why would we invest our money? Why would we put our own assets on the line to employ people when we can’t have any confidence that we’re going to be supported in that ambition?” If we have settings that are going to cost jobs in this country, the only people who lose are the New Zealand workers. Why would you do that?

Yet we now have a Government that is so determined to look after their union mates that they want to take us back to the dark old days of the 1970s, when it was all about block, rigid employment conditions, when businesses were punished for taking on workers, and when the taking on of a worker was done only if it was absolutely unavoidable, because the cost and the difficulty was so overwhelming. I find it so disturbing that the labour reforms announced by the Labour Government are, not surprisingly, going to take us back to a situation that will see, I’m telling you now, more strike action. You will see more strike action as unions get more and more militant—you’re seeing it already. You will see fewer jobs. I asked the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety whether he could commit to maintaining 10,000 new jobs a month. No, he can’t, because he knows that these changes will see fewer jobs created, and that will hurt New Zealand workers.

At the end of the day, if we want New Zealand to continue to be a prosperous, growing, positive country with opportunities for our workers and opportunities for our families, they have to have jobs, and the more jobs there are, the more choice they have. Good jobs are created when New Zealand businesses have confidence that their Government backs them. It’s very clear that New Zealand businesses have no confidence that this Government will back them. That will hurt New Zealand workers, and we’re going to make sure New Zealand knows about it.

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS (Minister of Energy and Resources): Thank you, Mr Speaker. It is an absolute joy to stand here as this Government gets to the end of 100 days where, in that time, we have achieved more than the previous Government did in nine long years. We have passed our Families Package; we have passed an extension to paid parental leave to 26 weeks; we have increased the minimum wage, starting on 1 April; we have announced changes to strengthen workers’ rights; we have announced legislation to set child poverty reduction targets into law; we’ve introduced a law to ban overseas speculation; we’ve started setting up KiwiBuild; we’ve set zero-carbon emissions goals; we’ve set up the Pike River Recovery Agency—and the list goes on. It is 100 days that, on this side of the House, we are rightly proud of, because we know we are bringing about positive, progressive change for our country.

The last 100 days haven’t been quite the same picture on the Opposition benches. While we’ve had 100 days of action, those guys have had 100 days of roaring up the barbecue. I think it’s very apt that tonight at midnight we are going to see a super blue blood moon, because I think that very aptly describes what is happening on the opposite benches. And we’re not naive to the ways of the world. We’ve seen this movie before, a couple of times. We know how it ends. Just doing a textual analysis of the comments coming out of the National members: “Look, there’s been a little bit of gossip.”—that means “The battle lines are drawn, the factions are forming, the barbecues are roaring, and winter is coming.” The fact that there have been “frank conversations”—I can’t even imagine what that one means, and we’ve seen some stuff over here. But it has been 152 years since we have seen this phenomenon of the super blue blood moon—I’m looking forward to seeing how it ends.

But I think I would like to send a message to Bill English: don’t worry, by 5 a.m. tomorrow morning the moon will be back in the full light of the sun. I think it’s worth him remembering that, but I think that it will be only a very short-term reprieve for the leader, because last night in this House we saw one of the National members literally seize the Iron Throne: we saw the Hon Nikki Kaye give a speech on a bill from the leader’s chair. Now, I have seen some stuff in my time, but I have never seen someone seize the Iron Throne in such a fashion. I know she probably imagines herself more as the mother of dragons, Daenerys Targaryen, but I would like to say that it’s more of a Cersei Lannister kind of move that’s happening over there on the Opposition benches.

What we are going to see is an Opposition that gets itself obsessed with itself. The factions will form. All we will see is—

Hon Maggie Barry: That member knows a lot about self-obsession.

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: —inward-looking things—and, yes, Ms Barry, I do remember those days. That’s why I said I know how this movie ends. Now, what you will see in that same period while National gets obsessed with itself—the knives are out. On the day the leader gives his state of the nation address, we have a leak within the National Party caucus about the ructions that are going on. Instead, what you will see on this side of the House is a Government that is intent on bringing about more progressive change for this country. We have only just begun with our first 100 days. We have many, many more things that we need to achieve to put this country on the positive track it needs to be on to face the 21st century, where everybody gets a fair go. We have launched a mental health inquiry. We know there’s further work to be done on that. We know that we need to continue working to make sure that New Zealanders can have access to affordable, warm, dry housing. We know we need to keep working to make sure that our kids are getting the best education system. And we are committed to New Zealanders, not firing up the barbecues. Thank you.

Hon SIMON BRIDGES (National—Tauranga): Well, it was interesting. [Interruption] Can I say, it’s great to hear my fans on the other side. It was interesting to hear the Minister of Finance just now. He is clearly fascinated by me. He spent half his speech talking about me, but what I found fascinating was watching him over the last 24—

Hon Phil Twyford: Did it make you feel good?

Hon SIMON BRIDGES: Well, you speak for yourself, Phil Twyford. I spent the last 24 hours being fascinated by him, watching him squirm at question time as he struggled to answer questions on why business confidence in this country is plummeting.

Hon Chris Hipkins: Here we go, talking down the economy.

Hon SIMON BRIDGES: And there’s absolutely no—well, the member over there says “talking down the economy.” I think he’ll find his buddy, now the Deputy Prime Minister, did that on the night he decided to go with them. He’s the one talking—I say, actually, if you look at the fundamentals of the economy, there’s absolutely no reason to talk down the New Zealand economy: 10,000 jobs a month for the last two years, some 245,000 jobs; I think, as my colleague Amy Adams said, third in the world for employment. We’ve got an economy that’s diversifying into many areas, whether it’s ICT, whether it’s all manner of new food types, or whether it’s rockets. We’ve been lifting benefits under the National Government—no reason whatsoever for confidence to go down. And you have a look: the major economies of the world at the moment, from America to Japan to, actually, throughout Asia and Europe, are going gangbusters—the first time in a very long time when all the major economies in the world are growing. So you have to say—we have to say—that if business confidence is down and if this economy starts to dampen, there’s only one place to look—

Hon Chris Hipkins: Well, why’d you lose?

Hon SIMON BRIDGES: Chris Hipkins—it is on your side of the benches, Mr Hipkins. That’s where we’ll be looking.

And you have to ask yourself: why is it that that’s what business is thinking? Is it just because they don’t like the other lot? I don’t think it’s that at all. I think it’s the policy settings that they’re changing, it’s the uncertainty that they’re creating.

Hon Iain Lees-Galloway: Ha, ha!

Hon SIMON BRIDGES: And Iain Lees-Galloway, he’s excited, but he’s the little pawn in all this, doing some of the worst things as far as business is concerned. We’ve heard from Amy Adams about the courage that it takes to get a business going, to take on that extra person, and what we’ve got from Iain Lees-Galloway, coming, I think it is, tomorrow, is a ragtag wish list of union wishes that he is putting into place, undoing a whole lot of things that made this a more flexible economy, a more exciting and a more vibrant economy to be in, with very strong growth indeed.

Worse than that, though, are the changes in immigration—or, in fact, the non-changes, at the moment, because what we know is that every single party on that side—

Hon Iain Lees-Galloway: Make up your mind, Simon.

Hon SIMON BRIDGES: Well, I’ll give you the real view. Every single party on that side is very scared about migration, wanting to slash the numbers, and now Iain Lees-Galloway says, “Oh, we’re not fixated on the numbers.” Well, what is the policy? Businesses need to know, Mr Lees-Galloway. They need to understand, to have the confidence to plan and to grow their business. I can tell that member I’ve been out in regional New Zealand, all over the country, and what they are telling me is, given they don’t have a plan from Iain Lees-Galloway, given they don’t know that they can take on the new workers that they need, they are planning not just to stay the same; in many cases—a bus-builder company I went to in Tauranga—to shrink their businesses. So if that member wants to know why business confidence is down, it’s a fear of their policies.

Out in regional New Zealand, we’ve seen, when this last Government finished, 12 of 15 regions growing incredibly strongly, and what have we seen in its place? Rather than regionally led growth, we’ve seen pork-barrel politics. But we’ve got a situation, as we have heard today. We’ve got a situation, as we’ve heard again today, from Mr Shane Jones: a billion trees that, as of today, is—how many trees? No trees; mother Nature’s going to take care of it sometime in the next decade. He’s keeping the promise as an aspiration now, not a commitment. Work for the dole—he got rumbled by Willie Jackson. If he loses to Willie Jackson, he’s in real trouble—and project blowouts all over the show, I’m being told by officials. That makes you very worried, actually, about that billion-dollar fund and what a lack of progress is going to mean in regional New Zealand.

So it’s embarrassing for this Government—a Government, Mr Hipkins, with no real agenda, that’s going to run out of work in this House quite soon. No wonder business confidence is down. We’ll be fighting the things that are stupid, for the best of this country.

Hon IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY (Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety): I am proud to stand and speak on behalf of this Government as it comes to the end of its first 100 days in office—a period of time in which this Government has done more to progress the ambitions, the hopes, and the dreams of New Zealanders than the National Party did in nine long years in Government.

We’ve passed our Families Package to increase the incomes of 385,000 New Zealand families. We passed the extension of paid parental leave to support parents to be able to stay at home with their children and improve that bond between themselves and their kids. We increased the minimum wage to $16.50 an hour. We announced changes to our employment law to strengthen workers’ rights, to return the workers’ rights that were stripped away by the previous National Government. We’ve announced legislation to set child poverty targets in law and we are under way to get on with the tasks that it will take to reduce child poverty.

We’ve introduced a law to ban overseas speculators—something the National Party said could not be done. We did it within weeks. It just took willingness and intelligence. We’ve stopped the mass sell-off of State houses, so that this Government can once again focus on ensuring that people have one of the basic, one of the most fundamental rights: that is, a roof over their head and a warm, dry home to live in.

I could spend more than my five minutes talking about the things that this Government has done in office. But it’s not just the Government that has had a busy time since the election. We know that the Opposition has had a busy time as well. They say they’re worried about jobs. Well, of course, the jobs that they’re worried about are Bill English’s job and who gets to take his job from him.

We’ve heard a lot about Simon Bridges—mostly, from Simon Bridges, or, as his parents like to call him, “that guy that used to sit next to Jacinda on the telly”. He’s best known for wanting to be the leader of the National Party, for his contributions to the hair products industry, and for repeatedly introducing legislation that needed to come back to the House, time after time after time, to fix up the mistakes that he made as Minister. And, of course, he’s well known for promising bridges that never came to fruition. Perhaps that might be a foreshadowing of his leadership bid.

We also heard today from contestant No. 1, Amy Adams. Amy Adams is too boring to talk about; something that I’m sure she will come to realise in the coming weeks, despite her unshakeable belief in her own abilities.

Then we have, of course, Judith Collins, aka the “Nuclear Option”. The polls would have to be at Bill English 2002 levels to get Judith Collins over the line, so, you know, possibly just around the corner. Eschewing the traditional barbecue with colleagues, Judith Collins’ leadership campaign will involve dinner with Chinese border officials, dinner with National Party donors, and visits to any car salesman prepared to give her a free car in return for marketing and promotion. And she’ll do all of this on taxpayers’ time.

One of the outside hopes is, of course, Nikki Kaye. Some people think that Nikki Kaye is the only one in the National caucus who can take on Jacinda Ardern, and there might be some sense in that logic. Unfortunately, she will never get the chance to go up against Jacinda Ardern, because as a staunch advocate for marriage equality, a staunch advocate for end-of-life choice, and a loud and proud advocate for drug law reform, she has shown that she’s in touch with the New Zealand public and completely out of touch with the National caucus—the majority of which are backward thinking and increasingly conservative.

Then, of course, we have the real outside hope, the future of the National Party, Todd Muller. Very, very popular within the National Party, he’s a middle-aged Pākehā man with no obvious philosophy or original ideas. No one knows what he stands for and no one knows what he’s done in his time in Parliament—in other words, the perfect National Party leader. Don’t hold your breath, though, because he doesn’t want to be cannon fodder at the next election.

The Opposition’s busy, but the Government is busier. At the end of our 100 days, we look forward to getting on with the next round of our programme of advancing the hopes and aspirations of New Zealanders.

Debate interrupted.

Amended Answers to Oral Questions

Question No. 3 to Minister

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister of Finance): I seek leave of the House to correct an answer I gave to a supplementary question in question time today.

SPEAKER: Is there any objection to that? There appears to be none.

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: In answer to a supplementary question to question No. 3 today, I referred to data from the New Zealand Institute of Economic Research (NZIER) Quarterly Survey of Business Opinion. This was in response to questions that were regarding the ANZ business confidence survey. In order to clarify for the House, the data I was referring to related to the NZIER survey rather than the ANZ survey that was the subject of the primary question. I apologise to the House for this error.

General Debate

General Debate

Debate resumed.

Hon JACQUI DEAN (National—Waitaki): Mr Speaker, thank you very much, and thank you for this first opportunity to speak in the House in the New Year. Gee, it’s great to be back, and, gee, it is great to be a member of the National Party caucus as we go into 2018 refreshed, encouraged, and ready to hold this Government to account.

It’s been a great summer for all of us; not so great for some of us in rural New Zealand, and that is going to be the subject of my intervention today. It seems to me that the current Government has asserted this “Pollyanna-ish” attitude where all is wonderful, all is rosy. Of course, they are promising the world, they’re congratulating themselves on what a great job they’ve done already, when the reality is far from so. All they’ve done is announced a couple of inquiries and failed to plant any trees whatsoever despite some big promises. And yet in rural New Zealand, there are dark clouds. Those dark clouds are because of current Government policies, which they are wanting to foist on rural New Zealand as well as the rest of the New Zealand economy.

There is a reason for four or five or six drops in business confidence in New Zealand. It is not just a blip because business doesn’t like the change of Government. No, it can’t be explained away so simply. It is because of this Government—and the Hon Iain Lees-Galloway said it just now—that National is worried about jobs. Yes, we are. We are worried about jobs. Business confidence is lowering. The regions are worried about employment and getting workers, and rural New Zealand shares the same fears.

But it’s not just this Government’s industrial relations policies; it is also this Government’s approach to water storage. Just yesterday, the Minister of Agriculture declared a medium-sized drought in parts of Southland, Otago, and other parts of New Zealand. Of course, to the city slickers over the other side of the House, that probably means very little. Well, I’ll tell you what it means to rural New Zealand and to those of us who represent real communities in rural New Zealand: what it means is that farmers and rural communities are under extreme stress, and while they are well supported by the rural support trust, which is a benefit that comes out of declaring a drought, that support can go only so far.

This Government, and its support partners, who’ve made much of the impacts of climate change on New Zealand’s climate, are completely at odds with their policy of not supporting future irrigation and water storage initiatives. So, on the one hand, we have a climate that’s changing. It’s going to get hotter in Central Otago; there’s going to be more summer—and in other parts of New Zealand. It is going to be harder for farmers and rural communities to make a living, and yet, on the other hand, we have the Green Party, New Zealand First, and Labour who have said that there is no commitment to continue supporting rural New Zealand in water storage initiatives.

So what’s that going to mean? Well, first of all, at its simplest form, it means a loss of confidence for rural New Zealand, across a number of interests. It’s not just dairy farming, the pet hate of the Greens. It’s not just dairy farming; it’s viticulture, it’s agriculture, and it’s fruit growing. There are a number of industries who, if they don’t get supported by this next Government into water storage initiatives, will simply go out of business.

The climate is changing. It’s getting hotter. We need water storage. So you can but wonder at the “Pollyanna-ish” attitude of this Government, who, on the one hand, cry crocodile tears about climate change and then, on the other, do the very thing that farmers don’t need to support them, and that is call a halt to irrigation, because for some reason they cannot see past their own ideology into supporting that very thing that will not only will enhance the environment, enhance water quality—it’s been shown to do so—but support that very part of the New Zealand economy that is productive. Well, this party does support rural communities.

VIRGINIA ANDERSEN (Labour): What a great opportunity to stand and speak about what this Government has achieved in the past 100 days. Labour has achieved more in the past 100 days than National managed in 3,280-odd days—nine years. We’ve done it in 100.

What potential has yet to come in the following months and years that we can deliver that will affect the lives of New Zealanders? Let’s take a look. Let’s take a look at the life of a child—one child—under this Labour-led Government, and let’s look at how that child has changed with the new laws that have been brought in in the past 100 days. Paid parental leave—26 weeks’ paid parental leave.

We watched as National Party members fought this legislation and stopped it from coming into force with a financial veto. What we’ve done is enable parents—mums and dads—to bond with their kid in those early years, that important time, enable mums to breastfeed for the requisite time, and enable kids to get a good start at life. Let’s not forget how much National Party members fought tooth and nail to prevent this from coming into force—and they’re still fighting tooth and nail, but this time amongst themselves.

Best Start payment: this is the next stage in the child’s life. Once 26 weeks are up, then there’s $60 a week in the pocket for those families in the first year of a child’s life. The better bit, still, is for those low and middle income earners—the ones that the members opposite don’t tend to want to know about too much. They’re the ones that are also provided for by enabling that money to come in for the second and third year of the child’s life, to give that first three years.

And then, at three years, that nicely dovetails into the last Labour Government’s policies: 20 hours’ free early childhood education, enabling mums or dads to go back to work on a limited time and making that affordable. The cost of childcare has meant that the second wage-earner in the average household hasn’t been able to afford to go back to work, even if they want to, because it’s not financially worth it for their family. This legislation enables, from zero right through to five, those first five years of a child’s life to be well supported. That’s a plan. That’s a clear vision for how we want to see children in New Zealand grow up.

There’s no vision from the other side. You can’t build the next generation of New Zealanders on a tax cut or a promise of a tax cut. That’s not a vision; that’s a promise. Perhaps, the next leader of the National Party will be a bit bigger on vision. I bet Simon Bridges has had a few visions lately—try to speculate on what those might be. I’m proud to be part of a Government that’s got a plan and a vision for New Zealand.

So at five years old, the child is at school, likely to have no fees—isn’t that great? I’m encouraged by schools in the electorate of Hutt South already not nominating to put fees up because of the reassurance of what this Government has provided for. And to have no national standards—the overarching thing on teachers. Instead of having to deliberate bureaucracy, they can get on with doing their job and teaching kids, and us having confidence that teachers can do that well—well-supported teachers that have professional development and the ability to do what they do best. Maybe Nikki Kaye, instead of having to moan about national standards all the time, will have something else to think about now that there’s some leadership to be discussed, and that will give her something else to have a think about.

After that, we’ve got tertiary education—free tertiary education under this Labour Government; training and education available to all New Zealanders so that you can choose, the child can choose, what they can do with their life, whether it be polytech, university, or other trade training. That is now available to all people in New Zealand under this Labour Government. It gives everybody the opportunity for education that best suits them, and it maximises the potential of our people. Speaking of maximising potential, we might just say that the Leader of the Opposition might’ve just maximised his lately.

And, finally, jobs: at the end of it, having the ability to get a job that pays a wage so that you can afford to pay your rent or even maybe one day buy a home. That’s the vision that this Labour Government has for New Zealanders. From the time children are born to the time they’re earning a living, we’re making sure that people are provided for, and we’re going places. This is a Government that looks—

SPEAKER: Order! [Interruption] Order! The member’s quite a bit over.

Hon DAVID BENNETT (National—Hamilton East): Thank you, Mr Speaker. This week, the Minister of Agriculture has made a huge mistake with one of our bigger export industries, and that is the mānuka honey industry. I want just to go through a bit of a time frame of what has happened in that industry so that members in this House are well aware of the incompetence of that Minister.

Last year, the Government went through the process of review of the mānuka honey definition and, in July last year, a definition was put out to the industry. That definition was given to the industry so they could test their products against that definition to determine whether they met the test for mānuka honey. It was also an opportunity for the industries involved to actually be in consultation with the Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) and to work through any differences they may have in that definition, because there are some differences that the industry had been using against what MPI had proposed in its definition.

So when you come to mānuka honey, there are two types. There are the multifloral and the monofloral, and, as the speaker identified yesterday, they are two different parts of the mānuka honey industry. But the test that has been applied is not so much around whether it is multifloral or monofloral, even though there is a divergence in some of the tests in that area. The main thing to look at is the ingredients that have been applied in the test that applies to both multi- and monofloral.

If you look at the industry, they have a test of leptospermum. That is the main test that the industry uses. If you look at the MPI test, it has two levels. The first is four chemical markers, and the second is a DNA test for both multifloral and monofloral. For the first chemical marker, there is a difference between mono- and multifloral, and that difference has been in all three definitions that have been put to the industry: the first definition in July last year that the Government put, the definition that went out by the new Minister in December, and the definition that was released this week. So, with those characteristics, there is one of the chemical markers that the Minister changed in the definition in December, and when he released that definition in December, he didn’t let the industry know. He just went out and released the definition of mānuka honey with a variation in it, which actually meant that a lot of multifloral mānuka honey failed the test.

The industry was not happy, as you could imagine, and legal action was brought against that Minister in the last couple of weeks. That was going ahead, and then, suddenly, on Monday, the Minister changed the definition back to the original definition that this Government had put out in July. So when this Minister stands in this House and tries to argue multifloral against monofloral, he is just trying to confuse the situation. The reality is that the chemical markers that are actually part of the first part of the test are the crucial thing, and he stuffed it up. The Minister stuffed it up. He went and put a high chemical marker requirement, that higher requirement led to a lot of mānuka honey failing, and he had to back down this week. That Minister has put one of New Zealand’s export industries at risk. That Minister should not be holding his warrant anymore, and he has deliberately, in this House yesterday, not expressed an honest approach to what happened.

SPEAKER: The member will withdraw and apologise. He knows what he’s done.

Hon DAVID BENNETT: I withdraw and apologise. The Minister needs to come to this House and explain what actually happened, and we’re giving him that opportunity. He has that opportunity, in the next few days at question time, to come and explain what has happened, but the Minister will not do that, because he believes he is right, and his ego is so big. You can see that with his comments around the wine industry today—how he is putting New Zealand primary industry at risk. That Minister will not admit his failures, and one of our key industries has suffered because of his incompetence, his failure to actually go to the market and consult, and his ability then to hide behind definitions when it comes to answering questions in this House. Thank you.

KIERAN McANULTY (Labour): As a new member of this House, I’m disheartened to hear former Ministers speak of current Ministers in such a fashion that we have just heard. In defence of our Minister of Agriculture and Minister for Rural Communities, he is deeply admired amongst our rural communities.

Hon Members: Ha, ha!

KIERAN McANULTY: You can laugh all you like. The members opposite can laugh all they like.

I note the Hon Jacqui Dean calling over here, calling us city slickers—I couldn’t be more offended if she’d tried. I live in Wairarapa, and I know exactly the issues that are facing rural and regional New Zealand. As the members stand there, like the Hon Simon Bridges—who I haven’t seen smile so much, and when my fellow comrades over here were mentioning his name, his smile got wider and wider. They don’t like that word, do they? They don’t like the workers, and they don’t like talking about workers; they like scooting around the outsides of it, actually not wanting to address the issues.

That there actually sums up the last nine years, when the National Party were in Government. We heard from Jacqui Dean and we heard from the Hon Simon Bridges, declaring that they are in touch with rural and regional New Zealand. We didn’t hear them talk about the shortage of rural broadband. We didn’t hear them talk about the lack of infrastructure funding in our regional areas. Nor did we hear about the lack of provisions and measures that the previous Government put in place to actually allow our small-business owners in rural areas to access the workers, giving people that are standing there wanting a chance—give them a go. We haven’t seen that over the last nine years. We never heard these two members talk about the lack of access to primary healthcare in certain rural areas. The fact is that the National Party paint themselves to be the party of rural New Zealand, and yet they fail to deliver every single time. They take those regions for granted, they think they’re going to vote for them anyway, and they do absolutely nothing.

Take police, for example. There are many towns in our rural communities who rely on police that come from up to 45 minutes to an hour’s drive away. How is that delivering for our rural communities? They would rather focus on delivering tax cuts than actually giving our communities what they need.

But this Government is different. In the last 100 days, we’ve delivered more for rural communities already than the previous Government actually did in real terms. They might have given them lip-service, but in nine years they delivered nothing. And all that they can do is a little snigger. They started with a bit of a hiss and a roar when I stood up here, but they’re pretty quiet now, because they know that there’s truth in what I speak.

The fact is if you look at farm ownership, this is one thing that is affecting hard-working New Zealanders in our rural community. It doesn’t matter if they are a sharemilker or a shearer or, indeed, someone who just works on a farm. One generation ago, you could work hard, you could save up, and you could buy productive land in this country. That was no longer the case only a few months ago. One of the first things this Government did was put in provisions to make sure that New Zealanders could actually afford farms, to make sure that overseas speculators cannot come into our productive land just for the sake of buying it and not adding any value. Just like this Government delivered for New Zealand homeowners, it has delivered for future farmers as well.

We have actually also identified another mistake of the previous Government in assuming that primary industries are all but the same and can therefore be thrown into the same Government department. The Minister of Agriculture, the first thing he did was identify that agriculture needs a specific focus—and forestry and fisheries and, indeed, rural communities.

How can that party stand here and say that they are the party for rural communities when one of the first things they did when they got into Government the last time was get rid of the Minister of Rural Affairs—got rid of the ministry and the Minister that was actually guaranteed to give rural communities a voice at Cabinet? Well, I’m proud to be part of a party and a Government where one of the first things we did was reinstate the Minister for Rural Communities to ensure that places like Dannevirke and Carterton and Featherston have a voice at the top table.

TIM VAN DE MOLEN (National—Waikato): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I find it incredibly interesting just how much time this Government is spending talking about the National Party. On and on they go, again and again. It seems like there’s jealousy on that side. I see it in their eyes. They have nothing else to talk about, so they keep coming back to refer to the great things that we did during our time in Government.

Hon Maggie Barry: Good boy.

TIM VAN DE MOLEN: They’re jealous of our drive, our determination, the success we’ve had, the strength we have, the ambition, and the quality of people on this side of the House. And I’d just like to comment on that speech of the previous member, Kieran McAnulty. He didn’t sound like he actually meant any of it. All those things he was saying about rural New Zealand, and yet I don’t think he believed it himself. As someone who actually represents rural New Zealand, I can assure him there are plenty of great things that have been done by the former Government for rural New Zealand.

It is still possible to own your own farm by working hard. I’ve seen it many times over the last few years, and I would encourage you to have more ambition—

SPEAKER: Order! No. The member is a new member, but he doesn’t bring me into the debate. While I’m on my feet, I will ask the Hon Maggie Barry just to be very careful about the tone of her interjections and to think what she would say if a male member called a female member a good girl.

TIM VAN DE MOLEN: Thank you for your guidance, Mr Speaker. Carrying on from that, business confidence is something that we’ve seen highlighted in the last few days. It’s terrible where it sits at the moment. We see this massive decrease. It’s outrageous how much it’s fallen, and as if 39 or 38 wasn’t bad enough in the business confidence survey, if you actually break that down by sector and look at agriculture, it is minus 68. That is incredible.

Hon Scott Simpson: How much?

TIM VAN DE MOLEN: Minus 68 is the level of confidence in the agriculture sector because of this new Government. No wonder there’s so much uncertainty out there. When I talk to farmers around the Waikato I’m constantly getting feedback. They don’t know what’s going on. They’re scared. They’re worried about their future. Water storage forms a huge part of that around the country—120,000-plus hectares are now uncertain. These projects have massive benefits for New Zealand. They have social benefits. They have economic benefits. They have environmental—and so many other benefits that are just being neglected by this Government. If they’d only look at the data, they would realise there is so much benefit to implementing these projects for our regions and for our country as a whole. We need to continue to focus on these to enable our regions to continue to prosper.

On top of that, we have migrant workers. We don’t know where that policy is sitting yet. We’ve heard it chop and change multiple times. Where are these people going to come from to pick our vegetables, to work on our farms—some of these challenges that we face in the Waikato, and we still have no answers for after 100 days.

We’re smashing apart the Ministry for Primary Industries. That’s what we’re hearing from the Government. What good is that doing? We need to be concentrating on challenges like Mycoplasma bovis and coming up with solutions like actually understanding what this new test for mānuka honey is, rather than chucking out different categories and then getting presented with legal challenges because of it. We need to be a little smarter about what we’re doing.

On top of that, these trees: we’ve heard all about a billion trees. Well, where are they now? What we’re hearing now is that we’re not sure how many it will be. Maybe it’s just an aspirational target instead. And, actually, today in the House we heard from Minister Shane Jones that it will even include lemon trees. Well, the only lemon here is that policy. This is no laughing matter, I would say to that Minister, as he continues to make jokes about the number of trees. This is serious for New Zealanders and serious for the people he’s claiming it will give jobs to. We need to see some actual evidence and some work happening.

The business confidence side, aside from agriculture in the regions, is struggling. When I talk to business owners in Matamata, when I talk about to business owners in Morrinsville, they’re concerned. They don’t know what the future is looking like for them under this Government. They want to be growing their businesses, supporting their communities, and contributing to New Zealand, and yet they don’t see they can do that with this Government.

Roading is being cut. The Waikato has great projects available through the commitments from the previous Government on the expressway, and now we’re seeing those up in the air. Who knows where they’re going to be? All we’re hearing are promises and intentions and absolutely no action at this stage.

The debate having concluded, the motion lapsed.

Bills

Rates Rebate (Retirement Village Residents) Amendment Bill

Third Reading

Hon RUTH DYSON (Labour—Port Hills): It gives me an immense amount of pleasure to move, That the Rates Rebate (Retirement Village Residents) Amendment Bill be now read a third time.

The rates rebate goes back a long time, since the early 1970s when Norman Kirk was our Prime Minister, and I just want to acknowledge his vision and his passion and his practical application to get good things done for people who are most in need. The rates rebates scheme was one such example. Norman Kirk recognised that people who were paying off a mortgage were often struggling. They spent a lot of their income to pay off the mortgage so that they would eventually own their house, but every quarter they got a rates bill from the council—which they have to pay, and of course they should pay—and that was a big financial challenge to low-income earners. His idea was to give people money from central government to help them pay that rates bill.

The scheme was introduced so that people with a low income with quite a high rates bill would then get, on a sliding scale, some money back to assist with that rates bill. That was hugely successful when it was first introduced. Over time, particularly over the nine years post the then Labour Government—1972 to 1975—losing office, the scheme began to be run down. The amount of money that people could earn wasn’t updated and the amount of money that they paid in rates wasn’t updated. So in the end there were, you know, half a dozen people eligible for the rates rebate scheme.

I noticed this in the period that we were last in Government, when Helen Clark was the Prime Minister. When I was the Minister for Senior Citizens, it was obvious that a lot of older New Zealanders who were dependent on superannuation couldn’t afford to pay their rates. So one of the first things that we did in that period of Government was increase the amount of money that people could earn and the rate, so that far more people became eligible for the rates rebate. But it was also obvious that a number of other things had changed in those intervening years, including the introduction of a different type of ownership of a home, which was not a unit title; it was called a licence to occupy, and that was particularly the case in retirement villages.

Throughout New Zealand we’ve had a proliferation of retirement villages. Many people choose to live in a retirement village unit, but they don’t have a title. They have what’s called a licence to occupy, or some variation on that phrase. They pay their rates. The resident pays their rates indirectly through the retirement village owner, who then pays the rates bill to the council. So under the current scheme, even though they are paying rates, they are not entitled to get a rates rebate even though many of them—50 percent of retirement village residents—are totally dependent on superannuation for their income.

Now, that seemed to me to be unfair. So I introduced a fix for that as a member’s bill and, unlike most of the other member’s bills that I’ve had introduced, it got the majority support of the Parliament. In fact, when I introduced the bill it got 100 percent of support of the Parliament. It’s been through a select committee. Somewhere along the line the National Party changed their mind about their support, and I was pretty disappointed about that because I couldn’t think of a better message for Parliament to send to retirement village residents than that the whole of Parliament has seen the unfairness of their ineligibility to apply for a rates rebate and the whole of Parliament has agreed it should be fixed. So the National Party pulled their support.

In the second reading and the committee stage, there was a bit of movement on that position, because I was very fortunate to have, in that intervening time, partaken in an election, and Labour and New Zealand First and the Greens now form the Government.

Kieran McAnulty: Oh, thank God for that.

Hon RUTH DYSON: It is a big relief to many people. We now have a Minister of Local Government who understands the issue and understands the unfairness of it and is committed to playing her part in fixing it—and I want to acknowledge the Hon Nanaia Mahuta. She didn’t need this explained to her. She already understood the issue, and said, “We’re going to help resolve any concerns there are that have been raised at the select committee.”, and she directed her officials to help meet the concerns that were raised at the select committee and in the committee stage. So a Supplementary Order Paper was presented in my name—huge help from the Department of Internal Affairs officials in drafting that—and that resolved all the concerns that have been raised, and now we come to the third stage of the legislation.

So I invite the National Party to have one more think about this, because it would be such a good message to send from our Parliament if everyone voted for it. But before I do that, I want to acknowledge the parties that supported it before the election that are no longer in Parliament. As well as, obviously, National and Labour, New Zealand First and the Greens supported it before, and, fortunately, are still here to continue their support. The Hon Peter Dunne supported it prior to the election and gave his commitment to continuing support, but, of course, he isn’t here—he didn’t stand—and the Māori Party also supported the legislation. So I just want to acknowledge them.

I want to acknowledge other advocates for this legislation. Grey Power have been consistent and strong advocates of this legislation; the Retirement Villages Residents Association, and I want to particularly acknowledge Carol and Rob Wilson, who have been tremendous supporters and promoters of this legislative change; the Retirement Villages Association, whose chief executive, John Collyns, has been very active in supporting the legislation, and making sure that we got it right for the owners and operators of the retirement villages, because we want something that works for everyone and not just the residents; and, of course, I want to re-acknowledge Norman Kirk, whose vision put this scheme into place in the first place. It’s given low-income earners a big financial boost at a time when they need it. When their rates bill is due, they have to pay their rates bill, and this has just made it so much easier for them.

So I’m delighted now that retirement village residents who are in a licence to occupy unit will be now in exactly the same place as somebody who is living in a freehold title unit just down the road. They both have the same income. They both have the same rates. They pay their rates differently, but if this legislation is passed, it will mean that in both situations, they will be entitled to apply for a rates rebate. If they meet the criteria, they will get the financial support they deserve.

There are further changes to the Rates Rebate Act, and I think my next member’s bill that I put in the ballot will be addressing another one of those loopholes, which were identified in a report to the Government in 2007 and which were ignored by the National-led Government for nine years—nine years. Knowing the gaps in the system and knowing that low-income earners were finding it hard to manage, it ignored the opportunity to expand the rates rebate scheme in the way that this legislation does.

So I want to conclude by just saying that it’s quite rare for a member’s bill to get all the way through the process. In the last term of Government, I had three members’ bills drawn out. That’s rare, as well. On the basis of me feeling so fortunate when I had the third member’s bill drawn out, I went down and bought a Lotto ticket, thinking that my luck was in. I didn’t get one single cent back from that Lotto ticket. It was devastating, really. But it’s more than made up for by the fact that this rates rebate bill has got to the third reading and has received support from a wide range of people outside the Parliament and, I hope, the majority of people inside Parliament.

Finally, the people who are in the retirement villages will have fairness. They’ll get that financial support. It will make their lives better. I think they deserve it. I think they deserve the support of Parliament so that they have fair treatment compared to people who live in a comparable situation, even in the same street—which they currently don’t get—and I commend the progress of this bill to the House. Thank you.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Can I ask New Zealand First, again, to remove their advertising, in accordance with Speakers’ rulings. I did give an indication when I came into the House.

BRETT HUDSON (National): Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. It is a pleasure to rise in support of this, the Rates Rebate (Retirement Village Residents) Amendment Bill—

Mark Patterson: I raise a point of order, Madam Speaker. Could I just say that the member has—there was a similar offence on the other side of the House, but it’s been rectified. It has been settled to our satisfaction. Thank you.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: That’s an unnecessary interruption.

BRETT HUDSON: Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I’ll reiterate, just in case people have forgotten. It is a pleasure to rise in support of the Rates Rebate (Retirement Village Residents) Amendment Bill in this, its third reading. This, we are very pleased to say, is a very, very different bill to that which was introduced, to that which was allowed to exit the select committee, and to that which did receive a second reading. Fortunately, at the committee of the whole House, it changed quite dramatically. But before I talk about that, I think it is important just to recap, of course, why it was, in fact, that we originally did support the bill, because we supported its intent.

The idea is—and we acknowledge—that over time, there are distortions in the ways people, particularly elderly New Zealanders, live, and the nature of their terms and conditions of occupation of residences shifted quite dramatically from when the rates rebate was first implemented in New Zealand to one where, now, in retirement villages it is the common practice for those in self-contained units or those who are living independently to be in an apartment or a unit for which they don’t hold title but, instead, have some sort of a licence to occupy. The reality is that because of the way the law had been written—and currently is—those occupiers would not be entitled to the rates rebate. I think it’s fair to suggest that that was never envisaged at the time, and probably for most of the intervening years, at least, hadn’t really been anticipated.

So we entered into this, as this bill was introduced, with the idea that the concept at least could help, potentially, to address that distortion, and we were hopeful that in select committee the bill could be improved, because it was a very short bill, with just a simple amendment to what a “ratepayer” was defined as. Unfortunately, it was not permitted. There were two pieces of value in the select committee. First, as the officials said, it was unworkable, and they felt, actually, not necessarily fixable, and we weren’t able to get a significant amendment to it.

Fortunately, despite us then removing our support in the committee of the whole House the member in charge of the bill, the Hon Ruth Dyson, did submit a Supplementary Order Paper that fundamentally addresses the biggest concerns we had at the end of that select committee process and introduces a means for the calculation, application, and refunding—or payment—of a rates rebate to work in an effective manner. We look at what has come through, and we can see that while it may not address absolutely everything we could choose to talk about, it actually addresses the lion’s share of the concerns we had. So that’s why I will stand—and I anticipate other members of this side will stand—and express support for this bill.

There is a saying that “Success has many mothers and failure is an orphan”. It was quite interesting to hear the member in charge of this bill talking about how the now Minister of Local Government had set officials on to create a means to address the concerns we, and perhaps others, had with the bill. It’s quite astounding, really. I was in a meeting recently—very recently; as recently as yesterday, actually—with the immediate prior Minister of Local Government. She told me, and others, that, in fact, it was her that instructed officials—before the committee of the whole House stage, before the lifting of the last Parliament—to work on the bill and to determine if they could come up with a mechanism and drafting that would resolve the concerns that we had expressed. And lo—they did.

They did, and the member in charge of this bill introduced it in the committee of the whole House stage. I do feel she could’ve taken the opportunity to have acknowledged the work of the immediate predecessor to the current Minister of Local Government. But, none the less, despite that, we still are here in this, the final stage of the bill, with a bill that is finally in much better shape than it was when it was introduced into Parliament. It’s in a shape that we can give it our support, and I commend this bill to the House.

Dr DEBORAH RUSSELL (Labour—New Lynn): Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. This bill is about doing the decent thing, and I’m delighted that our colleagues on the other side of the House are now doing the decent thing too and supporting this excellent bill. The rates rebate has always been about doing the decent thing. We know that rates expenses are a big expense for people to bear, but if you have a low income, in fact, that huge, lumpy expenditure can be difficult to handle. That’s exactly why Norman Kirk introduced the rates rebate. It was to help people to be able to pay that lumpy expense.

I just want to point out one really important thing with the rates rebate that we’re talking about today. It’s actually available to all low-income earners. There are some very simple rules at present for claiming the rates rebate: you have to pay the rates on a home, you have to live in that home, and you have to be a low-income earner. Now, at present, the threshold for that low income is $24,790 of income a year, before tax. That’s not a lot. But, as it turns out, it applies to superannuitants. Superannuitants—particularly a single superannuitant—will fall under that threshold if they are living on New Zealand superannuation alone. So that’s why we so often associate it with people who are retired and are living on New Zealand superannuation. And, of course, many low-income earners have not yet had the opportunity to buy a home, but one of the things we know about people who are on New Zealand superannuation is that, during their lives, they’ve had the opportunity to earn income, to build up assets, and, all going well, they end up in retirement owning their own home. But they still need to bear the expenses for that home.

And there’s another important point around that. We’ve got a very well-established strategy for looking after our senior citizens, and it’s around ageing in place—helping people to stay in their own homes. That’s what part of this rates rebate does. What it is helping people to do is to bear the lumpy sum of rates—to bear that expense. It’s giving them a little bit of a hand along the way, and that enables them to manage in their old age, even if they are living on only New Zealand superannuation.

But there is a fundamental unfairness in the rates rebate scheme as it is right now, and it is a fundamental unfairness that is being fixed by this excellent bill. As a House, we are now all doing the decent thing, and we are going to fix that particular unfairness. And it came about by chance. No one ever envisaged that this particular unfairness would arise. You see, retirement villages are quite a new phenomenon. They’re comparatively recent. They weren’t particularly around when Norman Kirk first established the rates rebate scheme. But, these days, they are common—well, perhaps not common as muck, but they are common; there are several in my electorate in New Lynn—where the people who live there pay a lump sum to the owner of the retirement village for the right to occupy. And that right to occupy is like, in effect, owning their own home.

Those people currently living in what is, effectively, their own home nevertheless could not claim the rates rebate—they cannot at the moment. But this jolly decent bill fixes that unfairness. So it makes changes around the definition of who may claim the particular rebate and it extends it to people who are occupying space in a retirement village. So this unfairness that came about by chance—well, we are now taking the chance to put it right. And thanks to my colleague the Hon Ruth Dyson we are putting it right now and doing the decent thing.

It’s also not even a lot of money each year. It’s only $620. And I tell you, to those of us in this House, perhaps $620 doesn’t sound like a lot, but that can be a fair chunk to a superannuitant, and that bit of money helps, and it’s all part of that keeping people in their own home.

I just want to focus on something about the process of this bill, and this, again, is where I’d like to thank Mr Hudson and his colleagues for now doing the decent thing. There was a fair amount of agreement on this bill in select committee. But, somehow, when it came out of select committee, the agreement had disappeared. But what happened was it came back to the House, it came back to the committee of the whole House, and we worked on it. We worked and worked and worked on it to make sure that we got it right.

This is something that we often do in this House. And I say “we”, even as only a very new member of this House, because there were those of us who, as new members, were plunged straight into this debate and asked to understand what the bill was about, understand the problem it was trying to fix, understand how the legislation was being sorted out, and work on the legislation to get it right. I know that I and many of my new colleagues all spoke to this bill, and we worked together as a team with our colleagues from across the House to put it right. That’s one of the great triumphs, I think of this bill—that it is now an example of the way this House can, working together, do the decent thing and get things right. And that’s what we are doing for the 26,000 older New Zealanders who, we know, live in retirement villages these days. That’s quite a significant number of New Zealanders, and they are spread right through the country.

I know that one of the issues that the National Party Opposition had with the bill was that, perhaps, there wasn’t a clear mechanism for getting the rates rebate to our senior citizens who are living in retirement villages. There, perhaps, wasn’t a clear understanding of how it would be calculated, of who it would apply to. And I think what was instructive in the committee of the whole House stage was that, in terms of the actual bill that is now in front of us—the bill where we have reached agreement—we now have some measures sitting in the bill telling us how the rebate is to be calculated, who it applies to, exactly who is counted as a resident of a retirement village, who’s going to administer the forms, where the refund’s going to come through, and all the sorts of mechanisms that you need around a measure like this to be sure that it is actually going to take place and is actually going to get to the people who it needs to get to. So it is an excellent example of people doing the decent thing.

As I reach towards the end of my time here, I just want to recall some of the people I know, living in my own electorate of New Lynn, and I’m sure that my colleagues across the House will know people like this too. Two old gents—Eric and Sid, people I’ve gotten to know this year. They’re living in a retirement village in my electorate. Eric and Sid don’t have a lot to go on. Eric, bless him, is looking after his wife, who has Alzheimer’s. That retirement village is providing a really good structure for them to order their lives, it’s providing community around them, it’s providing a place to be, and it is safe and secure for them. I want Eric and Sid and I want their friends at that retirement village to be able to stay in place as they go through the golden years of their lives. And I’m telling you—they’re pretty active gentlemen, and it’s great to see them like that.

Now, you might think that $620 a year won’t make a lot of difference to them, but I think it will. It will help them along the way, and that’s what we need to do for our senior citizens and, indeed, what we need to do for any of our low-income citizens who have the great good fortune to own their own home. We want to help them to stay in place.

Thinking of my mates Eric and Sid, thinking of the people who will be in my colleagues’ electorates, in retirement villages, this is something that we are doing for those people, for our senior citizens, who we value so much. Today we are doing the decent thing and ensuring that they too can claim the rates rebate—that little bit of help that we give to our senior citizens. It’s jolly decent. I’m glad we’re doing it. I commend this bill to the House.

Hon Dr NICK SMITH (National—Nelson): There are four points that I want to make in the third reading of this Rates Rebate (Retirement Village Residents) Amendment Bill. The first of those is that the issue of rates and the cost to people on fixed incomes, like superannuitants, is a really important issue. After the last nine years, I’m actually very proud that the cost of living over the last nine years has gone up by less than under any Government in the 160-year history of New Zealand. You may want to check that with the Parliamentary Library. I did. But I’m very proud that our Government took very seriously the issue of costs, and having fought 10 election campaigns, the 2017 election was the first that I have had where the cost of living was not a significant issue.

So for all the schemes we might have, like rates rebates, let us not overlook the fundamental issues of what this Parliament does to drive up those costs of rates. One of the reasons we had to have a rates rebate scheme is that in the course of the nine years of the previous Helen Clark Government, rates went up by an average of 8.7 percent per year. I say to members opposite that rates rebate schemes are no substitute for solid local government policy that ensures we keep the costs of rates in this country constrained, and we intend to hold the Government accountable in that area.

The second point I want to make is, why has National’s position on this bill changed? Well, it’s very easy to work that out if you read the bill that’s before us on the third reading. The extraordinary part is that if we look at the original bill that was introduced by Ruth Dyson, there’s barely 10 percent that’s survived the select committee and committee of the whole House process.

As we correctly said when this bill was introduced, it was a dog, it was unworkable, and as the previous Labour speaker, Deborah Russell, said; it required extensive amendment during the committee stage. It is only with those amendments that National members on this side of the House feel able to support it.

Here’s the key—here’s the key. This bill is going to cost in the order of $8 million to $9 million a year for taxpayers. This isn’t free money. This is $8 million or $9 million of taxes that hard-working Kiwis have produced. All we’re doing is transferring those taxes through to those people in retirement villages. The concern that National had with the original bill is that the money was just going to go to the retirement villages company.

Hon Ruth Dyson: Rubbish!

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: It was. There was no guarantee that the benefit of the rates rebate—I do have to say to the member that interjects: I do have concerns, even with the mechanisms in this bill, that we’ll be sitting down in two or three years’ time assured that all of that $8 million or $9 million a year of taxpayer subsidy through rates rebates is actually going to the residents of retirement villages, and not the companies.

I would challenge the next Labour member to reassure me on this point. What is to stop any retirement village company, as part of its normal contractual arrangements with the licence to occupy in the agreement—sure, to provide the rates rebate of $600 a year but just to put the service charges up by $600? The honest answer is there is no constraint on that, and I want to give Government members notice that we on this side of the House will be monitoring that closely, because we are only interested in the rates rebate if the benefit of that is going into the pockets of our retired village residents and not the companies.

The third point I want to make is this. For the last three years, I’ve heard members who are now in Government argue that retirement villages aren’t houses, that retirement villages are not ownership. It is true that the fastest-growing sector of the housing market is the construction of retirement villages. It has grown by more than 200 percent over the last decade. It is the fastest-growing area of the housing market. But I will be looking for some consistency from Government members. For instance, the Minister of Housing, in quoting homeownership numbers, conveniently excludes those people that own a $400,000 licence to occupy in a retirement village. I think that’s inconsistent. It’s inconsistent with the speech that we’ve just heard from the Labour member, who actually used the term that these retirement village residents “own” their unit.

When the Government quotes homeownership numbers, the number of people that we now have in retirement villages, quoting nearly 30,000 people, is of a scale that it should be included in those homeownership figures. It is a bit academic for someone who sells their family home, who then uses that money to buy a $400,000 interest in a licence to occupy in a retirement village, to somehow pretend that that person is worse off and no longer has an asset and an interest in that unit. I would go even further. I would wish that in the census, when we actually provide the detailed information on homeownership levels in New Zealand, the scale of the retirement village legislation now is such that we should be separately identifying those people that are in retirement villages.

The very last point I wish to make in respect of this rates rebate amendment bill is that we need to ensure that we have a commissioner who’s responsible for monitoring the retirement village sector. The concern with this bill, all the way through, has been that those benefits are going to go to the elderly retired, not to the village companies. I would like to ask the next Government speaker to assure the Opposition that in the terms of reference the Government has with the Retirement Commissioner they will include the monitoring of this specific point, so Parliament can be reassured that the $8 million to $9 million extra going into rebates for people in retirement villages is indeed going where the supporters of this bill intended. For those reasons, National supports this bill.

MARK PATTERSON (NZ First): Madam Deputy Speaker, thank you. It’s with great pleasure that I rise to speak on behalf of New Zealand First on the Rates Rebate (Retirement Village Residents) Amendment Bill. Forgive me. I actually thought this was a very generous and warm-hearted bill, but after listening to that previous speech I must have missed some grim and oppressive details in there, because that was a speech that was certainly short on generosity for this bill.

I congratulate the Hon Ruth Dyson on bringing this bill forward. I think in this Parliament we debate some great and weighty issues—we’ve got one coming up tonight. But it’s these nuts and bolts bills, these smaller bills, that maybe don’t attract the cameras or the media, but for the people that they are affecting they’re actually really important bills—the people that Dr Russell referred to in her speech, the people on low incomes. This bill, of course, seeks to resolve the anomaly of the situation where people in retirement villages that have occupational rights agreements, or ORAs, with their villages are not able to reclaim the rates portion, or the rates rebate, as their qualifying peers in private residences do. So that’s an anomaly that needs addressing.

I note that you don’t have to be a superannuitant or over 65 years to receive this; you just have to be below the income threshold. I note that retirement for people under 65 is a really live issue in this House today, so if Mr English finds himself on hard times, we know that he will have some solace in this bill. We also know that some local bodies had already moved in advance of this, to have formed some programmes to actually prelude this bill, so that they already had moved in this direction, because they have recognised that this anomaly is in place.

We know that, as Dr Russell said, there are 226,000 people now in these retirement villages, and as the baby boomer generation moves into retirement that is only going to be rising. It had been rising at the previous census at 22 percent over that period, and it will only be rising much quicker now. We know that the maximum pension is only $20,290 for a single person, and we know a little bit about the pension levels at New Zealand First—it’s been pretty topical for us as well—and the rate at which we can claim the full rate is at $24,790. If you’re on that income, $620 a year or $12 a week is a significant amount of money. It does make a material difference. I will add that that goes on top of the $700 a week of the winter power rebates that this Government has brought in. These are layers that you can see this Government is building towards helping these older citizens.

We, also, in New Zealand First, of course, have been one of the great champions of superannuitants. In the coalition agreement, the SuperGold card, which had been woefully neglected under that previous Government, is to be ramped up and revised. We also know that the cost of living for superannuitants—and I also have consulted the Parliamentary Library over this—is actually over and above, on average, that of the average citizen, at 2.3 percent for the last year, as opposed to 1.9 percent. Rates are a significant portion of that. This is a discussion that this House has to have and it will be having over this term: how our local governments can raise revenue without the blunt instrument that is rates, and the flow-on effects to our citizens on fixed and low incomes. This is but a small measure in trying to mitigate that, but it is a much bigger discussion that we will be having as a Government, on this side of the House.

I’ll just conclude with New Zealand First supporting this bill. I’d just like to say that it gives dignity to our elderly and those that are on low and fixed incomes, and we as a nation are judged on how we treat our most vulnerable. This is a good example of this Government recognising that fact—in a small way, maybe, but a small and significant way for those people that are affected. So it is with that that I take great pleasure in confirming New Zealand First’s support for this bill. Thank you.

Hon MAGGIE BARRY (National—North Shore): Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. For the benefit of the member who just sat down, Mark Patterson, it may be timely to remind that member that under the National Government, the rate of the use of the SuperGold card went up from very humble beginnings in 2008 to tens of thousands of additional businesses—more than a 38 percent increase. I’m trying to put the record right because, I guess, in a wide-ranging discussion about the Rates Rebate (Retirement Village Residents) Amendment Bill, at its third reading, it is timely to remind those who were not in the House at the time of the evolution of this bill, and to correct some of the myths that are going around as to the level of support that the previous National Government brought.

I know, when I was the Minister for Seniors, how much interest there was in putting through a bill of this kind, because, as colleagues have said, more than 30,000 New Zealanders over the age of 65—most of them—now live in retirement village situations. So to have a rebate, even one as small as $610, is worthwhile. The threshold, at $24,470, is what it is, so there will be a small group of people who will benefit from this. I’m not diminishing the impact that that additional money will have for them, and also the level, I suppose, of fairness across the board.

National believes very strongly in the principle of assisting low-income households and targeting it. Meeting the cost of local authority rates is something that we had considered. We’d initially looked at this bill and wanted to support it. It was, as a colleague described a few moments ago—the Hon Dr Nick Smith—a dog of a bill. It had four clauses, as Brett Hudson said in his opening speech on this, and he’s absolutely correct. The initial briefing to the committee that was considering this small bill outlined very clearly—and I’m quoting here from the Department of Internal Affairs’ advice—that it considered “that the Bill as introduced would not achieve its stated purpose. Additional and complex amendments would be required to do this.”

These complex amendments were, effectively, a rewrite. The Department of Internal Affairs was asked by the predecessor of the current Minister of Local Government—and I acknowledge that member for having the foresight to ask the department—“How could you put this bill right?” So they wrote something that has now been presented as a Supplementary Order Paper (SOP), and it has made the bill now workable, which was what we wanted it to do. So for those who were confused and uncertain as to why National did not support the bill, we supported the officials’ assessment, and we understood that the complexity and the problems that were identified in those four short clauses were such that it was unsupportable. So now that that’s been put right—and the member who proposed this bill and put it forward was offered the opportunity to consult and rewrite, but chose not to take that up, so let’s look carefully at who’s throwing the stones and why they might be doing that.

But SOP No. 10, in the end, delivered something that we know that we can support, because it has changed the definition of a ratepayer to include “a resident of a retirement village who pays rates, directly or indirectly, in connection with an occupation right agreement with the operator of the retirement village”. My colleague Dr Nick Smith, who spoke about this earlier, is absolutely right to ask and really encourage the Government to try and monitor—through the Retirement Commissioner is probably the most effective way—to ensure that the money is actually delivered to the people who need it and want it, that $610. So I would like to see further monitoring done. Again, the bill is silent on how that will be monitored, and it really needed to do more, but, in the end, in light of that SOP, we’re supporting it through.

It is important, as well, in a specific provision, to clarify how the payment of the rebate would be occurring to somebody who doesn’t otherwise qualify as a ratepayer. So the specific circumstances of paying for retirement village accommodation are complicated. They’re different depending on the licence to occupy, depending on the details. I would take a moment to just indicate that if anyone is going into a retirement village situation, they really do need to read the fine print carefully, as with anyone who buys a house or becomes involved in a place that they hope they will spend out their twilight years. They need to be very, very careful that they understand what the wording implies and how that might impact on them.

So, having said that, it is important to know that the retirement village isn’t just going to absorb it or put up the amounts that they charge residents each year, because this is in the spirit of wanting to deliver to the people who really need it. We all pay rates—those of us who own properties. In the Auckland area where I live, they’ve gone up dramatically, but I’m seeing a lot of retirement village complexes coming on stream. They’re not cheap to get into—$610 is probably not going to make a massive amount of difference for people who are on fixed incomes to be able to afford to go into a residential village situation, and they mustn’t live above their means or buy above their means, because this is not the panacea that the architect of this bill made it out to be. It may be in the spirit of what Norman Kirk had originally thought of, but, in terms of the gap between what this rebate will deliver and the reality of what people have to pay these days, there is a large gap, and it will remain.

However, this is going to help a number of people, and I think that its calculation and the principles of it are sound. I spoke to Grey Power about this bill on many different occasions and pointed out our problems with it and why it needed to be changed. The Retirement Villages Association was also very much interested in having this piece of legislation come through, and, again, I would urge that they extend their recommendations to the people who are under their umbrella to encourage them to pass on these advantages.

I think Brett Hudson, who has spoken on this bill on many occasions, has made the point that we can ensure that older people who live in a fixed income situation will be getting some kind of income. That is a laudable thing, and that is why, at this stage, National has decided to support it in its third reading, and that is why I commend the bill the House.

JAN LOGIE (Green): Tēnā koe, Madam Deputy Speaker. It’s a real pleasure to stand and speak to this, the Rates Rebate (Retirement Village Residents) Amendment Bill, at its third reading. I too want to offer my congratulations to the Hon Ruth Dyson for bringing this bill to the House and shepherding it through to what I am sensing, from all the debate so far, will be a satisfactory conclusion in passing this evening.

This is, I think, an example of good local MP work, where an issue is identified in the community by, possibly, not a large group of people but a group who have a real concern and they take it to their local MP, and the local MP thinks about what they can do to respond to that community concern. The Hon Ruth Dyson clearly came up with a good solution, because we’re all about to pass that now. And it’s been evolved along the way, as is normal in most select committee processes.

I do want to draw the House’s attention to a fact of the report that was done in 2007 on the local government rates inquiry that was done in 2007 that identified this anomaly and problem and recommended that the rates rebate scheme be extended to the licence to occupy agreements, which were excluded in legislation. For the entire nine years of the last Government, they’ve had that on the books as a recommendation to them to act, to fix up an anomaly in the law, and to ensure that the actual intent of that rates rebate legislation, as it was first introduced in 1973, was able to be realised in the modern context. But they didn’t do anything, and it took a local member responding to concerns being brought to her to be able to fix that. So I do, again, give credit to the member for doing that.

As I mentioned, for me and the Green Party, this legislation at its heart is about equity. There’s been quite a bit of discussion this evening about supporting older New Zealanders who are on fixed incomes, to make life that much easier, and this is, on average, $500 extra a year that people will get through the rates rebate. I think the figure of $620 has been mentioned as well. So it’s not a massive amount, but that is quite a significant amount when you are on a fixed income and dealing with the costs of life, when we know the costs of living have been going up disproportionately to people’s incomes. But it’s not life changing, as the previous member said, in terms of it’s not going to enable anyone to live a lavish lifestyle at all.

But it is ensuring equity. We know that there is, in some places, somebody living in a home down the street on one income—a fixed income; say, superannuation—and their house is worth however much—say, $400,000, randomly—and then there’s a person in a retirement village, in a unit worth $400,000, and they are on a fixed income as well. They are both paying rates—for the person in the retirement village, when they get their bill that they pay, often it will identify rates on that bill that they pay to the retirement village for costs. So they’re both paying rates, they’re both on a fixed income, and they’re both, effectively, in a property worth the same value that they, effectively, own, but only one of them has been entitled to a rates rebate. That’s inequitable, and it doesn’t make sense of the intent of the legislation as it was first introduced. So it is really great to be able to actually fix that problem and ensure that equity.

It also is about ensuring geographic equity, because there have been some councils that have been listening to older people in their local communities who are on fixed incomes and living in retirement villages, who, I can only assume, were complaining about their lack of access to the rates rebate and that problem of equity in their community. So those local councils, namely Auckland, Dunedin, Napier, and New Plymouth, actually responded proactively, even though it wasn’t supported by legislation, and enabled those New Zealanders to access rates rebates proactively. It’s been happening for older people in those communities, but not in Invercargill, not in Porirua, not in Wellington—that’s because those councils haven’t been supported by a legislative mandate and only some have been in a position to be proactive about it. That’s inequitable, and it’s good to get that sorted through this legislation tonight. The Greens are really happy to support that.

Altogether, in terms of thinking about the scope of this, there are about 34,000 New Zealanders living in retirement villages—so it is a significant number of people. About 80 percent of those don’t currently qualify for a rates rebate because the original legislation, as we’ve kind of canvassed, didn’t imagine this new ownership model that is now the norm. This will actually fix up an inequity that has impacted well over 20,000 older New Zealanders. The amount of money may not be earth-shattering, but it will make a difference to over 20,000 New Zealanders. I think that’s something to feel good about. On that note, I will congratulate the member once more, with envy, for getting it passed, and congratulations for being a jolly good MP.

STUART SMITH (National—Kaikōura): Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I’d like to add my congratulations to the Hon Ruth Dyson. I’m delighted to be able to support this bill through its third reading. I did have the opportunity to speak on this in the second reading, in which I did oppose it, with quite good reasons, which I will go into later.

This is a growing area. I don’t think anyone in this House would disagree. This is a member’s bill, for a start, not a Government bill, and as a member’s bill, as members of the House, right across the House, we all come here to make a contribution and, hopefully, to make New Zealand a better place. This bill sought to do that. We had some difficulty with it up until Supplementary Order Paper 10 came and was introduced into the bill, but it is now able to actually achieve those goals.

We have a country that, at the end of 2016, had 711,200 people who were over 65, or 12 percent of the population. That is set to roughly double by 2046 to 23 percent of the population. In fact, in some of the better places to live in New Zealand, that’s higher. Take Marlborough, for example—people like to go there to retire. It’s already 22 percent of the population today. Because of that migration to the sun and people going for a lifestyle to retire, you would expect that to be proportionately higher. I have a lot of retirement villages, as a consequence of that, within my electorate.

In fact, there are 88 retirement villages in New Zealand with 200 residents or more in occupation, and that’s set to increase to 170 by 2036, according to the Retirement Villages Association of New Zealand. So this really speaks to the number of people we’re expecting to go into these retirement villages, who will need—a lot of those will qualify for, at least—this rebate. Those homes have a number of different ownership structures. They have freehold title, leasehold, cross-lease, unit title—and, in the case of unit title, the unit title owner owns the land and would receive the rates rebate anyway, because they are the ratepayer. But 80 percent of rest home or retirement village residents are in an ownership structure through a licence to occupy. They are not on the title. They are not the ratepayer.

So what was identified in the select committee was flaws in the bill—big gaps, in fact—that made it unworkable. The intent was there. Everybody agreed with that; that’s why it got through first reading and to select committee. However, trying to work through those details and find a way to actually make the bill work so we wouldn’t be back in the House trying to sort out the unintended consequences and the opportunity for money to fall through the gaps into the hands of people who it wasn’t intended for—so, for example, the very department that actually had to administer it was strongly opposed to the bill. The committee did have an opportunity to go back and work on it, and a second extension was sought, but that was opposed by the member.

However, Supplementary Order Paper 10, as we talked about earlier, really put all of our fears to rest in the committee of the whole House. It has significantly altered the bill—for example, inserting new section 7A into the bill, which outlines the calculation for payment of the rates rebate and how it would operate and relate to the persons. All of those issues have now been dealt with, and I think that that is a huge step forward for everyone, and we’re great to be standing behind it now. It is, as I said, something we all come into this House to try and do: to improve the situation for New Zealanders. None of us disagrees with the intent of the rates rebate scheme; we just want to make sure it works and the right people get it in the appropriate way, and with that I commend the bill to the House.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: The next call is a split call, with a bell at one minute. I call Jo Luxton.

JO LUXTON (Labour): Thank you. I’m so very pleased to be able to take a call on the Rates Rebate (Retirement Village Residents) Amendment Bill in its third reading, and I really want to congratulate the Hon Ruth Dyson for all the work and effort that she’s put into getting this bill here in front of this House. Ruth has been a huge advocate for the elderly, and that’s something that she really, really needs to be commended for. I just want to make the point that members opposite have made quite a bit of a deal about criticising the bill and calling it a dog’s breakfast, in its initial stages, but I actually think we need to stop and think about and appreciate the intent.

The intent has always been to make things fairer and better for people that are living in retirement village homes with an occupation right agreement. This bill was introduced by the Hon Ruth Dyson. It allows people living in a retirement village with an occupation rights agreement the ability to apply for a rates rebate. As we know, some people are eligible to apply for a rates rebate, but at this stage it is available only to people living in their own homes at an address and paying the rates at that address.

The idea behind the rates rebates scheme was one that we all know originally came from Norman Kirk. He believed that people on lower incomes, such as benefits and superannuation, could be put under financial hardship by meeting the obligations of making their rates repayments. Therefore, he introduced the rates rebates scheme as a way to give people a hand up. The scheme was well received, fit for purpose, and met the needs of New Zealanders at that time. But, as we know, times have changed, and there was not the amount of retirement villages back then that we have now. More and more elderly people are choosing to spend their later years living in retirement villages, and they shouldn’t be penalised or miss out on the opportunity to apply for rates rebates just because of where they choose to live.

We now know that there are over 360 retirement villages throughout New Zealand, and this number is continuing to grow all the time, particularly as we have an ageing population. This equates to approximately 34,000 people living in retirement villages, with more joining all the time. What we have here is a bill that is absolutely fit for purpose, further enhanced by the changes made as the bill has progressed through its various stages in the House. It is about fairness and equity. It’s not complex; nor is this a difficult bill to understand and implement. It can’t be too difficult, as several councils have already implemented it, and it is excellent to see the councils being proactive, being forward-thinking, and allowing individual residents with occupation right agreements to apply for a rates rebates.

Currently, there are 27,000 people potentially missing out on the opportunity for a rates rebate. How is that possibly, and even remotely, fair? A person living right next door to the retirement village could well be eligible to apply for a rates rebate, yet the people living next door in the retirement village are not.

Often, people living in retirement villages—or, actually, elderly people in general—have nothing but the pension as their sole source of income. And we know that, while some people might think that $600 a year is not a lot of money, to people where their only source of income is superannuation, it really is, and it will make a big difference. We know, as the Hon Ruth Dyson mentioned in her first speech on the first reading of this bill, that 50 percent of residents living in retirement villages are entirely reliant on superannuation, and it will help alleviate the financial pressure for people like that.

This is a fantastic bill that sets about changing the definition of “residential property” to include retirement villages, thereby allowing elderly people that choose to live in retirement villages the ability to apply for a rates rebate. This bill is well overdue. It is time that people living in retirement villages were treated equitably and fairly, and I am so thrilled that members opposite are now supporting this bill. I commend this bill to the House.

SIMEON BROWN (National—Pakuranga): Thank you very much, Madam Deputy Speaker, and it’s a pleasure to rise for my first time this year to speak on the Rates Rebate (Retirement Village Residents) Amendment Bill for the third reading. I’d like to acknowledge the Hon Ruth Dyson, whose bill this is. It is a member’s bill, and it comes down to the luck of the draw, getting one through. I understand she’s had quite a lot of luck over her time here—

Hon Scott Simpson: A long career.

SIMEON BROWN: —in her long career in this House. But I’d also like to acknowledge the Department of Internal Affairs, who have had to do the real grunt work to make this bill the bill that it is, that we are looking at tonight.

And it is a pleasure that National can support this bill. We initially opposed this piece of legislation, for good reasons. It was full of good intentions, but very light on detail—a lot like other pieces of legislation coming from this Government. But we are grateful for the work that the Department of Internal Affairs has been able to do to work through the issues, in particular the issue around licences to occupy. This is where the real grunt work is in relation to our retirement villages.

Of course, those retirees who have a licence to occupy aren’t actually ratepayers, so this has had to deal with how to create a system whereby they can be identified and then have a rebate applied to them. So this has had to rely on a lot of work being done to ensure that this can be now brought through. But it’s good news for those who do live in retirement villages. It’s good news that they will now be treated the same as those who qualify but don’t live in retirement villages, and it will support those on fixed incomes to be able to afford those costs.

So the National Party will support this piece of legislation as it passes tonight and we are glad that the process has developed this piece of legislation into something that I think will support our retirees up and down this country. We’ve heard a lot of information through the speeches around how many people this will impact, the growing number of people who are living in retirement villages, and how this will continue to support them.

But one point also—I’d like to acknowledge that this does come at a cost. This will increase the cost to taxpayers to pay for this subsidy for ratepayers, for those who will receive the rebate. I think that’s something that we should be acknowledging in this House—that it’s easy to pass legislation, it’s easy to put in place new laws, it’s easy to hand out money, and this is one of those pieces of legislation that does, but every dollar that we allocate or that is appropriated has to be paid for by the taxpayer. So I’d just like to acknowledge the taxpayer for their contribution to this scheme—a scheme that does support our elderly but a scheme that also does cost money. So, Madam Assistant Speaker, I thank you for the opportunity to speak on this bill, and I endorse it to the House. Thank you.

VIRGINIA ANDERSEN (Labour): Thank you for the opportunity to stand and speak in this third reading of the rates rebate bill—the Rates Rebate (Retirement Village Residents) Amendment Bill, to be precise. It’s always good to have a member’s bill that makes good sense. That’s exactly what this piece of legislation does, and I would like to commend the Hon Ruth Dyson on taking an issue and following it through to the end, and this enables so many elderly in New Zealand to benefit from what we’ve seen is an anomaly in the existing law.

When the Rates Rebate Act was passed in 1973, there were no such things, really, as retirement villages here in New Zealand and no such thing as a licence to occupy. But since that time, we have seen that more than 26,000 New Zealanders now live in retirement villages, and around 50 percent of those living in retirement villages are entirely dependent on superannuation—on a fixed income. For those living on a lower wage or a fixed income, it matters in terms of every single cent that they can save.

So while this amendment—while this change to the law—results in around $610 per year, that’s a lot of money. That means a lot to someone who’s trying to pay for a heating bill, who’s trying to pay for presents for grandchildren at Christmas, who’s trying to catch the bus on public transport, or who’s trying to pay for groceries on a weekly basis on a fixed income. So it’s good to see that it’s fair and that all New Zealanders can benefit from what’s offered through the rates rebate scheme.

Where I live in Hutt South, there are several large-scale retirement villages, which offer a range of care facilities for those who choose to live there. There’s a new one, just announced only a week ago, in Wainuiōmata. In fact, the Masonic Villages Trust have invested in a big development that will be kicking off next month—in February. This is a great opportunity for Wainuiōmata because it offers jobs. It offers jobs and, even better yet, it means that those families who live in Wainuiōmata can make sure that their elderly are able to be visited on a regular basis.

It is so important that there is affordable, accessible care for all elderly in New Zealand. It should not be just those who can afford to pay the top dollar in the big flash outfits, but everybody in New Zealand should be able to have good quality care for their mum or their dad or their grandparents. It is great to see that we’re seeing that investment there, and I look forward to seeing all of those residents in the future of Wainuiōmata being able to benefit from this legislation—from being able to see a return and a rates rebate if they invest and have a licence to occupy in that development that’s going ahead.

I must say that one of the most frequently asked questions when you visit a retirement village or a rest home is a question around rates rebate. It’s a top question, and all those residents who know that in the past they’ve been entitled to receive a rebate but have not done so, have followed the passage of this legislation very closely. So I would like to just pause and thank those groups that have advocated on behalf of elderly across New Zealand. I know that Grey Power do a fantastic job in representing their members to make sure they get a fair deal and are well represented in what opportunities are available, and this legislation is a good example of where Grey Power have done exactly that. The Retirement Village Residents Association have also shown strong support for this bill because they know that their members will benefit from it, and it’s a real pleasure to see that coming to fruition now with the third reading of this bill.

While this legislation is seeing a rebate of only about a $610 a year—and that’s important—it shows how important the issue of affordable housing is in New Zealand right now, and that affects particularly those on low and fixed incomes, such as superannuitants. It is so important that we consider how housing is made affordable across the spectrum, particularly in the face of a housing crisis.

There are many elderly who are currently living in homes that are too large for them and that are hard to maintain because there is a fear or an inability to be able to afford to move into retirement villages. So while this makes a small change, it will be good to see long term where all those who are retiring are able to downsize at an affordable rate. What that also does—what that also does—is it makes those bigger four-bedroom homes with the big backyard available on the market for families. Those bigger homes that are close to schools and are able to be fully utilised by families who want to have more space for children or for pets and who are happy to mow a big lawn and maintain a house—those benefits are seen. So the more that we can make care affordable for elderly people, the more we also enable the freeing up of bigger homes for families in New Zealand to be able to have access to and to increase the supply of houses in the housing market currently.

It’s important also to acknowledge that this bill has been through a process and we have seen changes, and it is good to see that the National Party is now supporting this bill. It’s good to see that there is agreement across the House with the fact that this is simply something that needs to happen in order to move with the times. We’ve seen that there’s been a big shift in the way that people live their lives once they’ve retired, and this bill enables that to happen.

Despite being obliged to pay for rates through retirement villages, residents living there with a licence to occupy have not been eligible, and that seems to be unfair. It is so pleasing to see a bill that makes that accessible across the spectrum, and that’s what Labour represents—making sure all those are treated fairly.

I would like to say thank you to the Hon Ruth Dyson and thank you to all those on the select committee for reporting back. I would commend this bill to the House.

Hon SCOTT SIMPSON (National—Coromandel): Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s a pleasure for me to stand as the last National Party speaker in this third reading on the bill that has been sponsored and presented through the House by the Hon Ruth Dyson. I remember the first reading of this bill back in the last Parliament. At that stage, I was the chair of what was then the Local Government and Environment Committee.

I went back to my Hansard from that first night and I reread it, because we have heard from a series of new Government MPs this afternoon about how good this bill is and the great things that it’s going to do and what a big impact it’s going to have. But the simple reality was that this is a bill in its third reading and its final iteration that is incredibly different and quite another piece of work from that that was first introduced.

But I went back to my first reading notes, and I found that I had said these sorts of things: I said I wanted to thank the sponsor and the proponent of the legislation for bringing it to the House, because I think it’s an issue that the House should give consideration to. I talked about how, 40-odd years ago, when the original rates rebate rules were put in place, the concept of a licence to occupy dwelling literally did not exist. The challenge that this bill has always had through its coming to the House has been more of a legal one than one of principle and who should be entitled to a rates rebate or not. And the simple fact of the matter is—and was at the first reading—that licence to occupy owners of dwellings actually don’t own the freehold.

That was the real problem, because no matter what was written on the invoices that they paid to the retirement home management companies, whether it said rates or fees or whatever, actually it wasn’t technically a rate in terms of our local government rules and legislation, and it wasn’t a fee simple freehold title that they had. A licence to occupy is more akin to a lease than it is a freehold. So the people who invest in a licence to occupy retirement home inevitably invest in a nice, modern, safe, secure environment, which is terrific, but it’s not a freehold. They’re not actually buying the bricks and the mortar, or the land upon which the bricks and the mortar sit. That was the nub of the issue.

So at first reading the National Party did support this legislation. We supported it through to select committee for the exact purpose that select committees exist, and that is to try and make well-intentioned and good legislation better. This was a piece of legislation that had some very significant flaws and some faults, and I said in my first reading that I thought it was probably a well-intentioned piece of legislation but that there were going to be problems in the detail, and that the fish hooks that were not remedied by the bill at first introduction would need to be addressed at select committee.

I didn’t sit on the select committee towards the end of its hearings, and that’s maybe—

Hon Ruth Dyson: That’s what went wrong.

Hon SCOTT SIMPSON: The Hon Ruth Dyson says maybe that’s what went wrong, and far be it from me to suggest that she could be wrong on that matter, but, needless to say, it came back out of select committee with most of those issues still unresolved—still unresolved. It wasn’t until the bill got to the committee of the whole House that, through a Supplementary Order Paper that appears to have been largely the work of the Department of Internal Affairs, who at select committee had opposed the legislation—they seemed to provide what was a sensible resolution to the issues and the thorny matters that were irreconcilable at select committee. So I want to thank the officials from the department who have provided a pathway through for this bill now to be able to be supported by members of the National Party, because I do think that the original intention of the Hon Ruth Dyson was a good one.

I come from an electorate, the Coromandel, where we have a very large number of 65-plus citizens living in my electorate. Like many electorates around the country, we have a large number of these new retirement villages and homes, and, inevitably, they are based on a licence to occupy model. So this is an area that did need addressing, but we shouldn’t, I think, be too hung up by the fact that this was a flawed piece of legislation at first introduction, that it wasn’t a good piece of legislation.

The intent may have been there but the detail wasn’t, and it’s through the parliamentary process, through the legislative process that we’ve taken part in as a House, that we’ve finally got to a position that is going to work for residents—seniors and people who are in these retirement villages. It also means that we’re able now to fulfil the obligations of the land law that is fundamental to our property-owning democracy, without compromising that. We’re also able to fulfil the obligations that local government requires in administering the rates rebate scheme.

So, as the final speaker on this side of the House, I do want to congratulate Ruth Dyson on bringing the bill to the House. I want to congratulate everybody that’s been part of making it a much better piece of legislation than it was when first introduced, and working in a way that has meant that we are in a position where we are today to support it. I think it will receive wide support across the House. So, in conclusion, I’m very happy, on behalf of the National Party, to confirm that we will support this bill, and to commend it to the House.

Hon NANAIA MAHUTA (Minister of Local Government): I want to acknowledge the comments of the previous speaker, Scott Simpson, in the fact that, from the outset, the bill had a positive intent that would deliver real gains to elderly people on fixed incomes living in retirement villages.

I’ve listened to some of the debate, and I want to acknowledge that while the select committee had its concerns, at the end of the day, the sponsoring member, the Hon Ruth Dyson, who put the bill together, was very clear from the outset that something needed to be rectified for a group of New Zealanders living in retirement villages who were on fixed incomes and needed to have access to the rates rebate scheme, because when you’re living on a fixed income, these types of supports can just help life a little bit better.

But I want to come back to a comment made by John Collyns, the executive director of the Retirement Villages Association of New Zealand, who has been a keen advocate in support of the work of the Hon Ruth Dyson in ushering this particular bill through. He said that “Our 360-member villages are home to around 34,000 older New Zealanders, or approximately 12 percent of the plus-75 aged population.” So that is a number of elderly people who will certainly benefit from the changes that are proposed in this bill. The fact is that extending the rates rebate to those who have a licence to occupy I think sends a number of signals, and there are actually other people who live in this situation, like those in papakāinga or around marae.

But I want to come back to another comment that John made: “It’s important to note that around 50 percent of our residents only have their national superannuation to live on. These people are the ones for whom the rates rebate would be the most valuable, just as it would have been if they remained in their own homes in the community. It seems grossly unfair that they lose this benefit when they move to a retirement village, yet the requirement to pay rates remains.” So there is a mechanism within the bill that enables those residents to claim a rates rebate. I want to commend those councils who have responded voluntarily by making it easier for residents in retirement villages to better apportion the rates cost and claim a rebate, but, by and large, this is a streamlined approach.

I do want to acknowledge the officials who, under a new Government with a new imperative to help the great majority of those, certainly, living on fixed incomes and who should be claiming the rates rebate to access this scheme. I want to also acknowledge my colleague the Hon Ruth Dyson who has been absolutely vociferous in her advocacy on this particular issue, across Parliaments and across different Governments, and she has stared as many people down as she had garnered support from to be able to ensure that we can be contributing to a third reading speech and the passage of this bill.

I didn’t intend to take too long a call, except to say and acknowledge a number of people who continue to support the rates rebate initiative, and that, by and large, within the context of the challenges facing ratepayers, there are some broader challenges ahead of local government. So I wanted to take this opportunity to express that as we as a Government meet the challenge of the increasing costs on ratepayers and the reliance of councils on rates. Our decisions in coming up to embark on an inquiry to better address what might be available to local government to better meet the expectations of ratepayers, and not relying on rates, is a key area of focus for our Government.

So, with that said, I commend the Local Government and Environment Committee, who put in quite a bit of work on the bill. I commend the officials of the select committee who have provided advice and, certainly, the Department of Internal Affairs officials who have helped with some of the transitional, practical arrangements for the bill. It’s very pleasing to see that the Opposition members have now been able to find themselves supporting this particular bill. Kia ora tātou.

Bill read a third time.

Bills

Misuse of Drugs (Medicinal Cannabis and Other Matters) Amendment Bill

First Reading

CHLÖE SWARBRICK (Green): I move, That the Misuse of Drugs (Medicinal Cannabis and Other Matters) Amendment Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Health Committee to consider the bill.

Surely, the point of our laws is to keep people safe and prevent them from suffering. Where people are already suffering, it is to ensure that they get access to help or relief. So what happens when the law itself is responsible for suffering and prevents people’s access to that help or relief? I believe it is Parliament’s moral obligation to change that law, or at the very least, be brave enough to listen to those who it is hurting—to open our hearts and our minds. This bill is about how we treat our sick. It is about what happens to all of us when we find ourselves sick. It is about the help that we as a society can give and the help that we deny.

This bill will provide affordable, sustainable access to medicinal cannabis for people like Grace Yeats, who I met earlier today on the Parliament lawn. At 10 years old, Grace was diagnosed with a rare brain illness that left her unable to walk, to eat, to sit, or to speak, until she was prescribed a medicinal cannabis product, Sativex. This treatment costs her mum, Tracy, a prohibitive $1,100 a month. They currently rely on the generous charity of their community to afford it. Their family is asking for the ability to produce their own medicinal cannabis spray by extracting it from cannabis plants, which would guarantee consistent, affordable access and dignity. They are asking for your support on this bill.

I’m sure all MPs have received similar stories this past week. I hope that they have read them. I hope that they’ve understood that there are thousands of Kiwis who are out of work, for example, due to pain, meaning that they are often receiving Work and Income benefits; meaning that even if they are lucky to be able to jump through the Ministry of Health hoops, they are faced with a cost that they are unable to meet; and meaning they either remain in pain or out of work, or turn to the black market and become, effectively, criminals.

I ask all in this House to put themselves in the position of the late Helen Kelly and her son Dylan Kelly, who had to watch the pain and hurt his mother experienced in the last few months of her life. She found relief in medicinal cannabis, which, under current law—and, indeed, under the Government’s proposed law, which was voted through yesterday—would have made her a criminal.

I know that there is support across this House in each and every party for this bill, and I know that each and every one of us voted for the Government’s bill just yesterday, which, in the immediate term, serves only to create a criminal defence for those with a terminal illness. As many in their speeches pointed out yesterday, that is not enough. It does not provide legal access, let alone for those with chronic pain, with muscle spasticity symptoms, with epilepsy, and with other illnesses and ailments that could benefit from the prescription of medicinal cannabis. This bill does that, and all of us in this House know that.

I acknowledge there’s a few who have concerns about the potential ramifications of this bill. There have been murmurings that people will pretend to be ill, that people will wander into their doctor’s office faking a toothache and, supposedly, walk out with a prescription for medicinal cannabis. To address this point head-on: quite frankly, it’s ludicrous. New Zealand’s health profession does not hand out pain medication willy-nilly. Anybody who has this concern should seek to place this bill before a select committee so that technical aspects and definitions can be borne out, so that they can hear the evidence, learn about how similar frameworks have worked in other jurisdictions, and listen to the experiences of those suffering at the hands of an outdated law that makes them criminals for using the only medicine that works for them.

The past few months have seen a handful of prosecutions for otherwise regular people who produce and supply cannabis products to the terminally ill or those in chronic pain. One of those people was Rose Renton, who, in recent times, brought an 18,000-strong petition to Parliament calling for safe, affordable, medicinal access to cannabis, in the legacy of her son Alex Renton, for whom she fought tirelessly to secure access to medicinal cannabis to stop his suffering and seizures near the end of his life. You do not find a solution to a problem by beating it with a blunt and broken instrument. The law here is broken, and good, kind, otherwise law-abiding people are risking jail to help their neighbours and those in their community currently experiencing unnecessary suffering.

A Curia Market Research poll commissioned by the New Zealand Drug Foundation in mid-2017 demonstrated that 78 percent of New Zealanders were in support of growing and/or using medicinal cannabis for any medical reasons, such as to alleviate pain. That is an unequivocal majority of New Zealanders ready and willing to have that debate, including a majority of voters from every single party in this House. Seventy-eight percent of National Party voters believe New Zealanders should have access to medicinal cannabis when they need it. That is in sharp contrast, unfortunately, to the publicly stated National Party caucus support.

I would like to invite any National Party MPs who support this to stick their neck out and to be on the right side of history tonight. It will not pass without your votes. This is also a plea to those on this side of the House. This bill and the people it affects need your support as well.

We have seen substantial legal development in comparable jurisdictions. The law in Australia has been liberalised to allow for greater access by way of doctor’s consultation, which is not dissimilar from the threshold of this bill. In Canada and certain states in the United States, they for a very long time had the ability to grow their own plants for medicinal use, and studies have quelled the moral panic by demonstrating no greater uptake in recreation or amongst young people, as is often the catchcry of opposition to this bill.

An incredibly thorough and reputable meta-analysis in 2017 entitled The Health Effects of Cannabis and Cannabinoids: The Current State of Evidence and Recommendations for Research— which I have circulated to members of this House via email—found that there was conclusive and substantive evidence that cannabis and cannabinoids are effective for the treatment of chronic pain, for example, in adults, and are an effective treatment for chemotherapy-induced nausea and vomiting, and for improving patient-reported multiple sclerosis spasticity symptoms. None of this, of course, is to ignore the reality that there is a risk of harm that comes with cannabis—the abuse of it. Notably, however, the risk of that harm is currently far higher with the class A narcotics that are currently prescribed to patients that may otherwise receive medicinal cannabis. A user cannot overdose on cannabis, as is possible with morphine, tramadol, and other prescription drugs. Medicinal cannabis too does not come with the same host of side effects, nausea, and decreased quality of life that sometimes accompany these drugs.

Friends of the late cricketer Martin Crowe noted that he self-medicated with liquid cannabis during his final days of aggressive lymphoma. Lady Deborah Holmes, widow of Sir Paul Holmes, has opened up about he turned to cannabis for pain relief in his final weeks dealing with prostate cancer. I wage, without a shadow of a doubt, that the stories I have told tonight are the tip of the iceberg. If we in this House are bold and brave enough to take this to select committee and open our arms, our hearts, and our minds to New Zealanders, we will hear many more stories like this.

We cannot pretend that this is not a problem. It is a problem because people are suffering. It is a problem because people presently risk going to jail for helping their friends and whānau. The status quo is not working and we, as a House of Representatives, have an opportunity—nay, I would say, a moral obligation—to forge a better path forward. I ask my colleagues in this House across all party lines to vote with their conscience and to allow the voices of the people of Aotearoa New Zealand to be heard at select committee.

SPEAKER: Order! [Interruption] Order! I want to warn persons in the gallery that I have some personal experience of being removed from the gallery for interfering in a debate. I know what the rules are, and I know what the court says. It is very important that members have the ability to express themselves in this House, on one side or the other of this issue, and that people in the gallery listen but do not get involved.

Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN (National—Northcote): Thank you, Mr Speaker. This is the second of two bills that Parliament is debating this week, both of which relate to medicinal cannabis, and I want to congratulate Chlöe Swarbrick, the Green member, for bringing this bill to the House and for having it drawn from the ballot prior to that and for the chance to debate what is a very important issue to thousands of New Zealanders. I also acknowledge Julie Anne Genter, who is now a Minister, but was the person who originally put the bill into the ballot.

Now I know, of course, that this is something that is being hotly debated around the country. As the member said in her speech, there have been many high-profile figures who’ve gone public with their views on medicinal cannabis and their personal experiences of resorting to medicinal cannabis in the most high-profile cases relating to terminal illness. I also want to acknowledge that there are very many New Zealanders with a range of chronic conditions and debilitating pain who are seeking relief from that state and, very naturally, have an interest in obtaining access to medicinal cannabis. Of course, as we’ve heard over the course of these debates, that access is currently fairly limited. But there is no question that internationally the views on medicinal cannabis are liberalising, and that is happening at a fairly rapid rate.

However, let’s be clear. Cannabis is not a drug to be taken lightly. I think everyone in this House would agree with that. Most people here would have had experience of people in their social circle, wider life, or indeed in their professional life who have abused cannabis, and we have seen some of the consequences of that. In a certain group of individuals it can greatly exacerbate a predilection or an underlying disposition towards mental disorder. So I think no one would disagree with the proposition that cannabis is actually a drug that society should not take lightly.

The member who has brought this bill to the House gave a very fluent, quite emotive speech, citing many examples of patients seeking access and benefiting from medicinal cannabis, and, indeed, those are quite compelling stories when you listen to them. But I think what’s really important is to focus on the bill itself and compare that to the Government bill that we debated yesterday. While I am no supporter of this Government, I have to say there were some things to commend in that bill that was discussed yesterday.

So I think there’s a general mood in this House to allow controlled access to medicinal marijuana, but that has to be done in a regulated fashion. It has to be done in a way where we are sure that there are controls in place, where we know what preparations patients are receiving, and where we can understand the evidence base. This is an area where there is an emerging evidence base, but it’s still pretty early on.

Medicinal cannabis encompasses a wide range of preparations, right from those that have undergone rigorous clinical testing—in this instance, in New Zealand, Sativex, which is used for the relief of spasticity in multiple sclerosis—right through to people wanting to access loose-leaf marijuana to smoke cannabis in order to relieve their symptoms. So there’s often quite a bit of confusion, actually, about what medicinal cannabis encompasses.

But if we look at this bill, it’s very important to see what this bill will actually do. Unfortunately, this bill is deeply flawed, because what it allows is for anyone who has what is called a qualifying condition to access cannabis, to grow their own cannabis, or to nominate a relative or any other person to grow cannabis on their behalf. That is where I have a problem with this bill. There’s no mention there of controls. There’s no mention of regulation. There are just some coverall provisions that talk about qualifying health conditions including “chronic back or other pain”. Now I can tell you, as a doctor, I’ve dealt with many, many patients who have come to see me with chronic pain. Pain is one of the most difficult areas of medicine to get to the bottom of, to manage, and to treat. But also it’s something that’s pretty hard to disprove. If someone comes and tells you they’ve got pain, how can you really assess the true extent and degree of that pain?

But it also says, even more broadly—and you could drive a truck right through the middle of this—that a “qualifying health condition” is also “any other medical condition that a medical practitioner certifies may benefit from supplementary plant cannabinoids.” “Any other medical condition”—so it’s up to the doctor to make a call.

Of course, we’ve got great confidence in our health professionals in New Zealand. I mean, we’ve got a strict process of registration. There are continuing medical education requirements. So, by and large, we trust the health profession. But the problem is that that is placing a huge onus on any doctor. Most doctors are good; a few are bad and end up maybe being expelled from the profession. But what I can tell you is that doctors are going to hate this bill, because what they will have is enormous pressure placed on them by patients to prescribe cannabis. You see that in terms of other painkilling medications.

So what you’ll get is you’ll get a group of doctors who absolutely refuse to have anything to do with medicinal cannabis, and that, actually, at a certain level, would be unfortunate. Then you’d get a very small group, hopefully, who would be known as the prescribers—the person to go and see if you want cannabis. And then you’d get the middle group, who, with all best intentions, have enormous pressure placed on them to prescribe medicinal cannabis. This will be a doctor’s nightmare.

But also what’s really concerning about this bill—and I know it’s not the member’s intent—is this is going to be de facto decriminalisation. Basically, it is going to mean that anyone can grow as much cannabis as they want for the treatment of one of these qualifying conditions, and it just needs a doctor’s say-so. Miss Swarbrick says there are similar schemes in Canada and Australia. Well, when you look at the detail of those schemes, they are tightly regulated. This bill is silent on the supply. In Canada, you actually have to go and get your seeds from a regulated supplier. There’s nothing in here about a regulated supplier. This does not create a regulated market for medicinal cannabis based on a body of evidence. This is just carte blanche for patients and their nominated people to grow cannabis for what is a very vague qualifying condition.

The other thing that the bill does is it confirms that cannabidiol will no longer be a controlled substance. Well, the National Government actually had already done that through regulation, and, indeed, it is in the Government bill.

Much as I’m critical of this current Government, and much as they also left a lot out of the bill that was before the House yesterday, what that bill yesterday had was a regulation-making power. That regulation-making power in the Government bill sets the groundwork for a regulatory scheme to create a market place that will increase the access for people who need medicinal cannabis products, and it will mean that they can get products that have been approved on the basis of the available evidence to help relieve their debilitating conditions. That is the way to go.

The other thing about the Government bill is the select committee process will allow all those who have an interest in this particular bill to submit to the select committee and have their case heard. So I think—much as I’m no fan of this Government—that the bill that the Government brought to the House yesterday will enable that public discussion that thousands of New Zealanders wish to have. This member’s bill currently before the House is deeply flawed. It will create carte blanche for people to grow whatever cannabis they want and to use it. It will be decriminalisation by stealth, and on that basis National does not support this bill.

GREG O’CONNOR (Labour—Ōhāriu): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I stand opposed to this bill, and I want to start by saying that I don’t oppose it from any philosophical basis around the liberalisation of cannabis laws, but from a strong belief that passing a bill that permits unregulated cultivation of cannabis—with the medical profession as gatekeepers, as the previous speaker, Jonathan Coleman, pointed out—represents an absolute wasted opportunity to learn the lessons from those other jurisdictions. I congratulate my colleagues on bringing this to the House, and for what they are trying to achieve, it may not be a bad piece of legislation, but, again, I agree with the previous speaker that this will lead to a situation where, through the legal ability to grow cannabis, the State will lose absolute control over any ability to regulate it.

Any change we make to cannabis law liberalisation must achieve two things: one, at best, it makes it less available to those teenagers—our people under 20—who all the evidence shows are damaged by cannabis and by use of same, and secondly, what must be achieved is we must get it out of the hands of the criminal gangs. This will not achieve that.

One of the problems is that many overseas jurisdictions are quoted in these arguments. I’ve been fortunate enough to go to the Netherlands and spend time with regulators and with growers, with suppliers, and with police—same in Portugal and the same in Colorado. One important factor around the oft-quoted Netherlands is that cannabis is not legal there; it is permitted. There is no legal supply of the drug. As they say, “Illegal in the back door, legal out the front.” There is a proposal now that the local bodies be allowed to grow the cannabis legally, but that is still subject to some debate. So, importantly, it is not legal; it is permitted. I don’t think we have a mature enough system to allow that to happen.

In Portugal—again, oft-quoted—it is not legal. You’re still arrested; you just don’t go through the criminal justice system. You end up, in Portugal, going into the health regime—again, well-documented.

Colorado is the situation or the jurisdiction that we most look at, and they started their journey to full legalisation exactly where we are, where they permitted people with a medical certificate to grow six plants. That very quickly morphed into the ability of others to grow those six plants for those people. The biggest commodity very quickly became the list that you could grow cannabis for, and by then, they’d lost control.

What I fear with this bill is that it is going to deny the opportunity to get it right. We are going to have a referendum before or at the next election, and that’s the time when the public of New Zealand will decide which way we will go on this. That referendum is already going to be redundant by the time we get there, because we’ll end up trying to build a regime on the basis of what will be a very liberal, highly available amount of cannabis there, and we’ll be trying to fix it. If we’re going to do this, if we’re going to achieve what the architects of the bill want to achieve, and if we want to achieve what I’m sure many here want to achieve, which is a very sensible, world-leading cannabis regime, we are denying ourselves the opportunity to do just that by doing this piecemeal, like we’re doing here.

What the Government bill that went to select committee yesterday has done is it has bought us time, which will allow us to address many of the issues that have been brought up here today, but it will mean that when we move forward, we get it right. We don’t have to recreate. We don’t have to reinvent the wheel. It’s been done. We pride ourselves on being world leaders on this, and we can. If this goes to select committee, I fear it will come out, it will go ahead, and it will come back, but it will be a poor example of legislation, and it will be a missed opportunity to get this absolutely right.

What I implore the House and my fellow members to do is don’t send this to select committee. Let’s get it right, let’s start with a blank bit of paper, and let New Zealand end up with a highly workable cannabis regime that makes it safe for our children and for all those in the future, and, most importantly, that gets it out of the hands of criminals. Thank you.

Dr LIZ CRAIG (Labour): Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s an absolute pleasure to be taking a call on the first reading of this bill. As we’ve already heard, what it tries to do is it will make it legal for people who are suffering from terminal illness or other medical conditions to use cannabis with the support of a registered medical practitioner. The thing is, though, that unlike the bill that passed its first reading yesterday, it’s not about getting medical cannabis on prescription. It’s actually about allowing people to grow their own, or allowing their support person to grow their own on their behalf. For me, I’m supporting this bill to first reading so that it can go to select committee for a couple of reasons, which I’ll go into, but beyond that, unless there are some significant changes made, I’m unlikely to support it further.

So why am I supporting it to select committee? I think the first thing is that so many people around the country have been in touch. There’s a real sense out there that people want their voices heard, and I think select committee will allow us to do that.

The other thing is that we saw that the Government’s own bill passed its first reading yesterday and will go to select committee. I think that bill will address a lot of the issues that people in the community are raising, but what I would like to see is some formal discussion about whether and how much further we can go beyond people that have got a terminal illness. So that’s why I’d like that looked at in that select committee process.

The problem, though, is that I also have some real concerns about this bill, and that’s why, unless they’re changed, I wouldn’t support it further. There’s two parts to that, and I think the first one is really about the expectation of people growing their own cannabis. In medicine, there’s no other area that I’ve ever seen where you’ve got somebody who’s terminally ill or in severe pain and we’re asking them to grow their own medication, and the problem there is that there’s a whole lot of inherent challenges within that.

Apart from the obvious things like crop security, there are some other things that have been raised with me, not by people opposing the bill, but actually by people who have managed to access some of these products. What they’re saying is that the issue for them is not about wanting to grow their own—they don’t—but they want access to high-quality product. Some of them have been talking about—you know, with cannabis, and particularly growing your own, it’s not one entity. It’s not one agent. It’s a whole lot of different chemicals with different activant agents. So, with the cannabinoid (CBD), you know, for pain relief—but then the THC’s got psychoactive properties, and one of the people that was in touch with me was saying, “You know, I want to purchase it from a registered supplier who knows how to separate out the CBD from the THC.” They want to be able to know what they’re getting is what they need.

The other thing is that a lot of people don’t want to smoke cannabis; they actually want to use the oils and balms. So, for them, being able to actually process that and get it done by a proper manufacturer—that’s actually what they’re needing, not being able to just relieve it with smoking, and some of the issues are inherent in that.

The other thing, I think, is about a steady, year-round supply, because, you know—I was listening to some of the stories of frequent users talking about what happens when there’s a shortage of cannabis. The challenges that this particular person was sharing about having to smoke mouldy cannabis when the supplier was down to their last bits. Also, if you run out completely, what are the alternatives? So there are a real lot of issues around quality of supply.

The other thing I’ve got concerns about is the broad definition of what’s a qualifying condition, because under the current bill as proposed, for anything where a medical practitioner feels somebody would benefit from cannabis, it would be able to be prescribed. We’re actually acting in a bit of an evidence vacuum here, because we haven’t got a lot of randomised, controlled trials, like other drugs, about what this could be effective for and what it’s not good for. We’ve got a sense it’s good for cancer and chronic pain, but here the extension would be to people with, maybe, immune disorders and with other nervous system conditions where we don’t have an evidence base to back us up, and we’ve also got known adverse effects. Particularly, for me, the one is young people and psychosis, where there have been, in susceptible individuals, some queries about whether you can bring on psychosis. It’s not a completely safe product, so we’ve got to be quite careful.

For me, I think we need to have that debate. We need to have people to be able to put forward their views, and we need to think about the broader extension. But I think a lot of those other issues need to be sorted out at select committee, so that we’ve got a safe, high-quality product and we know who’s going to get the benefit from it, but we’ve got to step back from causing further harm. So for me, personally, I commend the first reading and I commend this bill to the House. Thank you.

Hon NIKKI KAYE (National—Auckland Central): I am very pleased to take a call on this piece of legislation, but I do take a call on this legislation and say that I am the most deeply conflicted that I have ever been in nine years as a member of Parliament. Can I acknowledge Chlӧe Swarbrick, and can I acknowledge Julie Anne Genter. You’ve done amazing work. You’re intelligent, passionate, and strong women, and thank you for the work that you’ve done on this legislation.

Can I also acknowledge the National caucus. One of the reasons that I am a National member of Parliament is I deeply believe in freedom. As many people within the public gallery will know, while this is not a conscience vote for us, we have been given the ability to vote for this legislation if we want to. So let me put that on the record this evening.

I want to mention that as well, because I do want to make reference to the waka-jumping legislation. I say it not to be political, but to say that one of the most beautiful aspects of this House is to see conscience votes in train, or to see the freedom of MPs to healthily debate issues. And one of the reasons I’m a member of my party is because we have, through conscience votes on local issues—whether it’s me standing up on Great Barrier mining or issues like this—the freedom to be accountable for our actions and to speak freely as to what we believe.

With that privilege comes huge responsibility. The reason I am deeply conflicted is that, on the one hand, I have been in severe pain—I’ve had breast cancer—and the thought that I could possibly deny people who have chronic pain and debilitating illnesses access to potentially medicinal cannabis that could help them is abhorrent to me. However, on the other side, I have had family members—as I mentioned in my maiden speech—deeply affected by drugs, and, as a former Minister of Education and Minister for Youth, a number of young people came up to me and said that their journey in the criminal justice system started as a result of being addicted to drugs.

So I am faced with two bills that have come before this Parliament. Both of them are flawed. One goes too far, and one does too little. So that is the dilemma that I have, and I actually believe there are many members of Parliament in this House that have the same dilemma. This is why I am conflicted.

I want to acknowledge the work that you have done. I will not be voting for the legislation this evening, but what I am committed to doing, with other members of Parliament—I know from the conversations that I’ve had in the last 24 hours, and I’m not going to cross the floor on a bill that I know, even with my vote from the National Party, we don’t have the numbers for. But what I will do is I will work with Chlӧe Swarbrick, I will work with the Prime Minister, and I will work with those other members of New Zealand First that want change around those people who have chronic pain or debilitating conditions to provide greater access for either cannabis products or loose leaf.

I think we can do that with the existing Government bill, and that is what I will be campaigning for. I commit to working with you, Chlӧe, and other members of the House to try and deliver that. It has been one of the toughest political decisions that I have ever had to make.

I want to then, finally, speak to the people in the gallery but also to the people that are watching tonight. It’s very easy to look at parliamentarians and think they don’t care. That is not my experience of this place. People do care. There is a pathway through, and I’ll be fighting for that.

KIRITAPU ALLAN (Labour): I’m still a green member in this House—no pun intended—but I may just have a little more faith, hope, and aspiration in our political system if we were to indeed support this bill, which may have some flaws, and I think there are a few. But if we support this bill through to the select committee, the members of the public that have been engaging with every single member of this House for the past few months will, in fact, have the chance to have their say.

I rise to speak in support of this bill at its first reading, and those that know me personally know that I have found the position that I’m taking this evening a very hard one to take. Within my communities—and, indeed, like my colleague Nikki Kaye over the opposite side of the aisle, I know that drug use, its impacts, and its harm within my own family and my own life have indeed shaped my outlook. But when I took my oath and when I took my seat within this House, I took an oath that I would keep my eyes open, regardless of my own personal convictions, and that I would keep my ears open and would be open to engage with the debate.

I put up a forceful argument in opposition to this bill for a number of months, as many members of this House will know. I put up opposition because I was afraid of many of the comments that have come throughout this room about the deregulation, the increase in harm, and so on and so forth. The challenge always put back to me from every single person who was an expert within this field was, “Kiri, go and read the research. Go and look at the work that is being done across the world in jurisdictions where medicinal cannabis has been legalised.” Indeed, I did, and what I must say—and I look particularly to the example over in Canada.

Canada has done extensive work on looking into the implications of marijuana for personal use and, indeed, medicinal cannabis, but there was one particular report that looked into the implications of cultivation for personal production, which is an area that I have particular concerns about. The arguments, effectively, were two-part. One—and I think we have heard a bit of the scaremongering from both sides of the House tonight—is that it’s going to increase harm, it’ll create further access by gangs, and so on and so forth. The more nuanced research presents a different case, and it is that in some jurisdictions that have indeed engaged with these deeply morally challenging issues but have been brave enough to go into an area and legalise, decriminalise, or make accessible cannabis for medicinal use, there has been a decrease in harm and there has been a decrease in criminal justice statistics.

I particularly want to just make a comment, because this has been a point of some debate amongst Māori communities in particular. There is not universal agreement on this issue, and indeed, in fact, it’s one that we grapple with intimately around kitchen tables.

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

KIRITAPU ALLAN: This bill that we’ve been asked to consider tonight extends the parameters for medicinal cannabis use from those with a terminal illness to those that are suffering in chronic pain. There are real fears, as I illuminated prior to the break, that a Pandora’s box may somehow erupt and open and that we might not be able to contain the harm of drugs. But from a pragmatic perspective, my community up there on the East Coast—my communities, Māori communities, small communities right now are suffering at the hands of so many different types of harm. Right now, 40 percent of young Māori incarcerated in prison are there because of drug-related offences.

I had to confront my fears when I engaged with the subject matter of this bill, because the community have asked us to engage with these matters and engage with them thoroughly. So I implore members of this House, when we are casting our conscience vote tonight, to trust in the parliamentary process and to send this bill to select committee, so that we can indeed hear from our communities.

Dr SHANE RETI (National—Whangarei): Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s a pleasure to speak on this bill tonight. I’d like to congratulate the originator of the bill, Julie Anne Genter, and the member who currently has it in her hands, Chlöe Swarbrick.

Over the past recess, I had the opportunity to explore and spend some time in US jurisdictions that have a large history, a long history, of medicinal cannabis. On Christmas Day, I found myself in Eugene, Oregon, a liberal state that has medicinal cannabis and also has recreational cannabis. On New Year’s Day, I was in Camarillo, California, which has had medicinal cannabis for quite a while, and on that day Proposition 64 came in, which made it recreational. In between then, I was in Nevada, another liberal state with recreational and medicinal cannabis. My contribution tonight, then, will be a reflection of several things: first of all, 20 years of clinical practice and then my observations from speaking to colleagues and communities in these environments.

I want to make some opening remarks. I said yesterday—and I want to reinforce—that I am very pleased that medicinal cannabis is part of our conversation. It is timely. There’s nothing to be afraid of. It’s a good conversation to have. It sits medicinal cannabis alongside other medicines. Let’s look at these other medicines. Other medicines have a known source, a known production line, a known manufacturing programme. Other medicines have a known dose response. They have known drug-drug interactions. They have known side effects. Other medicines are dispensed in known places, at known times, by known people. Other medicines are in their final form. They’re not in a midway sort of form. Leaf could be a midway sort of form because you could infuse it, you could smoke it, and you could bake it. It’s not the final form that you may take it in.

But many of these medicines, if they are available, are expensive. I understand that, and so I think part of this bill—certainly the area of self-cultivation—says, “Look, how can we get past the expense of these products?” If we look at the pharmaceutical spectrum, if you like, for regulation, we would have the pharmaceutical-grade products at one end and what this bill proposes—self-cultivation—at the other. In the middle is something interesting—the high-standard pharmaceuticals, high-standard grade pharmaceuticals, or you might also call them near pharmaceuticals. I’m really hoping that Mr Clark’s bill—the medicinal scheme—will talk to these, because the bill’s intent talked about setting high standards. This near-medicinal group, which is about 25 percent cheaper than standard high-grade pharmaceuticals, could well be very suitable for the purposes that this member is looking for.

There are four main parts to this bill, and I’ll talk to some of them. First of all, the qualifying conditions—briefly, what’s in and what’s out. What’s in doesn’t make sense to me—chronic immune order conditions. If you look through all the 52 states, those that have THC containing medicinal cannabis, not one of them has chronic immune conditions as their qualifying criteria—not one. Too broad. There are occasional immune conditions, but not immune system disorders. It’s too big. What’s not in—every state, except Maryland, has cancer on that list. This bill does not. So I’ve got some issues about what’s in and what’s not.

The second part of this bill talks to a medical recommendation. I commented yesterday that that’s part of the weakness of the Minister’s bill—that there is no clear indication from a medical practitioner that it’s useful.

The third part to this is the cultivation, possession, and use of cannabis. I’ve talked to that, and I’ve talked to some of the self-challenges that I have around self-cultivation, around quality, and around control standardisation, and the alternative I’m proposing is to look at near pharmaceuticals. I also have issues with the fourth part, which is around immediate relatives or nominated persons.

I support this discussion. I will not be supporting this bill, on the basis of too broad qualifying criteria in one area, not inclusive of cancer in another; a lack of quality, consistency, and monitoring around self-cultivation; and a cultivation net that includes immediate relatives and nominated persons. That is just too big. But I do support this discussion. I believe the Government bill is the forum to have this discussion, and I think we can expand it a bit to cover some of these things. It was part of the discussion we had in the select committee this morning of can we pick up parts of this bill, in the select committee, under the Government’s current legislation. We’re exploring that. I hope we can. It’s a good and timely discussion. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

Hon NICKY WAGNER (National): Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. Yesterday, National voted for the Government’s Misuse of Drugs (Medicinal Cannabis) Amendment Bill. We voted for it because, like most New Zealanders, we support the use of therapeutic cannabis products for people who are terminally ill but also for people with severe and debilitating illnesses.

I discussed yesterday that the bill doesn’t deliver on Labour’s electioneering promises to legalise medicinal cannabis, because all it actually does right now is provide a statutory defence for people for the possession and the use of cannabis if they’re terminally ill, and only if their doctor thinks they’re going to die in 12 months.

The bill is flawed in other aspects too, particularly because it doesn’t include a wider definition of people who may like to use it in terms of those debilitating and severe illnesses. But we voted for it as a stopgap measure. We voted for it out of compassion for the terminally ill but also, and very importantly, because it provides a regulatory power to create a medicinal cannabis scheme. That, I think, is where the opportunity is that we can get something of value to the people of New Zealand, where we can perhaps create the reasonable, rational, sensible, and practical middle ground.

What, really, New Zealand needs in terms of medicinal cannabis is an evidence-based approach. It needs to be able to provide secure access for patients. We need to be able to have ensured quality control of the product. It needs to be affordable, and it needs to have a safe and clearly managed supply chain. Unfortunately, the bill that we are debating tonight doesn’t deliver any of these things. In fact, we believe that the bill is so loose that it’s almost unworkable.

It’s unworkable particularly around the definitions. The definitions are too broad—too broad in terms of which disorders qualify, although I have to admit my colleague talks about leaving out cancer. Also too broad as to who and how the product can be supplied. Essentially, if you take it at face value, almost anyone can grow and process cannabis for almost anybody, and we all know the risks of that.

National’s view is that cannabis-based products used for medicinal purposes must be treated like any other medicine, and just like any other medicine, they must be subjected to the same sorts of trials and testing processes. They must be able to be of maximum effectiveness and they must be safe. But there’s also a significant opportunity for non-pharmaceutical grade products to be prescribed in certain conditions, and this is what my colleague also has just mentioned. The key, of course, is how we separate and utilise the cannabinoid, which has the potential for the therapeutic effects, from the THC, which is the psychoactive component of the plant. That needs much more research and much more work.

The National Government has already delegated decision-making powers to prescribe cannabis-based products to the Ministry of Health, and specialists can now prescribe unregulated products, which could include pharmaceutical grade or non-pharmaceutical grade products derived from cannabis for patients, as long as it’s signed off by the Ministry of Health. National’s advice to all people, or patients who feel that they may get some benefit from cannabis-based products, is to talk to their doctors in the first instance.

So, in summary, National certainly supports the use of therapeutic cannabis-based products for their patients, but we cannot support this bill. Yesterday, we voted for the Government’s bill as a stopgap, but with the clear expectation that the Government will work efficiently, well, and urgently to set up the medicinal cannabis scheme as promised—a scheme that can deliver secure access for patients, and that can deliver consistent and assured quality control for the product, affordability, and a safe, well-managed supply chain. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

ANAHILA KANONGATA’A-SUISUIKI (Labour): Happy New Year, Mr Speaker. It’s a privilege for me to stand today to speak for the first time in 2018. I would like to acknowledge this opportunity to speak on the Misuse of Drugs (Medicinal Cannabis and Other Matters) Amendment Bill, which was in the name of Julie Anne Genter and is now in the name of Chlöe Swarbrick.

I would like to honour the memory of those New Zealanders who have passed away that had the belief that the Government could have intervened in their pain relief, using the healing properties of cannabis. I would also like to acknowledge those who are currently terminally ill or are suffering, who are in pain—who are in pain and who are looking for alternative medication to relieve the pain. My empathy with the family and friends of those New Zealanders who, hour by hour, minute by minute, think of and love their friend who is currently suffering in their time.

I want to acknowledge the Labour-led coalition. Yesterday, after nine years of a National Government that had known the conversations that New Zealanders have about the healing or the pain relief properties of cannabis, and had appealed on many occasions by—we’ve heard today from the member who’s bringing this bill to the House about leaders who are actually supporting the healing properties of cannabis. So I want to acknowledge the leadership of the Hon David Clark for his bravery in bringing the Government’s bill yesterday.

I’m going to read the reason why I am acknowledging that bill, the Misuse of Drugs (Medicinal Cannabis) Amendment Bill. The reason why I loved what the Government had put forward is that it reads, and I want to read this because I want people who are laypeople like myself—I’m a first-term member of Parliament, so before then I didn’t know many words. I want to acknowledge the learned colleagues, the two doctors who were sharing their knowledge of medicine and giving us an insight that some doctors are bad—in the words of Dr Coleman—and may use this bill, if it comes into law, in other, negative matters.

But the Government bill yesterday seeks to amend the Misuse of Drugs Act 1975: “The Bill will introduce an exception and a statutory defence for terminally ill people to possess and use illicit cannabis and to possess a cannabis utensil; and provide a regulation-making power to enable the setting of standards that products [are] manufactured …”. We had a Medicines Act in 1981 that sets out many standards—pages after pages of standards—and I agree with the Government’s bill that there need to be standards.

The bill that we are talking about, Ms Swarbrick’s bill—what concerns me is that, yes, it acknowledges changes and acknowledges terminal illness, but what concerns me is it is to cultivate and possess cannabis products, or have a family member or named person cultivate and supply this for the named person.

I am a descendant of medical healers. My brother currently mixes herbal medicines and he provides that freely to people who believe in his medicine. My father is a traditional healer who, through compassion and love—it will be three o’clock in the morning or four o’clock in the morning, and people are knocking at his door asking for his healing thoughts to prescribe to their illness.

I, unfortunately, haven’t inherited any of those healing powers or knowledge, but what I can share is an insight I heard from the member today about Grey Power supporting this bill. I had an experience with a few elderly ladies in an organisation that I belong to, and they talked about how good their medication is. It’s doing really great for them, and through their compassion and their love, they share their medication—“OK, you take a couple of pills and I’ll take this, and it’s going to do you wonders.” So they self-prescribe and share the pills.

I’m concerned about human behaviour—human behaviour in terms of sharing your home-grown cultivation of cannabis and its healing powers. As a person, if I’ve got someone who is in pain that I love, it comes to a point that I can share this medicine with them. If it’s about love—I can honestly say that I may not follow the rule of law, if it’s about love.

But to end this—if you allow me to make another call, Mr Speaker, so I can finish my story—

SPEAKER: You’re not having a whole new call, but wind it up.

ANAHILA KANONGATA’A-SUISUIKI: Wind it up—OK. It is human behaviour to share something that is going to benefit another human being who is suffering. If I am the person who’s been approved to cultivate and supply to person A this healing power of the medicine for them to make them feel better—I put this question to you, all the members of this House. We’ve had an opportunity yesterday to discuss the healing powers of cannabis. I put this to you: would you deny your loved one that healing power of cannabis if they’re not the named person, person A? So I—

SPEAKER: Order!

JENNY MARCROFT (NZ First): Kia ora and thank you, Mr Speaker. Thank you for the opportunity to stand and speak on this member’s bill in the name of Chlöe Swarbrick. I’ve really grappled—[Interruption]

SPEAKER: Order! Thank you, Dr Coleman. The member will start again, please.

JENNY MARCROFT: Thank you, Mr Speaker, and thank you for the opportunity to stand and speak on this bill, this member’s bill in the name of Chlöe Swarbrick. I’ve really grappled to understand and work on the decision—the way I will vote. I spoke in the House yesterday about my own personal experience of watching my mother with breast cancer die in a very terribly painful way. On the one hand, we must be compassionate, but, on the other hand, the wide range of inclusions and the lack of regulations in this bill are a real concern for me.

There is widespread cannabis use in our community and that presents significant harm. The casual exposure to cannabis that this member’s bill will enable will be especially harmful to our youth and their perceptions of what drug use is. A just and caring society needs to balance the potential harm to one section of our population against denying the needs and the real concerns of another section of our population. The Misuse of Drugs (Medicinal Cannabis and Other Matters) Amendment Bill will legalise the psychoactive substance component THC with unlimited use of any form of cannabis. It will literally enable the use of any form of cannabis without limitation.

Now this is important to note, because science creates a distinction between a medicine and an uncontrolled substance. What are the dosage labels on a plant? Where are the published articles on experiments showing the linkages to side effects and the safety of mixing more than one prescription drug with any other drug? How, for example, will someone’s heart medications interact or react with cannabis—with THC—and what about someone who’s taking a range of medications for a variety of illnesses or for a variety of conditions. What safeguards will be in place for them if they are self-medicating?

I wonder about this on a personal level too. I struggle to reconcile a decade of “Drugs are bad.” These are the discussions I’ve had with my teenager. Casual exposure to cannabis is harmful to our youth and their perceptions of the harms of drug use.

Our moral compass is skewed when we treat a medicinal product as something unscientifically grown in our backyard or under a grow lamp in a rented suburban house. Is it really a medicine when there are no controls, no recommended doses, no daily limits? We should not be enabling the growth of unregulated and unmonitored drugs. The science just isn’t there yet. However, the research completed already paints a bit of a grim picture.

Dr Kate Baddock, chair of the New Zealand Medical Association board wrote about the social impacts of cannabis use in her commentary on cannabis written for the NZMJ Digest, on 1 October 2017. It reads, “The use of cannabis in adolescents and young adults is associated with reduced academic achievement in a dose-related fashion. The pooled results from a large Australasian study suggest that the use of cannabis before the age of 15 may contribute as much as 17% toward failure to complete school, go to university and attain a degree.”

I also note a point of concern that the member’s bill allows a nominated support person. What will happen if that nominated support person is sent off to purchase some weed and they end up in a queue with a whole bunch of other people with medical exemptions, lining up outside the local tinny house? What about the lady who’s living on her own who grows a few plants and people find out that she’s got a stash? Is her property in danger? Is she in danger? There need to be controls carefully thought through.

The public interests in terms of medical marijuana are already being considered by the Government bill, and thereby the public will still have an opportunity to submit in a select committee, and that’s really important—just on a more refined and focused bill than this one. I am compassionate to the needs of those who are suffering a terminal illness or who have a debilitating condition, but this bill is too far removed from the use of marijuana as a medicine, and therefore I cannot support it.

SPEAKER: Before I put the vote, I have noticed that there are only two members who have been seeking the call and who have not got it. This is an unusual situation, but because it is a conscience vote I am going to seek the leave of the House for there to be two further speeches. Is there any objection to that? There appears to be none.

DAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise in support of this bill. I want to just address what it’s about and what it’s not, because, ironically, this bill is not about marijuana or cannabis.

I don’t particularly like cannabis—I don’t like marijuana. I tried it once, I got very hungry, and I never did it again. I don’t understand why people smoke it, but a lot of people—and some of the members we’ve heard—say that it is beneficial. My personal experiences and preferences are hardly the point, because if this bill is not about cannabis then it is about prohibition. There is no policy called cannabis, but we are lawmakers. Our job in this House is to deal with policies, and the policy in question is the prohibition on people who have serious, painful illnesses on using cannabis.

We have to ask ourselves as lawmakers, has the prohibition on cannabis been effective? I’ll give you the answer that I gave on the Government bill last night. You can analyse any policy by asking three simple questions: what’s the intent, is it effective, and what are the side effects? Well, the intent of banning people with illnesses from accessing medical cannabis is, pretty clearly, to stop them accessing medical cannabis.

What of the effectiveness? We know from the number of people who are doing it, and from police, including former police officers in this Chamber, that it is a highly ineffective prohibition because so many people are doing it. The objective is to stop people smoking cannabis; the effectiveness is almost zero. The people that want to do it are doing it.

The unintended consequences are that people put themselves in danger dealing with criminal elements whose criminal sphere they fund by acquiring illicit cannabis, and they receive a product that is made all the more dangerous, by being underground, than it need otherwise be. I can tell you—or at least I’ve heard—that most of the current suppliers don’t follow the Consumer Guarantees Act, and they don’t often issue refunds. That is the circumstance in which so many people find themselves.

The politics of this is very simple. This bill will pass tonight if we can find about half a dozen brave and thoughtful souls on the National Party benches. I put it to my colleagues in the National Party—well, let me put it this way. I listened to Nikki Kaye’s speech, and I thought of something Richard Prebble once said to me: “If you can’t ride two horses at once, you shouldn’t be in the political circus.” Well, Nikki Kaye was riding those horses so far apart she just about hung, drew, and quartered herself.

The National Party members need to think long and hard about this question: had the Labour Party—the evil Labour Party—not put up their piss-weak, watered-down bill, which will go halfway to where they’d like to get, would they be voting for this bill tonight? I’d point out to members—

SPEAKER: Order! People remonstrated with me yesterday for the use of language that might be common where I come from but is probably not appropriate here. I think the member just better be careful how he expresses himself.

DAVID SEYMOUR: In fairness, it’s not common where I come from.

If the Labour Party had not put up a weaker bill, many more members on this side would be voting for it. That’s the only difference. I’d put it to members on the National Party benches that you don’t want to be found trying to ride two horses at once, because sometimes you tear yourself apart.

What you want to be doing is asking the simple question: is the policy of prohibition a successful policy; if not, would New Zealand be a better country if we ended that policy for people with chronic illnesses, and would it be a better policy if people could acquire what they are acquiring already through much safer, much more legitimate means that did not lead to children in this country growing up in households funded by the proceeds of crime that exists only because of prohibition? That is the question: could you make New Zealand a better place by taking a small step to end that prohibition tonight?

If members on the National Party benches agree with me, it takes only half a dozen to bravely and thoughtfully cross the floor. Try it, fellas. It’s exhilarating. I’ve done it—you feel like Julie Andrews, skipping across the floor. You can make a difference for New Zealand and have a great time doing it. That’s the best appeal I can make to my colleagues in the National Party. I hope to see half a dozen of you in the Ayes lobby tonight. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

CHRIS BISHOP (National—Hutt South): Thank you, Mr Speaker. Thank you very much. You could almost think Richard Prebble had reincarnated into the Chamber—not reincarnated, but at least had reappeared into the Chamber.

I have spent a lot of time with this bill, and gone back and forth on whether or not I should support it. Let me make it clear that I think the status quo with medicinal cannabis is manifestly inadequate when it comes to cannabis for medicinal use. Over the last three years, I have met countless sick people whose lives are improved by the use of cannabis. Some of these people have been in the media; most of them have not. Access to medicinal marijuana at the moment is difficult, expensive, and time-consuming. I think we can and must do better.

It’s also clear to me, from some of the work I’ve done on my own accord, that the direction of travel internationally is towards a legal, regulated market for medicinal cannabis products. Other jurisdictions have grappled with the same problems we are, and the various models overseas vary, but they all have probably three key things in common. Number one, there’s clear authority given to doctors to prescribe medicinal cannabis, alongside guidance as to how and when it can be appropriate; secondly, there’s a robust regime that allows domestic producers of medicinal cannabis to register and be licensed; and, thirdly, there are strict regulations on manufacturing and imports to control quality, to make sure patients have trust in the products they use. Schemes like this exist in Canada and in Colorado, and my colleague Greg O’Connor made reference to a couple in his speech—in his very excellent contribution to this debate—and, ultimately, I think that’s where we need to head in New Zealand.

So when we come to the two bills that have come to the House on successive days—we talk about David Clark’s bill. That does one very worthy thing and one thing the previous Government had already done, and is utterly silent on the very worthy thing it purports to do. Let me explain. The worthy thing is it provides people with a terminal illness a statutory defence to the charge of possessing and using cannabis. It could go further, but it does one thing that’s a step forward, I think. It also changes the classification of cannabidiol. It would be fair to say the previous Government’s already done this, and we’ve heard from my colleagues tonight about how that is, essentially, a tidying-up exercise, and puts into legislation what’s already been done through regulation. If you were being uncharitable—and I’m not an uncharitable person, but if you were—you could say it’s an attempt to fill out a bill that lacks a bit of substance. What the bill doesn’t do is establish a regulatory scheme to actually establish medicinal cannabis in New Zealand. It says it does, but it doesn’t. We have to wait at least two years for that to happen.

So then we come to this bill. Now it, too, is inadequate. Members have canvassed—on this side and the other side as well—a lot of deficiencies. It does not set up any sort of regulated market for medicinal marijuana. There are no controls on production and supply. It will not give doctors any confidence—and this is a very important point—about prescribing medicinal marijuana. The qualifying criteria, as my colleague Shane Reti pointed out, are too broad. So it was a difficult decision, but I have decided to vote against the bill.

Ultimately, I want a conversation about wider access to medicinal marijuana and how we can design a world’s best-practice regulatory regime for New Zealand. The appropriate place for that is at the select committee—the Health Committee—that considers the Government bill that purports to establish that scheme. I also—and this is very important—want the voices of those with chronic pain to be heard and listened to. Again, the right place for this is at select committee, and as part of designing a good regulatory regime we must listen to the thousands of New Zealanders out there who get therapeutic value from medicinal cannabis.

I thought Greg O’Connor made a very important point in his contribution to the debate. Let’s get this right through the Government bill that sets up at least the starting point over the next couple of years, and I suspect beyond as well, through Government consultation and through engagement with this side of the House—because I think there is good-hearted support, as you’ve heard from members on the National side tonight, for a robust regulatory regime that allows people who gain therapeutic value from medicinal marijuana products to use them. But let’s get this right.

Because this bill is so flawed, and so deficient, and because we already have a vehicle in the Parliament as it exists right now, I cannot bring myself to support this bill, worthy as it is. Thank you.

CHLÖE SWARBRICK (Green): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I have only five minutes to address all of the concerns that have been raised throughout this debate, so I will keep this brief, but I would again implore any of the MPs who have risen to voice their conflict and/or potential lack of understanding of the purpose or how this bill would actually work in operation to vote for it, to hear the voices of those New Zealanders who will benefit from it.

I have heard tonight a point raised by many speakers—Chris Bishop the most recent, but they included the likes of Dr Jonathan Coleman—stating that there is no mention of regulation. Greg O’Connor mentioned that this is a wasted opportunity, the State will lose any control to regulate it—Nicky Wagner, as well. I would state that any member who has said that should refer to clause 6 of this bill, which outlines, “prohibiting, limiting, restricting, and imposing conditions on, either generally or in relation to particular cases or classes of case or particular classes of person, the cultivation, administration, supply, use, or possession of medicinal cannabis pursuant to any provision of section 9A:”. That is a provision for a set of regulations to be determined at select committee and during that process by which we will open the door to that conversation with patients, many of whom are currently having access to their medicine making them criminals.

A few people have mentioned that this is outside what other countries and other jurisdictions are doing. I’d note that Canada does have a nominated supplier mentioned in their legislation, and 29 US states—Hawaii included—allow people to nominate someone to grow on their behalf for medicinal purposes. I’d very much like to touch on the point that was raised by my colleague Kiritapu Allan about faith in this system. This here—this vote tonight—is about opening the door to a conversation with patients who would benefit from the use of medicinal cannabis, who, under the Government’s bill, will still be criminalised. It will take at least two years to open up that regulatory scheme that the Government’s bill proposes.

For those concerned about doctors prescribing something that may potentially get people high, I am sorry to tell you that that presently happens with the likes of tramadol and morphine, and for those who are concerned about people smoking for recreational use or otherwise, I’d refer them to the Ministry of Health study on the issue of cannabis, the most recent of which was, unfortunately, undertaken in 2012-13. It found that of nearly 400,000 users of cannabis in New Zealand—400,000—42 percent of people used it for medicinal purposes, including alleviation of pain and nausea. The cat is out of the bags, folks! We are not putting it back in there. As was mentioned by my colleague David Seymour, prohibition here simply is not working.

As was mentioned by both Chris Bishop and Greg O’Connor, we do have an opportunity to get it right, and I think the best way to get that right is to ensure that we have the broadest scope, we have the broadest potential for change, going before select committee, which will happen only if we can vote this through its first reading tonight and send it through to the select committee stage. Prohibition, as I mentioned, is not working, and in many cases we find that good drug law is somewhat counterintuitive. So, again, my final plea tonight is to not stop this conversation before it is started. I know that many of you have received emails, messages, and calls, and had people dropping into your office who have shared their stories with you. Bear that in mind as you vote with your conscience tonight. You have an opportunity to make history. As all of you will know, voting this through its first reading does not guarantee a vote at second reading. It simply opens that door. So don’t shut down this conversation. I implore you to vote for this bill. [Interruption]

SPEAKER: Order! Members will be aware that this is a conscience vote, and I should just remind people of the processes. I will put it to a voice vote, I will declare a result, and if any person wants to have a personal vote, a personal vote will be held.

A personal vote was called for on the question, That the Misuse of Drugs (Medicinal Cannabis and Other Matters) Amendment Bill be now read a first time.

Ayes 47

Noes 73

Motion not agreed to.

Bills

Sentencing (Livestock Rustling) Amendment Bill

First Reading

IAN McKELVIE (National—Rangitīkei): I move, That the Sentencing (Livestock Rustling) Amendment Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Primary Production Committee to consider the bill.

Mr Speaker—or Madam Deputy Speaker; we’ve got a bit of both—the purpose of this bill is to amend the Sentencing Act 2002 to deter people from engaging in livestock rustling by identifying it as an aggravating factor at sentencing. I’m going to start tonight by saying that I would very much have liked to have introduced a bill with more teeth than this one has.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: I’m sorry to interrupt the member, but can those who are leaving the House just have a bit of quiet and respect. Thank you.

IAN McKELVIE: I thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I just thought it wasn’t interesting. I would have very much liked to have introduced a bill with more teeth than this one, but I felt it may have been difficult to get general acceptance of a harder line, which I feel this bill will achieve—a general acceptance, I mean. I hope that that will become part of the discussion during the select committee stage, as I imagine submissions will point to the challenges faced particularly by those farmers who live in more remote parts of our beautiful country and the difficulty in getting a conviction for stock rustling.

There are commonly two types of livestock rustling: one where the odd animal is nicked for the freezer, which seems on the face of it pretty harmless, but nonetheless it’s worth a significant amount of money; and the other, which is organised and well organised, by driving stock from a farm and basically laundering them through a supposedly legitimate business.

Livestock rustling, defined as the theft of livestock from farms or properties, has in recent years become more prevalent and was established—or was estimated—to be costing the farming community over $120 million per year last year. With a lamb now being worth over $150 it’s probably much more than that. So you can see it’s a problem, but it’s not only an economic one, as I will try to illustrate a little later. To quote the Federated Farmers, “This activity is not only a threat to farming businesses but also creates risks to people’s safety in more isolated parts of rural New Zealand as often rustlers are armed and equipped with quite sophisticated tools to assist them.”

I don’t know how many of us in this House know what it’s like being woken in the middle of the night by gunshots in close proximity to your house. That house could be some kilometres from the nearest neighbour. To look out the window only to see vehicle lights just appearing over the hill, to go out not only to find bits of your sheep, deer, steer, or pig lying in the paddock with the best cuts gone down the road—that’s if you’re lucky. If you’re not lucky, you could find a truckload have gone down the road and the truckload could also consist of one’s beehives, or laying hens, which, of course, raises another topic for the select committee: just what is in fact covered as livestock. Livestock in the old days was easy to identify. It no longer is. I can tell you it’s a little scary, very annoying, and, of course, it’s theft by any measure to have your stock taken in the middle of the night.

One could equally go out to find your dog missing, your horse shot—this happened in my home town recently—animals mauled by rustlers’ dogs, and fences cut. It’s frustrating and, at times, devastating for families and individuals. A link can also be found between wilful trespass; poaching, which could involve the removal or killing of wild deer, trout, rabbits, and gamebirds without permission; general theft from farm buildings, all of which are behind farm fences and gates; and stock rustling. I use the farm fences and gates in this context because I see the crime of stock rustling as no different than the crime of burglary, which would most likely be the charge if one were prosecuted for taking something from an urban property or shed. This will be a topic for the select committee to deal with at an appropriate time.

I thought it worth quoting a passage from our distant past and it comes from a book called Ghosts of Otago by Georgiana Andersen and it reads, “Yes, he was involved in some stock rustling thing that went wrong and a shepherd got killed. He’s in the Arrowtown jail but they’re going to move him to Dunedin day after tomorrow. He’s scheduled to hang next Friday.” Lucy said. “I thought you might like the chance to … throw rotten eggs in his cell or something, before they take him away.”

I don’t propose anything or advocate anything quite as drastic as that for the poachers or rustlers of today. But it is an interesting reminder of our distant past and how seriously this crime was taken and the very different types of—I guess—sentences we have nowadays for very similar types of crime. The people who commit these crimes are usually people with some skills, quite a degree of fitness, and people with energy, because you need to have energy to chase livestock around hills in the middle of the night, and you need to have a little bit of dedication as well.

So the point I want to make is I don’t think putting them in prison is the answer, because these people are useful and often have plenty of ability. So I think it would be really quite nice to find another way of punishing these people for the crime—or, well, yeah, the crimes they commit, I guess. After all, energy is required, as I said, to commit these mischiefs, and those people with energy have got a use all over the place. These people also often have a sense of adventure and even remind me of my days as a student and the odd twilight market gardening adventure my fellow students often talked about, at night.

I would like to see the select committee look to giving the courts some unique penalties for these crimes, but that, of course, may be a step too far. For this reason, I’d have liked to have seen powers similar to those included in the Fisheries Act and Wild Animal Control Act included, which would give, or could give authorities the power to seize tools used to commit these crimes. However, I have chosen to leave that option to the select committee to consider. I’m sure if the bill gets through its first reading, a number of submissions will be received on this matter alone.

The statistics, such as they are, make a compelling case for a toughening up of this legislation. And I say “such as they are” as, unfortunately, the police stopped collecting statistics on this type of crime in 2014—this being one of the most compelling reasons for moving, as I have here, to give them more tools for prosecution to succeed and more incentive to follow these crimes with more vigour.

There is over $20 billion worth of livestock farmed in New Zealand and an estimated $120 million are stolen or rustled annually. In a 2016 farmer survey, 26 percent of respondents had stock stolen. In the last five years, 41 percent of those were reported to police, 44 percent of those were further investigated, and 4 percent of them resulted in a court appearance. That’s an interesting statistic in itself.

As I said, 2014 was the last year the police collected statistics, and in that year, 215 cases of livestock theft of over $1,000 were reported; 22 were resolved. In total in that year, 2014, 653 cases were reported and 50 were prosecuted or resolved—not a great success rate, but there are significant difficulties dealing with this type of crime. It’s a very difficult crime to detect, and it’s very difficult to detect the people that commit it. The real reason for that—and it’s also a reason you might ask why so much livestock are stolen in New Zealand, and a lot of it’s not even reported—is because the isolated terrain that we often farm in is a very difficult part of New Zealand to either identify people who are involved in these crimes or, in fact, to understand that the stock has gone missing, for quite some time after they’ve gone missing. That’s not because farmers neglect their stock; it’s just because of the difficult nature of the business we’re involved in.

One of the other big difficulties with stock rustling is identifying the animals stolen and proving that they’ve actually been stolen, or what they are, without suitable paperwork or identification. The ability to identify will be significantly enhanced as our animal traceability methods improve, and that may happen quickly, with a bit luck, but I do think it’s important that we have good traceability methods and processes in place, and it will help with this cause or this particular crime.

In one of the biggest cases reported in New Zealand history, 1,400 lambs were stolen, at an estimated value of $120,000. They were stolen in one night, and, as I explained earlier, you might ask how that could happen, but it can happen quite easily in isolated, rural New Zealand. At the same time, I go back to my point that these people have got to have a bit of energy, a bit of skill, and, frankly, a bit of talent. They’d be much better employed as shepherds than doing what they do, but, none the less, that’s what happens. There was also, in very recent times, the Canterbury case of the large number of cows that, I guess, went missing but, in fact, effectively, that’s the same thing as rustling.

So it’s a very difficult crime to detect. It’s a difficult crime for the police to prosecute, and the more incentive we can give the police to prosecute that and the more options we can give the courts, in my view, to punish them without necessarily—as I said, I don’t think locking them up is the answer. So I hope that the select committee will get the opportunity, as a result of this debate tonight, to consider all those factors as this bill moves forward.

So, Madam Deputy Speaker, thank you for the opportunity to present this bill at first reading to the House, and I’ll listen with interest to further discussion tonight.

KIERAN McANULTY (Labour): I am delighted to speak on this bill, and to stand and speak not only on the bill but in support of the bill. This is an important bill, and I say to the member who put it forward, well done, sir. Good on you for taking the initiative and putting this issue—which is important to rural communities—in front of this House. I reassure you, don’t listen to those in your caucus that may ridicule you. The Labour Party has your back, comrade. We are right behind you on this issue. It is vitally important that this House sends a message to rural communities that the issues that are important to them are important to us, and so this bill tweaks the Sentencing Act 2002 to make livestock rustling, or the theft of livestock, an aggravating factor at the point of sentencing for the crime.

The bill is indeed a short one. But, as my old man said to me once, a short one is a good one, and the issue here is large.

I’m proud to be part of a party that takes a big-picture view of the issues facing a vital industry, which is our agriculture industry. We support this amendment to the Sentencing Act but I would also note the Labour Party’s commitment to the big-picture elements of addressing the crime itself and giving a lot of attention to the well-being of the industry generally by focusing on it in a different way.

The rural communities in New Zealand are under strain—I touched on this in an earlier speech today—but they are deserving of focus and of our energy in the House. The bill is aimed at deterring people from engaging in livestock rustling by identifying it as an aggravating factor in sentencing, and I imagine that it is that particular factor that might garner and attract particular attention in select committee. I welcome that because it is indeed an opportunity for members in this House to gain further insight into why this should be considered an aggravating factor.

Now, section 9(1) of the Sentencing Act 2002 provides generally that “In sentencing or otherwise dealing with an offender the court must take into account the following aggravating factors to the extent that they are applicable in the case:”, and it goes on to list quite a few, but there are a couple that would be particularly applicable to the theft of livestock. Mr McKelvie touched on the impacts of livestock rustling. It might be easy to ridicule this on first sight, but livestock is the lifeblood of a farm. Indeed, if it were not for livestock, there would be no industry. It is an asset to that industry, and it should be treated as seriously as any other core asset to any other business.

Labour supports the bill and strongly supports the underlying goal of deterring livestock rustling, but it is important that we also take this opportunity to identify the underlying causes of any increase in this particular crime. The questions, we propose, at select committee must be asked as to why has livestock rustling increased over the last few years, what are the driving causes behind it, and what has caused this issue to come here in the first place. We are committed to asking these questions, for this is a Government that is committed to rural communities. Indeed, we are a Government that reinstated the Minister for Rural Communities. Be it rural health or rural infrastructure, any issue that might be a national issue has a particular and different lens when looking through it from a rural perspective.

Hon David Bennett: Who’s that Minister?

KIERAN McANULTY: He’s—you’re a big fan. You talked about him earlier today.

This Government, by supporting this bill, is demonstrating that it does not matter which corner an idea comes from. It shouldn’t matter whose idea it is. If it’s a goodie, we should get behind it. As it happens, the bloke that came up with this idea just so happens to be a top bloke, and I am very proud to stand here and put forward the Government’s perspective in supporting you. You might not be very quick around the cricket field, Mr McKelvie, but if the cricket ball comes straight to you, I have confidence that you can stop it. I have only one example to go by, and that was when you dealt to the diplomats when we played them a couple of weeks ago. But I do acknowledge you for bringing this forward.

I want to provide a couple of examples to give members here that might not be familiar with the concept of livestock rustling just a further insight into this. There is a concern that this is becoming more prevalent. It does affect both commercial and small farms, and so we acknowledge the component within this bill that says it is not just commercial livestock but also smallholders’ livestock as well.

It is not just rural electorates that suffer this. In fact, it was the Minister of Finance—the MP for Wellington Central—who was the most recent Labour MP to deal with a situation of livestock rustling. There was once a cow stolen from Mākara Beach, and Grant Robertson went out and sorted that out. The case is still open, however, and he has asked me to put forward to the nation that if anybody has any information, they are to contact his office directly. If this bill had been in place then, then whoever committed that crime would be liable, regardless of the number of livestock on a farm. Just last year, there was an extreme example of 1,400 lambs taken from one property in Whanganui.

A survey of 1,000 farms conducted recently demonstrated that 26 percent of those respondents had dealt with some issue of livestock rustling at some point.

Hon Ruth Dyson: 26 percent?

KIERAN McANULTY: 26 percent. There are also reports that say that up to 60 percent of those livestock rustling cases go under-reported. The question I pose here is that given the nature and the importance of this and how much emphasis our rural communities and our primary industries place on this matter, why would 60 percent of cases go under-reported? Is it because our police, up until recently, have been underfunded? That’s a question I think we should explore. Is it the case that many rural communities do no longer have a police presence within a 45-minute to an hour’s drive?

The underestimated impact of this goes beyond the particular farmer or the particular livestock owner. It’s also about our economy and our brand as a nation. Given that it’s estimated that $120 million per year is the impact on our farming community, and given that just on 1 February last year, the Guardian produced stories about “Backyard butchers and vigilante farmers: stock rustling on the rise in New Zealand”, talking about the illegal meat industry, what impact is this having on our brand as a “clean, green” world-class producer? Can we take the risk that with these stories going overseas—how will this affect consumer confidence in our products? It’s important that we do take this issue seriously, because if consumers cannot have confidence that the New Zealand meat they are eating has gone through the proper processes in a safe and legal manner, the impact on our economy is potentially significantly higher than the $120 million quoted in the Federated Farmers research that I touched on earlier.

I think we should also consider poverty as a driver. We all know that poverty can be a driver of crime in general, but given the nature of this crime and that livestock is obviously a food source, we cannot dismiss the impact of the situation that many in our communities find themselves in—the impoverished position that they find themselves in, which breeds desperation. If we’re going to be looking at this issue, we also need to be touching on the drivers of this issue.

In conclusion, the Labour Party is comfortable that the importance of the safety and well-being of this community of farmers and the importance that their livestock hold within the primary industries warrants an amendment to the Sentencing Act to recognise that this type of offending is damaging in many different ways. We look forward to hearing more about the issue of livestock rustling as this bill progresses through the House. I congratulate Ian McKelvie for putting it forward. The Labour Party supports you in this measure, sir. Thank you.

Hon NATHAN GUY (National—Ōtaki): This is a great occasion to salute Ian McKelvie for the fine work that he has done getting this bill in front of the Parliament this evening, a bill that he got feedback from in his own electorate, where 50 percent of the lambs that are processed in New Zealand come from within two hours of Feilding, predominantly from his very large electorate of the Rangitīkei. He’s heard the drums beating in rural heartland, and he’s done something about it. Indeed, if I was fortunate enough to have been the Minister for Primary Industries under this Government—and now we sit in Opposition—I would have indeed been very keen to have taken this bill on as a Government bill. So I’m delighted that Ian McKelvie had some luck, got it out of the ballot, and tonight we are debating it.

I’m sure that there will be widespread support across the Parliament for this bill, because it has economic considerations for rural New Zealand. We’ve heard, from various speakers tonight, $120 million; I would say that, really, that is the tip of the iceberg, because there will be a whole lot of farmers that don’t bother to report a single loss or a couple of sheep, where, indeed, the boundary gate might have come open near the road or the boundary fence may have been cut right next to the road, and they could be very small-scale, but we’ve had numerous evidence in the last few years where there has been large-scale stock rustling. I know there will be a debate in the select committee about what the appropriate penalties are, and I’m sure we’ll get evidence from the Ministry of Justice, from the New Zealand Police, and the like. But, certainly, this is a bill that is worthy of detailed scrutiny by the Primary Production Committee, and I look forward to playing my constructive role on that committee when we hear from submitters.

I heard a very humorous story recently, when a school principal mate of mine recounted a story back to me about primary school—what we used to term—morning talks. I think it’s now “news on the mat”, where the kids go round, often on a Monday morning, and talk about what happened on the weekend. This one particular story was quite appropriate for this bill that we are debating this evening. It went something like this: “Oh, well, dad was driving. He went off the road. We went through the fence. We went down the bank a bit. The car was close to rolling, but it was OK because I was in the back seat and on either side of me I had these two sheep. So I, sort of, bounced from one ewe to another, and they were in full fleece.” We know that there are numerous examples of this up and down the country, where people for whatever reason think that it’s their right to cut the boundary fence next to the road or open the gate and take what is actually a personal property right, where farmers work hard to produce top-quality livestock. It’s not for other people to walk in there with their rifle or their knife and butcher the livestock in the corner of the paddock.

Actually, when you think about this issue, when you look at it large-scale, it’s not all to do with rural policing. We know there are issues to do with that, and the Government is addressing it, and the National Party had a plan, also, to have more policing rural communities. But, actually, people need to put their own hand up. When you think about processing a large number of livestock that have been, I guess, taken illegally, well, often it takes a stock transporting company. Often, it will involve a stock agent or a meat processing person or, indeed, a pet food processing outfit as well. So I guess in rural communities it’s important to have good intel.

The other part of this bill that will be discussed, no doubt, through the Primary Production Committee is the role that modern technology can play, whether it’s a camera where farmers can pool their resources and pay for a camera on a no-exit rural road to understand transport movements, people movements, in and out—also thinking about the use of drones and whether in future electronic ear tags can have a greater role. All of these things, I’m sure, will come up in the select committee. Once again, I acknowledge Ian McKelvie for bringing this bill to the House—a job well done.

KIRITAPU ALLAN (Labour): It’s an absolute delight and pleasure to rise and speak in support of this member’s bill. To Ian McKelvie, the member that introduced it to this House—I commend you, good sir.

For those of us from rural communities who are out there in some of the regions that don’t get as much attention as the bigger cities with the lights, we know how hard times can be, particularly for those that are engaged in the primary industries in very remote regions. For example, up on the East Coast, the primary production sector is the backbone of our economic survival.

I guess that the lawyer in me has a few twinges when I’m looking at a piecemeal approach to law development around sentencing, and I’d like to see this type of legislation included into—or this particular point that the member is trying to address here, which is really the security of our regions, I’d like to see as part of a more comprehensive approach to our criminal justice law and sentencing law evolution. But I do acknowledge that there is a particular concern within our rural communities that they’ve simply—[Bell rung]

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): Oh, sorry.

KIRITAPU ALLAN: I was going to say, “Well, that was the quickest”—oh, jiggers. I know that I sometimes lose track of time—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): I apologise to the member. I was going for the mike. Sorry.

KIRITAPU ALLAN: —but that really was quick.

So I probably want to just touch on a couple of points of consideration. Up there on the East Coast, we’re really seeing an increase where the margins have become so slim for many of our particularly family-based industries, as opposed to the corporate farmers. But for a lot of our smaller farmers, who are counting every penny and every cent that is made and spent on their farms, when there is a mass culling or an unlawful acquisition of stock taken from farms, that has massive implications for that family. What we are starting to see—and I hear it within my electorate, at the very least—is that times have been pretty tough for a lot of our farmers.

In particular, due to the stress of maintaining a number of our farms, we have a very concerning rise in mental health incidents amongst my farming population. I particularly just want to draw attention to the work of the Tai Rāwhiti agricultural women’s collective, who have been really campaigning around just how tough things have been in respect of small farmers who are counting their pennies but not quite making ends meet.

So, I guess from a pragmatic perspective, I do support the passage of this legislation. I guess my cautions are, though—and it was one of our sergeants up in Gisborne. He was making a comment in respect of stock theft about a year ago, and it was coming up to Christmas. He said, “You know, this is a time when a lot of stock is taken—up around Labour Day and these various statutory holidays, but in particular, getting close to Christmas.” Whilst we are making considerations in respect of the unlawful acquisition of stock from our farms, I too just want to make the note that things have been pretty hard out there in the regions. That doesn’t justify poor decisions and doing the wrong thing, but the theft spikes are occurring—well, this is what my local policeman was saying, anyway. They’re happening close to Christmas because of the burdens on those families.

So I guess, as we are considering the passage of this legislation—particularly in regard to the aggravating and mitigating factors in relation to our sentencing—there are a range of considerations that we need to take into account. But I have full faith in our Primary Production Committee that they will indeed nut those particulars out as this bill passes through the House.

So, to the member, thank you for bringing these issues of great concern to our regions to the House’s full attention. I commend this bill to the select committee. Thank you.

MARK PATTERSON (NZ First): I also congratulate the member for Rangitīkei, Ian McKelvie, on bringing this very sensible bill to the House. This is a serious issue, it is a growing issue, and with the cost of meat that is in the supermarkets at retail level, it is only going to continue to grow without some specific attention.

Making a crime of livestock rustling an aggravating factor in sentencing and elevating its seriousness I think is a timely reminder, and New Zealand First totally supports this. In fact, I can reveal—the Opposition were very interested before the break in the 38-page, or was it the 33-page, document, but I can tell you that one of the policy development programmes that we had was indeed this very issue. So we support this totally, and we would, in fact, take it a little bit further. I think the member talked about confiscation of equipment—utes and trucks and whatever—and we would certainly support elevating that up. We probably wouldn’t go as far as capital punishment, which it may have been in the past, but I think that’s only the moderate members of this House. I think if you went into some parts of rural New Zealand and asked them, they probably would advocate for that. It is something that really concerns rural New Zealand.

The financial scale of this already has been mentioned by several speakers. The Federated Farmers survey said it was $120 million a year. I think that’s probably conservative. Let’s put some scale around that. The average sheep and beef farm, in the beef and lamb estimates for this year, will make $84,000. That’s before tax and before personal drawings. The average farmer is not wealthy. Yes, they have a landholding that holds some value, but their cash flow and their cash in the bank at the end of the year are often pretty thin, and that’s in a year when prices are quite elevated. Last year it was only $69,000, and as we know, in many parts of the country, including where we are in Otago and Southland, and I know in Taranaki and previously on the West Coast, it’s been very, very dry. There are other mitigating factors as well that are putting financial pressure on, and this is just another one that we can’t countenance.

This is an insidious crime. Farmers are largely defenceless. Properties are often large, they are remote, and they are isolated. The average age of sheep and beef farmers is 58, so you know through that that there are a number of farmers in their 60s and 70s and 80s living out in these remote places.

These are traumatic crimes, when people come on to your property, often armed. You can’t lock your gate. They’ll just cut the wires, as the Hon Nathan Guy just referred to before. My elderly neighbour has actually adopted some of the technology that was referred to before. He’s set up some infrared lights—he’s lost some stock—and that causes stress in itself because possums or whatever trip them off as well. So he’s constantly on edge with this technology and this threat. As has been witnessed before, there were the 1,400 lambs in Whanganui. I quote the farmer involved there: “It totally mentally debilitates you. Constantly making sure that everything’s alright. … I’m a mentally tough person, most farmers are. But I’m human also—I’m still struggling with it.”

As has been noted previously, 26 percent of farmers are thought to have been affected, but I would say most of us don’t know. I wouldn’t have a clue. It’s hard. When you’re mustering, you’re always missing a few here and there in a gully or through a fence or into another mob. It’s just hard to know exactly how many you’ve got, so you could lose within the margin of error and not know. So the 60 percent that don’t report—I would say that on top of that, there’s plenty of us that have been victims that would never know.

It shows how important the 1,800 extra police that this Government is committed to is. We need to be out in these rural areas in some scale with a police force to be able to deal with these crimes. These are now sophisticated crime syndicates and they deserve our attention. They are also armed on many occasions, and I would say that this is a preventative measure as well. Someone is going to get killed at some point.

So we look forward to progressing this measure through the House. Thank you.

Hon DAVID BENNETT (National—Hamilton East): Thank you. I’d just like to thank Ian McKelvie for bringing this legislation through to the House. Ian is a very respected farmer in his own right and has given a lot in his career to agriculture in New Zealand. From his days looking at FMG Insurance and Agricultural and Marketing Research and Development Trust and on to his political career in local and central government, he’s a very well respected farmer that has the interests of his community and farmers in general. He will be remembered in the farming communities as somebody that has been a strong advocate in a very nice and peaceful way, and friendly way, but effective in what he’s done. And this is another step in his process.

Rt Hon David Carter: Just reminding you, he’s still alive.

Hon DAVID BENNETT: Now Mr Carter’s sitting there to take a little bit of the credit. But, no, Mr McKelvie, well done and congratulations.

Ian McKelvie: Could be my father, David.

Hon DAVID BENNETT: Yes, yes. So this bill—it’s great to see that there is support across the House as well. I’d just like to thank the Labour and New Zealand First parties that have spoken, for their kind words to Ian McKelvie but also for their support for the bill. I think that’s a good sign that we have that connection with these issues on the other side of the House as well. So we thank you for that support and look forward to that continuing through the select committee process and as we go through the rest of the parliamentary process.

It’s important that, I think, this House is seen as united in something like this, because it is a genuine interest and an issue that many farming communities and, increasingly, urban communities will find is something that they will have to deal with as well. I just wanted to touch on how that will actually happen over time. A lot of the examples that we’ve heard of today from the earlier speakers have been about farms in remote areas where there have been fences cut and stock taken, and generally on quite a large scale. But in areas closer to urban environments it is also a very big issue. It can be an issue that not only is about missing stock but it actually can be quite a difficult environmental issue to deal with as well if stock are killed on the premises or are taken away. In a difficult area, like close to an urban environment, if there are fences cut and there is the prospect of danger to those other people that are using roads and other access points it can be a very serious issue beyond just the stock rustling that is taking effect at that time.

Also, with changing land use you’re actually seeing that there’s a different way that stock rustling may actually be occurring and it might be quite good to have a look, in a wider scale, at some of our horticultural industries. You often hear of avocado theft these days, where people go into orchards and steal avocados.

Hon Nathan Guy: Beehives.

Hon DAVID BENNETT: Yes, and beehives are another example.

Hon Member: A bit trickier.

Hon DAVID BENNETT: It is real, it is happening, and you are seeing a change in some of those agricultural and horticultural areas where there is a change.

But the essence of it is that there must be an intention to steal. This is not an offence where somebody is in a shop, you know in the supermarket, they’re poor and they’re hungry and they take something because it’s there and they want it at that point. This generally involves a very intentional act. It is something that involves somebody taking time to actually work out where the stock are, how to access them, how to take them, and to find an end point to sell that stock to or to dispose of them. So it is a very intentional crime that is at a high level, and it deserves to have that high level of sentencing then, because somebody has taken it up that scale of consideration in exercising that activity.

I think it’s also important to look at the increasing value of stock. As we look at more value-add in what we produce, you’re going to get higher-value stock, stock of a higher quality that actually are more vulnerable to stock rustling over time. This is about protecting farmers that want to make those next steps in the generational change of agriculture, so that we move on to those higher-value products, we move on to that higher-value stock. It gives them a little bit of protection as they make those changes in their business. Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker.

GARETH HUGHES (Green): Kia ora, Mr Assistant Speaker. Ngā mihi nui ki a koutou. Kia ora. I rise to support this legislation, to vote it to the select committee.

Looking into it, it’s pretty astonishing that last summer, near Wanganui, somehow, 1,400 lambs were taken from a paddock. It’s quite incredible, because it would’ve taken maybe a couple of hours, definitely involved a couple of trucks, essentially, happening in plain sight—simply staggering. I can understand why it is such a worry to rural communities. When you see the estimate of $120 million of costs, when you take into account the isolated, rural nature of many of these properties that have been discussed in this debate, I can understand how it’s a real worry to people living in rural communities.

Looking into some Federated Farmers of New Zealand data, what we can see is that as a response, 38 percent of farmers have installed sensor lights, 20 percent have gone towards security cameras, and 35 percent have done practical things like moving their dog kennels to their sheds. On the other side of the coin, we also know that 60 percent don’t apply locks, which I think is the New Zealand we all grew up in, believe in, and want to see going forward, where you can have trust in your colleagues, your citizens, and your community—you can leave the gate open, you can leave the door open, and you won’t get robbed.

Now, many dairy owners in urban communities are probably listening to this debate tonight and saying, “Well, what about us?”, because we’ve all heard the terrifying stories of dairies and other retail outfits that have seen violent robberies. We see retail data showing retail crimes in the order of $1.2 billion a year—a huge issue. So while we’re supporting this bill to the first reading, we have to make the case in the select committee why this should be singled out as above the other communities, and I look forward to hearing from the member Ian McKelvie.

What we haven’t heard is the existing penalties and how they’re ineffective. In fact, I don’t believe anyone’s raised it. We need to make the case why it needs to be a specific requirement in the Sentencing Act 2002, because what I would point out is that there’s about a dozen existing requirements in the Sentencing Act 2002, for example, if the offence involved actual threatened violence; the use of a weapon; particular cruelty, for example; was vulnerable because of any other factor known to the offender; the issue of premeditation; the nature and extent of the connection between the offending and the offender’s participation in an organised crime group. Now, I raise these because what we’ve heard in the arguments for why we need a specific livestock rustling penalty is that, sometimes, weapons are used—that’s already in the legislation. Sometimes, it’s organised criminal groups—that’s already in the legislation. Sometimes, it’s premeditated—that’s already in the legislation. So we’ll be asking the member and we’ll be asking the submitters, the Ministry of Justice, and the select committee why we need to add a specific one.

Now, David Bennett raised the example of people taking avocados. Should we add avocado rustling as part of this? We heard it in the speech from that member. Dairy owners will be asking, “Why aren’t we included as an aggravating factor under the Sentencing Act 2002?” Now, we’re supporting it because we want to have that debate—little bit rich after the last debate we just had on the medicinal cannabis bill, but let’s have that debate.

What I want to ask in that select committee is why existing sentences have been ineffective. We haven’t seen evidence that extending the sentences, harsher criminal penalties, acts as a deterrent. When the evidence doesn’t show that, why would it happen in this case? So we look forward to the submitters appearing in front of the select committee. We are glad it’s going to go to the select committee, but the question this Parliament’s got to ask ourselves is: is it actually passing an effective bill that’s going to make a difference, that’s going to go above existing criterion legislation, or, really, is it just about trying to look good?

JO LUXTON (Labour): Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker. I’m really delighted to take a call on this bill, the Sentencing (Livestock Rustling) Amendment Bill. I too want to thank Ian McKelvie for bringing this bill to the House, and commend him for it.

This is something that’s had quite an impact on the people in Rangitata, the electorate where I live. I’m also really looking forward to having this bill come before the Primary Production Committee.

People out there may not be aware, and I certainly wasn’t until I looked into it further, but the issue of livestock rustling costs the farming community around $120 million per year. As the Hon Nathan Guy alluded to earlier, that probably really is just the tip of the iceberg because so many do not report, or as Mark Patterson alluded to as well, some people aren’t always even aware that stock has been taken.

This bill is a small and uncomplicated bill, but one that I think is really quite necessary, given the fact that we are seeing an increased rise in the cases of cattle rustling. This type of activity not only poses a threat to farming businesses, but potentially puts innocent people’s lives at risk. The purpose of this bill is to further deter people from undertaking the illegal activity of livestock rustling. The way that the bill does this is by identifying livestock rustling as an aggravating factor at sentencing. For the purposes of this bill, livestock has been defined as “animals kept as part of an agricultural operation, whether for commercial purposes or for private use.” It is good to see that this bill not only covers large farming operations but will also benefit small-time farming operations, or those who perhaps have lifestyle blocks with a few animals.

I want to tell a story of a young farmer I know, called John Totty, from Staveley in mid-Canterbury, who recently bought and took over his family farm, which is a huge undertaking in itself and also an expensive one. John had 14 calves stolen, at an approximate value of $10,000. Now some people might think that 14 calves is not that much, but the loss of these 14 calves had big implications. It was a real kick in the guts for a young man trying to make a real go of it.

These calves were Jersey calves, which are less common in the South Island, and they had a high breeding worth, through AI, and were actually replacement heifers—that is, replacement stock for breeding the following year. To replace these is no easy feat. John would have quite likely had to pay double the cost of his loss if he was to buy in-calf heifers to replace his loss. I’m not sure if many people realise that trying to insure stock for theft and death is hugely expensive, and we all know that it is a reality that farmers have stock die for various reasons. The more that die, the more claims you make, your insurance premiums will go up, therefore making it unviable to insure. Some insurance companies will only insure animals that are housed, which isn’t really that practical.

Because these were Jersey calves, he had to buy replacements from the North Island. Friesian cows are the common breed used in the South Island for dairying, not Jersey. So this ended up costing John far more than rearing his own replacement stock on the farm.

But it’s not only the financial impact. It is the psychological impact. A farm is often large and open or remote, and neighbours aren’t close by. It’s scary to know that someone has been wandering around your property, possibly armed with a weapon. I would find this really frightening, and I know people must surely be left feeling quite violated. We are supposed to feel safe in our homes.

The other thing to think about is that cattle rustling is most likely premeditated. As mentioned by the Hon David Bennett, this is not a crime by chance. A perpetrator would have scoped out the property, to know what livestock was there and how to get to it. Possibly it’s even someone that knows the farm or property.

I am happy to commend this bill to the House, to ensure that hard-working people like John can have the confidence that there is an additional deterrent in place to discourage livestock rustling. So I commend this bill to the House.

TIM VAN DE MOLEN (National—Waikato): Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker. I would like to start by commending Ian McKelvie for bringing this bill before the House. It’s a great opportunity to strengthen this for the rural space.

It’s also a privilege to follow on from the team of fantastic farmers we have on this side—firstly Ian McKelvie, then the Hon Nathan Guy, and the Hon David Bennett, all good farmers in their own right. So it’s a privilege to be following on from them, as the next speaker for the National Party.

I’d also like to thank the other parties across the House for supporting this bill through its first reading. Whilst there may well be some additional questions that they would like to see answered, I look forward to helping to answer those through the select committee process and I am indeed looking forward to having this presented before us at the Primary Production Committee.

What we’re talking about here is an aggravating factor at sentencing. Rustling should be an aggravating factor at sentencing. I think it’s an appropriate reflection of the escalating issue that we’re seeing in rural communities across New Zealand. We’ve heard a number of factors tonight that might potentially influence why someone may or may not do that, and the types of rustling that we’re seeing—whether it be the random one or two animals taken near the side of the road, or a more structured, cohesive stealing of a large number of animals. Regardless of that, the victims in either case are, rightly, left devastated. This is a violation of their property, their rights, and I think this is an appropriate way to acknowledge that.

This aggravating factor for rustling in particular is, I think, a good opportunity to acknowledge the remoteness of rural New Zealand and, by imposing a harsher penalty and creating this as an aggravating factor, it helps to perhaps alleviate some of the issues around that remoteness, the isolation, that might perhaps not deter criminals otherwise. So this could be that extra catalyst to make them question their decision around what they are doing.

It helps gives victims confidence to report the crime as well. This will be an additional deterrent to those criminals, and those victims then, hopefully, will have the confidence to step forward and say, “This is not right. This shouldn’t be happening. Let’s report it.” You can have confidence, as we’ve heard, that there are indeed many cases going unreported at this stage that should indeed be reported in the future.

It can be hard to defend against, as a farmer. When you have a big property, you don’t necessarily know exactly how many stock are in each paddock at any particular time. You can have the odd losses, so it may even be possible to have been a victim without realising it, as well.

Aside from that, though, it’s important to create this opportunity so that police can act. Whilst we had a great programme in place, rolling out additional police rurally to help with this, 140 extra rural police were coming on board—it’s great to see the Government continuing to focus on increasing police numbers. I look forward to seeing the distribution of those across rural areas. It will be a great way for them to start to pick up on some of these issues and progress a stronger action plan in this space to help reduce the incidence of livestock rustling.

Looking at the higher-scale end of it, in terms of the big numbers, I think there’s also a potential food safety risk here. If we’re talking about people taking significant numbers of animals from a property, where are those animals going? How are they being processed? How are they being sold or transitioned into the market? What’s happening with them, what are the processes being managed around that and the potential food safety risks that that could present as well?

Of course, we’ve also heard about the other areas in rural New Zealand, that there are issues with horticultural crime, apiculture, as well, fuels and bikes, chainsaws—all these areas. Rural areas within New Zealand are subject to crime, like the rest of the country, but taking into account this aggravating factor of livestock rustling at sentencing is, I think, a great way to help provide that additional deterrent in some of those more remote parts of New Zealand.

Again, I’d just like to commend Ian McKelvie for bringing this bill forward, and I thank the other parties for their support. I commend it to the House.

RINO TIRIKATENE (Labour—Te Tai Tonga): Tēnā koe, Mr Assistant Speaker. It’s a great pleasure for me to stand in support of this bill. I too would like to add my congratulations to the member for Rangitīkei, Ian McKelvie, a fine former chair of the Primary Production Committee, for bringing this bill to the House.

This is a very real issue that is affecting farmers, agribusinesses, the length and breadth of the country. It’s very welcome—it’s very welcome. I’m particularly looking forward to the submissions that will come, so we can, hopefully, maybe flesh it out, add further scope to the bill, perhaps, to ensure that we’re actually achieving what we want to achieve, which is to deter and to, appropriately, I guess, punish offenders, thieves—stock theft.

So I do appreciate the contribution from Mr Hughes in terms of looking at what happens at the moment, in terms of the criminal justice system and dealing with stock thieves in the court system. But I’d also like to acknowledge Mr McKelvie for, maybe, encouraging us to look at the scope of this bill to include further offences—such as, perhaps, theft of beehives, which we know is quite a big issue for the mānuka honey industry—and also the issue of forfeiture of property involved in the commissioning of these offences. I think some merit could be had by examining the provisions of the Fisheries Act, in particular sections 255, 255A, and 256, which impose forfeiture of property for those fish thieves—to use the term—which is, I guess, equivalent to stock thieves or livestock rustling. So I think there is some merit in, perhaps, looking at those provisions and seeing if an equivalent type of provision could apply in this particular bill. For all intents and purposes, the impact is the same, and why not forfeit property that is used to commit theft of other people’s property and their livestock?

I look at some of these examples: we are seeing massive, premeditated, sophisticated operations. It’s not just the odd ewe for a kai; we’re looking at, in one case in 2016, in the Rangitata-Ashburton district, 500 cattle disappearing—500 cattle. That is an amazingly large number of stock to just disappear, so in those instances we are looking at quite sophisticated operations, and there is a lot of profiteering happening along the supply chain from those that are involved in committing these offences. So I think looking at forfeiture provisions, which have been raised by Federated Farmers, could also be of benefit for inclusion in this bill.

What we’re wanting to do with this bill is add that deterrent, and make it an aggravating factor for those that are apprehended and put through the criminal justice system and are ultimately sentenced. But also we’re wanting to bolster the already brave efforts that are being undertaken by the rural communities themselves, and I’d like to acknowledge the CCTV cameras capturing number plates and the like—all of those initiatives that are going on around the country to try and apprehend offenders and deter offenders. Hopefully, this bill will be just another step, another element that will ultimately deter those offenders so we can protect our livestock and so we can add to the wealth of our rural communities, our exporters, and Aotearoa in general. Kia ora tātou.

IAN McKELVIE (National—Rangitīkei): Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker. Well, I just want to, firstly, thank all those parties for the support of this bill at first reading and, particularly, all those members who’ve made a contribution to the first reading tonight. I have to say that I think anyone who was listening to this debate tonight and any farmers would have to take great heart from the knowledge that all the members who have spoken tonight displayed. I thought that was pretty impressive, and I congratulate everyone who has spoken tonight, because I think the understanding of the issues is extremely good.

I want to comment on a couple of things that were talked about tonight. One was the issue that Gareth Hughes raised, and one of the conundrums or quandary*ies I faced when I introduced this bill was the issue of theft versus burglary. The challenge with that is that if you take something from a dairy, it’s burglary; if you take something from a farm, it’s theft. That’s one of the challenges that the select committee will need to deal with, because that’s where you get the difference in the sentencing. I’d argue that a fence is the same as a locked door, basically. I can’t see the difference. That’s one of the strange pieces of law that are a little difficult for me to get my head around.

I think the other thing, and Rino Tirikatene and a number of other speakers have touched on the fact, is that there are a number of other factors that come into stock rustling, and the same type of people commit so many of those crimes or offences. I think that’s an interesting topic for the select committee to deal with as well.

I want to thank the Labour Party for having my back, and I just remind Iain Lees-Galloway that the next time when there’s some election debate there are friends who’ve got my back. He often tries to have another bit of me—ha, ha! But I’ll remind him next time we’re stuck in some hall somewhere. But I do think it was pretty impressive tonight. Kiri Allan talked about the big lights of the city, and, of course, the interesting thing about the Rangitīkei is we have the most sheep in New Zealand and no traffic lights at all, so we are a remote part of New Zealand.

I won’t speak any further. I think it was a very good debate tonight, and I thank everyone who contributed to it, and congratulate them on the part they’ve played. Thank you.

Bill read a first time.

Bill referred to the Primary Production Committee.

Bills

Local Government (Freedom of Access) Amendment Bill

First Reading

BRETT HUDSON (National): I move, That the Local Government (Freedom of Access) Amendment Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Justice Committee to consider the bill.

I’d like to begin by acknowledging the member who introduced this bill into the ballot and, should it progress through further stages, will be in charge of the bill: Mr Jonathan Young, MP for New Plymouth. He has put a great deal of effort into addressing issues that he has both seen within his own electorate and observed across New Zealand. This is a delicate sort of a measure that seeks to strike a balance around the often competing rights between parties in the exercise of democracy.

Freedom of speech is a critical foundation of our democracy and it must be protected. In The Friends of Voltaire, Evelyn Beatrice Hall wrote, “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” Those words speak to the very essence of freedom of speech—that such freedom is neither bound nor constrained in its exercise by the agreement to it by others. That essence notwithstanding, there are times when, in the pursuit of one’s goals, people can step, and have stepped, beyond the line where their pursuit of freedom has impinged upon the freedom of others, and that is what this bill is about. This bill seeks to better balance the rights of councils to protect property from being interfered with and to ensure that communities have freedom of access to lands that councils are responsible for administering, while ensuring the rights of members of the public to express their opinions in the form of protests and demonstrations on such land.

The New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990 guarantees citizens the rights to seek, receive, and impart information and opinions of any kind in any form, and the right to freedom of peaceful assembly. Those rights can be limited only if doing so is demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society. The exercise of such rights by protesters who erect structures and tents on council-administered land has been seen by some councils as akin to camping, something that not only prohibits the freedom of others to access the affected areas but also may present a health hazard. Such councils have, in some instances, resolved that that should not be permitted behaviour through by-laws.

Unfortunately, there is some ambiguity in the enforcement of such by-laws and trespass notices, particularly in instances where freedoms of speech and peaceful assembly are involved, and I will offer a couple of examples. Firstly—

Matt Doocey: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. Can I just raise a procedural matter? I’ve just been advised by the Clerk around where this member’s bill will go. We’ve got an issue that the speaker at the moment—if he sits down without correcting this issue, it’s very hard to unwind, so that’s why I’ve taken this point of order now. I just want to clarify from the speaker whether this member’s bill will go to the Governance and Administration Committee, which the Clerk has been advised, or the Justice Committee, which he instructed at the start of his contribution.

BRETT HUDSON: Speaking to the point of order, may I have, please, a moment just to confer with my colleague, which may help to resolve this matter?

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): Again, I’ll take some advice.

BRETT HUDSON: I’d just like to confirm for the House that the committee that I have nominated in my speech is the committee that is intended.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): Can you repeat that?

BRETT HUDSON: The committee that I nominated for consideration, which was the Justice Committee, is the committee that is intended.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): The member will need to seek a point of order to change the original statement.

BRETT HUDSON: No, I said it in the speech.

Matt Doocey: That is the original—the Clerk just raised it.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): Sorry.

BRETT HUDSON: Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker. So, again, on the example—the Dunedin City Council issued a trespass notice against Occupy Dunedin participants in early November 2011. The police issued—

Hon Ruth Dyson: Is Governance and Administration poorly chaired? Is that the problem with it?

BRETT HUDSON: Well, I don’t trust the chair of that committee, Ms Dyson! We need impartiality in this matter. Dunedin City Council issued a trespass notice against Occupy Dunedin participants in early November 2011. The police issued a statement the following day, and I will quote, “Any power to trespass people protesting in a public place must be exercised reasonably and balance rights and freedoms. These are the issues we are currently working through with the council.” The area commander said that. He also said, “We understand the wider community’s frustration and recognise the competing interests who use this space. However we live in a democracy and we need to be sure that any power to trespass people protesting in a public space is exercised reasonably and lawfully.”

In a similar vein—around the same time, actually—there was also an Occupy protest in Wellington. A protest that was supposedly to last only a week lasted for over 100 days and took over one month to resolve after the Wellington City Council issued the first notice to have those particular protesters move on. The real point here is that the uncertainty of the application and enforcement of law, particularly council by-laws and trespass notices, in this area impedes authorities maintaining the balance of rights and freedoms for all parties.

The purpose of the bill is to ensure communities have freedom of access to land that councils are responsible for administering by preventing persons from obstructing, impeding, or preventing an enforcement officer or local authority agent from carrying out their statutory functions, duties, or other tasks required of them, including by refusing to provide particulars or providing false or insufficient particulars, and to widen the scope in which any enforcement officer may remove or seize property.

It is important to note, despite interjections from across the other side, that this bill does not infringe on the right to peacefully protest. It ensures the right of members of the public to express their opinions in protests and demonstrations but enables councils to prevent protests from becoming long-term, live-in occupations where tents and structures impede the use of the land by other citizens, potentially causing property damage and health hazards.

I do note that the Attorney-General has issued a report that concluded that the bill does appear to have some inconsistency with section 22 of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act, “Liberty of the person”, such that cannot be justified under section 5 of the Act, on the basis that the power to arrest is arbitrary and that it appears to be without reasonable cause. The Attorney-General says, “In the absence of judicial supervision, for example through issuing a warrant for arrest, [he] cannot conclude that appropriate safeguards exist to mitigate against disproportionality.” I would also note that the Attorney-General goes on to say that the inconsistency could be remedied through limited amendment to the bill. This is clearly an area that the select committee could, and should, investigate further.

In conclusion, the bill seeks to address a delicate balance between the right to protest and the right for citizens to enjoy their public environment in a safe and peaceable manner. This will be an interesting bill to work through should it go to select committee, and I would expect and trust that we would receive a wide range of views at that committee. I ask that parties across this House will send this bill to the select committee so that New Zealanders can have their say. I commend this bill to the House.

Hon NANAIA MAHUTA (Minister of Local Government): In taking a call on the Local Government (Freedom of Access) Amendment Bill, I want to set out quite clearly that Labour does not support the progression of the bill or the ideas promoted in it. It’s unnecessary. Councils already have sufficient powers under the Local Government Act to address the concerns that this bill aims to try and alleviate. The bill allows police officers to arrest people that obstruct council enforcement officers, without a warrant. However, the Local Government Act already makes it an offence to obstruct council enforcement officers, but with the appropriate protections of the warrant process before an arrest can be made.

The sponsoring member of the bill, Brett Hudson, has highlighted some of the issues that the former Attorney-General had raised in relation to consistency with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act, and I think, should it have the hope of going further, it is wise for the select committee to consider that advice.

It’s of interest that this bill isn’t going to the Governance and Administration Committee, which is where local government bills would normally go, so I wonder why that decision has been made in particular. Also, given that there are provisions within the existing Local Government Act available to councils, I think the justification for this bill would have to be more strongly put or we would need to see evidence, were this to go to select committee, through the submission process, that councils felt that there was sufficient need for powers to be extended. I certainly think that the bill is a retrograde step and, again, question the necessity of it.

If the bill was drawing on the Occupy protests that did occur around the country, and I know that reference was made to events in Dunedin—I happened to be in Auckland when Occupy protests were being conducted in Auckland. They were quite peaceful affairs, and they were actually quite festive. They didn’t hamper or hinder the public from being able to access parts of Aotea Square, and, in fact, what the protests did do was educate the public, as they passed through the area of protest, about the concerns of that particular group. It is important that New Zealand protects freedoms of speech and freedoms of protest, while maintaining a strong view around keeping lawful protest. Again, there are ways in which local government, within its own bylaw-making system and offence infringement provisions, can address the types of concerns that have been outlined by the sponsoring member.

I don’t recommend that the bill progress to select committee. I do hope, as the debate continues tonight and people put some rationale around the justifications of a need for measures of the sort promoted, that we get a bit more information as to the motivations. I recall two other significant protests, of which one was at Moutoa Gardens, that I can remember. In my recollection, again, it raised within the national sentiments some very strongly held views. People who went there went to try and understand what the issues were, and were educated along the way. Did it pose a personal threat or liability against the public citizen? No, and for those who attempted to go there with a genuine view to understand what the issues were, I think they were probably better educated about what was of most concern at the time.

So I didn’t want to take too long a call, except to say that, again, if we read the full consideration of the former Attorney-General, the Hon Chris Finlayson, and the advice that he provided on the bill, again one would want to question why a member from his own team would continue to sponsor a bill of this nature. On that basis, again, I reiterate, Labour doesn’t support the bill. We think that there are enough provisions available to local government to enable them, both on an offence and infringement and a bylaw-making regime, to be able to address the issues and the concerns that are motivating the sponsor to introduce a bill like this tonight.

STUART SMITH (National—Kaikōura): Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker. It’s a pleasure to speak on this Local Government (Freedom of Access) Amendment Bill. It’s in the name of Jonathan Young, who unfortunately can’t be here tonight to speak on this bill himself. As I’m sure all members will know, having a bill pulled out of the ballot and having the opportunity to speak on the first reading is a great thrill and an honour, and I’m sure he’s very disappointed to not be here. However, Mr Hudson ably stepped up and did the job for him in that first reading speech. I’m disappointed to hear that the Labour Party are not going to be supporting this bill. I think we differ in that I believe there is a need for this legislation.

Of course, freedom of speech is a basic tenet of our democracy, and we all, I think, agree with that. Having your right of freedom of speech and freedom of expression is always going to be difficult as to where you draw the line. I think one of the civil rights and political rights—one definition I’ve found in here is “The dual aspect of freedom of expression both acknowledges individual rights (that no one be arbitrarily restricted in expression) and implies a collective right to receive any information whatsoever and have access to the thoughts expressed by others. Expression need not be in words and may include symbolic expression, including actions and physical conduct.”

Obviously, some of those people that want to occupy public spaces are the case in point of what we’re talking about here. We’re not talking about, in this bill, stopping people from actually going through those processes, and there have been quite a few decisions. I’d like to quote Brooker v Police from 2007. Chief Justice Elias from the Supreme Court ruled, “A tendency to annoy others, even seriously, is insufficient to constitute the disruption to public order which may make restrictions upon freedom of expression necessary.” I can’t disagree with that, really. In R v Valerie Morse from 2009, in the Court of Appeal, Justice Glazebrook said, “it can only be in exceptional and extreme cases that the right of freedom of expression (and particularly the right to protest) can legitimately be curtailed through the medium of the offence of disorderly behaviour, at least when it is exercised in a reasonable manner.” I can’t disagree with that, either.

However, having these protests where people occupy land for public spaces for an extended period of time creates a health issue on occasion, and it does impinge on people’s right to actually enjoy those public spaces. If we look here in clause 5, which seeks to amend section 164 of the Local Government Act 2002, “Seizure of property not on private land”, after section 164(1) it would insert “An enforcement officer may seize and impound property that is not on private land if—(a) the property has been erected, placed, or fixed for longer than a period totalling 5 days in any given 12-month period; and (b) that erection, placement, or fixture was not done with the necessary consent; and (c) before seizing and impounding the property, the enforcement officer—(i) directed (orally or in writing) the person to whom the enforcement officer reasonably believed the property belonged to, to remove [that] property;”.

It goes through several more. We’re not talking about going up 10 minutes after the protest has formed and dealing with it. It’s in fact a very good go—if people have the opportunity to spend five days there, be warned to remove their property, and they don’t do it.

Hon Andrew Little: What an appalling argument. What an appalling bill.

STUART SMITH: I think this is an excellent bill—

Hon Clare Curran: Why not three days or 10 days?

STUART SMITH: —and I’d actually question the motives of what I’m hearing chirping from the other side, from a couple of squeaky wheels over there. They really don’t understand the issue.

Hon Andrew Little: You don’t get to tell people how to exercise their rights.

STUART SMITH: I really would actually counsel the gentleman to try and calm himself a little bit. So it is with that I take great pleasure in commending this bill to the House. Thank you.

PAUL EAGLE (Labour—Rongotai): Ngā mihi nui o Te Tau Hou Pākehā. Happy New Year, Mr Assistant Speaker, and it’s my pleasure to take a call on this bill. Can I start by saying that local government is a bit of a strange beast, and usually—and in my experience—local government is used to getting hospital passes from central government, be it psychoactive substances or the Easter trading hours. But this bill, however, isn’t one of these strange beasts. This is strange in the sense that the title, the Local Government (Freedom of Access) Amendment Bill is misleading, and the word I was thinking of when having a quick read through this is that it’s actually deceitful. It’s deceitful in that it’s anti-freedom: anti-freedom of speech and anti-democracy. It’s anti-protest, but most of all, and the crux of this, is it’s anti-occupation, and I think what this is really about is an attack on a particular type of protest, and that is occupation.

Look, I was told, and I won’t say by who—but this even originated from Nelson, that beautiful, sunny, I guess, holiday town, or city, as they would like to call it. But it originated out of there, and when I got it told to me, I then quickly thought about other occupations, and Minister Mahuta has talked about Moutoa Gardens and Pākaitore from the mid-1990s. What would New Zealand be like if they couldn’t have the opportunity to express their concerns? No Occupy movement. So a global movement, yes, came to New Zealand in 2011 or thereabouts, and I’m even thinking, you know, the five days—well, it seems a long period of time, but, in fact, when you’ve had lifelong issues, five days is simply nothing.

I want to reflect on Wellington City Council, for example, where the Occupy movement was. And, yes, I think this was more about that people just didn’t want to see this side of life; they didn’t want to really confront the issues. But isn’t it interesting when an urban local authority like Wellington managed it in a way where those people were there for nearly a year, if not more? I couldn’t find the exact reference, but my point is this: was Wellington as a city worse off by having a group of people—and there were roughly 20 at the end there, in 2012—who, yes, occupied a piece of grass on civic land, on public land there in our Civic Square, because they wanted to get across a certain point. How was Wellington, for example, impacted by that? Was it any worse off? Did it look a bit ugly? Yeah, it did. From a branding perspective, you know, there were things not quite right, but the city didn’t lose any jobs over it, the GDP didn’t drop, we didn’t lose any major conferences or venues. In fact, people were proud of Wellington when they knew that it had reached little old New Zealand—the Antipodes, dare I say it—and they were given the opportunity to make their point.

So I’m a little miffed around what the real purpose of this bill is. I think it’s just something that people just don’t like seeing. A couple of comments were made about, “Ew! We don’t want to see that.”, but, actually, when we look back at the history of Aotearoa New Zealand, we are a country that’s been built on protest, that’s been built on giving people the opportunity to have their say, and I’m proud to be part of a party that’s going to say, “No, this is inappropriate, considering the Local Government Act already gives officials the power to do what they need to do.” And we will continue to see the not so nice. It doesn’t look good. But the fact is, and the point is, that their messages about lifelong issues, for some of them, will be able to be articulated and communicated in public spaces. So I support this bill, as does our party. Kia ora.

RAYMOND HUO (Labour): Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker. There are three reasons that I do not support the member’s bill. First of all, the title is rather misleading. It is not about freedom of access. Instead, it gives additional powers to councils and enforcement agencies to stop and remove protests on public land lasting longer than five days. So it is not about freedom of access; it is about how to stop freedom of access.

Secondly, and more importantly, the bill appears to be inconsistent with section 22 of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990, which is about liberty of the person, and cannot be justified under section 5 of that Act, according to a report by the Attorney-General at that time, the Hon Christopher Finlayson QC. The Attorney-General’s report says the power to arrest without warrant “is arbitrary, in that it appears to be without reasonable cause. It is unclear why this power is required, as it does not appear to be directly linked to the overall purpose of the Bill”.

Thirdly, the bill in question is unnecessary as councils already have sufficient powers under the Local Government Act to attend the concerns this bill seeks to address. The bill allows police officers to arrest people that obstruct council enforcement officers without a warrant. The Local Government Act already makes it an offence to obstruct council enforcement officers, but with the appropriate protections of the warrant process before an arrest can be made.

Also, councils already have the necessary power under the Local Government Act and are able to seize and retain property that is in a public place in breach of a by-law. So, therefore, I do not recommend that this bill be progressed.

Dr JIAN YANG (National): I rise to speak on the Local Government (Freedom of Access) Amendment Bill, first reading. I would like to support the bill to go to the select committee. New Zealand is a democracy, and we are very proud of being New Zealanders here. Now, a democracy means government by people. For that reason, people have the right to protest, and freedom of expression is a core foundation of democracy. So we all understand that.

Also, democracy means a state of society characterised by formal equality of rights and privileges. So that means that while we are trying to protect the freedom of expression, at the same time, we need to make sure the rights and privileges of other citizens can be protected. So protesters should also respect other citizens’ rights and privileges. This bill is an effort to somehow have a better balance—a better balance—between people’s rights to protest and demonstrate on council land and the right of councils to protect their property and to ensure that communities have freedom of access to their land.

So this is needed because, at the moment, our law is not clear enough for people to reach that kind of balance. There is some confusion, even for police, over people’s rights to use public land for different purposes. For instance, the New Zealand Police made it clear that they do not have a clear position on enforcing council by-laws that may also appear to be repressing peaceful, democratic protests. Now, many councils have by-laws preventing unlawful erection of tents, fences, and structures on council-owned land, so these by-laws can be hard to enforce because it is not clear how to strike the balance, as I mentioned above.

The honourable member Brett Hudson mentioned Occupy Dunedin in 2011, and I looked online, actually: the protesters occupied the Octagon for 66 days. So events like this, while they were exercising their rights as citizens of New Zealand, at the same time, could cause some issues, not only in terms of safety but also in terms of health issues. So this bill specifies the conditions to seize and impound property that is not on private land.

For instance, here it says that “An enforcement officer may seize and impound property that is not on private land if—(a) the property has been erected, placed, or fixed for longer than a period totalling five days in any given 12-month period; and [also] (b) that erection, placement, or fixture was not done with the necessary consent;” and some other conditions. So, by doing so, this bill actually widens the scope in which an enforcement officer may remove and seize structures that have been erected on council property.

So, basically, this bill is an effort—a good effort—to try to strike a better balance between the right to protest, to protect freedom of speech, and, at the same time, to protect the rights and privileges of other citizens. So I commend the bill to the House. Thanks.

CHLÖE SWARBRICK (Green): E Te Māngai, tēnā koe. Tēnā koutou e Te Whare. It is my pleasure to stand and talk on this bill, the so aptly—and rather incorrectly—named Local Government (Freedom of Access) Amendment Bill. The reason that it is such a pleasure to stand and speak to this bill in its first reading is that it was fascinating to hear Brett Hudson, the National Party MP, introducing this piece of legislation into the House by asking members to vote it through to select committee, where we could hear our concerns borne out.

Now, on that point, you know, I’m not renowned for my memory, but that strikes me as an argument that I do remember using earlier this evening with regard to my own member’s bill. That itself was a conscience vote, and I think where it is important that we do see those concerns borne out in select committee is where we have those concerns, where we are unsure about where legislation should be progressing. But on this point, on the point of the right and freedom of protest, I am not unsure, and nor is the Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand. Aotearoa New Zealand was built on protest, and so too was the Green Party of this country. There are a number of different examples throughout our history that have seen our democracy be strengthened by way of people’s ability to protest, to voice their dissent, to organise and congregate in collective action—to occupy.

Long story short, there is a difference between Crown law and natural justice. Governments do not always get it right, and, in fact, they sometimes make a real pig’s breakfast of it, and we all need to play catch-up as soon as we hear those issues from the people in this country that we seek to represent. I think a great example of that, really, is the vote experienced earlier today on my member’s bill, where we found that 78 percent of New Zealanders are in support.

Debate interrupted.

The House adjourned at 10 p.m.