Wednesday, 28 March 2018

WEDNESDAY, 28 MARCH 2018

WEDNESDAY, 28 MARCH 2018

The Speaker took the Chair at 2 p.m.

Prayers.

Personal Explanations

Oral Questions—Question No. 7 to Minister

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS (Deputy Prime Minister): I seek leave to make a personal explanation to correct a statement I made in the House yesterday.

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

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: In question time, I stated that on 9 June 2017 Mark Mitchell MP took a flight from Whenuapai Air Base to Papakura Military Camp in an NH90 helicopter. This advice from defence was wrong. They’ve corrected it. Mr Mitchell flew in an SH-2G(1) Seasprite helicopter. It’s worth emphasising that the flight did indeed take place, just not in the model of helicopter that the Defence Force incorrectly identified to me yesterday.

Oral Questions

Questions to Ministers

Housing, Rental—Government Priorities

1. PAUL EAGLE (Labour—Rongotai) to the Minister of Housing and Urban Development: What steps is the Government taking to make renting more affordable for Kiwi families?

Hon PHIL TWYFORD (Minister of Housing and Urban Development): On Thursday, the Government introduced a bill to ban letting fees. Banning letting fees will save families up to $47 million per year. Letting fees are unfair and have no economic rationale. It’s a large cost on families that comes at the worst possible time, when they have to find as much as four weeks’ bond, two weeks’ rent in advance, and often the costs of moving. That is an immense burden on families. The amount charged also bears very little resemblance to the actual costs incurred in the process of letting the property. This change will make a big difference in the lives of Kiwis and will ensure that the costs of letting a property fall with those able to control those costs.

Paul Eagle: What responses has he seen on letting fees?

Hon PHIL TWYFORD: The response to the proposed ban on letting fees has been overwhelmingly positive. For example, Dr Lucy Telfar-Barnard has said, “Banning letting fees is a simple legislative fix to improve efficiency and competition in property management services, and to reduce the cost burden of moving house, borne unequally by our most vulnerable.” Most sensible commentators accept that the costs of a contract should lie with the parties to that contract and accept that letting fees are unfair and bad economic policy.

Paul Eagle: What else is the Government doing to make renting more affordable and secure for families?

Hon PHIL TWYFORD: I have committed to a review of the Residential Tenancies Act, which will get under way this year. The review will advance a range of changes to make life better for renters and will include consideration of limiting rent increases to once per year and initiatives to improve security of tenure and better allow tenants to make their house a home. The review is expected to result in legislation being introduced to Parliament by the end of the year.

David Seymour: How does the Government propose to ensure that the costs which currently underlie letting fees are not passed on to tenants in other ways, such as higher rents?

Hon PHIL TWYFORD: Well, we don’t expect that banning letting fees will lead to an increase in rent. When Scotland banned letting fees, there was no evidence in Scotland that it led to an increase in rents. The UK housing advocacy group Shelter found that only 2 percent of landlords in Scotland increased their rents after letting fees were banned there, while in this country the Reserve Bank notes that rents are driven primarily by supply and demand, not landlord costs. Treasury also concluded that, and I quote, “Experience in other countries shows no clear evidence that banning letting fees will lead to increased rents.”

Prime Minister—Contact with Minister of Broadcasting, Communications and Digital Media and Minister of Internal Affairs

2. Hon SIMON BRIDGES (Leader of the Opposition) to the Prime Minister: Does she have confidence in all her Ministers?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN (Prime Minister): Yes.

Hon Simon Bridges: What did Clare Curran tell her about Clare Curran’s meeting with Carol Hirschfeld?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: As I mentioned in the House yesterday, she advised me that it was a high-level meeting, that they discussed the future of broadcasting generally and some of the ideas that were already very much in the public domain about the role of public broadcasting in New Zealand.

Hon Simon Bridges: Was the Prime Minister advised whether funding for Radio New Zealand was discussed at the meeting; if so, what was said?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: As I said yesterday and again today, very much what the Minister, I’m advised, discussed was what’s already in the public domain. For instance, the Labour Party’s policy in particular around RNZ Plus is free and available for everyone to see.

Hon Simon Bridges: So, to be clear, was funding and was RNZ Plus discussed at the meeting?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: As I’ve said, the issues she discussed were already in the public domain. For the specifics, you are absolutely able to ask the Minister directly, but, again, all of it is already in the public domain.

Hon Simon Bridges: Then what is the Prime Minister’s understanding of why the meeting was hidden both by Clare Curran and by Carol Hirschfeld?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: As I’ve also said in this House previously, the Minister should have absolutely disclosed, when first asked in a written question, that the meeting occurred. The fact that she did not, she has apologised for. What I do not accept, however, was that it was a secret meeting. Secret meetings are generally not held in places like Astoria, they’re not put in the diary, and they’re also not confirmed with a journalist, which she did on the day she was asked.

Hon Simon Bridges: How many meetings have Clare Curran and Carol Hirschfeld had since Ms Curran became a Minister?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: I believe that was included in her corrected written question, which the member already has.

Hon Simon Bridges: How many meetings have Ms Curran and Ms Hirschfeld had since Ms Curran became Minister?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: My recollection of the corrected written question is that she included then the breakfast meeting, and I believe she was also in attendance at a wider meeting that happened with others from RNZ at her office.

Hon Simon Bridges: Shouldn’t all meetings have been with the chief executive and chair of Radio New Zealand, not Ms Curran, as is made clear in Ms Curran’s briefing to the incoming Minister?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: The Minister absolutely understands that her primary relationship exists with the board chair and with the chief executive. However, Ministers can—and do—meet with others who work within Crown entities. To say that they couldn’t would mean that someone who worked, for instance, for a Crown research institute, a scientist, couldn’t discuss any of their work with the Minister for research and development or that a transport Minister could never speak to anyone who worked within the New Zealand Transport Agency. The primary relationship, of course, is always with the board chair.

Hon Simon Bridges: What possible legitimate purpose is there in a meeting between the relevant Minister and a senior journalist and manager in Radio New Zealand, when it’s quite clear it should have been with the chief executive and chair only?

SPEAKER: Well, that’s very marginal, especially the last part of it. I’ll let it go, but I’m going to ask the Leader of the Opposition to tighten his questions going forward.

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: The Minister, in holding this meeting, was not acting in breach of the Cabinet Manual. Nor is it unusual for Ministers to meet with people who work within Crown entities. She should have been transparent about the fact that it happened. That is why she has apologised, but the fact that she did not include it in a written question is the primary error, not the fact of the meeting itself.

Hon Simon Bridges: Was the discussion where the Prime Minister “sought assurances” from Tracey Martin regarding Jenny Marcroft and the Provincial Growth Fund carried out by her in person; if not, how was it carried out?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: The member will know from the sequence of events that I outlined that I intended to seek assurances from each member on the Tuesday morning.

Hon Simon Bridges: Intended?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Yes, at that point, I hadn’t done that. Immediately after, I phoned each of those Ministers and spoke with them directly. Of course, the phone was a quicker way for me to be able to do that.

Hon Simon Bridges: So how long was that phone call with Tracey Martin?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Seeking an assurance from a Minister that they were not involved in a situation doesn’t take that long.

Hon Simon Bridges: Has the Prime Minister or her office done any further checks to corroborate Tracey Martin’s version of events?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: I take Ministers who work within Cabinet at their word, as, I’m sure, the leader takes his members at their word. That is how Cabinet operates.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: If the—

SPEAKER: Order! I haven’t called the member yet, and the reason that I haven’t called him is that I’m waiting for people, including a number of people on the cross benches—I’m getting a little bit of help from the National Party backbench about how many people should be standing up, and they are right. But I was waiting for members in front of that member to be quiet before I called them. I won’t name the three members concerned now.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Can I ask the Prime Minister: if qualities of leadership and ministerial posts are important, what would she think of someone who claims to have been a Crown prosecutor although he never held a Crown prosecutor’s licence?

SPEAKER: Order! [Interruption] Order! I’m on my feet. That is not something for which the Prime Minister has responsibility. Are we finished there? Yes.

Deputy Prime Minister—Statements

3. Hon PAULA BENNETT (Deputy Leader—National) to the Deputy Prime Minister: Does he stand by all his statements and actions?

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS (Deputy Prime Minister): Yes, I most certainly do.

Hon Paula Bennett: Does he stand by his media statement put out as Rt Hon Winston Peters, Deputy Prime Minister, released on 26 March 2018?

SPEAKER: Order! As I indicated yesterday, after looking at that statement, the content of that statement is not a responsibility of the Deputy Prime Minister. That question is ruled out.

Hon Gerry Brownlee: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. A simple question—why did he style himself as such?

SPEAKER: Does the member want to ask that question?

Hon Gerry Brownlee: No, it does go to the heart of order though, doesn’t it, because if we now have to discern whether or not the Rt Hon Winston Peters is acting as the Deputy Prime Minister or as the leader of New Zealand First, regardless of what he puts on his letterhead, then, of course, he can obfuscate any time he likes by just choosing one hat over the other, and that’s unacceptable.

SPEAKER: I want to thank the member for his advice. I am going to refer him to oral question No. 1 back on 5 December where I received some very good advice from the then shadow Leader of the House, one Simon Bridges, who, I think it’s fair to say, twice implored me—and I accepted and agreed with his advice—to rule out matters when the Deputy Prime Minister was asked questions as Deputy Prime Minister that were not the responsibility of the Deputy Prime Minister. In that case, I think it was Mr Ball asking about rail, and Mr Bridges very clearly and eloquently pointed out that that was not the responsibility of the Deputy Prime Minister and I ruled the questions out.

Hon Gerry Brownlee: I thank you for that clarification. The bit that is perhaps not clear is the difference between asking a supplementary question in the House and a question about a release put out in the public.

SPEAKER: Well, as I think I fairly clearly indicated to the member yesterday, while the release was headed “Deputy Prime Minister”, actually there was nothing in the release whatsoever that was with the responsibility of the Deputy Prime Minister. As I indicated, I will take leadership from the then shadow Leader of the House as to what’s relevant and what’s not.

Hon Paula Bennett: Why did the Deputy Prime Minister put out a statement on Monday under the heading of “Deputy Prime Minister” when now we are informed that he has no responsibility for the content?

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: I think, with precision, I was seeking to help out my friend Mr Mitchell and make sure he was on the straight and narrow.

Hon Paula Bennett: So what does he mean, then, by saying that Mr Mitchell needs to be on the straight and narrow?

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: Ah yes, well, given how wide the parameters of behaviour are in that party, I know that’s a great stricture, but what I’m really trying to ensure is that he gets the correct story before he wantonly goes public with it.

Hon Paula Bennett: So the question is, then: what is the correct story when he was approached by a member of the Deputy Prime Minister’s party who informed him that he had been sent by a Minister; so is the correct story that he was sent by one of your Ministers?

SPEAKER: No, I can deal with that very, very easily. The responsibility for the member of the party is not that of the Deputy Prime Minister, and responsibility for the Minister is not either. That is the responsibility of the Prime Minister, but there is no ministerial responsibility for the actions of backbench members of Parliament.

Hon Paula Bennett: What was the underlying point that he refers to frequently, and what is the message that Mr Mark needed to get on Saturday afternoon?

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: The underlying point would have been that this was about a conversation to do with the Provincial Growth Fund; that because of the previous Government having thrown Warkworth and Wellsford against their wishes into the super-city, they could not qualify; but that because we are an open-minded party it would not pre-empt us trying to see our way through it in the future to help the people from Warkworth. [Interruption] But it’s what I’m saying and it’s a fact.

Hon Paula Bennett: Does he still believe that “transparency and openness” is the middle name of this Government, as he’s said previously, when both Minister Tracey Martin and MP Jenny Marcroft avoid media questions?

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: Mr Speaker—

SPEAKER: No, no, the member cannot answer it, because he—I don’t care if he wants to. The member cannot answer it because that is not an area that he has any ministerial responsibility for.

Hon Paula Bennett: Supplementary—

SPEAKER: Sorry, I’m just going to ask Mr Goldsmith, I think, who made that interjection to stand, withdraw, and apologise. Was it Mr Goldsmith?

Hon Paul Goldsmith: I withdraw and apologise.

SPEAKER: Thank you.

Hon Paula Bennett: In respect of his previous response, as part of, then, that funding going through, is it a condition that Mr Mitchell not be involved in that restoration project?

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: Oh, quite the contrary. We welcome any efforts that Mr Mitchell has to make his life more meaningful, given that he’s a backbencher, and I know this project to have been around since Peter Wilkinson was there in 1975. That’s how long it’s taken National to respond to a vital issue. So here we are, in 2018, and I can see why they’re accessing the Provincial Growth Fund to try, after 50 years, to do something for the people of Warkworth.

SPEAKER: Well, I think we now see the problem that we have when we get outside the areas of strict responsibility.

Education—Extension of Teacher Education Refresh Programme

4. JAN TINETTI (Labour) to the Minister of Education: What recent moves has the Government made to help more teachers into classrooms?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister of Education): Last week, the Acting Minister of Education announced an additional $700,000 to help more teachers into classrooms with the extension of the Teacher Education Refresh (TER) programme. Around 280 additional teachers will now have access to fully subsidised refresher courses, which I announced as part of a $9.5 million teacher supply package before Christmas.

Jan Tinetti: How does the Teacher Education Refresh programme work?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: The Teacher Education Refresh programme is designed to retain experienced teachers whose practising certificates are about to expire and attract teachers back into the profession who haven’t taught for a while. We’ve made subsidies available to remove the cost barrier associated with undertaking the TER course, which could be up to $4,000 per person and acted as a detriment to those who are passionate about teaching returning to the workforce.

Tax System—Tax Working Group Outcomes

5. Hon AMY ADAMS (National—Selwyn) to the Minister of Finance: Will he guarantee any new taxes resulting from the Tax Working Group will have their total nominal revenue off-set by tax reductions in other areas?

Hon Dr DAVID CLARK (Associate Minister of Finance) on behalf of the Minister of Finance: I welcome the member’s interest in the independent Tax Working Group’s activities, and I’d like to take this opportunity to thank her and encourage her, along with all New Zealanders who are interested in the issue, to make a submission at www.taxworkinggroup.govt.nz to join the national conversation about the future of New Zealand’s tax system. In respect of her question, the member is getting well ahead of herself. The independent Tax Working Group will report back to Ministers in February 2019 and, for the benefit of the member, it is currently March 2018. As the Tax Working Group is independent, it would be inappropriate for Ministers to make commitments on its behalf before its recommendations are received.

Hon Amy Adams: Why is he incapable of giving taxpayers a simple reassurance that this working group is not just a Government exercise designed to tax hard-working New Zealanders even more?

Hon Dr DAVID CLARK: Because it isn’t. It’s a responsible conversation about the future of New Zealand’s tax system.

Hon Amy Adams: Given that tax revenue is forecast to increase from $78 billion this year to $93 billion in 2021—an increase of nearly 20 percent in just three years—why is he so determined to introduce more new taxes?

SPEAKER: Oh, can I—again, I’m going to let the question go, but I want to remind the member that she is not allowed to make assertions, as she did at the end, as part of the question. It’s not necessary as part of the question.

Hon Dr DAVID CLARK: Yeah, I do, obviously, reject the premise of that question. But I can confirm that it is this Government’s plan—despite her trying to talk the economy down—for GDP to keep growing.

Hon Amy Adams: How much additional tax revenue beyond the $93 billion per year forecast for 2021 does he project he will need to fully fund all of the 51 spending commitments in the Speech from the Throne?

Hon Dr DAVID CLARK: The operating and capital revenues set aside in the coming envelopes are sufficient to meet the promises, and some beside.

Tamati Coffey: What expert commentary has he seen recently on the tax system?

Hon Dr DAVID CLARK: I saw one expert who asked whether the public wanted tax cuts at this point in time as opposed to more investment in health and education, specifically commenting that “My view has always been that you have got to properly fund health and education first before considering tax cuts.” I never thought I’d say this, but I’ve found myself agreeing wholeheartedly with the Hon Jonathan Coleman, former Minister of Health.

Hon Amy Adams: Why does he believe it is appropriate to have a Government working group that is being directed to consider the introduction of new taxes at the same time he’s raising debt by billions of dollars during a period of solid economic growth, leaving himself nowhere to grow should economic growth evaporate?

Hon Dr DAVID CLARK: This Government has a plan to see debt as a proportion of the economy drop over time. And I’d also say that I expect the tax working group will report back in line with its terms of reference, and I’m very happy to table those for the member.

Housing Supply—Mandatory Warranties

6. Hon JUDITH COLLINS (National—Papakura) to the Minister of Housing and Urban Development: Does he stand by all his answers to Oral Question No. 10 in the House yesterday?

Hon PHIL TWYFORD (Minister of Housing and Urban Development): Yes, in the context in which they were given.

Hon Judith Collins: When he said that “there is currently no requirement for mandatory home warranties for new residential construction”, was he aware that section 362I of the Building Act 2004 provides a 10-year warranty for new homes?

Hon PHIL TWYFORD: Yes, because that’s an implied warranty, not a mandatory home warranty.

Hon Judith Collins: If the implied warranty is part of the Building Act 2004—in other words, the legislation—how is that not a mandatory implied warranty?

Hon PHIL TWYFORD: I stand by my answer to the previous question.

SPEAKER: No, I think it was a different question, and I’ll ask the Hon Judith Collins to repeat it.

Hon Judith Collins: Well, I’ll do my best, Mr Speaker. If there is an implied warranty of 10 years in the Building Act, which is the law, how is that not a mandatory implied warranty that has the full strength of the law?

Hon PHIL TWYFORD: The former is an implied warranty under the Building Act. What I was talking about were insurance-backed mandatory warranties, as are provided by the likes of Master Builders and Certified Builders.

Hon Judith Collins: If he thought it was an insurance-backed warranty, then why didn’t he say it?

Hon PHIL TWYFORD: I thought it was self-explanatory.

Hon Judith Collins: Is it his intention that the New Zealand Government will have no responsibilities under sections 90B and 90C of the Building Act 2004 for any new home warranties?

Hon PHIL TWYFORD: The member was asking me about the development that we’d announced at Unitec. My expectation is that the Unitec development is likely to be developed with the benefit of an urban development agency coordinating and master-planning the project, just as HLC has done at Hobsonville Point. Under that model, private sector developers will take on super lots, or aspects of development projects, and, under that approach, the Government, through KiwiBuild, will not be getting in the way of the contractual relationship between the developer, the builder, and the home buyer.

Hon Judith Collins: If he’s now telling us that he plans no Government guarantee for the mandatory implied warranties for 10 years for new homes under KiwiBuild, is he saying that New Zealand buyers of KiwiBuild homes—first-home buyers—are on their own if the developer or the builder fails in the first 10 years?

Hon PHIL TWYFORD: I’m not saying that. But what I have said—and the way that we intend to develop the Unitec project—is that the Government, through KiwiBuild, will not be getting in the way of the existing contractual relationship between the developer, the builder, and the home buyer.

Defence Force—Repatriation of Remains

7. DARROCH BALL (NZ First) to the Minister for Veterans: What progress, if any, has been made regarding the repatriation of the remains of New Zealand military personnel and dependants who were buried overseas after 1 January 1955?

Hon RON MARK (Minister for Veterans): Tēnā koutou e ō tātau tini mate, koutou kua whetūrangitia ki te korowai o Ranginui, koutou kua wehe atu ki te pō, ki te tua o te ārai, ki te okiokinga i ō tātau tupuna; haere, haere, haere!

[Acknowledgments to you collectively, our innumerable deaths who have become immortalised upon the cloak of the great Sky Father, who have departed to the void and beyond the veil to the resting place of our forefathers; depart, go forth, travel on!]

Earlier today, I was very pleased to announce that the Government has extended an offer of repatriation to the families of all service personnel and their dependants who were buried overseas after 1 January 1955. Today’s announcement expands the decision made by the previous Government, who offered repatriation for service personnel and dependants buried in Malaysia and Singapore, to now include those buried in Fiji, American Samoa, the United Kingdom, and the Republic of Korea. This is the right thing to do. Can I thank Paul Thomas and Andrew Peters, who initiated the call to return our fallen from Malaysia and Singapore and who petitioned Parliament on this issue.

Darroch Ball: Why were these remains not repatriated in the past?

Hon RON MARK: Prior to 1955, it was Government policy to bury our fallen personnel overseas, close to where they died. This changed in 1955, and between 1955 and 1971 personnel could be brought home at the cost of their family. This created an inequity, because many families could not afford to bring their loved ones home, and this caused pain and heartache, which their families have lived with ever since. In 1971, the Government began picking up the bill, but it was not backdated to 1955, when the policy change occurred.

Darroch Ball: How will the Government support the families who accept the offer of repatriation?

Hon RON MARK: The Government has agreed to fund the disinterment, repatriation, and re-interment of the fallen, at no cost to families. A contribution of $1,000 will be made towards a memorial for those re-interred, in a private or a public ceremony. The New Zealand Defence Force has assigned liaison officers to the families and will also offer additional support to re-interments if families request that, such as pallbearers, a chaplain, and a bugler. If a family does not wish for their loved one to be repatriated, then the New Zealand Government will continue to care for their graves overseas.

Darroch Ball: When will the remains be returned to New Zealand?

Hon RON MARK: Four arrival ceremonies will be conducted in New Zealand between May and October of this year. All ceremonies will include senior representatives of the nation, senior defence officers and officials, and representatives from veterans organisations and communities. We want to make this process as dignified and as peaceful as possible for the families. On behalf of the coalition Government and the Prime Minister, I want to assure the families that the team from the New Zealand Defence Force will take care of them and their loved ones. They will be in good hands.

Intelligence and Security—Presence of Russian Intelligence Officers in New Zealand

8. Hon TODD McCLAY (National—Rotorua) to the Minister of Foreign Affairs: What will New Zealand’s response be to reports that following the Salisbury nerve agent attack 150 Russian diplomats have been expelled from 26 countries plus NATO?

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS (Minister of Foreign Affairs): The same as I hope that member’s response would be, having received advice from the New Zealand SIS (NZSIS) and acted upon it. If he can give me an alternative response to the NZSIS advice, we’d like to hear it.

Hon Todd McClay: Does he agree with the Prime Minister when she said yesterday, “We don’t have Russian undeclared intelligence officers here.”?

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: I agree with both the Prime Minister and the NZSIS, who gave her the information. The fact is, we don’t take knee-jerk reactions on this side of the House; we get the evidence, we get the facts, and we are working close with the NZSIS on that. As to outside—

Hon Simon Bridges: Winston—they don’t need a spy; they’ve got Winston.

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: No, you’ll have to listen.

SPEAKER: Order! I am going to ask the member to resume his seat. This is a matter of international importance, which I think just about every member of the House is interested in, and I think it ill behoves people to chip while the Minister of Foreign Affairs is replying. But I will ask him, if he can, to play as straight a bat as he can.

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: Not in Aussie for that, if you ask me. Ha, ha!

Hon Gerry Brownlee: Stop laughing—it’s serious.

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: I was looking at you, Gerry. I’m advised by the NZSIS, and so has the Prime Minister been, that there is no individual here in New Zealand who fits the profile of those being expelled by other countries—that is, people within the embassies in other countries. If there were, we would have taken action a long time before Salisbury. But here’s the real point: the NZSIS advises it is aware of Russian intelligence activity in New Zealand and, where it is seen appropriate, action is taken.

Hon Todd McClay: Has he seen reports on the RNZ website today with the headline “PM’s spy comments make New Zealand a ‘laughing stock’ ” or the UK’s Guardian website, which says “New Zealand says it would expel Russian spies … but it [just] can’t find any”?

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: Having been in politics for some time, I prefer to listen to the NZSIS. I’d rather listen to people with experience than a few flighty journalists from abroad.

Hon Simon Bridges: Winston reads Investigate.

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: And if they want to make the kind of noise that Simon Bridges is making right now, showing how unprepared he is for leadership because he’s prepared to react to every phone call from some foreign embassy rather than his own national interests. Now, having said that, we have been monitoring this ship in the past, and here comes the contrast: Australia, in a much bigger context, found only two, so maybe we’re on the right track here.

Hon Todd McClay: Does the Minister really believe that, as a member of “Five Eyes”, New Zealand is the only country without Russian spies, when Australia, the UK, the US, Canada, most of Europe, and even Albania have expelled Russian diplomats?

SPEAKER: I am going to let the question go, but, I think for the third time today, I’m going to advise members of the Opposition that they should make sure, in their supplementary questions, they have ministerial responsibility. That might be a question which is appropriate for two other members, very clearly, but it is not a question that is the responsibility of the Minister of Foreign Affairs. But, because I’m being kind and generous, I will allow Mr Peters to answer it.

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: I can advise that member that people in the “Five Eyes” have consulted with us on our decision, understand our decision—did so before the decision was made, I might add, because they are aware of the facts.

Hon Simon Bridges: How can they understand it before it was made?

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: They understood the circumstance or priority they were applying may not apply in New Zealand. They are more aware of this country’s context than that member is.

Rt Hon Jacinda Ardern: Is he concerned by reports that the Opposition are suggesting this Government should ignore the advice of the NZSIS, who also acted in conjunction with our “Five Eyes” partners in the advice that they have provided this Government, that this Government has acted on?

Hon Gerry Brownlee: Point of order.

SPEAKER: No, I want to deal with a matter first, and the first thing that I’m going to deal with is—right from the start, actually, I was hoping that the Prime Minister might be able to bring that question within the responsibilities of the Minister of Foreign Affairs. She did not manage to.

Hon Todd McClay: Does the Minister agree with TVNZ political commentator John Armstrong, who said, and I quote, “[The] claim … that New Zealand has been ahead of the international pack in declaring Moscow as behind the attempted murder of Skripal was as outrageous as it was audacious as it was patently incorrect.”?

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: Could I have that quote again one more time—and slowly.

SPEAKER: Can the member ask the question again.

Hon Todd McClay: Does the Minister agree with TVNZ political commentator John Armstrong, who said, “[The] claim … that New Zealand has been ahead of the international pack in declaring Moscow as behind the attempted murder of Skripal was … outrageous as it was audacious as it was patently incorrect.”?

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: If it was true, it is all of those things. But the statement is false.

Hon Todd McClay: After three weeks of mishandling and inaction, when will he stand with our friends and allies and take action against Russia?

SPEAKER: Order! I think what I am going to do is ask the shadow Leader of the House to do something like run a seminar with—[Interruption] Order! All right; as a result of the interjection from the Leader of the Opposition, the National Party have lost two supplementary questions, and I’m going to repeat the comment that I was making. I think we’ve now had at least three of the supplementary questions from Mr McClay that were outside Speakers’ rulings. We’ve had one from the Prime Minister, as well. I do understand that for some members it has been a long time since they have been involved in asking a series of questions—if at all—and, therefore, it might take some practice and some tutelage. I’m going to ask now Mr McClay to ask his question again—without penalty—and attempt to get it in an area which is Mr Peters’ responsibility.

Hon Todd McClay: When will he stand with our friends and allies and take action against Russia?

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: Far too late—we’ve been doing that from day one. But we want to make it very clear that what we’ve been challenged by, in terms of the Opposition and the media, is often demonstrably false. For example, 40 percent of the European Union, like New Zealand, have made no expulsions. But no, no—we hear from the media that the European Union has does this and so has everybody else. Well, in the end, Australia found two. We’re a much smaller country, and we haven’t found any yet inside the embassy in the way that, abroad, they did.

Hon Gerry Brownlee: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I raise two points of order. The first is that when you ruled that question out from the Prime Minister, you didn’t reflect on the fact that she was asking the Minister if he had seen reports about what, effectively, would be seditious activity by Her Majesty’s loyal Opposition. That is exceptionally offensive and, simply, cannot be stacked up by any material that might be put in front of the House and is an unacceptable abuse of the House’s privilege often granted to a Prime Minister to say more than is acceptable or reasonable in any circumstance.

The second point is that you made the point of asking the Opposition to be a little quieter and more respectful because of the nature of this question. That situation wasn’t helped by the atmosphere created right from the start—which will be evident when you review the tapes, as I know you do later in the day—by the introduction to the answer from the Rt Hon Winston Peters. He may not think this is a serious matter, but we most certainly do.

Hon Chris Hipkins: I think if the Opposition wished to object to the implication in the Prime Minister’s question, they might like to reflect on the implication in the questions being asked by the Opposition. In fact, I think the Prime Minister’s question was simply rebutting the implication being raised by the Opposition, actually.

Hon Gerry Brownlee: That is simply not the case. There is quite a difference between asking a question about a Government’s action or inaction and then, in a response or a question that’s designed to deflect from that, suggesting that the Opposition was engaged in, effectively, seditious activity against the best interests of this country. That is the problem.

Rt Hon Jacinda Ardern: Point of order, Mr Speaker.

SPEAKER: The right honourable Prime Minister—speaking to this point of order?

Rt Hon Jacinda Ardern: Speaking to this point of order, in the answer to their primary question, the Minister of Foreign Affairs made it clear that the action the Government had taken was on the advice of the NZSIS. In a follow-up supplementary question from the Opposition member, he implied that we’d acted incorrectly in doing so. I thought it only right to therefore draw the inference that he was claiming that we were wrong to listen to the NZSIS.

Hon Gerry Brownlee: I’m sorry, Mr Speaker, but the New Zealand SIS and the New Zealand GCSB do not set foreign policy for this country. The Government does, and while they might take advice from those people, I am confident there will be no documentation to say that those organisations advised the Government not to take any action in this matter.

SPEAKER: Well, I think—[Interruption] Yes, the Prime Minister has interjected while I’m on my feet, and because she has special responsibilities that will result in three extra supplementary questions going to the National Party. Now, I think there are a couple of questions which I am dealing with at the moment. I think the first one is whether the Prime Minister went too far in her supplementary question, and I say there are a couple of points. One, I will have a look at it and come back if I think it’s necessary. There is a question of timeliness if that was a specific point that the member wanted to bring up. And I will say, on the second of his substantive points, he will have noticed that I did ask—maybe it needs some translation from some people—the right honourable gentleman to attempt to use a straight bat in these matters. The implication of that is that members should treat these materials in this area seriously.

Hon Kelvin Davis: What would happen if he didn’t take the advice of the SIS?

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: That’s a fascinating question. That’s a fascinating question. I suppose there are a number of answers to that, but one of them would be just to grab a couple of people and throw them out of the country without any evidence at all.

Health, Minister—Involvement in District Health Board Pay Negotiations

9. Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (National) to the Minister of Health: Does he stand by all his statements and actions?

Hon Dr DAVID CLARK (Minister of Health): Yes, in the context in which they were given and undertaken.

Hon Michael Woodhouse: Does he stand by his repeated statements of perceived underfunding in the health sector of between $1.7 billion and $2 billion per annum, and his commitment to remedy that underfunding?

Hon Dr DAVID CLARK: I stand by my statement that an independent review was conducted when Labour was in Opposition that indicated $2.4 billion worth of underfunding, and that that has led to a neglect in the system in terms of the ability for people to access the care they need and also in terms of capital projects that have been neglected under the previous Government’s watch.

Hon Michael Woodhouse: Did he intervene in the district health board (DHB) negotiations with the New Zealand Nurses Organisation, as reported by Nursing Review on 15 November 2017, which revealed that a new deal was offered by the DHBs on 8 November after “successfully seeking sign-off from new Health Minister David Clark for additional funding”?

Hon Dr DAVID CLARK: That’s not my—no.

Hon Michael Woodhouse: Is the Minister denying that he had conversations with the DHBs that resulted in a larger fiscal envelope being available to the DHBs for those negotiations?

Hon Dr DAVID CLARK: I have conversations with DHBs all the time. That’s a different question.

Hon Michael Woodhouse: Did the offer by the DHBs increase after meetings held up to and including 8 November 2017?

Hon Dr DAVID CLARK: I think, if you look at history, the record will say yes.

Hon Michael Woodhouse: Finally—well, having unsuccessfully intervened to settle the nurses’ pay round, is it not incumbent on him to further involve himself to settle the dispute using some of the $8 billion he claims the health sector is underfunded by?

Hon Dr DAVID CLARK: In answer to the first part of the question, I didn’t.

Health Services—Waikato District Health Board, Ombler Report Findings

10. JAMIE STRANGE (Labour) to the Minister of Health: Does he have confidence in the governance of the Waikato DHB given the findings of the Ombler Report?

Hon Dr DAVID CLARK (Minister of Health): Last week, the State Services Commissioner released the Ombler report into allegations of the inappropriate use of public funds by the former Waikato District Health Board Chief Executive Dr Nigel Murray. It found that more than half of his claims for travel and accommodation were unjustified, and his conduct fell short of what is required of a State sector leader. This report fully justified my decision to accept the resignation of the former chair of the district health board (DHB) Bob Simcock. I have no doubt the acting chair, Sally Webb, has the DHB focused on its real job, delivering quality healthcare. The answer to your question is yes.

Jamie Strange: What lessons were there for DHBs out of the Ombler report?

Hon Dr DAVID CLARK: The public expect DHB leaders to be careful stewards of health funding, as do I. There needs to be clear justification for spending on travel and accommodation. As Minister, I will hold DHB chairs accountable for the spending on their watch. There needs to be transparency around expenses, including written authorisation for significant travel costs and robust processes for managers’ expenses.

Broadcasting, Communications and Digital Media, Minister—Contact with Carol Hirschfeld and Radio New Zealand Funding

11. MELISSA LEE (National) to the Minister of Broadcasting, Communications and Digital Media: On how many occasions has she met with Carol Hirschfeld since becoming Minister?

Hon CLARE CURRAN (Minister of Broadcasting, Communications and Digital Media): I had breakfast with her on 5 December. She was present at a Radio New Zealand (RNZ) board meeting on 7 December. I’ve already been clear that I was wrong to characterise the breakfast meeting as unofficial, and I corrected the parliamentary record as soon as I realised that. I have since apologised to the Prime Minister.

Melissa Lee: In answering that question, has she considered any other informal or unofficial meetings she may have had, apart from those mentioned in the corrected answer to written question No. 19129?

Hon CLARE CURRAN: Not to my recollection.

Melissa Lee: In her 5 December meeting with Carol Hirschfeld, did she discuss anything at all to do with funding for Radio New Zealand?

Hon CLARE CURRAN: As has been said previously—very high-level discussions about the future of broadcasting in New Zealand, policy ideas that were already on record, and there was very high-level discussion that included potential funding.

Melissa Lee: Why didn’t Radio New Zealand report that she and Hirschfeld had high-level discussions about RNZ funding?

SPEAKER: Order! I’m going to allow the member to rephrase that question. She has no responsibility.

Hon Member: Hand on hip.

Melissa Lee: Ha, ha! Has she seen reports about the RNZ funding that she actually mentioned?

Hon CLARE CURRAN: I have no idea what the member’s referring to.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Could the Minister advise the House as to whether or not it’s a fact that one member of the coalition had announced a substantial multi- multi-million dollar funding for RNZ five months before her meeting—the one that’s being complained about?

Hon Gerry Brownlee: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker.

SPEAKER: No. I’m not going to allow the question.

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

SPEAKER: No. Mr Peters, I’m going to explain why—

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Yeah, but can I make a point of order first—

SPEAKER: Not until I’ve explained.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: —before I get the explanation?

SPEAKER: Not until I’ve explained. This Minister has no responsibility for announcements that are made five months before, or four months before, she was a Minister.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. That is only pertinent to the history behind this meeting. This meeting, it’s alleged, was about funding, and I’m putting on the record that the amount which would have been within any conversation on funding had already been promised by the Labour Party five months before that meeting—that’s my point.

SPEAKER: And that might well be the case, but it does not mean that this Minister has responsibility for answering questions about it in this House.

Hon Gerry Brownlee: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. You’re quite right to rule as you had. I simply want to extend the invitation to the Rt Hon Winston Peters to join my seminar.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I will. I’ll come along and lecture them anytime I feel like it.

SPEAKER: Right, I think that’s about three each.

Melissa Lee: Does she still believe that, I quote, “Openness and transparency and doing things differently is important, so we’ve got to practise what we preach and actually do it.”?

Hon CLARE CURRAN: Absolutely.

SPEAKER: Right, that concludes oral questions—oh, sorry. Rino Tirikatene—I apologise. That concludes the National Party supplementaries.

Civil Defence—Emergency Management Update

12. RINO TIRIKATENE (Labour—Te Tai Tonga) to the Minister of Civil Defence: What engagements has he recently had regarding improving responses to emergencies?

Hon KRIS FAAFOI (Minister of Civil Defence): Thank you for remembering us. The Government is considering its response to the technical advisory group (TAG) review recommendations and is mindful that many communities and sectors, and people in the sector, have first-hand experience of what has been effective in responding to natural disasters and other emergencies. We are mindful, too, that other stakeholders, including iwi, have a significant contribution to make. Earlier this week, I was in Christchurch, where I met with the mayor, the Canterbury civil defence emergency management group, Environment Canterbury, and Ngāi Tahu. The perspectives from Christchurch and Canterbury, as we design policy responses to the review, are extremely valuable.

Rino Tirikatene: What are the main concerns with New Zealand’s current emergency management system?

Hon KRIS FAAFOI: The current system has stood, and continues to stand, up well and is fundamentally sound, but there have been pressures and challenges in recent years. Like the previous Government, who called the review, we also realise that we have a responsibility to learn from events to make our system better and to create a fit for purpose civil defence system. Improvements are needed to modernise, professionalise, and standardise the system and to ensure that when an event happens civil defence groups around the country are best prepared to help both Kiwis and visitors. This includes a more professional emergency response workforce, robust national leadership, a fit for purpose national crisis management facility with modern information technology, and better local, regional, and national collaboration.

Rino Tirikatene: What work is currently under way following the release of the technical advisory group’s report?

Hon KRIS FAAFOI: The Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet has established a team to advise me on the recommendations to the TAG report, and we’ve been consulting widely with stakeholders to develop options to address them. The review recommended some things that the Ministry of Civil Defence and Emergency Management (MCDEM) has already addressed. For instance, MCDEM has improved its training for mayors so they know when and how to declare a state of local emergency. MCDEM is also establishing the ability to activate an alternative national crisis management centre in Auckland if needed. Over 400 staff from other Government agencies in Auckland have been trained to provide support if such a response was necessary.

SPEAKER: Right, second time: that concludes oral questions.

General Debate

General Debate

Hon PHIL TWYFORD (Minister of Housing and Urban Development): I move, That the House take note of miscellaneous business.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. The state of the National Party was revealed this week in their confused and contradictory response to the Government’s exciting new housing development at Unitec. Simon Bridges and the four horsemen of the housing apocalypse—Judith Collins, Cameron Slater, Mike Hosking, and Matthew Hooton—have tied themselves in knots. Simon Bridges claims that Unitec was his idea and that National had already done it. Well, Mr Bridges, I’ve got words for you: coulda, woulda, shoulda. You could have done it; you didn’t. But we have.

Then he said that they didn’t announce it during the election campaign because he was worried they might get accused of pork-barrel politics.

Hon Chris Hipkins: The bridges—what about the bridges?

Hon PHIL TWYFORD: This is from Simon “10 bridges” Bridges. He’s obviously had some kind of road to Damascus experience, but his road to Damascus is a 10-lane super highway called a road of National Party significance.

Then there was Judith “Crusher” Collins, the face of compassionate conservatism. Judith had so many reasons not to like—

SPEAKER: Order! Order! Both the names used—thank you.

Hon PHIL TWYFORD: Judith Collins had so many reasons not to like the Unitec project that she had trouble choosing between them. Apparently, it’s going to cost money to put the pipes in the ground, therefore we shouldn’t do it. Density is apparently a really bad idea for any urban development, and now she’s worried about the possibility of potential lawsuits in years to come. The National Party are so good at making excuses for not building affordable houses. That’s precisely the kind of thinking that got us into the housing crisis to start with.

Let’s turn to Cameron Slater, who’s fallen on hard times recently because he used to be on John Key’s speed dial and now he’s just Judith Collins’ puppet boy. Perhaps that’s why he was so scathing of Simon Bridges’ statement that Unitec was a good idea. Cameron Slater did some basic maths and concluded that the Unitec project would be a slum, which is pretty much what Mike Hosking had to say on the radio the next morning. Cameron Slater and Mike Hosking, running the same lines from the National Party research unit—

Hon Chris Hipkins: Who would’ve thought?

Hon PHIL TWYFORD: Who would’ve thought? What a coincidence! But, you know, Mike, I have to say, these aren’t the kind of houses that you would buy. You know, on a Saturday morning at Unitec in 10 years’ time, the neighbours won’t be out on the road lovingly buffing the Ferrari and the Maserati. There won’t be any Georgian shutters on the houses—no topiary around the swimming pool out the back. But, Mike, these are the kinds of houses that your listeners would love to buy, and, in fact, they’re going to be lining up around the street trying to buy these houses, just as they are at Hobsonville right now—the stunningly successful, commercially successful Hobsonville development, where they can’t build those houses fast enough because they’re so popular.

But the most fevered of the four horsemen of the housing apocalypse was Matthew Hooton, who went on the radio waving around numbers that he had downloaded from Wikipedia, claiming that Hobsonville Point has a higher population density than Hong Kong. Now, anyone who’s been to Hong Kong knows how patently ridiculous that is. Mrs Collins, you need to get better sources.

This all goes to show just how hopelessly divided and confused the National Party and their acolytes are. On one hand, they claim that this exciting new urban development project at Unitec in Mount Albert is their idea and that they’ve already done it, but, on the other hand, it’s a terrible idea and we shouldn’t be doing it.

Thinking up excuses not to build affordable housing is exactly what got us into this crisis. The National Party spent nine years denying there was a housing crisis, and now it seems like they don’t want affordable houses to be built for young Kiwi families. They don’t want it. Our Government is going to roll up our sleeves and build the high-quality, affordable houses that young Kiwi families so desperately want.

Hon AMY ADAMS (National—Selwyn): Thank you, Mr Speaker. Well, we are five months in already to this three-headed hydra of a coalition governing arrangement. What staggers me is that already they are looking like a tired, shambolic third-term Government. They’re out of ideas. Well, we know that probably happened on day one, because, actually, the biggest achievement of this Government in the last five months has been the establishment of inquiries and working-groups and expert panels—broadly, anyone who can has been asked to come together and give the Government some ideas on what to do, because they have none. So they’ve done that.

We know they’re out of ideas, but what has been even more apparent in the last couple of weeks is the level of shambles and disarray within their own ranks. It is quite extraordinary that the only thing we are really hearing from the Prime Minister in recent weeks is when she has to come out and defend the comments of another Minister, defend the actions of a backbench member, explain what she really meant when she shot off some comment from the hip on the steps of Parliament, and put out fires of things happening in her own party that she wasn’t briefed on. Time and time again, we are seeing the old adage play out, which is “If you can’t manage yourselves, you can’t run the country.”

Now, I wouldn’t have expected a Government, fresh from the excitement of assuming the Treasury benches and fresh with the vigour of taking on the governing reins of this country for the first time in nine years, to be out of ideas, in disarray, and unable to manage the simple business of acting collectively as a team and, most importantly, to focus on the best interests of New Zealand. That’s what you should do as a Government. That’s why we fight to be in this place. That’s why we fight to be in Government: so we can make New Zealand a better place for the people who live here. And all we’re seeing, consuming the time of the Government, the Ministers, and the Prime Minister in particular, is putting out fires, managing scandals, setting up working-groups—almost nothing on how we make New Zealand a better place.

Let’s just look at a couple of the examples from the last few weeks. We’ve had a range of loose, ill-formed, poorly thought-out, inappropriate comments from the likes of Shane Jones, getting stuck into the performance of Air New Zealand, knowing full well that it is not appropriate for him to do so, having to be reined back in by the Prime Minister, told off—by the way, continuing to ignore that advice and carry on, which just shows the control the Prime Minister has over her Cabinet.

We’ve seen the Prime Minister herself going to the steps of Parliament, announcing policy off the hip, and then coming back in and having to explain to the media what she actually meant, which is different to what she actually said, which was different again to what her Minister said at the Petroleum Exploration and Production Association of New Zealand conference later on in the week. We’re seeing falling business confidence—

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Look over here.

Hon AMY ADAMS: —which isn’t surprising actually, given that you’ve got a party that has zero ideas, zero competence, and seems to have no plan of where it’s going. We heard today, on behalf the Minister of Finance, that their plan for spending is—

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Look over here.

Hon AMY ADAMS: —we’re just going to hope the economy keeps growing.

SPEAKER: Order! I’m sorry I have to interrupt that. I think the member is getting slightly repetitious—[Interruption]—no, in his interjections. Members are allowed to, and the member might have once or twice himself turned around and addressed members of his own team in the way that the member is doing now. I think we should just let the member get on with it.

Hon AMY ADAMS: Thank you, Mr Speaker. We’ve seen deeply questionable practices hinted at from members of New Zealand First bullying members on this side of the House who are trying to carry out legitimate activities. And we’ve seen poor old Jenny Marcroft rolled out to play the Bancroft to an unknown Steve Smith in New Zealand First. So what we want to know is who is Steve Smith? Who is the Minister who said poor old Mrs Marcroft ought to play Bancroft? She’s been thrown under the bus. When will Steve Smith of New Zealand First stand up and take responsibility?

You’ve seen, quite frankly, unbelievable conduct from the Minister of, ironically, open and transparent Government, the Hon Clare Curran—[Interruption]

SPEAKER: Order!

Hon AMY ADAMS: —secret meetings that she failed to disclose when she was asked to do it. If these meetings were so above board and inconsequential, why did Carol Hirschfeld hide the true nature of them for four months? Why was it not included in the information, when my colleague Melissa Lee asked for it? To have a Minister of the Crown, who is responsible for the regulation of that sector, and is responsible for setting up panels to decide the allocation of more than $150 million of taxpayers’ money, to be meeting with the head of content, the head of news, at an independent broadcaster is one of the most serious allegations that I think I have seen in this House. It certainly puts into very stark light decisions like that of RNZ to have a member of the Prime Minister’s own staff appearing on radio without disclosing their positions. These are serious questions. They show an appalling lack of judgment by the Government, and I think the Government should be very worried.

Hon NANAIA MAHUTA (Minister for Māori Development): Two words for the Opposition: cheer up! Cheer up! They don’t want to admit it, but the coalition Government’s plan to reset our direction as a country, to build a better, a fairer New Zealand is starting to take shape. Cheer up! Cheer up, Opposition members! We implemented the 100-day plan to help set a new direction and things have been done and achieved. We said we would do these things as a core commitment to reorient where this country was going, so that more New Zealanders could benefit. So what have we done?

We’ve passed our Families Package to boost incomes for around about 385,000 families. We have passed an extension for paid parental leave. Many mothers will benefit from that; so will their children. We will be seeing the increase of the minimum wage to $16.50, starting on 1 April this year, and we’ve announced a target for child poverty rates that I think will start to lead the way in which a whole-of-Government approach will actually do the things that we said we would do for the most vulnerable in our society, because it needs to be done.

But more than that, we’ve said that we would introduce a law to ban overseas speculators from buying up homes. And why is that important? It is because my colleague Phil Twyford has got an ambitious—ambitious—programme that we believe we can achieve. The announcement in terms of Unitec signals that we’re not just going to be bystanders in this effort; we want to be partners and partnering with others to help ensure that our KiwiBuild programme to increase homeownership will be something that we will actively pursue. Cheer up, Opposition members! Things are happening. The mood out there amongst many New Zealanders is that we are so, so pleased that the Government is starting to listen, that we have a Government who is listening to the needs in our communities.

But then when I think about the fact that orientation has just finished on many campuses, young people themselves are starting to really applaud the fact that this is the first year that they will have access to free tertiary training. But more than that, it’s a signal that they have a Government who is prepared to invest in them. It’s a signal that we have a Government that is prepared to invest in their future and their contribution to the type of economy that we will have. There are many, many positive things that are happening.

Most important is what we are doing to ensure that we give back to communities the confidence that we’re listening, because after all, many of the solutions that require support will actually help get the local economy moving. Housing is one of them. When we are talking about the way in which housing can help not only just build houses but ensure skills training for young people, ensure that we are investing in communities that sustain themselves, there are projects starting to emerge and people putting their hands up to say, “I want to be a part of that.” It is a huge, huge contribution to local economic development and opportunity.

I know that this Government is making a huge contribution to the way in which this country is going. The provincial growth fund and the good work of the Minister for Regional Economic Development will continue to tell the story that here is a Government that goes back to the regions, back to the provinces, supporting local development, regional government, partnering with local government and business and iwi in a way that’s never been done by the previous Government. So cheer up, Opposition members! Cheer up, because things are changing.

Hon TODD McCLAY (National—Rotorua): Thank you, Mr Speaker. Well, what a three weeks this has been. Like a babushka doll from Russia, every time the head comes off the story goes so very much deeper, because, of course, the Government has made itself an international laughing stock over the last two days, but this really is not a joke. While the rest of the world was condemning Russia over a nerve agent attack on one of our closest friends and allies on their own soil, the United Kingdom, our Foreign Minister was talking about a trade deal with Russia. And now, while 26 countries and NATO have expelled Russian diplomats, we’re not because our Prime Minister has claimed she can’t find any Russian spies. But, of course, a statement was put out. It wasn’t a joint statement this time. I haven’t been to the website to see whether a staff member made a mistake and it’s been changed, but the Rt Hon Winston Peters has said, “Salisbury attack—[New Zealand] Government to keep next steps under review”. Well, I must say to the “Five Eyes” countries, to our close allies and friends in the United Kingdom, they’ll be relieved. They’ll sleep easily tonight because Winston Peters has said we’re keeping the next steps under review.

So let’s go back to the beginning of the three weeks and see exactly what’s happened. On 13 March, the Rt Hon Winston Peters issued a press statement: “[NZ] joins condemnation of nerve agent attack”. He didn’t call out Russia in there at all. There was no criticism of that at all. He merely said that New Zealand condemns the use of nerve agents anywhere, and for the rest of that week, in the newspapers, on the television, and on the radio, he spoke more about a trade deal than he did actually that issue.

On 16 March—just three days later, on the Friday—a joint statement was released by the Prime Minister and the Rt Hon Winston Peters that had quotes from the Prime Minister condemning Russia for involvement in the use of these chemicals on UK soil. The quotations were only from the Prime Minister; they weren’t from the Minister of Finance. If one was to go and—

Hon Tim Macindoe: Foreign affairs.

Hon TODD McCLAY: —sorry, from the Minister of Foreign Affairs—check that statement on the website today, the Government’s website, those quotations have been taken away, and, therefore, the suggestion is that they are also attributable to the Minister of Foreign Affairs, and when asked in the House on Thursday of last week why that was, he said, “a staff member made a mistake”. Well, I’m not sure that’s the case, but thank goodness, on a website now, there is criticism.

Of course, what the Minister of Foreign Affairs has not done verbally in this House, or anywhere else, is stand up and tell the New Zealand public who he thinks is behind that attack on British soil, and he has an opportunity here in this House today to do so. The reason that’s so very important is so many other countries around the world are taking this issue much more seriously than the New Zealand Government is. Twenty-six countries have expelled Russian diplomats, including NATO on top of that. Of those 150 Russian diplomats, 60 from the USA, 23 from the UK, seven from NATO, and Mr Peters in the House said today, “Well, Australia has only expelled two, and they’re much larger than we are.” Well, in Sweden, there was one; Romania, there was one; Norway, there was one; Macedonia, there was one—the list goes on and on and on and on until it adds up to 150.

So the real question for this Government is, after three weeks of confusion, after three weeks of covering and playing catch up, what is their policy on Russia? What is the New Zealand Government’s policy on Russia? Can they explain that to the New Zealand people? Can they explain it to this House, because many of our friends, many of our allies, and very many New Zealanders just really don’t know?

Foreign affairs is a very important issue, and when it comes to the lives of others, it’s extremely important. New Zealand has one of the best reputations of any country in the world when it comes to foreign policy matters. We used to have an independent foreign policy. It’s for the Minister of Foreign Affairs to stand up and confirm we still do so.

Hon SHANE JONES (Minister for Regional Economic Development): Tēnā koe, Mr Speaker. Something very contradictory is happening on the other side of the House. At one level, we have this narrative of fabrication coming out from the leader of the other side of the House—cruel, unkind, inaccurate, attacking my good self as the provincial champion, as the purveyor of stores of goodwill, financial succour, to the provinces that have been neglected, downtrodden, and taken for granted for so long. But what the leader of the other side of the House doesn’t know is that his own members have taken to whispering sweet nothings in my ear.

Now, I have to say it’s not for me to be too extravagant in language—it would be unbecoming—but I have to share with you that some of these remarks are alarmingly flirtatious. Of course, I have received a letter from Dr Nick Smith, and I can assure the House there is nothing enchanting about that letter. The notion that that person could be an enchantress would be a type of sorcery, and it would remind me of that great line out of—which my leader knows—Macbeth, where, if I’m not mistaken, I see a face before me which is a combination of “Eye of newt, and toe of frog, Wool of bat, and tongue of dog,”. But I don’t want to continue, because the man asks for assistance—asks for assistance—to advance the interests of the airport of Nelson.

Now, being a great champion of the regions and the provinces and having enjoyed a certain passing acquaintance with the fishing industry, from time to time, and being known to contribute to political fortunes which I’ve been condemned to reveal, I would say don’t threaten that I’m going to bust you through the Overseas Investment Office (OIO) process and, at the end of your letter, in a whimpering, limp-wristed fashion, say, “By the way, is there anything that I can do to help the two airports in my electorate, as Murray McCully and John Carter”—two Northlanders with slightly redeeming qualities about them, not the least of which is the latter saw great virtue in my good self taking a trip for three years into the Tropics, but that’s another matter.

Mr Smith, tell your leader that you, along with your colleagues—and I accept that they should do that—are quietly approaching the provincial champion to back your regions. Just be up front.

Now I need to continue, because in South Otago and in Southland, where the frugal South met the feckless North in my good self, they have threatened to erect a bust of my good self—suitable physical proportions. I, because of modesty and the quiet way in which I was brought up have, to date, turned them down, but I can make a promise to Murihiku—I can make a promise to the South—no more the provinces sending quiet, useless, lapdog, right-wing politicians to the House, never once standing up for their regions and for their provinces, constantly banking their boat, and never delivering anything for their area.

Now, of course, that requires me to acknowledge in the House Mr Matt King, who is, I’m told, a farmer. From time to time, I’ve been known to drive past the property that he calls a farm. Now it’s not for me to talk about a neighbour, but, sir, do not for a moment think that the nest you currently occupy is yours permanently. That’s the first thing. The second thing: get some lessons from Mr John Carter, get some lessons from Mr Murray McCully, and you will see that the North has been taken for granted for far too long. And had it not been for those two ex-politicians standing up and advocating for the North—why did they advocate? Because they knew, in the case of my good self, they were pushing on an open door, not waiting for an obscure backbencher to deliver something that, unfortunately, is physically impossible, politically impossible, and soon to enter the annals of haere rā.

The North realises that it missed a brilliant opportunity by sending Mr King to Parliament. But wait—wait. Mr “Matua Shane” Jones, provincial champion and one of the most modest parliamentarians to grace this House and this Chamber, is on his way. Kia ora tātou.

DARROCH BALL (Junior Whip—NZ First): I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I just didn’t want to interrupt the previous member from speaking. But Matt King did a very unparliamentary hand gesture, and I would like him to withdraw and apologise.

SPEAKER: Did the member do an inappropriate, unparliamentary hand gesture?

MATT KING (National—Northland): I withdraw and apologise.

Hon LOUISE UPSTON (National—Taupō): In the last few weeks, we’ve seen a significant change. We’ve seen a very significant change from the Prime Minister that was relentlessly positive, to being relentlessly worried, to being relentlessly anxious, to being relentlessly concerned about where the next bullet from her own team is coming from. You know, I feel sorry for the Prime Minister. I feel sorry for the Prime Minister whose perspective was to be relentlessly positive, but she has been defending herself as Prime Minister against bullets from multiple directions.

In the Speech from the Throne, this was the commitment: “This government will foster a more open and democratic society. It will strengthen transparency around official information.” Well, so unfortunate, because what we’ve seen in the last couple of weeks is we’ve seen bully-boy tactics, where Ministers have sent a backbench MP to an electorate MP who was doing his absolute duty and expected that they will back down from their duty as an elected representative. That sort of behaviour is appalling. And it’s not surprising, really, that the Prime Minister has slipped into “relentlessly negative”.

But not just that example—she’s been defending bullets from her own party, where a president and the general manager have not shared information with her. And to have a former Prime Minister—Helen Clark—come out and say this week that the current Prime Minister has been deeply let down by her own party is pretty appalling.

So it’s not surprising. It’s not surprising that we now have a Prime Minister that is no longer relentlessly positive—anything but. She’s been blindsided left, right, and centre.

What’s going to be interesting, as the conversation plays out around the Minister responsible for open Government, Minister Curran, and a staff member for Radio New Zealand, is what was the staff member for Radio New Zealand so worried about that she would lie on four occasions and hide whether the meeting was planned or not? And I can see that’s why the Prime Minister is no longer relentlessly positive.

But it doesn’t end there. She’s dealing with Ministers—or a Minister in particular—that is inappropriate in terms of Air New Zealand. The Prime Minister does her job, sends the Minister a message—probably within hours, he’s back at it. So how can the Prime Minister remain relentlessly positive when she’s been given bullets from every single direction?

Because what New Zealanders want to see—I think they like that “relentlessly positive”. But you can’t fake it. And what we’ve seen from the Prime Minister in the last couple of weeks is an absolute struggle to keep it together. And the unfortunate thing is that New Zealanders want to see competent, capable, and stable Government. That’s what they expect to see. But no. What we’re seeing instead, through that Government’s actions, from what they are intending in workplace relations—we’ve seen train strikes, we’ve got bus strikes, we’ve now got the threat of a nurses’ strike. And we will see ordinary New Zealanders—hard-working taxpayers across this country—on the receiving end of some pretty awful experiences, delivered by the not so relentlessly positive Labour - New Zealand First - Green Government.

So they’ll be pretty disappointed out there. They’ll be pretty disappointed, because the gloss has come off. We’re not just seeing speed wobbles; I think we’re seeing some pretty significant rifts. As I said, you know, I feel sorry for the Prime Minister, because her team, on every side of this House, is letting her down, and I hope that they do something different to help her restore that relentlessly positive look. But I fear that “relentlessly positive” has gone for good.

GREG O’CONNOR (Labour—Ōhāriu): There’ll be people watching this on television—the general debate. This is the time when they expect us all to have a go at each other’s throats. This is the time when politicians—really, the gloves are off. It’s when we’re unbound by the normal rules—or some of the normal rules—around debating legislation.

But can I invite those watching—in fact, my colleagues, everyone—to feel sorry for those sitting on the opposite side, to feel sorry for those in Opposition. Look, they’re good people. I’ve been on a sports field—notwithstanding what Matt King just did. I found that a little disgraceful. But I’ve—

SPEAKER: Order! The member will resume his seat. I know the member is a new member, but there is a very strong convention in the House, and that is when a matter has been dealt with by way of point of order, it is left behind and not mentioned further.

GREG O’CONNOR: Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s a terrible day when one goes to bed not knowing something they didn’t know when they woke up. So I’m grateful for that piece of advice and I’ll make sure—

SPEAKER: And it’s also a convention not to comment on Speakers’ rulings. So just keep going.

GREG O’CONNOR: Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. So going back to this sympathy I feel—I don’t feel sympathy for the Opposition for the fact that they are in Opposition, although I have seen a few of them standing, looking wistfully, as Crown cars have gone and they are walking through the rain to the taxi.

No, what I feel very sorry for them about is that the reality is now dawning on them. The bubble that they have lived in—the only people on that side of the House who weren’t in it were their ex - Prime Minister, their other ex - Prime Minister, and now their ex - Minister of Finance, all of whom have gone. Clearly it was they who were in charge of the messaging. It was they who clearly told them everything was OK. And now, I feel sorry for these people as they sit through select committees and they see submitters coming through here and telling the truth, telling it as it is, telling us the effect of the underfunding of the last nine years.

Anyone can run a surplus if you don’t pay the bills and you don’t do the maintenance. Well, let’s just talk about paying the bills. Let’s just go to the Cullen fund. I mean, they cut that off and now, here we are, appointing a new leader, Mr Orr, who made an average of 10 percent over his time looking after that fund. Just imagine how much better this country would have been off had the Opposition not cut that spending at the time.

What about Better Public Services? Oh, that was well praised—Better Public Services. Well, again, with my colleagues I sit in select committees as we hear Government departments coming through. It’s quite clear that Better Public Services were simply cheaper public services, and now who’s going to have to foot that bill?

Everywhere we look we see that those members, who I continue to feel sorry for, did live in that fantasyland. How terrible it must be to now get the realisation of just why and how they were able to live in this fantasyland of excesses. Mind you, we had Australia. We were lauded by their now Prime Minister and we were very popular there, evidently, at a time when our crooks were being dumped over here, when our citizens living there were having reduced rights around education and various other services that any New Zealander in the past had been able to avail themselves of.

Sit and look at these members of the Opposition. Look at them thinking now that, yes, we’ve seen the hospital up at Middlemore. If that’s not an absolute classic case of not paying the bills—because we’ve now got a hospital. We’re going to—$11 million we’ve had to basically put in there now, and who knows what we’re going to have to put in. Every stone we pick up, there are scuttling critters underneath it and those critters represent underspending, underfunding, and who’s going to have to fix it? We’re going to have to fix it.

So when you sit there criticising, when you sit there putting pressure on this side of the House—

SPEAKER: Order! The member’s time has expired.

Hon SCOTT SIMPSON (National—Coromandel): That was a speech from a new member who has much to learn about this place and his role in it. Sitting on this side of the House, there isn’t a need for him to feel sorry for us one little bit because we do sit in those select committees and we are seeing the lack of work and the lack of focus and the lack of legislation—and the lack of ambition, quite frankly—that’s coming from this new Government.

This is a new Government that came to office towards the end of last year, brimming with hope and with confidence and with the skippy bright step of a new and exciting opportunity. Who would have thought that here we would be, only a few short months later, and the wheels would have come so comprehensively off so early in this Government’s administration?

So over the last week or two we’ve seen, as my colleague the Hon Louise Upston has indicated, a Government that’s gone from being confident and from being upbeat, to being well and truly on the back foot. Most of it has been as a result of self-inflicted wounds. This is the sort of behaviour that occurs to a Government usually after several terms in office. It’s a highly unusual thing to see, in our democracy, a Government come to pieces so quickly and in such a comprehensive way.

Over the last few days we’ve had a very significant resignation from a high-ranking executive in the State broadcaster Radio New Zealand’s administration. She’s had to fall on her sword because of a—well, actually, an error of judgment of the highest order by a new junior Minister who should have known better. But in the full flush of excitement early on in her administration, having just recently been sworn in, she was eager and keen to go and prove herself to her mates in the flash coffee houses of Wellington, and there the problem really arose. So the rest of that is now history—well, it’s history for that Radio New Zealand executive; it’s not yet, I suspect, history for the current Minister, who may well have to find a seat on the backbench, along with that backbench MP who just sat down prior to me rising.

I want to raise the issue of the new Associate Minister for the Environment and her role in the tawdry, sordid little affair that involves the early and unexpected resignation of the Environmental Protection Authority’s (EPA’s) Chief Scientist, Dr Jacqueline Rowarth. We know from the release of official information, correspondence of emails, and a variety of information that’s become available, that the Minister involved herself in matters that she clearly should not have done. That, too, was actually as a result of naive exuberance and enthusiasm very early on in her time in her ministry.

Just a month or so after having been sworn in, at the very first meeting with the EPA’s chief executive, the matter of Dr Jacqueline Rowarth’s employment was raised and discussed in a way that was entirely inappropriate for a Minister of the Crown to involve herself in. Then we find later that there have been emails sent from the Minister’s office, at the Minister’s request, to the chief executive of the EPA, critical of the chief scientist. One can only assume that that was done in order to facilitate and to make easy the exit of the chief scientist from the employment of the EPA.

Then further, we find that on 15 December, after that first initial meeting with the chief executive, the chief executive himself replied to the Minister’s office with an email that says, yes, he’d seen the article. It says, “I had seen it”—the grammar is appalling, by the way—“and are happy to update Minister privately on discussion with Jacqueline.” Happy to update the Minister privately on discussion with Jacqueline—that can only be a coded message that there were further conversations between the Minister, and the Minister now has very serious questions to answer about her role in the early exit of the Chief Science Advisor. Those questions will be relentless and she will, at some point, have to address them, as will the chief executive.

Dr DEBORAH RUSSELL (Labour—New Lynn): There has been a change—a change in the way that people on the street feel. I feel it when people come up to me and talk to me on the buses, in the supermarket, and as I walk about my electorate and talk to my constituents. The change they feel is a sense of hope—hope that things will finally get better, and that finally they will have a chance to have a decent home, that finally their schools will be properly resourced, that finally they will have decent healthcare, and that finally they have a Government that cares, and that is this Labour - New Zealand First Government, supported by the Greens—a Government that genuinely cares about real people. And it’s a Government that takes action: the extraordinary action of building 3,000 new dwellings at the Unitec site in Auckland—some apartments, some terrace houses and townhouses, all built and planned with green space, with great access to transport; a place where we can build thriving communities. “At last”, people say—“At last we have a chance of a decent home.”

It’s action that’s taking place in my own electorate of New Lynn, where, over the next two to three years, another 350 Housing New Zealand Corporation dwellings will be built to help people have a stable, secure place to live. That’s a lot of people coming to live securely in my electorate, and I will be delighted to welcome them, because that’s what a caring Government does. It ensures that all people have access to decent housing.

It’s the sort of action we’re seeing with the teacher education refresh, where experienced teachers are being encouraged to stay in our classrooms. It’s the action on the regional fuel tax, where instead of just tolerating the snarled roads, the poor planning, the lack of public transport, no busway on the Northwestern Motorway—instead of doing that, we’re going to take action to ensure that our infrastructure can be properly funded. It’s action on tenancy rights—ensuring that tenants are not charged for services that they don’t actually need.

This is a Government taking action, and it’s a real change. It’s a sense of hope, a sense of change from the previous Government—a Government and an Opposition that is now entirely about negativity. They are the say-nothing, do-nothing Opposition. They don’t want us to do anything in taxation, they don’t want us to do anything on roads, they don’t want us to build houses, they don’t want to get more young people into education; all they want us to do is to expel some imaginary Russian spies. You might think it was funny that all they want us to do is play with imaginary friends, except it comes from their time in Government, when they were the do-nothing Government—doing nothing in pursuit of some mythical surplus.

And where was that do-nothing the worst? It was in health, seen at Middlemore Hospital, where they did nothing in respect to the repairs and maintenance. It was all a Government of neglect, and it’s really sad what happened there. You see, when the acting CEO of Counties Manukau District Health Board was asked why they had not done the repairs and maintenance—was it in order to stay in surplus?—she said yes: “the whole government [had] expected the health sector to be able to live within its means, and to be able to do that we have had to compromise on our capital investment programme.” Compromise—compromise our children’s health, compromise our assets and infrastructure, and compromise our future, all in respect of some ideological surplus.

I want to contrast this to our Government of action—our Government where we have a successful Government in a country where we deliver: a country where we deliver healthcare, a country where we deliver education, a country where we deliver welfare, we deliver housing, we deliver infrastructure, and we deliver decent living standards. That’s the Government we have on this side of the House: a Government that cares about ordinary people, and that is why the people in my electorate, the people in New Lynn, Avondale, Blockhouse Bay—they feel a sense of hope.

Dr SHANE RETI (National—Whangarei): Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s a pleasure to speak today—a day when it’s clear that we are seeing, across the House, the early separation and divorce proceedings of this unholy marriage of inconvenience: the Labour - New Zealand First - Greens coalition Government. While we still can, before it completely dissolves, I want to reflect back on how this unholy alliance came to be.

Let’s start with the marriage proposal—the engagement, if you will: the coalition negotiations. Let’s look at what each party brought to the table. What was their dowry? What did they bring? What did they give up? Well, let’s start with the Greens—what did they bring to this unholy marriage? Well, what did they give up? The Greens gave up their principles; that’s what they gave up—both of them, Kennedy Graham and David Clendon, given up, sacrificed on the altar of a marriage proposal for this unholy alliance.

Let’s go to New Zealand First. What was their dowry? What did they bring to the table? New Zealand First had a problem. The problem for them was they had nothing that was valuable to New Zealanders. They had nothing that New Zealanders wanted that they could bring to the negotiations, so they rustled around and they eventually found a couple of old bags—a couple of old bags that they tried to polish up and make shiny, but, at the end of the day, everyone could still see they were a couple of old bags and they had a lot of baggage. But they thought, “Look, we’ll bring them along. That will be our dowry.”

Labour thought they’d do something different: “Let’s do something traditional: something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue.” So what did Labour bring to the table? What did they bring to the marriage proposal? Something old—a capital gains tax; something new—a capital gains tax; something borrowed—still a capital gains tax, borrowed from Australia, and then they damaged that relationship so badly we can’t give it back; and something blue—National Party surpluses to pay for a capital gains tax. That’s what Labour brought to the marriage.

So we had the engagement: the coalition negotiations deciding the marriage. I don’t even want to consider the marriage night—that’s an image I don’t want to have in my head—but let’s look, maybe, to the morning after, the morning after the marriage. I can imagine the leader of New Zealand First waking up: to his right he sees Ron Mark, to his left he sees Labour, and through blurry eyes he sees Ron and he says to him, “Ron Mark, Ron Mark, what happened? Where are we?”—because, you see, things had changed. Initially, at the beginning of the night, there were three parties in the marriage bed, but during the night the Greens had been rolled. They’d been rolled right out of the bed on to the floor, but that was OK because on the floor was a mat—a hemp mat—from which they had received great comfort.

Anyway, left in the bed is the leader of New Zealand First, and he turns to Ron and says, “Ron, Ron”—blurry-eyed, waking up in the morning—“Ron, Ron, is that you?” He says, “Yes, yes, boss; it’s me.” He says, “Ron, why are you wearing that ridiculous cowboy hat? Take it off. Does this look like Bonanza?” He says, “No, no, boss. That’s what I wear all the time.” “Ron, I need to know what happened. What happened last night?” He said, “You don’t remember?” He said, “No, I don’t.” He said, “Well, we actually formed a marriage, a coalition with Greens and New Zealand First.” The leader of New Zealand First: “Oh no, that’s terrible, my worst nightmare—I’m in a marriage with people I can’t stand.” He said, “Ron, this is terrible.”

And then, vaguely, through the shifting mists, the shifting fogs, the leader of New Zealand First starts to recall some of the episodes of the night before. He starts to recall, and he recalls the last words he heard before the lights went out. He vaguely recalls the words, the mist starts to shift, and what were the last words he heard in the marriage bed before the lights went out? “Mmm, let’s do this.” Thank you, Mr Speaker.

JAMIE STRANGE (Labour): I believe the Opposition is struggling from their divorce with the New Zealand public, but on to another topic. When I think of the previous Government and the Opposition party, there is a song that comes to mind, and that song is a Beatles song, and it’s called “Yesterday”.

Yesterday, all my troubles seemed so far away

But now it looks as though they’re here to stay

Oh, I believe in yesterday

Suddenly, I’m not half the man I used to be

There’s a shadow hanging over me

Oh, I believe in yesterday

Why did Bill have to go?

I don’t know, he wouldn’t say

But how I long for yesterday.

But there’s a problem with yesterday, because, for a number of New Zealanders, yesterday was not quite so rosy. A number of New Zealanders were struggling yesterday in the areas of housing, health, education, the environment, and jobs, but I’m proud to say that now we have a Prime Minister and a Government who will fix these neglected problems of yesterday. You see, yesterday, we had families struggling, child poverty rampant, and the previous Government would do nothing about it, but today, we have a Government who are acting. On 1 July, families will be supported. The quality of life they deserve will be given to them. Child poverty will be reduced.

Yesterday, we had a Government who denied there was a housing crisis, who allowed houses to be sold to overseas speculators, but today, we have a Government who are banning the overseas sales of existing homes. Yesterday, we had the mass sell-off of State housing. Today, we have an increasing of the State housing stock to provide a safety net for people. Yesterday, we had rental homes that were cold, damp, and unhealthy, but today, we have a healthy homes guarantee of warm, dry homes. Yesterday, our police force were overstretched and underfunded, but today, we are working towards increasing the force by over 1,800 in the next three years.

Yesterday, we had an education curriculum narrowing due to national standards and we had teachers who were reduced to administrators; today, national standards is gone, allowing teachers to teach the full breadth of their curriculum. I had a principal say to me the other day that teachers in his school are once again picking up their curriculum documents—documents that had been hidden under piles of paper because they’ve been constantly struggling due to the work they’d been given through national standards and the lack of trust that had been put upon them. But now teachers are pulling out their curriculum documents, they’re getting together, and they’re exploring how they can teach the full breadth of our world-class curriculum.

Yesterday, we had dirty rivers. We had a Government who wouldn’t act in this area. But today, we have clear plans to clean up our rivers and waterways and restore the clean, green image we have in New Zealand. Yesterday, around climate change, the Government were, in their own words, “a fast follower”. There was no leadership. But today, we have a Government who will lead—carbon emissions goal for fossil fuel - free by 2050. It’s time that we led the world in this area.

Yesterday, we had a minimum wage which was difficult for people to live on. I’m proud to announce that this Government are raising it to $16.50 an hour from 1 April—164,000 workers and families will be better off. Yesterday, we had superannuation that was due to rise to the age of 67. Today, we have a Government who have resumed contribution to the superannuation funds to keep the retirement age at 67.

We have a Government who will lead. For nine years, we’ve been consigned to a Government that simply follows, but we have a Government who will lead on a global scale. I’m proud to be a part of that Government. Thank you.

SPEAKER: Just before I call Parmjeet Parmar, I am going to remind members that in the general debate there is no excuse for reading speeches. I’ve been pretty lenient. We said we’d be lenient up to the end of last year. I’ve been pretty lenient with members, but that won’t continue. Speeches will not be read at all in the general debate.

Dr PARMJEET PARMAR (National): Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s great to have the last say in today’s general debate. This side is not afraid of doing things that are right for New Zealand, unlike this Labour-led Government. They are in Government just by chance. They are in Government just because of the grace of the New Zealand First Party—or shall I say the New Zealand First Party’s board. They were in Opposition for nine years, and they have no plan. We have seen they lack the ability and organisation to run this country.

They have very quickly reverted back to that “tax and tax” Labour Government, as we saw with the regional fuel tax legislation last night before the House. Yes, Aucklanders don’t need that legislation; Aucklanders don’t need another burden of another tax. Yes, we do need transport mechanisms; we do need more infrastructure—but there should be other ways of funding that.

The Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, has no time to see what’s happening in her party—maybe she’s too busy looking for Russian spies.

When they found themselves in Government, because they didn’t have any plan, to cover up that, they came up with an idea—that idea is to set up working groups after working groups. With the nurses’ pay dispute, there is going to be an advisory panel—so it’s working groups, advisory panels, and reviews.

Their legislative programme is weak, and I suggest that they can bring legislation before the House that would make their legislative programme interesting, as well. That legislation should be to legislate that in the next election—which could be before 2020, looking at the state of this Government—on the ballot paper, instead of the names of the Labour politicians, it should be the names of people that they will appoint on working groups if they ever get back in Government, because it’s those people on working groups actually running this country, not these politicians in Government.

We have seen that their policies are failing—yes, already we have seen that. Their tertiary fees-fee education policy—we have seen there has been a negligible increase in the number of enrolments. And, yes, they can go ahead and set up another working group to establish why that policy didn’t work, and I know that working group will come back and say that that policy was never meant to increase enrolments but that policy was meant to be just a vote-grabbing policy—exactly, a vote-grabbing policy. This Government is just a self-serving Government, not serving New Zealand.

As the spokesperson on research, science, and innovation, I’m appalled to see the lack of commitment from this Government for research, science, and innovation. There is big talk, just like in other policy areas, of increasing science and research and development spending, and that is to 2 percent of the GDP in 10 years. But what we have seen when it comes to funding—actually, we have seen funding cut in Primary Growth Partnership that was for research and development. You don’t increase spending in R & D by cutting research and development spending.

Then, the Minister is really busy going around launching and celebrating programmes that were put in place by the previous National Government. So, yes, the Minister formally launched a programme that has been in place since 2015—put in place by the previous National Government. And last week, there was an event in Parliament to celebrate the success of National Science Challenges—and, again, I want to remind the Minister that it is really important that when she is going around launching those programmes formally and celebrating those programmes, she should acknowledge that those programmes were put in place by the previous National Government, and stop pretending that these programmes are put in place by her or this Labour Government.

Science and innovation is important for the creation of jobs and to support the economy. The Government lack that understanding. They don’t have the interest of New Zealand at their heart; it is this Opposition that champions that. Thank you.

The debate having concluded, the motion lapsed.

Bills

Criminal Records (Expungement of Convictions for Historical Homosexual Offences) Bill

In Committee

KIRITAPU ALLAN (Assistant Whip—Labour): I seek leave for all provisions of the Criminal Records (Expungement of Convictions for Historical Homosexual Offences) Bill to be taken as one debate.

CHAIRPERSON (Poto Williams): Leave is sought for that purpose. Is there any objection? There appears to be none.

Parts 1 and 2, schedules 1 and 2, and clauses 1 and 2

KIRITAPU ALLAN (Labour): It’s an absolute delight to be able to take a call in regard to the Criminal Records (Expungement of Convictions for Historical Homosexual Offences) Bill, in particular in the committee of the whole House debate. In having regard to this very significant and important bill, I’m proud to see that there is universal and widespread agreement across the House for the ethos that underpins it. It does expunge the convictions of those that were convicted under our previous law for the simple act of being able to love somebody.

I just had a couple of questions for Minister Little in regard to some of the finer details of the bill and the general effects of expungement. I wanted to understand whether a conviction expungement under New Zealand law would have a broader purpose—whether people who had been convicted under the previous law would still be required to disclose those former convictions in any overseas jurisdictions, and whether that was universal across the board. So I just wanted to understand that, if the Minister could step us through that a little bit.

On a personal note, a couple of weeks ago my uncle Darcy—he was my nana’s youngest brother—passed away. He moved from our ūkaipō in Te Puna as a young man—moved up to Auckland, to the city of bright lights, to live a life that in our small town wasn’t viewed with much favour. At his funeral, there were a range of people that came and talked about the lifestyle of the queens that lived up in Auckland, which my uncle was very heavily involved in in that community, and as they gave their stories, both inside the marae and outside the marae, they spoke of the weight of what it was to be young men, as they were, some of whom were in constant fear, hiding from the law, and being disconnected from their families. They spoke about the impacts of being able to travel universally—well, actually, just to live their life and get decent jobs without having to make disclosures of those criminal offences, just because of the fact that they loved somebody of the same sex. That was a topic that was very much a part of discussion at my uncle Darcy’s tangi.

So the Minister might be so kind as to just give some update for those that might be watching this debate at home, and also for myself, so we can understand exactly what the nature and extent of expungement of those domestic convictions will mean here for those people living outside the country.

PRIYANCA RADHAKRISHNAN (Labour): Thank you, Madam Chair. There are some bills that we debate in this House that strike straight at the heart of people’s lived existence, people’s suffering, fear, and hurt, and give us an opportunity to remedy that, and this bill really does that. I just also want to say that it was an absolute privilege to be part of the select committee, the Justice Committee, that went through this bill, that heard public submissions on this bill, and that actually worked very well together to make some amendments to part of this bill, which I will go through today, as well.

I just want to, firstly, thank the former Minister of Justice the Hon Amy Adams for her work on this; the current Minister of Justice, the Hon Andrew Little, for his work on this; and my colleagues on the select committee and, of course, those who submitted on this bill, as well. We heard some very emotive, some very emotional, submissions, and I want to acknowledge that.

Part 1 of this bill looks at, basically, the purpose of this bill—what does this bill do? The reason that we’re here today—and this goes way back to the way I began, actually—is, for those of us in this House, there is immense power here to impact people’s lives. It’s a little bit like fire: sometimes we don’t get it right and it ruins people’s lives completely, and sometimes we have the opportunity to remedy it. Now, the Crimes Act 1961, and its predecessor in 1908, criminalised sexual activity between males 16 years and over. Between that time and 1986, when the Homosexual Law Reform Act decriminalised the same activity, we saw a number of people who were caught in a space where just being themselves meant that they became criminals or were deemed criminals by society.

According to Statistics New Zealand, between that time period nearly a thousand men were convicted of indecency between males. About 138 of them had a sentence of imprisonment, and many others had either fines or community-based sentences, as well. Quite apart from that was the abject fear that they lived in of law enforcement agencies, the stigma that they suffered—young men who were thrown out of home for being homosexual—and the huge implications for their health and their mental health. So this bill gives us an opportunity to put that straight. It also sends a really clear signal to future generations of young people in the LGBTQI community.

So what does it do? The purpose of this bill is to address that stigma, that prejudice, that the young men who were convicted have faced. It’s all well and good for us to say post-1986 that this is no longer criminal, but it’s a whole different matter for it still to be on people’s criminal records when they either apply for a job or are considered for any position or status of some sort. So this addresses that issue. It enables an application for expungement of a conviction to be made under this legislation. Parts of the bill that I will get into shortly sort of outline who is eligible to make the application—whether it’s the person who has been convicted themselves or someone acting on their behalf as well. Actually, both are eligible to apply for an expungement, and I’ll go into that in a little bit.

Part 1 also looks at the interpretation—the definitions: who does this apply to and how? It lays that out quite clearly. I just want to draw your attention, Madam Chair, and that of those who are watching, as well, to clause 4, as an example of the types of issues we debated, in a lot of depth, actually, at select committee. For example, “ ‘criminal record’, of a conviction for a historical offence”—initially in the bill it was written down as an “official record”. The select committee suggested that that be changed to a “public record” so that we align the definition better with section 4 of the Public Records Act 2005. There are a few other changes in clause 4, as well, that will give better meaning to the expungement per se.

The other part of Part 1, of course, is the definition of historical homosexual offences, and it’s quite specific as to who can apply—so what sorts of convictions a person must have had in order to be eligible to apply for this. It lays it out in clause 5. Basically, there is the time period that I laid out at the start that’s between 1908 and 1986—so from the start of the Crimes Act that criminalised such behaviour right through to 1986 with the Homosexual Law Reform Act, that decriminalised the same behaviour. So that’s the time period within which people who have had such a historical conviction can apply for the expungement.

The other relevant part that’s outlined in clause 5, and I’ll just read this bit, because it’s quite detailed, is the sections that have been repealed—the specific sections of the Crimes Act that have been repealed. They are section 141, and that deals with indecency between males—so that’s section 141 of the Crimes Act 1961; section 142, which deals with sodomy; section 146, “keeping place of resort for homosexual acts”; section 153, unnatural offence, of the Crimes Act 1908—so that’s the predecessor Act—“but only to the extent that the section covers committing buggery with any other male human being:”; and section 154, “attempt to commit unnatural offence”, so similar to the previous one, but an attempt rather than the actual offence being committed.

So people within that time frame who were convicted under any of those five sections that I’ve outlined will be eligible to apply for the expungement of that conviction. Now, this also applies to those who might have passed on since that time. So they may not be able to apply in person, but a representative—someone from their family, perhaps—can apply on their behalf, as well.

I’ll just, at this point, draw attention to the fact that some submitters at select committee alluded to the fact that, potentially, this bill should go a little bit further and apply an automatic expungement to everyone—to those thousand people perhaps that we have details for—who would be eligible. That was considered by select committee, but the advice that was received was that that blanket automatic expungement actually might leave a few people out, so a proactive application for expungement was actually better. It meant that people could—we potentially included more people in that.

The other point to note, of course, is that these convictions actually brought about a lot of trauma for those who were convicted, and so it’s not everybody who would want to have to revisit that trauma as well, and an automatic expungement might put people in that position. So, instead of that, it was better that people applied if they wanted an expungement.

Now, Part 2 is the test for expungement—so, who’s eligible? We’ve gone through the time period and the specific convictions under the two Crimes Acts. We’ve also mentioned that the person themselves, or a representative—and that’s in clause 8, Part 2 of the bill. Now, the test is that the conduct constituting the offence, if it were engaged in now—so when the application is made—would not constitute an offence. So basically, what we’re saying is we had a law back then that criminalised people for just being who they were. We don’t think that was right, and, if the conduct that they engaged in at the time actually happened today, they wouldn’t be convicted.

So that’s pretty much the test, which then falls out, for example, cases of rape and cases where there was no consent—that would have been an offence back then, also because it was a sexual activity between males. That part of it would no longer hold under current law, but the lack of consent would. So those that fall into that category, this bill clarifies, would not be expunged, basically—that particular conviction would not be expunged.

So Part 2 of the bill lays out quite clearly the instances in which the conviction would not be expunged. There are also parts in Part 2 that basically say that a status cannot be refused or revoked. So, basically, a person who has an expunged conviction should not be disqualified on that ground for employment or for any other appointment or post—so quite detailed in the bill.

I have a question, though, for the Minister in the chair, Andrew Little, and that’s around compensation that came out in the select committee as to why that wasn’t part of this bill. It would be good to get clarity. Thank you.

MATT KING (National—Northland): Madam Chair, thank you. First of all, I’d like to acknowledge the members of the Justice Committee that are here today, including the chair, Raymond Huo. I would like to acknowledge the great work done on this by the Hon Amy Adams, and also I’d like to acknowledge the Hon Andrew Little for taking it on.

I was put on the Justice Committee when I first became an MP, which was only a few months ago, and I was learning about how select committees work. I thought that dealing with this particular case was the way select committees operated, and I didn’t realise that it’s not always the case. This important piece of legislation I’m proud to have served on, and I found that the whole select committee, across parties, supported this. Quite frankly, it’s a no-brainer to support it, anyway. It was a very collegial manner that we dealt with it.

What I found was that select committee members brought their own life experiences to the discussion—in particular, we had Ginny Andersen, who’s got a background with police and intelligence and justice. We also had the “dinosaur” up there, Greg O’Connor, who has had 30 years in the police and has huge amounts of invaluable experience—[Interruption]—and I say that quite fondly. So he brought a lot to the table. Also, the officials that are here today also brought their contribution. So we all worked together, and I think we got a good result.

Now one of the things that we argued about, or talked about, actually—discussed; we didn’t argue, but we talked about it—was what the definition of expunging would be, or what it would literally mean. Would it mean that on the computer screen it would say the conviction and then have the word “Expunged” by it, or did it mean that there was no reference to what the conviction was and it would just say “Expunged”? The officials came back with what they believed would be the way to deal with it, and that was just to have the word “Expunged”. But from our experiences in the police and others, we felt that any reference on that computer screen that could identify what it was would defeat the purpose.

So then, the officials came back to us and said, “Well, why don’t we just make it an offence to disclose whatever was on the screen?”, but I have to hark back to my experience when I was in the police, which was that—and it doesn’t relate to this particular thing, but it’s along similar lines. That was a schoolteacher that came to the area and he had some conviction—just a very minor one; a very minor one. It was a small town and people within the courthouse had access to that information and disclosed it, and it caused him a lot of problems. It was very minor stuff and nothing to do with this, but it caused him problems. So, from my own experience, I felt that the computer record itself had to have no reference in there, otherwise it would defeat the purpose, and I believe that’s where we’ve gone with it.

So that’s my contribution. I’d have to say it was a pleasure to be part of the team. I’m no longer on that select committee. I’ve been moved to the Transport and Infrastructure Committee, but it was a pleasure to be on that team. It’s a pleasure to be part of this process, and I recommend it to the House.

Hon ANDREW LITTLE (Minister of Justice): Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, members, too, for your contributions so far. To Mr King, it’s good for members in legislation like this to be able to bring their personal experiences, and it’s for that reason that the Criminal Records (Expungement of Convictions for Historical Homosexual Offences) Bill specifically provides not only for the expungement, in whatever nature that takes, but actually that subsequent disclosure by an official of a conviction that has been expunged ought to lead to consequences too. So it was good to be able to bring that inside.

Can I just come to a couple of the questions that have been raised by members so far. Kiritapu Allan asked a couple of questions: one about the extent of expungement and the other about what is disclosed. So in relation to the extent of expungement, the bill is pretty clear. The specified offences which have led to a conviction, those are expunged from the record, but if somebody is convicted of an offence such as disorderly behaviour that might relate to the same sort of conduct that would otherwise have led to those other offences, the offensive disorderly behaviour will not be expunged. But then the failure to expunge that particular offence will not lead to an inference or an implication that the person making the application has engaged in a homosexual offence and therefore subject to the discrimination that might be associated with that.

On the issue of what is disclosed, and particularly in relation to dealing with overseas bodies and organisations and parties, I think the bill and the consideration by the Justice Committee saw that this was particularly problematic. In any event, it will come down to the sort of question that is asked. So if the question is, “Do you have a relevant conviction or a conviction?”—and in this case, the conviction under this bill has been expunged—then the person is quite free to say, “No, there is no conviction.”, because it has been expunged. If, however, the question is, “Have you been arrested for an offence?”, that will not allow the person to say no, they have not been arrested. They will have to disclose that they’ve been arrested; they will not have to disclose the offence. So people do need to understand that particular limitation.

I’m thankful to Priyanca Radhakrishnan for her adumbration of the issues that she gave. She notes the, in a sense, arbitrary date around which the historical offending is limited, and it is offences after 4 August 1908 because it deals with the first legislation that provided for those offences, which was the legislation that took effect from 4 August 1908 and then, subsequently, the Crimes Act 1961.

The obvious question is why wouldn’t you go to a period earlier than 1908, and I think the Justice Committee made a pretty pragmatic conclusion, which was that it is most unlikely that there would even be descendants who would be concerned enough about convictions made before 1908 that would warrant the system to be able to accommodate that. So, yes, the cut-off date back to 1908 is arbitrary, but I think there are good reasons for that.

In terms of the specific question that Ms Radhakrishnan raised, which is why compensation has not been provided for, I think it was pretty clear from a policy point of view, and I think the select committee discovered, it was just going to be too problematic. I think it is true, also, to say that there are mixed views within the community about whether compensation is warranted or justified, and even if you did want to work out a compensation regime, how would that work, what are you compensating, or what is the extent of compensation?

In the end, I think what most submitters raised was that in order to remove the stigma associated with a conviction for these offences, or this conduct that is no longer regarded as a criminal offence, it is removing the record of that offence. That is the right outcome to achieve rather than trying to come up with a complex arrangement for compensation.

So, on that note, I’m happy to have answered those questions, and I look forward to the ongoing discussion.

RAYMOND HUO (Labour): Thank you, Madam Chair. I was late in returning to the debating chamber to take my call because the Hon Maggie Barry and I had a joint meeting with the clerk of the Justice Committee, so it is very fitting for me to thank the clerk for his contributions. It’s a very busy, very effective committee, and we did enjoy the work. Congratulations are in order for the Minister in the chair, Andrew Little, on making this bill one of the Government’s priorities and also for the then Minister of Justice, the Hon Amy Adams, on putting up the bill in the first place last year.

At the committee of the whole House stage, it is very appropriate for me to touch upon some important issues raised by members at the second reading. Those issues included, for instance, eligibility, illegality, the real effect of an expungement, and also, as the Minister just touched upon, the issues around compensation. Some of those issues were difficult ones, and without the input of the submitters and people in the know, and without the help of the officials, we simply could not get to the point where we are now.

For instance, the original clause 13(2) could be interpreted as such that those job applicants could be seen as agreeing or consenting to the disclosure of the expunged convictions even if those convictions are not relevant to the job at all, and this is not at all the intention or the purpose of this bill. Clause 13(2) is a difficult one, simply because it is concerned with this bill’s relationship with other pieces of legislation, especially the Vulnerable Children Act.

Having said that, I should acknowledge our officials who have done a great job, and the officials are in the debating chamber. I acknowledge their knowledge, input, and level of professionalism, and also I’d like to acknowledge and thank the Parliamentary Counsel Office, particularly Mr Ross Carter. They have always taken the optimal drafting approach, which has been reflected a great deal in the shape of this bill.

Back to some important points raised by members during the second reading debate, the first one, obviously, is regarding the records. This is about the real effect of the expungement. When talking about the records, there are generally two kinds of such records. One is a CMS, a case management system, and the other one is CaTCH, criminal and traffic conviction history report. With regard to CMS—case management system—operationally, the court record will be retained in the CMS, which is the court’s database. A court staff member with access to the CMS for the criminal jurisdiction will be able to view the records. All charges are recorded in CMS. This includes those that have been withdrawn by leave, dismissed, acquitted, or quashed on appeal, etc. It would be undesirable to remove expunged convictions from the case management system, as this system is intended to provide a full record of all court activity.

At the select committee session, we did hear submissions from those concerned about their record and the real effect of the expungement, and one or two submitters raised the point that given this is in the nature of expungement, why not remove the entire thing from any such records at all. To reinforce that sort of view, it would be undesirable to remove expunged convictions from the CMS, simply because this system is intended to provide a full record of all court activity. However, for the purpose of this bill, that expunged conviction would not appear on the individual’s criminal and traffic conviction history report.

Some submitters raised their concerns or some proposals with regard to compensation. As the Minister just said, there is no such principle to support such compensation because there is no general principle that a person who is convicted on a repealed offence is entitled to compensation on the repeal of the offence. Yesterday, when I made my contribution, I did mention the Yogyakarta Principles, because some submitters raised their concerns that without compensation or lack of such a policy initiative we could be seen as potentially in breach of the Yogyakarta Principles.

The Yogyakarta Principles is a set of principles established in 2006 about human rights in the sexual orientation and gender identity space. The principles affirm binding international legal standards with which all States must comply. There are 29 such principles together with additional recommendations, and representatives from the UK, US, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand were among the signatories.

We acknowledge the concerns raised by submitters. However, compensation goes beyond the purpose of the scheme, which is to prevent, as the Minister just said, further negative effects from the stigma of a conviction. Having said that, clause 22 of this bill, however, does not limit other measures under the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990, which protects the right to bring civil litigation against the Crown. Further, clause 22 does not exclude other rights to compensation which may be pursued under existing legislation. For those who are concerned about lack of compensation or that there is no mechanism provided under this bill, what we can confirm is that this particular clause or policy initiative aligns well with the approach in comparable overseas jurisdictions.

Another matter the Minister in the chair just touched upon is about the 1908 cut-off, because under this bill, it is concerned with two pieces of Crimes Acts, if you like. The first one is the Crimes Act 1961 and the other one is the Crimes Act 1908. What I could add on to the contributions made by the Minister and other members is that in practice the Secretary for Justice may receive few applications for offending over this time period, because the convicted persons would be deceased, and potential representatives of the convicted persons are unlikely to have knowledge of the convictions. Offences prior to the Crimes Act 1908 were not included, as any convicted persons from this era would have been born in 1892 at the latest; namely, at the age of 16.

Having said that, I’d like to take this opportunity to thank those people who are involved in not only this bill but also the petition in 2014 of Wiremu Demchick, and 2,111 other people who signed this petition, which we considered along with this bill. Thank you, Madam Chair.

GREG O’CONNOR (Labour—Ōhāriu): It gives me pleasure to rise on the Criminal Records (Expungement of Convictions for Historical Homosexual Offences) Bill. One of my colleagues across the Chamber described me as a dinosaur, some minutes ago, in relation to my time in the police. It did cause me to reflect that I did spend some time as a police officer in the New Zealand Police and I was indeed in the police at a time when police were actively policing these Acts: section 141, indecency between males; section 142, sodomy; section 146, keeping place of resort for homosexual acts; section 153, unnatural offence; section 154, attempt to commit unnatural offences.

As I sat on the Justice Committee and considered the submitters, considered the bill, it did cause me to give thought to just what it was like in those days—those days in the 1960s and 1970s and 1980s even—for those who were brought into the criminal justice system, because it wasn’t just a conviction; it was everything that went with that. In a lot of the latter years, a lot of the policing of the Act, in Wellington, was around Marion Street where a lot of transsexual men and a lot of homosexual men would nightly be brought into the Wellington Central Police Station and charged with associated offences. So as I considered that—I looked at the different parts of the bill—I couldn’t help but have context for what it was that we were actually doing and achieving with this bill, and that, complemented by the submitters, who brought their own stories, their own experiences, to the select committee, really did give me a sense that this is a very right thing to be doing.

Saying that, I think we should remember that we are in another time now, and we shouldn’t be too hard on those who were responsible for the legislation and the enforcement of same in that period, because, quite frankly, that was another time. But we are now in a time when we, I think, take a much broader view of the effect that some relatively narrow views placed into the criminal justice system can have on the lives of people, particularly those who are part of this.

I look at what the bill was attempting to actually achieve at its outset, and one of the main parts of that, of course, was that it was essentially to “reduce prejudice, stigma, and all other negative effects”. I go to clause 3, “Purpose of this Act”, which is to, “reduce prejudice, stigma, and all other negative effects, arising from a conviction for a historical homosexual offence”. In doing that, it allows, upon application by the convicted person or a representative on their behalf, if they are deceased, the expungement of a historical heterosexual offence if it meets the test for expungement.

I refer to that part of the Act where it lists the classes of people who are able to apply on behalf of a deceased person. They are the executor, the administrator, or the trustee of their estate; or their spouse, civil union partner, de facto partner, parent, sibling, or child. The definition of “representative” also includes anyone who has requested to be a representative and the Secretary for Justice has granted that request. There was some discussion at the select committee as to the extent that it should be applied to those who had passed on, but certainly the agreement was that the pain was often so great for those individuals that it did actually carry on well beyond the grave and, in fact, to family representatives. I commend this bill.

VIRGINIA ANDERSEN (Labour): Thank you, Madam Chair, for the opportunity to speak on the Criminal Records (Expungement of Convictions for Historical Homosexual Offences) Bill. As a member of the select committee that considered this bill, it’s been really a great privilege to see it progress through these final stages and, in particular, knowing that the burden will be lifted off many shoulders of New Zealand men who have been wrongfully convicted in the past.

What this legislation, effectively, does is it sets up a scheme that is open for individuals, or a family member, to be able to apply—an application for those that have been charged and convicted of specific offences that are listed in this piece of legislation; in particular, sexual conduct between consenting men between 16 years and over. If someone is deceased, it’s able to be applied for by a family member of the person affected. It’s important to note too that this application process is free, and that’s good to see.

Many of the submissions that we heard at the Justice Committee raised the question of compensation under the bill and whether or not compensation should be provided. That’s in clause 22 of the bill. It clearly stipulates that no compensation will be provided for those that had convictions that are expunged. While many of those submitters who had suffered wrongs would like to have been given consideration for that, it’s important to note that we’re aware that men convicted of these offences suffered real harm as a result but to go further than that was not required. So there were submitters who agreed with that position of the committee, and the resolution has been that clause 22, in fact, provides that there will not be compensation able to be provided.

It’s important that we look at how this bill enables those to look at the case by case analysis. So in clause 8, the scheme requires a case by case assessment of the relevant facts to determine whether the conduct of a person was charged and whether that was in fact unlawful today. It’s important to note that that decision is in fact made by the Secretary for Justice. So there’s no need for applicants to appear in person for that. If a person’s conviction is expunged, the conviction will not appear on a criminal record or a check for any other purpose. It’s also important to note that they will be entitled to declare, if requested in any way—for filling a job application in terms of requiring to declare their criminal history—that there’s no reason for that to be declared in that space. That is also great to see.

There have been a number of comments made too around clause 9, “General effects of expungement”, and that was an issue that the committee also looked at very closely. So clause 9 confirms the effects of expungement, and the person with that expunged conviction is entitled to declare they have no such conviction. The committee has made an amendment to that clause 9 to include that the expungement does not authorise or require the destruction of criminal records of expunged convictions, as stated in the explanatory note in the official record.

It’s also important to note that there’s been another amendment under clause 13, which notes that it is an offence to unlawfully disclose the information and the requirement to make sure that is concealed. So that’s an important note, too. We live in a small country and people are often accessing records, so it puts the burden of proof on somebody else who, for whatever official reason, is looking through records, to make sure that that is an offence to disclose it under this legislation, to protect really the privacy of those people who have been wrongfully convicted in the past.

It’s been a real privilege to be participating in a bill at this stage after hearing those submissions first hand from people affected. I’m proud to see a strong bill that enables the wrongs of the past to be put right and to give people a sense of that justice. So without further ado, I commend this bill to the House.

Hon ANDREW LITTLE (Minister of Justice): Thank you, Madam Chair. I once again thank members for their contributions and I’d like to take a moment to respond to some of the issues raised.

Our colleague Raymond Huo referred to clause 9(7) and the fact that court records will continue to be retained. So this bill allows for a process for the conviction to be expunged and, therefore, for the person making the application to not be required to disclose that there was a conviction—that is the nature of expungement—and for those requesting that information not to be able to have access to it. But it doesn’t mean that the record of the conviction is therefore destroyed. It is important—as I think the Justice Committee was advised—that public records, because of the obligations under other statutory obligations, need to be maintained and that a combination of the application for expungement which is then granted changing or altering what appears in the record that’s accessible to officials who will be providing information and also constraining those officials from disclosing a conviction that is otherwise expunged, I think, provides the protection and the certainty that those making applications under this bill would be looking for.

Once again, Mr Huo raises a question about compensation. He notes that there is still a right for those who have been convicted under previous legislation, and who would be entitled to an expungement under this legislation, to bring claims for damages in relation to conduct against them while in custody or while incarcerated or otherwise while being handled by the authorities in relation to the offence which they were subsequently convicted of. There is that angle, but compensation merely for the fact of conviction which would lead to an expungement under this legislation is too problematic and too complex to contemplate, which is why the bill does not provide for compensation and why the Government also, outside the confines of the legislation, is not considering a compensation regime.

The honourable member Greg O’Connor referred in his contribution to the definition of people who can apply for expungement on behalf of those who have been convicted. So those who are deceased but who had a conviction can posthumously achieve an expungement if someone applies on their behalf. So the legislation calls for a definition of a representative of those people, and that is clearly laid out. Mr O’Connor very assiduously—and I would say with great eloquence—went through those who are defined as a representative who can make that application.

It does require some proximity of relationship to achieve that. It is not any old Joe Bloggs who can turn up there and apply on behalf of somebody they don’t know, but because they are a busybody and might have some interest in some historical figure. It has to be somebody—a member of the family, bearing in mind that a conviction of a person under those historical offences will feel a sense of shame as well, and it is as much for the assuagement of their sense of shame as much as for the person who had the conviction as well.

Finally, Virginia Andersen referred to the issue about compensation, again in clause 22, and I confirm the select committee’s view is that compensation is not provided for. But then Ms Andersen focused on the test for expungement. And what that test for expungement focuses on is not just merely the conviction; it’s the conduct underlying the conviction, and that allows the Secretary for Justice, who has to consider the applications for expungement, to consider whether the nature of the conduct that led to conviction was innocent, was consensual, or whether there was a predatory character to it, or coercion, or some other nature of the conduct that vitiated the consent that you would expect that you would expect there to be in relation to activities that today would not today attract a criminal sanction.

So those things are covered off, and once again I thank members for their questions. I look forward to the ongoing discussion.

Hon CLARE CURRAN (Minister of Broadcasting, Communications and Digital Media): Thank you, Madam Chair. I feel quite proud and humbled to take a call on this bill—such a necessary piece of legislation in the healing process which continues around the stigma that has persisted despite the 1986 piece of legislation, a stigma that has been suffered by people who are being punished or have felt that they continue to be punished for being themselves by previous criminal convictions. I feel really proud of the whole of this Parliament, the Parliament of New Zealand, that we are taking this step.

I’ve got some specific questions around clause 13A, which was inserted at the select committee process, which was around “Offence to require or request that individual disregard expungement”, and note, again, the purpose of the bill: “to reduce prejudice, stigma, and all other negative effects, arising from the conviction for a historical homosexual offence”. But the Justice Committee obviously felt concerned enough to want to insert a new clause, and I don’t know whether that was as a result of good work just by the select committee members thinking of all the unintended consequences, or whether this came from submissions—the 37 submissions. But there was the concern that in some situations, even if a conviction had been successfully expunged, people might still be required to disclose the fact of the conviction. So the insertion of clause 13A makes it an explicit offence to require or request an individual to disregard the effect of expungement under this bill.

So my question to the Minister in the chair, Andrew Little, is around the problem definition around that. Was there a set of circumstances and actual cases where there was concern that this kind of behaviour would occur? Also, what would be the process for actually enacting that offence? How does it become an offence? What was the thought that went into that? I’ll just remind the committee that clause 13A has two parts to it. In the first part, clause 13A(1), the person commits an offence if that person “requires or requests that an individual—(a) disregard the effect of expungement under this Act when answering a question about the individual’s criminal history, or disclosing information concerning any convictions of the individual, or both; or (b) disregard the effect of expungement under this Act …”. So it sounds as if it’s a blatant disregard of what this legislation actually stands for.

There is concern that there is still the prejudice that exists, partly, in our community where there are people who would disregard, and if they did, then, as point two states, “A person commits an offence … is liable on conviction to a fine not exceeding $10,000”—what thought has gone into how that would actually be enacted, and what would the recourse be, because if they wanted to get their conviction expunged, they have to apply—am I correct—to the Minister? So how do you actually get that offence to occur? Does it have to go through the Minister to be referred to the court, or is there some other mechanism? I guess that’s the question I have for the Minister in the chair on this bill.

I certainly am not disagreeing with clause 13A. I think it obviously shows good thinking by the select committee members. But I just—on reading through it and, of course, not having been at the select committee—am unsure about how that actually played out. Other than having that question answered, this is an extremely important piece of legislation. It’s part of the healing process. I commend it to the committee.

Dr DUNCAN WEBB (Labour—Christchurch Central): Thank you, Madam Chair. It’s really just a short point that I’d like to put to the Minister. It’s around clause 5 of the bill, which defines “historical homosexual offences”. My concern is that there are a number of offences which may have led to a conviction but which don’t fall within those—in particular, offences which the prosecutor chose to prosecute under some Act which didn’t have necessarily a homosexual element to it. Examples might be a loitering offence or an indecent exposure offence, which nevertheless were triggered by behaviour which, in fact, came to the attention of the authorities or the police because it had this homosexual element, which now would not even raise an eyebrow.

As I read the bill, a person who has been convicted of an offence which the prosecutor might, in fact, have prosecuted because it seemed the less invidious offence to prosecute will nevertheless now be tarred with that offence and can’t come forward and say, “This is, in fact and in substance, a historical homosexual offence, and because of what appeared to be almost an act of mercy of the prosecutor, I can’t now have that offence expunged.” But nevertheless, it still carries with it all of the difficulties of an offence that would have to be disclosed if requested, and that does seem to me to be something of a mismatch.

Now, I accept that the difficulties of proof around that may be difficult, particularly with the effluxion of time, but it does seem to me—particularly for people who are alive and whose prospects and reputations are affected by this—that it would be appropriate for them to be able to come forward and say, “This is a real matter of concern to me. This is, in fact, an offence I should never have been convicted of because it’s only attracted attention because of my homosexual conduct.” So, Minister, I won’t take any more time—it’s just a short point—but I would like to see your response to that.

Hon KRIS FAAFOI (Minister of Civil Defence): Similar to my colleague Duncan Webb, there’s just one issue that I wanted to raise with the Minister. I know that interpretations aren’t always the most exciting part of a bill, but I do want to focus in on the interpretation of “representative”, which is in clause 4 and which sets out that if someone is deceased and, on their behalf, someone wants to get a conviction expunged, it sets out within the bill exactly who is able to do that as a representative.

It goes through the list of “the executor, administrator, or trustee … acting on behalf … a spouse, civil union partner, or de facto partner, of the convicted person:”, and the issue that I have, or the question that I’d like to ask, is around paragraph (c), and that is the definition in terms of a family, because it is very prescriptive to “a parent, sibling, or child, of the convicted person:” who can act as a representative.

Just looking forward to clause 5 and the timings around when these convictions may have happened, beginning in August 1908 and ending in August 1986 is quite a long time frame, so there could be a situation where it’s not a parent, sibling, or child of a convicted person but it may be a grandchild or great-grandchild of a person that has been convicted under these previous laws who may want to see the conviction expunged. I guess the question I would like to ask is whether there is any scope to broaden paragraph (c) out—and we’re talking about family who can be a representative of the convicted person who is now deceased—either to be less prescriptive or to include grandchildren and great-grandchildren, because I think we may get into a situation where there’s two tests for direct descendants of people who have been convicted of, first, one, proving their worthiness as a representative—and if it were a direct descendant of mine, I’d find that possibly a little bit offensive—and, two, convincing the system that their conviction should or could be expunged.

So I guess the very simple question is can we look at that? I know that paragraph (d) allows the Secretary for Justice to deem somebody else who may be an appropriate person to act on behalf of the deceased convicted person, but with a topic so sensitive, it would be felt quite acutely by grandchildren or great-grandchildren of people who were convicted, and I think we should seriously think about broadening out the definition of a “representative” in terms of family members so that we don’t have a two-step test for them.

Hon ANDREW LITTLE (Minister of Justice): Thank you, Madam Chair. Just to respond to some of the questions that have been raised in the last two or three contributions, can I turn to the intervention by the Hon Clare Curran, who raised a question about clause 13A, which makes it an offence to require or request that an individual disregard expungement. As I understood Ms Curran, she had two questions. One is focusing on the circumstances in which that might arise, and why did the committee think it was necessary to provide a remedy for this possibility, and then, secondly, how would the offence be enforced?

So, on the first, this provision mirrors a similar provision in the clean slate legislation. So somebody who meets the conditions of that legislation of going through a period of time where they have not committed a low-level offence that they have previously been convicted of can apply to have their criminal record, effectively, cleaned up—hence the name “clean slate”. What I think, under that legislation, Parliament at that time considered was the possibility that a person seeking information about prior convictions might try to circumvent the benefit of the legislation by saying, “I not only require you to tell me your current convictions but ask you to disregard your rights under”—in that case—“the clean slate legislation.” It is important when considering this bill, and the fact that people will wish to use it to remove the more stigmatic convictions that they have, that they should not be imposed upon by others and invited to abandon the rights they will have under the bill.

You can imagine a situation in which an employer, a private organisation, or whoever, who is seeking information about a person because they want to understand about them and perhaps understand about their past track record, may be brazen enough to say, effectively, “We know you have these rights and the benefit of this legislation, but we will insist that you abandon your rights under the legislation, and we’re going to demand that you provide this information. And, if you don’t, we will, effectively, discriminate against you.”

To allow an employer or an organisation to do that would be to defeat the objective of the legislation, which is to remove discrimination and stigma associated with a conviction for a homosexual offence that is, in this day and age, not an offence. So it plays a very important role, and the members of the committee are to be congratulated for having the wisdom to insert that provision in there.

How would it be enforced? Well, the reality is, it would require a complaint to the police, because if an is organisation seeking information which they’re not entitled to—and, in fact, seeking information which the person being asked to supply is not obliged under this legislation and, in fact, is protected from disclosing—that organisation should not be able to conduct themselves in that way. They should not be able to defeat the individual person’s rights and the benefits they would have under this legislation. So they would lay a complaint with the police, and the penalty is set at $10,000, which is an indication from this Parliament that discriminatory action is seen as a serious thing by this Parliament—that one citizen or one legal entity should not be able to discriminate against an individual.

My colleague Dr Duncan Webb asked about clause 5, and the fact that that clause, which defines the historical offences, which are the subject of the legislation, is very specific about the particular offences which can be expunged on application to the Secretary for Justice. And Dr Webb asked the obvious question: why could other offences that may have in their commission related to homosexual conduct not be the subject of an application for expungement?

And the problem with that is, if you consider offences like disorderly conduct or exposure—I can’t remember the technical nature of the offence—that it would add considerable complexity to the job of the Secretary for Justice to consider applications for offences that can be applied in a number of situations, for many of which there will be legitimate reasons for the convictions, and for which there will be no legitimate reasons to not continue to record that conviction. You know, an offence like disorderly conduct has an enormous breadth of application and so, although the conduct to which it might apply might be homosexual conduct, which this bill in its specificity is seeking to avoid the stigma associated with, to determine whether or not the particular offence on that person’s record relates to homosexual conduct or something else would add considerable effort and complexity and it would make the bill unworkable.

So I think the committee has struck the right balance in ensuring that the bill remains workable and achieves its fundamental objective, which is removing the stigma of criminal offences from a day and age when it was regarded as criminal—which, in this day and age, is not—and to then therefore remove the stigma and shame associated with that.

If I could turn to the question raised by the Hon Kris Faafoi in his contribution, which is the definition of “representative” under clause 4. And he is right. The definition of “representative” goes through a number of steps. There are the legal agents that a person may have, and then there are the family members, and there is your spouse and civil union partner and what have you, and then there are family members—a parent, sibling, or child. And the quite legitimate question is: why not a grandchild, given that the bill will apply to offences that go back to 4 August 1908? And if there is somebody who has a conviction from 1909, in this day and age, it is most likely going to be a grandchild who will want to make the application.

But I think he also touches on the answer to the question, which is that subclause (d) of that definition of “representative” allows the Secretary for Justice to exercise a discretion to allow somebody who does not fall into the definitions in paragraphs (a), (b), and (c) to also make the application and, therefore, have the application considered. And I think that is the basis on which a grandchild, or some other—it might be a nephew or a grandnephew or grandniece who might make the application.

I think what the Secretary for Justice will look for is a familial link, a proximity of the person making the application to the person who has the conviction, on the basis that a conviction of this nature in the unenlightened age when these convictions were happening is as much a source of shame to the family as it is to the individual itself. When the individual has passed on—they’re deceased—it is possible for that family to continue to wear the embarrassment and the shame of that conviction, which they should not. So I think the member should be reassured, if I can do so, that the Secretary for Justice will be expected to take a fair, large, and liberal interpretation of his or her discretion under paragraph (d) to ensure that this bill is of value to those who’ve suffered the ignominy of a conviction for conduct which today is not at all regarded as criminal.

So I thank the member for bringing that issue to the attention of the committee, but I consider that it is covered off by the other provisions in the bill.

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

TAMATI COFFEY (Labour—Waiariki): Thank you, Mr Chair. Thank you for the opportunity to talk on this particular bill. As I get up here—and I have listened to a few of the contributions from some of the members in this Chamber—I just want to remind the committee that we were once part of the problem. Actually, we were the ones that made the laws that everybody had to follow. So as we praise the work that we do, I just caution that we also remember that we were actually once part of the problem. For that reason, I’m happy and I’m sad to stand here and take a call on this. I’m standing on behalf of all of those people that can’t be here today, of course, but who have had to live with the guilt and the shame of having a conviction under this particular Act of Parliament. It’s for that reason that I so proudly supported the marriage equality bill back in 2014, so that people could understand that things were changing, that times were changing, and I’m happy to say that Parliament, through this particular bill here, is also changing as well.

If there’s somebody in particular that needs some thanks just in relation to this particular bill, it is the petition of Wiremu Demchick and the 2,111 people that signed his petition that came before the House, and I just want to just read it out: “That, in the matter of those who were convicted of consensual”—consensual—“homosexual acts prior to the Homosexual Law Reform Act 1986, [that] the House … promptly issue an official apology to those convicted, and (b) pass legislation which sets out a process for reversing the convictions of those convicted, both living and deceased, in a manner which upholds the mana and [the] dignity of those convicted.” I would like to commend Wiremu and all of those people that signed this particular petition to bring this bill before the House. If anybody needs thanks, it’s actually them.

I want to also just raise a point about what I see is very necessary—the ability for somebody to apply on somebody else’s behalf. I just wanted to touch on that wee point because there are many people who have had convictions against their name for a long time now who have since passed on. For that reason, it is only right that somebody be able to apply for this expungement on their behalf. So I commend the committee and also Minister Little for making sure that that’s a key part of is so that we can have representatives that can step in on behalf of their family member, their friend, or their whānau to be able to make things right.

A thousand people—they say—may be eligible to apply under this scheme based on data that has been gathered by Statistics New Zealand, and for that reason I look forward to monitoring the process and seeing the names of people coming out of the shadows who have been firmly standing in the shadows for quite some time for those prosecutions that were held between 1965 and 1986.

I do want to just ask the Minister one question about the compensation question. I know that I’ve been spoken to by some members of the community, of the rainbow community in particular. I’m just asking that question around compensation. I understand firmly that that’s not part of this, but I did want to know, so that I can report back to the community about why there wasn’t the question of compensation raised—and also that difference between an expungement and a pardon. To normal people out there, that don’t sit here in the hallowed halls of Parliament, they may not understand the difference between those two particular terms. So just a bit of clarification around that would also be very welcome.

I’m happy to understand that this is part of an international movement of countries that are undertaking this process. I understand that our scheme is particularly mirrored on the scheme that was put through in Australia. We’ve gone and aligned our particular bill that way. Of course, it has been done in England and in Wales too, so I was just trying to understand what exactly the differences were in those two, as I’ve only recently come before this particular piece of legislation. So if we could just have a wee bit of an explanation as to what the difference was between the England and Wales situation and why we chose to align ourselves with the Australians, that would be great. Thank you.

Hon ALFRED NGARO (National): I move, That the question be now put.

DARROCH BALL (NZ First): Thank you, Mr Chair. I just want to take a very quick call, and, in fact, just add a couple of questions—supplementaries, I guess—to the questions of the member that just sat down, Tamati Coffey, because they revolve around the same topics.

The first was the representative—and I know it’s been brought up quite a number of times, and you have answered questions, Minister Little. First of all, I think it’s actually one of the most important clauses that’s in there, because it actually allows the family members to be able to get some reconciliation for their passed loved ones. I know that the Hon Kris Faafoi asked that there should be some consideration about widening the scope for the family members, and I know that you answered that question.

I’m wondering if there’s been any consideration—and I’m specifically talking about clause 15(3) and (4). First of all, clause 15(3) states, “the Secretary must decide, as soon as is reasonably practicable, whether the person can represent the convicted person”. I know that there’s the consideration, about the family, in the other considerations as well, but is there any situation where they do lie, let’s just say, within that framework and be a direct descendent, i.e., a child or a grandchild or a brother or a sister, that wouldn’t necessarily be an able representative of that individual? I guess that moves on to clause 15(4) where it says, “The Secretary’s decision must be based on whether the representation concerned would be in the interests of the deceased convicted person.”

So in what circumstances—and I know that the circumstances of those individuals and their families would be quite varied and unique. So whether that comes down to the Secretary looking at them as individual, separate, very unique circumstances, or whether there are a few boundaries or rules or regulations or considerations that are existing now that would be applied and used to filter before it got to that unique individual stage. So that’s the first question for the Minister.

The second one also revolves around the “no entitlement to compensation”. That question has been brought up a couple of times and the Minister has answered. From what I can recall, the Minister has explained it by saying that the main reason, if not the only reason, is because it’s quite problematic. I’m not disagreeing with that at all, but I’m wondering if there has been consideration, through the select committee phase, where the guidelines around compensation that already exist from the Ministry of Justice were used and/or considered, to justify no compensation.

From what I’ve read of what was on the Ministry of Justice website, the clear difference, I think, or one of the differences between this situation we’re talking about in this bill to normal compensation, was that an individual was imprisoned because they broke the law and then they found that they didn’t break that law. Whereas in this situation, the law itself was expunged, even though they did break the law.

I know it sounds a little bit ambiguous, but I think that if the Minister could explain whether or not that part of the Ministry of Justice guidelines was used, or whether it was just simply because it was problematic, and that was the end of the conversation. So those are the two questions, if I could add them to the mix. Thank you.

Hon ANDREW LITTLE (Minister of Justice): Thank you, Mr Chair. If I could just now respond to the latest set of queries. So to the honourable member Tamati Coffey, who has raised a couple of questions, one about compensation, and said, effectively, why not? Perhaps I’ll take the opportunity, in answering Mr Coffey’s question, to answer also Darroch Ball’s question.

As I understand it, it occupied a significant amount of the Justice Committee’s time to consider the issue of compensation. Submitters raised it, and it’s a legitimate question to ask. Given that the law changed, people have been tarred with a criminal sanction for conduct that certainly is not criminal today and we would argue should never have been criminal. But that was a less enlightened age, and in 1986 we became enlightened.

The difficulty with compensation is that there will be different circumstances for different people that might call for varying levels of compensation, and that then makes it very complex and very complicated, and so the decision was made not to provide for compensation. It would be equally unfair to say, “Right. Everybody gets the same amount.”, if the Government were of a mind to do that, but that would not take into account the circumstances that some faced. For some, the humiliation may have been greater because of the nature of the arrest, the circumstances in which they were detained, the length of time they were incarcerated, and whether or not they were subjected to further prejudice and discrimination while they were in the State’s custody. So there’s huge complexity about a formula to achieve compensation, and in the end the judgment was that it was just too hard.

I think Mr Ball makes a very important point, which is that right now we have compensation for those who are imprisoned wrongfully and it is then discovered that the offence for which they are imprisoned they actually never committed. They never committed that act which led to the conviction that led to them being imprisoned. They should, therefore, never have been detained at all in prison and they are compensated for that.

What we’re doing here is saying that there was conduct that was regarded as criminal conduct once upon a time in our history, whether we now agree with that or not. We clearly disagree with it now, because in 1986 we passed a law saying that that conduct is no longer criminal. Now we are taking the further step of saying that those who were criminalised by that conduct but who were otherwise innocent, we are going to expunge the record of that criminality. But the act happened. The conduct happened. We might be able to expunge the criminal record, but we can’t expunge the act that in fact took place.

That segues nicely into the second question asked by Mr Coffey, which was the difference between an expungement and a pardon. The expungement means off the criminal record. It says, “This record should not exist. We’ve made the enlightened decision that even though you were convicted because of the conduct that you engaged in, at a time when that conduct was criminal, it is no longer criminal. You should not continue to carry the shame and humiliation of a criminal record, because in this day and age we don’t regard that conduct as criminal, so we will expunge the record.”

A pardon applies where you were accused of conduct which was criminal but you were later discovered to have never committed that conduct, and therefore should never have been criminalised in that sort of way. So that is why we talk about expungement in these circumstances. We don’t talk about a pardon, because the conduct, in fact, happened, even though that conduct happening today would not be criminal and would therefore not attract a criminal sanction. But there is that difference. On that basis, I think the committee has done a very good job in distilling out what is the appropriate action to take. It is an expungement, and that gets us to where we are.

I know Mr Coffey referred to the petition that also called upon the Parliament to make an apology to those convicted. The Hon Amy Adams was the Minister who took up this legislation originally, sponsored it, brought it to the House, and in the first reading she provided the apology that was called for in the petition. I think when we get to the third reading, we will no doubt underscore that, because I think that is a legitimate thing to do.

HAMISH WALKER (National—Clutha-Southland): I move, That the question be now put.

Motion agreed to.

Parts 1 and 2, schedules 1 and 2, and clauses 1 and 2 agreed to.

House resumed.

Bill reported without amendment.

Report adopted.

Bills

Land Transport Management (Regional Fuel Tax) Amendment Bill

First Reading

Debate resumed from 27 March.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): When we were last hearing this bill, Michael Wood had seven minutes and 30 seconds remaining to speak, if he so chooses.

MICHAEL WOOD (Labour—Mt Roskill): Thank you, Madam Assistant Speaker. I do so choose. When this debate was interrupted at 10 o’clock last night, I was speaking about the vision for transport and urban growth in Tāmaki-makau-rau, Auckland City, one of the great cities of the Pacific and the world, that underlies the intention and the purpose of this bill. I just want to elaborate on that a little bit in the time that I have remaining.

What is that vision for transport and urban growth that this bill will serve and allow for? Well, the vision is one for a city in which people and freight can freely move around; in which people can be connected to different communities across our city; in which the people of Auckland can use modern, efficient public transport to go to work, to go to school, to go to university, to go to the shops, to be connected to our airport, like every modern first-world international city across our world can. It’s for a city which is pleasant to live in, in which our transport system is clean and efficient and reliable, and it is something in that vision that Aucklanders are absolutely crying out for and Aucklanders are prepared to pay for across the board. That is what this bill allows us to achieve.

The thing about Auckland that I covered in my opening remarks is that Auckland is a remarkable city, it is a beautiful city, it is a thriving city, and people in huge numbers from within and from without New Zealand are choosing to settle in Auckland. We have had massive population growth: an additional 180,000 people since the amalgamation in 2010—about 900 people every single week coming to our city. So while we have those wonderful advantages in our city, that growth—that urban growth—provides significant challenges, and what Aucklanders know is that if we don’t put the investment in now to create an efficient and effective congestion-free network in our city, the problems of congestion that we face now in 2018 will simply get worse and worse and worse.

You don’t have to go far in Auckland to find out from people what the consequences of that congestion are. We know at a very high level, from the studies that the New Zealand Institute of Economic Research and others have done, that it costs Auckland around about $2 billion a year—it costs New Zealand about $2 billion a year in lost productivity. But then you talk to people and businesses at the community level and you find out more. I spoke to the retail manager of a major national retail chain, and he said that about five or six years ago, the trucks in his company could make about five deliveries a day in Auckland. Now, because of the traffic congestion, they can make about three deliveries a day, and that is an immediate and tangible effect in terms of the efficiency of that business and, ultimately, the price that consumers will pay for those goods.

And then there is simply the sheer misery and frustration that is inflicted on Aucklanders every single day as they are just stuck in traffic wasting time—they could be doing productive things at work, but just losing time that they could be spending with their families, enjoying themselves, and living a good life. Congestion is choking our city. But it doesn’t have to be that way, and what this bill is about, and what the Government’s urban growth agenda is about, is saying, “Let’s harness the benefits of growth and not be choked by growth.”

So what the Land Transport Management (Regional Fuel Tax) Amendment Bill does—it says we have that vision for a congestion-free city in which people and freight can move about freely, in which we are connected to our airport, in which we reduce congestion. Might I say that a part of investing in public transport is reducing congestion for those good folks and those good businesses who do still have to use the roads. Many people still will when we have a good public transport system, but by getting as many people as possible on to a modern public transport system we make our existing roading network efficient.

But if we want to achieve that vision, we actually have to have some problem solving. We can’t just keep kicking it down the road, which is what the previous National Government did. We actually have to sit down and do some serious problem solving. What I am greatly heartened by is that—I think, probably for about the first time since the third Labour Government, for a brief, sparkling moment in time—we have a local government in Auckland, led by Mayor Phil Goff, and a central government, the Labour-led Government here in Wellington, who are aligned on working together to solve this problem of congestion, and aligned on an urban growth agenda for our country’s biggest city.

But we’re going to have to work together. We’re going to have to work together on the funding. It’s a big challenge. The previous National-led Government came up with quite a good concept, which was the Auckland Transport Alignment Project (ATAP) plan, a shared plan between central government and local government to tackle Auckland’s transport challenges. The problem with that plan was that the previous Government, under the previous National Ministers, was so obsessed with building motorways which won’t solve the problem, that it would have actually just made it worse at very best. So we’re going to renegotiate that plan with Auckland Council and have a plan for transport infrastructure that will really tackle congestion.

If I can just leave this thought with colleagues: one single line of modern light rail will carry as much traffic, as many commuters, as three lanes of motorway traffic. So it’s about efficient investment that moves people around our city effectively. Those light rail lines connecting the central city to the rapidly growing north-west of our city, going across to the North Shore, to the hundreds of thousands of residents there who already enjoy the benefits of rapid transit through the bus system, connecting through the Auckland isthmus, which currently has no access to rapid transit, to our airport, to the rapidly growing employment centre just north of the airport, and a modern bus rapid transit system—look a bit cheerier there, Mr Brown, because we’re going to connect your electorate of Botany to the Auckland Airport with a modern bus rapid transit system, and that is going to be of great benefit to the residents of your part of the city. I say this very genuinely as an old east Auckland boy: your residents have the worst access to public transport in Auckland because of decades of under-investment, and under this plan we are going to fix that.

But we’ve got to fund it. We’ve got to be realistic, and Aucklanders are realistic. That’s why this plan is about Aucklanders saying, “Yep, we’re going to agree to invest.” We’re going to invest in the modern public transport system that we need, and the regional fuel tax allows for that. It says to Auckland Council, “You need to front up with a really good plan.”, and we’re going to work with Auckland Council on that to invest in modern public transport, to invest in the transport system that is really going to unlock our city and allow people and freight to move around freely.

And if you do that—if you do the consultation with your community, which is happening at the moment—well, here’s an option that’s going to help fill the funding gap, that the previous Government itself estimated, under their plans, was around about $6 billion over the last 10 years. So we’re not going to ignore that. Here’s a practical plan to do something about it.

Let’s note, as well, that amongst the guffaws from the other side of the House, that previous National Government levied a 14c per litre cumulative fuel tax on all New Zealanders to fund its transport priorities. Well, our transport priority is unlocking the urban growth potential of Auckland, and this is part of our plan to do it. I commend this bill to the House. Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker.

SIMEON BROWN (National—Pakuranga): Thank you very much, Mr Assistant Speaker. It’s a pleasure to be able to take a call on the Land Transport Management (Regional Fuel Tax) Amendment Bill.

We just heard from the member for Mt Roskill, who described me as the member for Botany, but I’d like to just acknowledge the member for Botany, who’s here in the House. It’s good to see you here.

Jami-Lee Ross: I was the one that beat you!

SIMEON BROWN: That’s right. I think there’s a bit of history between the two of you.

So we’ve heard lots about vision and intention and purpose, and all of those very kind and big words, from the members opposite. We’ve even heard from the Minister that this is a down payment on our Government’s behalf. I’ve heard him say that at least twice in this debate. Well, I’m sorry, Minister Phil Twyford, but this is not a down payment on the Government’s behalf. This will be a down payment on the taxpayers of Auckland, who will be forced to pay this tax, which you will be working on, with the council in Auckland, to make them pay.

So we’ve also heard from other members in this debate—David Clark saying, “I’m glad we’re putting this in place.” He is glad for another tax, because that’s what this Government’s good at. “Let’s tax this.” is probably the best slogan to describe this new Government.

We’ve also heard from other members talking about the different projects which they’re hoping that they’ll get from this money. We’ve heard a list MP in the Labour Party talk about a problem up in Rodney, but there’s no guarantee, because there’s no understanding and there’s no description of where this money will be going to. There has been no list of projects provided to Aucklanders. There’s no list of projects in the legislation as to what this will be going towards.

We’re now in a situation where we’re being asked to give a blank cheque of money to the council so that they can spend it on what they and the Government decide to spend the money on. But we know that this is not needed. Auckland Council has increased its costs by over $800 million over the last four years. There’s been a huge growth in the bureaucracy, and it needs to get its costs under control so that it can fund the infrastructure and the transport needs—and we know that they can do this.

We also know that this process has been a sham. We heard the member opposite talk about how the council is already consulting on a regional fuel tax. Well, if you read the legislation, it says the council should consult on the regional fuel tax once the legislation’s in place. Well, this seems to be the cart before the horse. The council’s already out there consulting on a tax which they have built into their budgets. They’ve built this tax into their budget, so the consultation, asking Aucklanders for their views, is an absolute sham because they’ve already banked the cash and are not being genuine in asking Aucklanders, actually, what they think on this legislation.

Yes, I do represent an electorate in east Auckland: the great electorate of Pakuranga. We heard Michael Wood talk about the Auckland-Manukau Eastern Transport Initiative project. Well, I’m sorry to tell the member, but that’s already funded under the current plans, and it’s already in the plans. So the motorists in my electorate, who will be forced to pay this tax, will be receiving no benefit from it whatsoever. We’ll continue to see money being poured into the city centre with less money going out into the suburbs.

Hon Phil Twyford: How do you know?

SIMEON BROWN: We don’t know. We don’t know what’s—

Hon Phil Twyford: Then why do you say it?

SIMEON BROWN: Because we’re continuing to see the same old council providing the same old solutions—and one of those solutions is a tramline up the Prime Minister’s electorate—

Hon Phil Twyford: You’re making it up.

SIMEON BROWN: —which has a benefit-cost ratio of less than—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): Order! No, I’m not making it up. Don’t bring me into the debate.

SIMEON BROWN: Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker. I wouldn’t try to do that.

We know that one of the projects which has been talked about has been a tramline up Dominion Road to the airport, which will take about an hour to get tourists from the airplane into the city, when it takes 20 minutes to go up the Waterview tunnel, which was built under the National Government.

Earlier in the debate another member talked about how the National Government could only build a few highways on the fringe of Auckland, Christchurch, and Wellington. Well, I’d like to remind them again of the Waterview tunnel, which is three lanes through the middle of Auckland City and, again, through the Mt Albert electorate. I think that’s something which actually has made a real difference in Aucklanders’ lives, and I think we need to continue to invest in projects like that.

So the National Party’s opposed to this piece of legislation. Transport policy needs to be focused not just on finding more money but on actually finding better solutions and also on Auckland Council cutting costs, reprioritising money, and making sure it’s investing it in the right places. Thank you very much, Mr Assistant Speaker.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): This is a split call—5 minutes, David Seymour.

DAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker. I want to also thank my colleague Shane Jones and the Labour Party whip Kiritapu Allan, who have agreed to split this call so that I might address this very important issue.

I have to say, as an Aucklander, that this is a very sad day. We get to pay and pay and pay for the corporate welfare, the so-called regional development funds—$1 billion of our money hosed out all over rural New Zealand. Then, when we need our own projects in Auckland, where the wealth is generated and where the tax is paid, we find that to get any improvement at all we have to pay an additional tax.

Hon Phil Twyford: Don’t you support user-pays, David? I thought you’d support user-pays.

DAVID SEYMOUR: In fact, that’s not particularly surprising in this Parliament, because this Government introduces a new tax every single day. Yesterday, it was the introduction of a stealth capital gains tax, and today it is a targeted petrol tax targeted at Auckland.

I heard Phil Twyford—that economic genius on the Government benches—telling me that this is user-pays. Well, actually, for Aucklanders, there’s not a lot of use going on—we’re just paying. We sit in the congestion and pay and pay to idle, because this Government is not committed to building the kind of infrastructure that Auckland needs and deserves and has already paid for.

What they want to build—and what we heard from Michael Wood, on Mt Roskill—is a tramline up and down Dominion Road, which the previous speaker, Simeon Brown, quite rightly identified as taking an hour to get from the CBD to the airport. And that’s the truth. If you’re doing 30 kilometres an hour max, and it’s 20 kilometres to get there, and you’ve got to stop a few times—that’s an hour. Unless this tram is going to be different from every other tram in the world, it’s going to take an hour.

Michael Wood, the representative from Mt Roskill, might want to think a little bit about why trams were removed from Dominion Road in the first place: because the amount of space taken up leads to enormous congestion for his own constituents trying to get into town so that they can work and earn a dollar and pay more tax to his Government. Michael Wood is committing political suicide for Mt Roskill here today. He does not understand the implications—the real implications—for the people of Mt Roskill, and it’s this: pay more tax to idle sitting in traffic stopped by congestion caused by his Government, because the Government says you should be on a tram that’s not going where you’re going.

So this is a sad day for Aucklanders. As if we don’t pay enough tax already. Yesterday, we get an extra tax on our houses; today, we get a tax on our cars. It’s a little bit like that old Beatles song: if you try to walk, they’ll tax your feet; if you try to sit, they’ll tax the seat.

This Government has no answer to any problem other than more and more tax. And it might be OK. If the promise was to complete the Auckland motorway network that has been half built in 60 years, then we might say this wouldn’t be so bad—if we were actually getting something for it. But we are not getting anything. All we’re doing is paying and paying and paying for nothing. It’s not user-pays, because there’s no use; it is just pay. This Government is quite happily taxing us, but they won’t promise anything new to ease the congestion that we’re going to be sitting in while paying the tax—and paying, and paying, and paying.

I’ve got a message for this Government from the people of Auckland. It is that we actually want results from Government. We actually want to be getting value for money. We don’t want to be paying additional taxes for the same level of service. We want better service for the tax we already pay, and if this Government could focus on that for just a moment, they might be a little bit more popular in Auckland. But after few years of this kind of carry-on, they’re going to be a lot less popular in Auckland—I can tell them that tonight.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): I call the Hon Shane Jones—five minutes.

Hon SHANE JONES (NZ First): That represents a lapse in judgment on the part of my good self. In my zest to create constitutional opportunities so the seeds of democracy could flower, I now have to apologise to Mr Twyford: I conceded five minutes to the ACT member. I fear that I may have to apologise, as well, to my leader. Of course, if that was to happen, it’s not the constitution of New Zealand I’m concerned about; it is the constitution of the Dalmatian Māori from Kaitāia.

I want to stand and support this, and remind the House that it was a former senior parliamentarian, Dr Michael Cullen—Sir Michael Cullen—who championed this in the period of time from late 2007 to 2008. Why did he do that? Because the case still remains. He did that because he felt that it was time that Auckland traffic users, infrastructure users—whether they currently live in Botany Bay or whether they’re passing through from Kaitāia down to the Māori King’s coronation and they buy gas there, they are using the infrastructure of a highly congested city already suffering from the stresses of rapid growth and continual under-investment in key infrastructure. That was the argument, broadly speaking, that that great parliamentarian rolled out and that one of equally significant ambitions, Mr Twyford, has repeated. I won’t sort of dub him at this stage “Sir Phil”—that pleasure may or may not await him.

There’s a key point here, because—I’ll pluck the figure that I’m comfortable using: $170 million, possibly more, per annum, added to by another $170 million, dollar for dollar, from central government, to do what? To enable Auckland, and its civic leaders, and its business stakeholders, and central government to expedite the delivery of overdue infrastructure in our largest city.

Now, there are some additional reasons as to why we’re stressed. An indiscriminate, unfettered immigration policy, like a half-crazed pet let off the leash, has worsened—worsened—the situation, but we are dealing with that in a slightly different way. But let the House know that it is not unreasonable that this impost sit upon the cost of fuel for people that are deriving a benefit but that also need to move more effectively and efficiently through Auckland as we create, via our housing strategy, a better quality of life, better communities, and improved infrastructure.

So I think shouts to the contrary actually demonstrate that the last crowd had nine years to do—what? Now, I have to confess, there’s one thing that Bill English did get right: he said, in a fit of pique, that the town and country planners actually have more power than the Ministers of the Crown or parliamentarians in terms of cutting through red tape or breaking down the barriers that confront Auckland homeowners, Auckland home aspirants, or businesses seeking to expand supply of residential housing in Auckland. On that part I did agree with him. What I did not agree with was the way in which the former Government talked a great deal about expanding supply in Auckland, but delivered precious few actual results.

I accept they did that partly because they have a lot invested in supporting the people who currently benefit magnificently from the strictures that presently inhibit property development in Auckland. There are land bankers whose level of aspirational wealth is higher than the roof of this House. There are others who enjoy the escalating value of their property—good for some if you’ve got it, but if you’re a young parent, if you’re a 25-, 28-, or 32-year-old, if you’re young Janet and John, kotahi tamaiti, e rua tamariki—with several children—I don’t think that that’s the quality of Auckland life that parliamentarians should have the next generation aspire to. In fact, I’ve heard on many occasions the man from Epsom say he can’t afford to buy a whare in the place that he represents. If that does not give the lie to what he’s just said, then it beggars belief.

I just want to carry on little bit. Auckland now goes right up to Ngāti Whātua country, Te Uri o Hau. It goes up to Rodney, and we need to ensure that some of the benefits are spread in that direction.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the Land Transport Management (Regional Fuel Tax) Amendment Bill be now read a first time.

Ayes 63

New Zealand Labour 46; New Zealand First 9; Green Party 8.

Noes 57

New Zealand National 56; ACT New Zealand 1.

Bill read a first time.

The question was put that the Land Transport Management (Regional Fuel Tax) Amendment Bill be referred to the Finance and Expenditure Committee.

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

Ayes 63

New Zealand Labour 46; New Zealand First 9; Green Party 8.

Noes 57

New Zealand National 56; ACT New Zealand 1.

Question agreed to.

Hon PHIL TWYFORD (Minister of Transport): I move, That the Land Transport Management (Regional Fuel Tax) Amendment Bill 2018 be reported to the House by Monday, 21 May 2018, and that the committee have authority to meet at any time while the House is sitting, except during oral questions, during any evening on a day on which there has been a sitting of the House and on a Friday in a week in which there has been a sitting of the House, and outside the Wellington area, despite Standing Orders 191, 193, and 194(1)(b) and (c).

I want to explain to the House why I’m seeking this earlier report back, and in doing so I want to acknowledge that the principles of this Parliament normally require a period of six weeks for public notification before submissions close, and then a period of time for the select committee to hear submissions, to receive departmental advice, to deliberate, and eventually to report back to this House.

There are exceptions to the regular process. The most shortened of those is where the House takes urgency, with no select committee process, and there are occasions when that is necessary. I do not consider it’s necessary in this instance, and I think it right that both those who will be affected by the regional fuel tax and the members on the other side of the House have the opportunity to provide input into this bill. However, in this instance a shortened period at select committee is necessary. It’s necessary in order to enable the regional fuel tax to be implemented in Auckland at the start of the new accounting financial year and by the time of expiry of Auckland Council’s targeted rate, known as the interim transport levy, on 30 June 2018. Secondly, there is a critical and urgent need for transport infrastructure in Auckland. A shortened report-back time will enable projects to get under way as soon as possible, and it will allow Auckland Council and the Government together to enter into contracts and, finally, to get cracking on fixing Auckland’s transport system.

JAMI-LEE ROSS (National—Botany): Mr Assistant Speaker, thank you. The National Party opposes this shortened report back and I say that the House should really think carefully about the continued use by the Government of its majority to curtail proper parliamentary scrutiny of important pieces of legislation—and actually, by the trend we’re seeing, important pieces of legislation that involve taxation and that involve benefits to individuals—and whether this House should continue to allow this.

The reason I say this is because I think we’re starting to see quite a worrying trend by this Government—a Government made up of parties which would have been very opposed, with a very principled view that they would have taken when they were sitting on this side of the House. They were the ones often saying that the curtailing of the parliamentary scrutiny of legislation should not happen. We’re seeing time after time now, in a very short space of this Government’s existence, that they are using their majority in a way which I feel is actually inappropriate.

This isn’t the first time. We saw not that long ago the brightline test Supplementary Order Paper coming into the House without select committee scrutiny. The paid parental leave legislation was done under urgency; it skipped select committee last year. The Family Incomes Package was put through under urgency last year, where select committee processes were skipped, and now we are seeing that the regional fuel tax legislation, whilst going to a select committee, is having a significantly reduced report-back time.

I’m told by people that follow these things closer than I do that individuals that wish to submit on this bill—when you take out the time required for the committee to do initial briefings and the time for the committee to hear submissions and time for the committee to consider the possible changes they may wish to make—will have approximately eight days to do so.

Are we really saying in this Parliament that a Minister can present to the House a piece of legislation which will implement a tax that we’ve not seen in this country since the 1990s, and that it can go through an extremely shortened report-back period, which will result in only about eight days for submissions? Is that really a good process? Is this really so urgent that it has to be done this quickly? I, in fact, think that this should go through a proper process; that New Zealanders should have an opportunity to submit.

We’re going to hear—possibly, in contributions on this debate; we have heard it already in the last debate—that Aucklanders want this and that this is required and it’s necessary. Well, I think that should actually be tested properly through a select committee process. New Zealanders—and it’s not just Aucklanders in this case—will be impacted by this from 2021. They should have an opportunity to submit as well, because it’s not just about an Auckland issue. It’s all been dressed up as being about Auckland and all the consultation that we’ve heard about has supposedly been about just Auckland, but actually this will impact on New Zealanders as well.

There are also varying accounts of what Aucklanders actually think—if we want to talk about Aucklanders—and I think that should be tested in a full way in select committee. On the one hand, we have the council saying 50 percent of people are saying they support the regional fuel tax and 40 percent are opposed. Then we have the AA saying that 38 percent of people oppose the regional fuel tax and only 35 percent support it. So you’ve got the Auckland Council, who wants the ability to tax more, saying New Zealanders and Aucklanders want it, and you’ve got the AA, who actually represents the people that will be paying the tax, saying Aucklanders don’t actually want it. These are the matters that should be tested thoroughly by a select committee, these are the matters that the select committee should have a decent amount of time to consider, and these are the matters that Aucklanders should have more than eight days to submit on.

I think it’s appalling that we are doing this yet again—that the Labour Government is yet again curtailing the ability for New Zealanders to submit on legislation by using their majority to reduce report-back periods. I suggest we should be allowing a select committee to have a full and proper process on this. There’s also an important, I think, principle at stake here, where the Minister’s saying that this has to go through quickly so a new tax can be put in place by 1 July. But in the bill there is a requirement for the Minister to make an assessment on a proposal put to him by the council. That proposal has to be prepared by the council after the council has outlined projects and consulted. The council has not had the opportunity to do that thoroughly yet, because the council does not yet know what the Minister’s going to put in place through the Government policy statement.

So when you work through this process, you’ve got a Minister saying that this tax is going to be important and must be in place by 1 July. He can only approve that tax after receiving a proposal—a proposal which hasn’t even yet been prepared because he hasn’t done the initial stages himself by issuing a Government policy statement. He is completely pre-empting a decision that he would have to make based on advice that he should be receiving from a council that is not yet able to give any advice because it is not yet able to formulate that proposal.

Hon Phil Twyford: It’s all too hard, isn’t it!

JAMI-LEE ROSS: It’s not all too hard, Mr Twyford. What we have here is Mr Twyford and the Labour Party being assisted by a council who wants to put in place a tax and doesn’t want Aucklanders to have a real say on it. I say that the Labour Party should be true to their principles. When he was sitting along these benches, he would have been one of the first people up on his feet saying Aucklanders and New Zealanders should have a real say on legislation, and we heard that time after time.

Let’s see them put their money where their mouth is. Let’s see them actually vote in line with what they said when they were in Opposition. It is not right to curtail the ability for New Zealanders to submit on this. It is not right to say, “A new tax is going to be put in place, but we’re going to take away your rights to a normal parliamentary scrutiny process to submit on that.” It is an appalling approach that the Government is proposing to take, and this party will be opposing it quite vigorously.

BRETT HUDSON (National): Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker. I rise too to oppose this shortened report-back time for this bill. Fundamentally, this is a matter of our democracy. The proposal from the Minister in charge of this bill, Phil Twyford, represents an erosion of the democracy being exercised by New Zealanders. Now, he made a point when he was trying to substantiate or justify his proposal—he made a point around the basis of need. Well, quite frankly, that is terminological inexactitude. There is no absolute need here. There is simply a desire by that Minister and that Government.

So first of all, if there was a true need for this to be in place for Auckland by 1 July, there would be some sort of calamity that would befall Auckland on 2 July, and there isn’t. He certainly didn’t evidence one. He certainly didn’t put one forward. There were no grounds that say that if this is not in place for 1 July, the huge negative consequences would be X, Y, or Z.

Furthermore, he made a point that Auckland has transport needs and they need to be fixed right now. Well, actually, it would be a good thing if they could be fixed quickly—that is true. But again, it expressed a desire as a need. So if the Minister is going to justify eroding or undermining the democratic process here, I think he has an obligation to the House and to New Zealand to be able to articulate the actual need, and a need is separate from his or his Government’s desire. Quite frankly, his and their failure to get this bill into this House in a timely manner does not create a need. It certainly heightens their desire to push it through quickly, but it does not create a need.

Now, in Opposition, those members had nine years to work up policy like this, even on this policy, which they did talk about quite well in advance of the election. They had all that time to do the work—

Hon Member: He could have had a bill—

BRETT HUDSON: —to get it ready. He could have had a bill written up. He could’ve done that. He could have had it in a shape and a form where it would’ve been ready to be introduced to this House very quickly after the Government was formed. But they didn’t—they didn’t. Their failure to do the work does not create a need that this House needs to address by shortening the report back. It does not.

But what it would do is it would prevent New Zealanders from across the country from making full and comprehensive submissions and having ample time to be heard in their views on this particular bill, because let’s make no mistake about it; it’s not just Auckland. While the implementation cannot happen before 2021, the bill certainly does allow for regional taxes across the rest of New Zealand, so the rest of New Zealand has a right to have their voices heard—something that the Minister is seeking to remove from them by having a shortened process.

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

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): Before the dinner break we were hearing the debate on the Land Transport Management (Regional Fuel Tax) Amendment Bill—the instruction to the committee debate. Brett Hudson had the call. He has six minutes and 45 seconds remaining.

BRETT HUDSON: Thank you, Madam Assistant Speaker. I look forward to these precious minutes. As I was saying before the dinner break, the Government and the Minister of Transport have not given any substantive reason as to why there is a genuine need, why it is actually necessary, to truncate the select committee process for this bill. In fact, by doing so, it has a couple of effects. The first effect is that it doesn’t permit potential submitters from right across New Zealand to be able to have the opportunity to have a full and comprehensive submission and a good, long look at this bill and how it might actually affect them, because, in actual fact, the framework of the bill can do just that—the mechanisms in the bill can do just that.

But the other thing, which is the point my colleague Mr Ross mentioned in his contribution, is that once you consider inside of the report-back time frame, which is Monday, 21 May, I believe—when you consider that time frame, when you consider initial reports to a committee, when you consider all of the things a committee will do, such as a departmental report, going through revision tracks—in actual fact, the amount of time that a submitter will have, or submitters will have, to make submissions on this bill is eight days. Eight days for a bill that has the ability to apply a new tax, not only just in Auckland—that’s just 1 July—but the mechanics of a new tax across all of New Zealand.

Actually, New Zealanders will, I think, be looking at this and they’ll be casting their mind back to the rhetoric they heard before the election, which was that there will be no new taxes introduced before the 2020 election—except the Auckland fuel tax. No one’s going to claim that the now Government hadn’t said the Auckland fuel tax, but their bill puts that tax in place for any part of New Zealand that chooses to put a proposal forward. So that is something New Zealanders will be concerned about, and New Zealanders deserve to have the opportunity to submit on that, because it’s something that could be very important to them and the Government want to not quite deny it but they want to truncate it so much that the real opportunity will not exist the way that our democracy says it should.

The trouble is that this is not the first or only time. Just a few days ago in this House, we were talking about how this Government had introduced a new measure on to a taxation bill—the brightline test, the five-year threshold. They introduced that the day after select committee—another case where they don’t give New Zealanders an opportunity to submit, or an ample opportunity to submit, on what is a new tax. They, again, are showing a wilful neglect and disregard of the democratic rights of New Zealanders, not just in Auckland—because this is not just in Auckland—but across the country.

I have to say that from this side of the House, it sounded to me like the Minister thought he was being very magnanimous by deigning not to do this under urgency, that by choosing not to do it under urgency, as the Government has already done on more than one occasion, such as their Family Incomes Package—on more than one occasion, they’ve rammed legislation through under urgency, absolutely denying any opportunity for a select committee process for the people of New Zealand—he made it sound like he was doing them an enormous favour by shortening their allowable time for submissions down from the standard of six months to two. He was doing them an enormous favour because he wasn’t going to put it through under urgency.

Well, actually, I think that illustrates for New Zealanders just what this Government and their support partners really think about the democratic process and the right for New Zealanders to have their voices heard by the members of this Parliament and have them heard as part of the legislative process. Quite frankly, if we reflect back on what is only just a few months of this new—what is it, five long months of this new Government, but, none the less, if we reflect back on that, what we’re seeing already is a pattern forming that this is a Government that doesn’t want New Zealanders to have their say as they push legislation through, doesn’t want to hear their voices, doesn’t want to give them an opportunity to appear and put their best case forward.

So, instead, what we have is a proposal in the House which doesn’t justify a need but clearly expresses the desire of the Minister and of this Government—doesn’t express a need but pitches the need as the reason behind truncating a process, and, in doing so, it absolutely undermines our democracy. I oppose this instruction.

Hon AMY ADAMS (National—Selwyn): Madam Assistant Speaker, thank you. Look, I did want to come down and take a call on this Land Transport Management (Regional Fuel Tax) Amendment Bill. I want to commend the speakers who have gone before us from this side of the House, the honourable Jami-Lee Ross and Brett Hudson, who have both spoken very eloquently.

This is a very important matter for this House to debate, because what we have here is a referral to the Finance and Expenditure Committee that the Government wants to have report back to this House by 21 May. Now, if you’re sitting at home and listening, you might think, well, from 28 March to 21 May, that sounds like a reasonable amount of time, but what those of us in this House know is that a report-back date set at 21 May—not only is it four months short of the traditional select committee period of six months, which, generally, is the bare minimum needed to properly evaluate legislation; and, frankly, there is any number of pieces of legislation currently before this House that are seeking extensions to the six-month period because the select committee can’t get it done—this is a two-month period.

Now, what that means, though, to submitters is that submitters will have eight working days to submit on this legislation. Now, we’re not talking here about something, sort of, prosaic and a matter of form; this is a brand-new tax that people right across New Zealand are going to be subject to. I want to emphasise that point, because Labour in Opposition and during the campaign did talk about an Auckland fuel tax, but never once do I recall them saying, “We’re going to bring in a 10c a litre tax across New Zealand. So, actually, it could apply in Gore, it could apply in Fairlie, it could apply in Motueka, it could apply in Pētone, it could apply in Masterton—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): Order! [Interruption] Order! If I could just ask the member to come back to the specifics of the motion rather than speaking generally about the bill itself.

Hon AMY ADAMS: Well, Madam Assistant Speaker, my point is the time that submitters have to submit on the bill, and to express that, you have to be able to reference the breadth of the bill and the impact of it, because it is not a well-signalled bill, and that is the point I’m making.

During the campaign, there was no reference to a fuel tax that would affect the whole of New Zealand. That has only become apparent very recently, and now, in a period of eight working days, the whole of New Zealand, who had little idea that this Government was going to come in and put a 10c a litre fuel tax on them—now they’re going to have to get their head around what that means for them, how it fits into their transport planning frameworks, and form a view and submit on it. That is unreasonable, to say the very least. I would say it’s arrogant, it’s outrageous, and it’s egregious, and, unfortunately, it is becoming all too common a trademark of this Government.

It was only last night in the House I was talking about the five-year brightline test, or the extension of the brightline test to five years, which is—make no mistake—a capital gains tax by stealth, with zero consultation. Now, the Government may think they’re doing some sort of favour to the people of New Zealand, giving them a whole eight days to submit on this new tax. It is not good enough, and it cannot be allowed to be the pattern of behaviour. Democracy deserves better than eight days to submit on a new tax.

Now, one of the other points that I did want to make, in talking about the importance of the time to consider and submit on this bill, is this is not a tax bill—and, frankly, every tax bill should be given the utmost of scrutiny, because it is all very well for this House to impose legislation; it is people who pay the tax that deserve to be consulted. But this is not just a tax bill that changes a rate, or we have a tax and they’re changing a parameter; this is an entirely new legislative structure.

So when you look at the legislation, we have page after page of discussion about how a regional fuel tax scheme is drafted, what it must contain, the particular description of the projects, the cost-benefit analysis, how it’s going to contribute, the completion dates for various projects, the consultation requirements—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): Can I bring you back to the motion, please. Thank you.

Hon AMY ADAMS: Madam Assistant Speaker, this is critical to the motion. All of these are matters people will want to consult on. This is what people consult on at select committee: the content of the bill. My point—very obviously, I would have thought—is that when you have an entirely new framework with substantial detail that people will want to engage on, even if they’re happy with the concept of a regional fuel tax, there is a lot of intricate detail in how that should be framed, what should be included, how consultation should work, and how the Minister should make their decision under section 65J, inserted by clause 5 of the bill. These are very intricate issues of detail.

It’s not a black and white, binary issue: should we have one or not? This is a complex piece of legislation setting up an entirely new taxation system, and to suggest that people need only eight days to consider whether that’s appropriate in the first instance, necessary across all of New Zealand when that hasn’t been flagged, and then to work through the specific detail—and members of this House will know very well, when the members of the public submit to select committees, they go to real trouble and care to go right through the bill and identify issues where they think something has been missed, where they don’t think the consequences will be what is intended, where there hasn’t been sufficient description and particularity, and where there isn’t going to be the information for the consultation to work or for certainty as to how a Minister will make a decision. This is critical to the motion before us, because we’re talking here about how long is an appropriate period of time for the select committee to be able to consider this legislation.

Within that is the necessary sub-question of how long should the public have to submit. My point, very clearly, is that when you have a bill setting up an entirely new tax framework with significant critical components as to how the process works to propose, consult, and decide on that, quite apart from the issue of the rate, quite apart from the issue of the extension across New Zealand, it is outrageous to suggest that an eight-working-day period is sufficient for the public to submit.

Members listening to this debate and watching on television, I suggest, will reach their own conclusions, but the conclusion that this side of the House cannot escape reaching is that this is a Government that doesn’t want public scrutiny. They don’t want public scrutiny. This wasn’t important enough to be in their 100-day plan. If this was as urgent as they want to tell us, it would have been in the 100-day plan. No, it wasn’t. It has come before the House now, and yet they want to rush it through and ensure that there actually isn’t proper time for discussion.

The issue of transport in Auckland is an ongoing issue, and colleagues of mine have traversed that in the first reading debate, the merits of the proposal. What I’m saying is that it is absolutely egregious to suggest that a framework like this doesn’t deserve public consultation, and that this is a Government that is too arrogant to even want to hear it, too scared of criticism to want to hear from the public, too worried about negative backlash for a tax and spend Government to want to give the public time. Their greatest hope is that the public don’t notice, it goes through, they increase revenue, and spend, spend, spend.

Well, this side of the House didn’t spend nine years getting our economy working, getting New Zealand growing, and reducing the tax burden on New Zealand to see this Government come in with a callous disregard for people who work hard every day. At the very least, they deserve a chance to have a say, and if this Government cared a jot about New Zealand, they would be welcoming that and not trying to shut it down.

Hon PHIL TWYFORD (Minister of Transport): I move, That the question be now put.

DAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): Thank you, Madam Assistant Speaker, for this call on what is an issue of the utmost constitutional importance to this country. Let me just traverse a little bit of the historical context that got us here. This Parliament is not quite unique but is extremely rare in the world for being unicameral, for not having an Upper House that scrutinises laws that have gone through the Lower House. As you know, behind us is the Legislative Council Chamber, which once upon a time contained our Upper House. Some years ago, in the middle of the last century, the so-called suicide squad, a group of members elected themselves into that Chamber and voted for their own dissolution. The trade-off at that time—

Hon Andrew Little: David, we’re not going back—we’re not going back.

DAVID SEYMOUR: —just while we’ve got some time—is that the select committee process was strengthened in order to carry out the roles that an Upper House had played in scrutinising the quality of legislation. I think that’s an interesting point to debate: whether it can truly be effective when the electoral system used to choose select committee members is exactly the same as the system used to choose members of the House of legislators. But, nevertheless, that’s the system we have, and other countries—of course, Australia, Canada, the United States, the UK—have a different electoral system to choose their Upper House, meaning that if one side of politics can win one House there’s a good chance they will nevertheless have to contend with the other House that has been elected differently through a different electoral system.

Hon Phil Twyford: Is this about the bill?

DAVID SEYMOUR: This is about the motion, Mr Twyford, and I think Madam Assistant Speaker will agree. The fact of the matter is that we have very great store placed on our select committee process because it is the substitute for our Upper House, which tonight lies empty and has done for over six decades.

So it is of the utmost importance that people are able to submit and that members of this House are able to scrutinise legislation in the select committee, because that is all we have. I’d appeal to members of the Labour Party to reflect upon their own heritage, because in the history of this Parliament they have played a critical role in cleaning up some of the wild west politics that used to happen late at night in the era of Muldoon. They introduced a Constitution Act in 1986, which has dramatically improved the sophistication of the functioning of this Parliament.

The Constitution Act, among other things, says, in not so many words “no taxation without representation”. It says that the executive, the Government, cannot levy a tax unless it has the permission of Parliament. Well, with this truncated select committee process, where people will have only two months instead of the usual six month process to feed into, we’re going to find that while the House might vote for the bill, it cannot honestly say that the proper legislative procedure has been undertaken to ratify this new tax. I would put it to you—

Hon Dr David Clark: Why did that member support the truncated process for asset sales?

DAVID SEYMOUR: Because there was no taxation involved. Taxation, as set out in the Constitution Act, is the most important role that this Parliament has, ensuring that taxes are collected with consent, and the parliamentary process includes being prepared—

Hon Iain Lees-Galloway: How many taxes have been changed under urgency?

DAVID SEYMOUR: I beg your pardon? You’ll have to open your mouth a little wider when you speak—that member. But the fact of the matter is, we cannot honestly say that we have carried out our role under the Constitution Act if we do not allow the select committee process to scrutinise a bill that amounts to introducing a new tax.

I’d appeal further. The members on the front bench of the Labour Party seem to have forgotten their party’s history, but I’d appeal to some of the backbench members—the Duncan Webbs, the Chlöe Swarbricks, who missed out on the ministerial limo this time—and remind them that while they may be members of a party that has executive members, they are not part of the executive. It is their job to be parliamentarians and help hold the executive to account, no matter which party it may be from. So I just put out that appeal to them, because it might not just be the right thing to do constitutionally but it might also be the right thing to do for the future of their political careers.

I can tell them that the people of New Zealand will place great value in members of this House who prove themselves to be democrats and to have some guts and gumption and maybe be a little bit fearless. I can see Duncan Webb. He’s just thinking, “What did I really come here for? To make better policy and hold the executive to account, or simply—”

Hon Iain Lees-Galloway: Not a history lesson.

DAVID SEYMOUR: Hey, we’re only up to 1986 and I’ve got four minutes to go.

He’s thinking, “What did I really come here for? Is it to make good policy and hold the executive to account, or violate the Constitution Act and ram through new taxes, violating the spirit of this House, and irritating and annoying the people of New Zealand who sit at home, who know that their basic rights, their most cherished rights in a democracy, are being violated because they will not have the practical ability to submit on the introduction of a new tax?”

Eight working days is all the time that the people who send us here and pay the bills will have to comment on this new bill. That is a travesty and those people will be looking at these parliamentarians—these executive members at least, who are not held to account by their own backbenchers—and they’ll be asking themselves this: “Why is it that these full-time professional politicians get all day and all night to make laws affecting me, but I, who have a job and am busy—ironically trying to earn the money to pay the taxes that this Government is levying on me—have to drop everything and submit in eight days in order to be heard?”

This is a Government that talks an awful lot about inclusion, the politics of kindness, and making sure that everybody in society is able to have a stake in the way that this society functions. That was the marketing ploy, that was the pledge, that was the smiling face of this Government when it asked the voters for consent to govern. Given the power to govern, suddenly this Government turns around and says, “We don’t think that we need to make it practical for you to submit.”—even when they’re levying new taxes, even when they’re violating the Constitution Act, even when people have no other way of having any impact on the legislative process, now that they’re all elected, other than submitting to a select committee, and they are to be given only eight days to do that.

I can see the New Zealand First member there, and he’s sitting there thinking—Darroch Ball, I think he is. He’s sitting there thinking, “I came here to represent the people, the real people, the grassroots people.” And he’s just thinking, “This guy Seymour, he’s right. He has a point. It should be six months that the people get to submit. We should not allow temporarily empowered politicians to ram these kinds of laws down people’s throats the way this Government proposes to do. Today’s the day. Tonight’s the night. I, Darroch Ball, should take a stand and cross the floor and—”

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): I’m sure there’s a point of order against that somewhere in the rule book.

DAVID SEYMOUR: I’m appealing. The purpose of debate, Madam Assistant Speaker, is that members appeal to each other in the hope that they can find their better senses, and I have zeroed in on Darroch Ball because I think he’s my best prospect of a man of principle who came here to serve the average person in New Zealand who just wants a Parliament that is responsive to them, that is not arrogant, and gives them an opportunity to participate in the democratic process at Parliament—which is their place.

So in conclusion—or getting to it, anyhow—I’d just like to say that this genuinely is a bad look for us as parliamentarians. It’s a bad look for this Government. There is no urgency and no justification for making it impractical for New Zealanders to submit on a bill that affects them. It is elitist to have such a short time so that only the few who have lots of spare time will be able to submit. And if this Government knows what’s good for it, constitutionally and politically, it will allow six months—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): Thank you. Excuse me, the member’s time has expired.

DENISE LEE (National—Maungakiekie): Thank you, Madam Assistant Speaker. I think we should all be disappointed here tonight. This is the icing on the cake of what has been a very flawed process from the start. The reasons that we’ve heard from Minister Twyford tonight is that this should be in place by the new accounting year and at the expiration of the interim transport levy in Auckland Council. Well, those who know about the interim transport levy, as I do, will know that that didn’t go through a public submission process at all, and now it appears that there’s a similar theme here tonight, and it’s the same theme that’s attempting to be undertaken here with the regional fuel tax.

Council consultation on this tax has been a sham, and now the Government is doubling down on that. They’re bending over backwards to give the council what they want at the sacrifice of Parliament’s scrutiny—and public scrutiny, for that matter. We owe it to Aucklanders to give them a full and proper parliamentary process, so why the rush here tonight? The mayor himself says in his mayoral proposal for their budget that he might not get the regional fuel tax by the end of this year. So you’ve got the mayor recognising that there are alternative options and that the time frames for this tax need not be fixed by 1 July this year. He left the door open for there to be the fuel tax by the end of this year; the mid-year time frame is self-imposed by the Government—a very interesting point.

So council’s consulting on a 10-year plan: 10 years of budgets. Why do we have here what appears to be only an eight-day—eight-working-day—process for the public? Explain that to me—a massive programme of tax and spend and we’ve only got eight days for the public to scrutinise it. Is that enough for those outside Auckland to scrutinise the effects for them down the line? Do they know and understand this isn’t just a rush job for Auckland; it will and could and it very may well affect all of New Zealand.

The effort that’s been put into rushing this bill and this tax means that no one really knows the full impact or the cost-benefit analysis. The bill says that the Ministry of Transport doesn’t know, it says that the council doesn’t know, and, if we go back to the mayor’s own proposal, he’s saying that the regional fuel tax is not the only option. So how do we know, with this rushed process, that the interim transport levy should be replaced by the regional fuel tax? Will we have enough time to scrutinise whether one is better than the other when we don’t even know, in the bill’s wording itself, what the impact and the full impact will be. If you remove a full select committee process, you are gagging the public’s ability—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): Order!

DENISE LEE: Sorry, Madam Assistant Speaker. The Government is gagging the public’s full ability to understand and know the impact that they face as individuals. This is real impact on people and their livelihoods—their ability to get to work; their employers—the effect on their employers; and their daily lives. A rushed process is not a good process.

SIMEON BROWN (National—Pakuranga): Thank you very much, Madam Assistant Speaker. It is a sad day in this Parliament to be rising to speak on this motion to truncate the process for submissions and for the Finance and Expenditure Committee to report back on the Land Transport Management (Regional Fuel Tax) Amendment Bill. This is a day when we as a Parliament will be telling New Zealanders across this country that their voices are not valued when it comes to how we’re going to address the transport issues. We’ve heard from the Government about all the things and the ambitions and the visions that they have, but now we’re saying to the public that they are not welcome—except if they can hurry up and get something in within eight days—to have their voice heard by the select committee.

One of the other elements of this, which hasn’t been raised so far, is that this is not just a tax—a petrol tax—but it also includes an increase in GST. That’s a whole other issue which needs to be raised, and a select committee can look into that and the costs and the implications of that.

There are a wide range of stakeholders who deserve the right to have their say on this issue. I think of councils up and down this country who won’t have time to put together submissions because their governing body meetings, or their council meetings, won’t sit over the next eight days. I think of ratepayer organisations whose next meetings won’t be over the next eight days and that won’t have time to be able to put forward and put together a select committee and hear from their members. I think of organisations like the Automobile Association, freight companies, and other organisations and associations, which have the responsibility to consult with their members before putting forward submissions on this important issue.

All of these organisations need the time and need the ability to be able to put forward their submission, and then for the Parliament to actually take into account, to listen, to hear those submissions, and to have real engagement with the people of this country. We’re often criticised as politicians for being those who are quick to act and slow to listen. Well, this is an opportunity for us to show and demonstrate that we’re willing to listen to New Zealanders and let them have their say.

There’re also a number of important issues which need to be addressed by the select committee, and submissions are an important part of allowing those issues to be addressed so that the legislation, if it is to pass—and I hope it isn’t—is actually better legislation. There are issues of fairness and equity which are at the heart of this regressive tax, which will impact on the voters in the Labour Party parts of Auckland and South Auckland and west Auckland as well, who will be adversely affected to a greater level by this tax because they live further away from places of employment or from the city centre. Those people in the electorates represented on the other side of the House deserve the right to be able to have their say and to be able to put their submissions in.

There are issues of price spreading, and there are issues of avoidance and market distortions. These are technical issues which require people with experience, with the ability to do some analysis, and with the ability to get on and do some of the work which needs to be done to put in their submissions.

So I just want to finish off by saying it’s a sad day to be standing here with a Government which is not prepared to listen—not prepared to listen to the voices of New Zealand on what is another tax. There should be no taxation without representation, and they’ve got rid of the representation but are carrying on with their taxation. What a shame.

KIRITAPU ALLAN (Assistant Whip—Labour): I move, That the question be now put.

Motion agreed to.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the Land Transport Management (Regional Fuel Tax) Amendment Bill be reported to the House by Monday, 21 May 2018 and that the committee have authority to meet at any time while the House is sitting (except during oral questions), during any evening on a day on which there has been a sitting of the House, and on a Friday in a week in which there has been a sitting of the House, and outside the Wellington area, despite Standing Orders 191, 193, and 194(1)(b) and (c).

Ayes 63

New Zealand Labour 46; New Zealand First 9; Green Party 8.

Noes 57

New Zealand National 56; ACT New Zealand 1.

Motion agreed to.

Bills

Crimes Amendment Bill

First Reading

Hon ANDREW LITTLE (Minister of Justice): I move, That the Crimes Amendment Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Justice Committee to consider this bill.

I see it as an important function of Government to keep the statute book up to date. Archaic laws that serve no useful purpose or—worse—frustrate legitimate prosecution should be removed from the laws of New Zealand. To maintain public confidence in the law, the criminal code should be relevant to modern society. It should not allow criminals to go unpunished only because of historical anomalies and, for that matter, we should not seek to retain laws that have no useful application in our country today. It’s on that basis that I’m pleased to bring to this House the Crimes Amendment Bill today.

This bill repeals three provisions from the Crimes Act 1961. In my view, all have passed their use-by date. I believe New Zealand law and society will benefit from their removal from the statute book.

Let me start with discussing the year and a day rule that is now encapsulated in section 162 of the Crimes Act. That section provides that no one is criminally responsible for the killing of another unless the death takes place within a year and a day of the cause of the death. This rule has been described as an anachronism, and I agree. The rule has its genesis in medieval times. Its origins lie in a distrust of science. Whatever its relevance centuries ago, it has no place in modern New Zealand.

As long ago as 1991, the Crimes Consultative Committee, in considering the Crimes Bill of 1989, concluded that advances in medical science had greatly reduced the difficulties in linking injury to a death that occurs a considerable time later. The authors of the great criminal law text Adams on Criminal Law agree, and note that—to quote them—“In relation to proof of causal connection, the development of medical science has no doubt rendered the law under section 162 unnecessary.”

Most like-minded countries to New Zealand have abolished the rule. It’s been abolished in the United Kingdom, in most Australian states, and in Canada. The rule was abolished in those jurisdictions due to factors such as public concern about the rule precluding legitimate prosecution in the case of medical intervention keeping victims alive for longer than one year and one day.

This issue has been highlighted in New Zealand following the 2017 death of a victim 15 months after he was assaulted, and the alleged offender in that case could not be prosecuted for murder or manslaughter, notwithstanding the clear connection between his act—a violent assault on the deceased—and the death of the victim.

The CTV Building collapse following the 2011 Christchurch earthquake highlighted another problem with the retention of the law in New Zealand. Arguably, a critical omission in that case related to the shortcomings in the design of the building dating back to 1986—significantly longer than a year and a day before its collapse—and it’s important to recognise that this wasn’t the sole factor that led to this case not being prosecuted. The Crown solicitor had a view and the Deputy Solicitor-General had a view that the failures of the engineers and designers of the building that meant that 26 years later the building collapsed meant that the deaths that happened at a result of that collapse had their causal origins in the actions of the engineers 26 years before. It therefore put the engineers’ actions outside the one year and one day rule, and therefore it could not be prosecuted.

Possible concerns about the repeal of the rule resulting in a person remaining liable to prosecution for murder or manslaughter for lengthy periods of time are unjustified. There’s currently no limitation period under the Criminal Procedure Act for filing charges for other serious offences, and there should not be for murder or manslaughter. Also, there are existing checks and balances in the operation of the criminal justice system to prevent prosecution where that would be an abuse of process.

Repeal of the year and a day rule will ensure that prosecution is not precluded solely by an ancient rule setting an arbitrary length of time between the cause of death and death itself. I think what it would come down to is that in the circumstances where a Crown solicitor or the police or the Solicitor-General or the Crown Law Office are considering a prosecution where there is a considerable length of time between the death and the action alleged to have caused the death, they will exercise their judgment about whether they have a reasonable chance of establishing beyond reasonable doubt that the death was a result of those actions. Where they don’t think they can meet that threshold, then they will make their judgment about prosecution accordingly.

The next issue that I’d like to speak to is the current protection against prosecution contained in section 71 of the Crimes Act. I should start by pointing out that section 71 of the Crimes Act doesn’t create the offence of accessory after the fact. Section 71 is definitional in that it sets out the essential elements of being an accessory after the fact. The accessory after the fact definition in section 71(1) applies to anybody who, knowing any person was a party to the offence, helps the person escape after arrest or to avoid arrest or conviction. However, section 71(2) of the Crimes Act 1961 provides that no person whose spouse or civil union partner has been a party to an offence can become an accessory after the fact to that offence, even where they do the act prohibited by section 71(1).

This kind of protection generally no longer applies. So, for example, section 67 of the Crimes Act recognises that a person may conspire with his or her civil union partner to commit an offence. Why, then, should they be given an exception to being an accessory after the offence? The judiciary have noted that section 71(2) creates an immunity for spouses or civil union partners, but the same thing does not apply to non - civil union or de facto partners—clearly discriminatory, clearly inconsistent, and clearly a complete shambles.

There’ve also been judicial observations that the retention of spousal immunity for accessory after the fact is anomalous. It represents an outdated view of the nature of marriage which is no longer recognised by the law in other contexts. The risk that some defendants may experience threats or intimidation by their spouse or partner to assist them evading justice doesn’t justify a retention of this law. Section 24 of the Crimes Act, which is the defence of compulsion, protects a person from criminal liability who commits an offence under the threat of death or serious physical harm. So repeal of section 71(2) of the Crimes Act will ensure that all people who help someone with whom they are in a close relationship to evade justice may be prosecuted as an accessory after the fact.

Finally, I’d like to refer to section 123 of the Crimes Act, which relates to blasphemous libel. At the outset, I acknowledge that the honourable member Angie Warren-Clark has a member’s bill repealing the same section but she has agreed to withdraw her bill because that is now covered by this Government bill. Section 123 of the Act criminalises the publication of blasphemous libel. Leave of the Attorney-General is required in order to mount a prosecution. There is a statutory defence if what is published expresses in good faith and decent language an opinion on any religious subject.

No prosecutions for blasphemy have occurred in New Zealand since 1922, and even in that case nearly 100 years ago, the jury returned a not guilty verdict. This is a law that simply does not apply in the modern context. In 1998, when Te Papa exhibited the Virgin in a Condom statue, the Solicitor-General rejected a call to commence a criminal prosecution under the blasphemous libel law. The view was expressed that it would be inconsistent with the freedom of expression as protected by the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act.

Offences dealing with blasphemy have been repealed in numerous other countries in recent years: England and Wales did so in 2008, followed by Norway, the Netherlands, and Denmark. There is currently a bill in the Canadian Parliament doing the same thing. I am satisfied that good reason exists to repeal this offence and that we should now do so. It hasn’t been applied for a considerable period of time and it stands with a very distinct tension with our New Zealand Bill of Rights Act protection of freedom of expression. There will be a range of views on this matter; that could be a matter that can be debated in the select committee.

The criminal law in New Zealand would be modernised and improved by this bill. I commend it to the House as a simple but important piece of law reform.

Hon LOUISE UPSTON (National—Taupō): Thank you, Madam Assistant Speaker. I am pleased to stand in this House and support the first reading of the Crimes Amendment Bill in the acknowledgment that it was the hard work of my colleague the Hon Amy Adams, as the former Minister of Justice, who did a lot of the groundwork on this legislation.

It is somewhat puzzling, though. I know we’re heading in to Easter shortly but I’m thinking more of Christmas, and what parents often do at Christmas is find stocking fillers. This piece of legislation feels very much like an Order Paper filler because there’s nothing significant about this legislation. Yes, it’s important, some of the components have been around for decades, and so none of it is particularly urgent or new. It’s not to say it’s not valuable, but it’s somewhat puzzling that for the legislation immediately before this, the Land Transport Management (Regional Fuel Tax) Amendment Bill, there’s not enough time for the House to debate that legislation at length and to allow members of the public to submit on it and yet they’ll get to fill their boots with this legislation, which, unfortunately, in most cases, will not set the world alight.

But at the end of the day, every New Zealander who has a car and drives on the roads will be affected by the last legislation. So it is somewhat surprising, but as I said, we will support it. Unlike other legislation, it will be great for the select committee to have a decent look at it. We know that when a piece of legislation like this is put together and drags in a member’s bill, the Government’s pretty desperate in terms of filling the Order Paper, but congratulations to the member who has had her member’s bill taken up, supposedly, as a Government bill—well done.

I did want to just touch on a couple of the aspects of this legislation. It is quite straightforward; there are three components. The one that probably is dazzling most people out there is the blasphemous libel, which, of course, was the member’s bill. I am somewhat staggered that we have a piece of legislation on our books of which there’s been no action since 1922, so it is probably fair to say it’s overdue for the attention of the House to deal with it. Perhaps it could’ve been done in a Statutes Amendment Bill, but there we go.

I think the one that the New Zealand public will be interested in, though, is the year and a day provision. I do want to say that that is an important piece of work and the Hon Amy Adams did do some substantial work to make sure that this formed a piece of legislation that would then be brought before this House. Because at the end of the day, as we’ve seen in the very real example and the real tragic example of the CTV Building collapse, we do want to ensure that people can be held accountable for their actions. The inability to prosecute anyone for that has had many New Zealanders shaking their heads. So, this Parliament can quite rightly say that that issue is being addressed. I think the other aspect of that is with modern medical technology. People who do have serious injuries are likely to live longer periods of time and that shouldn’t then be justice not being served in that instance.

There are some other areas in this legislation. The third one, of course, is that the protection from accessory after the fact for partners should be repealed. We do consider, though, that there’s additional work that perhaps could’ve been done before this component was brought to the House and on to the select committee for consideration. That is around what protections are being offered to vulnerable partners and spouses who could be forced or pressured into being accessories after the fact. The work that the previous Government did around family and sexual violence raised some really important issues, and we were sort of hoping that the Government would pick up some of that work and really solve some of these challenges for those victims of family violence and those that could be very inappropriately pressured into that position.

There were also a couple of areas that are worth mentioning that haven’t been included in this legislation and, in fact, actively removed from it. I’m really proud of the work my colleague Kanwaljit Singh Bakshi has done with the carrying of traditional kirpan, and that would allow baptised Sikhs to carry that particularly important cultural item for Sikhs. So I do want to congratulate my colleague for putting a Supplementary Order Paper together. I do hope that members on the other side who are very open about wanting to push for greater diversity, for embracing cultural difference, and for accepting New Zealand as a multicultural society, what seems to be quite a simple mechanism—to have removed that from the legislation we find quite frustrating, given that that was a lot of work that was done and a lot of consultation with the Sikh community to allow them to carry their kirpan in public places. But I’ll allow my colleague to talk to that in a bit more detail.

As I say, although we don’t see this as a bill of huge priority, we will be supporting it. Thank you.

GREG O’CONNOR (Labour—Ōhāriu): It gives me pleasure to rise and speak on this bill—a bill that, I have to say, I’d describe as very pragmatic. As I read through the three provisions—they cover quite a range—one that really does resonate with me is the year and a day rule.

It takes me back to a time as a detective when I stood in an operating theatre watching a young man who’d been stabbed in the back of the brain, in fact in his medulla oblongata, and watching surgeons working to save this young man’s life. Obviously, had he died, it would have been murder at the time, but through some great work, heroic work, actually, by these surgeons over some length of time, this young man did survive but he didn’t thrive. I was to see that young man over the next several years and he eventually did succumb to related injuries. As I read this I thought about the fact that the offender in that case was back on the street relatively quickly. I happen to know that he was involved in another very serious crime further down the track.

So just to put some real, I guess, meat and bones, if you like, on this offending, I will just talk about modern medicine, and I go back to the vital first few minutes, the golden minutes, that occur after any injury. If you are lucky enough to be injured where you do have very good medical help available, then it’s very likely that you will survive, but again, I go back to just how well you will survive or thrive.

So modern medicine, of course, brings us to the fact that many people who would previously have died will now linger, and, we know, death can occur years later from that same injury, albeit given the ability of modern medicine to intervene. That will be a debate for certainly another bill that will come before this House.

So the year and a day rule—the most recent example is the very highly publicised CTV Building in the Christchurch earthquake. Again, I have to say it was a situation I was very closely involved in. I spent basically three weeks inside the red zones following that quake, and I saw the human tragedy there—everything from where there was only a trace of a body, to actually full bodies being taken into the morgue. Again, closure will be an important part of what those families could hope to achieve from that disaster—and what better closure than closure in terms of the two people who quite clearly took unacceptable shortcuts. But those two people will now not face what they should face.

Some would argue that time cures all, but I look at, just this week, the person who was the bookkeeper at Auschwitz who cheated his day in court by dying early. But I don’t think anyone would argue that that man shouldn’t have faced his consequences in court, despite that length of time.

So if you are responsible for a death, however long it should take for that death to occur, of course you should face the consequences and not be freed, if you like, by the fact that a year and a day was reached. Again, I certainly commend that part of the bill, which, of course, is clause 6, which repeals section 162.

I move on to section 123, in clause 5, which contains the offence of blasphemous libel. This is another provision of the Crimes Act which will be repealed. No one has not been prosecuted for that offence in New Zealand since 1922, although I note—and it’s not that particular case; blasphemous libel—that Professor Lloyd Geering, who made 100 years very recently, was prosecuted for heresy, which is a related offence. I think the prosecution was withdrawn. But it just takes us back to another era where the role of the Church and religion was rather more stringent, strong, and relevant than it is today. Even the mere fact that such a statute is on our statute book just takes us back to another time.

I do note that when the discussion was taking place last year, the Labour Party, the then Opposition, was very much in favour of the legislation about blasphemous libel being repealed. There was some discussion then, and the comment made by the bishops in the New Zealand Anglican Church was that God did not need to be defended by a statute. Also, attention was drawn to the legislation last year after news reports that British actor Stephen Fry was being investigated by the Irish police on a complaint of blasphemy. Mr Fry questioned why he should respect God when the world was so full of suffering. He was investigated by the Irish police. He said, “It’s utterly, utterly evil. Why should I respect a capricious, mean-minded, stupid God who creates a world which is so full of injustice and pain?”

That investigation was dropped, but, again, it just goes to show that even today, when we’re talking about legislation here, we often look at what overseas jurisdictions are doing. So it may well be we’re ahead of several other jurisdictions on that, and I commend it as another statute on our statute book whose time is well past. I certainly commend that it be repealed.

I go to the other aspect of the bill, clause 4, which repeals section 71(2). Section 71(2) protects spouses and civil union partners from essentially being an accessory after the fact to an offence. Again, while not precisely relating to this, I used to train detectives at the Police College. One of the tricky questions was always around spousal privilege. Again, that still does exist on the statute book—spousal privilege. Again, that is taking us back to another time, and, really, what was behind that was that a person’s identity is not separate from their spouse. That’s the provision that essentially underlies spousal privilege, and related to that is, of course, the provision we are looking at now, which protects spouses and civil union partners in cases where they would otherwise be an accessory after the fact to an offence.

Essentially, really, the time has come where it’s anomalous. It creates an anomaly because it does not apply to other classes of people who are protecting someone in a close personal relationship. So in terms of the provision I mentioned in relation to spousal privilege, it certainly is related to that and there really is no reason why a spouse or civil union partner should receive the protection that they currently do. A lot of these provisions often are used to hide behind. Lawyers who know their business and know their law will often use these provisions to ensure that the jury, or even the judge, does not get to hear the evidence that they should. Any provision or any law that presumes that a person’s identity is not separate from their spouse, I think, has had its day.

So when I look at this Crimes Amendment Bill, with the three provisions I’ve spoken of, I believe that it would be hard to find anyone who would argue that all three provisions have not had their day. I commend this bill to the House.

SIMON O’CONNOR (National—Tāmaki): I say this somewhat tongue in cheek to the speaker who has just sat down, Greg O’Connor, and I think he shared the blasphemous libel saying of Stephen Fry. We haven’t actually repealed this yet, so that might strictly still be blasphemous and libellous, but I understand we are under privilege here, so it’s all OK.

In all seriousness, I’m very pleased to take a call on this bill, the Crimes Amendment Bill. As we heard from the Hon Louise Upston just a little earlier, National is supporting this bill.

Look, we’ve raised this, and I have as well a few times—our concerns about the bills that are being brought into this House. This bill, while important for the reasons that the previous speaker’s just articulated—and I’ll touch on some of those—is a bill which the National Government was progressing, has been investigating, and, in effect, had put forward. And yet, here we are, seeing it as a bit of fill-in legislation, effectively, now. So I just challenge the Government, again, to bring some fresh, solid legislation to bear. It’s not to say that this Crimes Amendment Bill is a poor bill in any way. I think the three areas are important, but when we look at what is a new Government with a whole lot of new ideas, we’d hope we might actually get something a bit more substantial to get our teeth into.

I’m also hoping that we’re not going to get an instruction at the end of this bill asking for a truncated period of discussion. I’m very concerned, with what’s just happened earlier in the House, that the people in Auckland and which I represent in Tāmaki have had their voices silenced.

This bill is fixing three areas within the Crimes Amendment Bill. The first, we know, is around the place of spouses and partners. There’s, effectively, a defence on the books at the moment that you can aid and abet something that your spouse has done. As was noted, a clever lawyer—and sometimes not-so-clever lawyers—can use that. I mean, in some ways, you can understand why spouses act in the way that they do, but that, effectively, a criminal’s identity is locked into that of their spouse is a bit of a problem. I would hope that the select committee does take quite a bit of time reflecting on this, though, and the potential unintended consequences when, again, a spouse is acting in what they believe is the best interest—in other words, the crime is not the first element in their mind; it’s the relationship to their wife, husband, spouse, partner, whatever.

The year and a day rule: I have to say, I thought the member—granted, he shares the surname as myself, so maybe I’m just a bit sympathetic, but his example, I thought, was very good in terms of how an act can occur, a criminal act, but the death itself may be longer than a year and a day. It was well illustrated by what happened in the CTV Building.

The last thing I want to touch on is that whole question of blasphemous libel. I believe 1922 was the last time there was a prosecution—I think unsuccessful; I have to go and look into that. Our colleague on this side Paul Foster-Bell was actually a big advocate of this, and I think he will be particularly pleased to see this in front of us now. To me, it makes sense that it’s taken off the books, though I’d just point out two elements. The first is that, in the modern parlance, there’s a new dogma of blasphemy out there at the moment. You might not be liable, if you will, in the statutes or on the books, but certain people, if you go out and say certain things now against a new dogma—that of progressivism—you find yourself in a very blasphemous position, and tried in the kangaroo court and pilloried. So that’s an interesting element.

The other thing is that I’ll be fascinated to keep the Hansards close because all of those tonight, particularly those who love to introduce hate speech legislation, who want to limit free speech—it’ll be good to remind them of what they say here tonight in support of removing blasphemous libel, because this basically sits within the framework of freedom of speech and the chance to be able to say what needs to be said. So I’ll just be watching closely in the future, because I’ve heard a number of people in this House, not just to this Parliament but past, that want to limit free speech and who believe there are elements now “blasphemous”. I believe very strongly that people should be able to put their thoughts forward, even in a blasphemous context, and actually have that engaged with. As I’m indicating, there are already signs in society at the moment that certain things just are not allowed to be said anymore, and I think that’s a bit of a problem.

But in terms of this bill, we have a very good bill here. Again, it’s something I think that the Government really should be progressing through very fast. I don’t think that’s going to be the case; I think we’re going to see quite a bit of filibustering and so forth, but I don’t intend to be one of those. I commend this bill to the House.

DARROCH BALL (NZ First): Thank you, Madam Assistant Speaker. It’s my pleasure to rise on behalf of New Zealand First, obviously in support of this Crimes Amendment Bill. Contrary to the National Party’s members that have spoken so far, especially Louise Upston—I couldn’t actually believe what she said when she first stood up. I quote her, she said, “There’s nothing significant in this bill. It’s not important.” And then we heard from Simon O’Connor that it was just a fill-in piece of legislation.

Well, New Zealand First stands and supports this bill because there are three very important parts to it, and there are very important parts of the legislation that need to be changed. If I can use the words of Louise Upston when she spoke on behalf of the National Party about this bill being not important and nothing significant, I believe that she inadvertently just gave a slight example, or analogy, of how the National Party ran the last nine years when they were supposed to be looking at very important legislation that affects the people of this country.

I would challenge those two members—but especially Louise Upston, because she’s the one that said it, with the typical arrogance of a National Party member—to go and speak to the family of George Siaosi, who died in 2017 by a king-hit. The individual that caused him to pass away, that assaulted him—it happened more than a year and a day earlier than that, and, as such, he couldn’t get prosecuted for his murder. I would suggest that Louise Upston needs to go and speak to his family and say that it’s nothing important or that this is just fill-in legislation, and then, perhaps, explain to his wife why they did nothing over the last nine years, when they were in Government, to do anything about it. I would challenge those members that stood up from the National Party to go and speak to the families of the victims of the CTV Building and tell them that it’s not important legislation, that they are wondering why we’ve got this so-called fill-in legislation going through. The arrogance is palpable coming from the National Party.

I was listening to the Minister’s speech when he first stood up, and was reading through the common-sense bill and the important bill, and I started just writing down a few notes. The first things that I wrote down were that there shouldn’t be any opposition, barring a few questions and queries, and it should be non-political. That’s what this bill should be, but the first couple of speeches that we heard from the National Party were anything but that. And then we have the example of the comments from Louise Upston about the introduction of an Supplementary Order Paper (SOP). It doesn’t matter what any member of that Opposition says, they know that that is 100 percent a political move from the National Party, and it shouldn’t be done in this context. It’s been quite obvious and blatant, that the National Party is trying to have the mantra of splitting this coalition up with stupid individual pieces of legislation or ideas—namely, law and order and other examples like this SOP coming through—but it will not be successful. This is the type of legislation which should be going through without any opposition and without being a political issue, but that’s not the stance that the National Party is taking.

I’m going to go through the three very important—well, let me say two very important and one important—pieces of the legislation. The amendments repeal three aspects of the Crimes Act. The first is, as we’ve heard, about the spouses and the civil union partners being immune to any sort of prosecution when it comes to accessory after the fact of an offence. The second is the blasphemous libel and the repealing of that part. New Zealand First—I mean, we’re supporting that, but we do have some questions that we’ll be wanting to have answered through the select committee phase.

Chris Bishop: What are they?

DARROCH BALL: Well, what we are worried about, or what we want to ensure, is that this won’t impinge on people’s—first of all, obviously—right of freedom of speech, right. So we get that and we understand that. We understand that the blasphemous libel is an old law, that it’s outdated, and it’s no longer in the context of this modern society—we understand that. But what we don’t want is to have situations where individuals’ deities or gods are insulted unnecessarily, and we’ll be making sure that that is not the case and making sure that all of those parts are—

Chris Bishop: That’s why you want to keep it.

DARROCH BALL: No, that’s not true, Mr Bishop. You’re not listening, obviously. I said we’re going to be making sure that’s the case. We are in full support of that, because we understand that, in today’s New Zealand, we are one of the world leaders—if not the world leader—in freedom of speech, and we need to make sure that our laws reflect that.

The third is the year and a day rule, which I mentioned before and which I think is the most important part here, because we’ve got a spate of serious offences—especially over the last nine years, increase in serious offences—and the prevalence of the things called king-hits. They lead to very, very serious injuries, and, with the modern-day technology, we don’t want to have anyone that is the instigator of those crimes get off without the correct sentence or charge put towards them.

Just a couple of fun facts under the—

Hon Member: Ha, ha!

DARROCH BALL: They are fun facts that haven’t been mentioned yet. The first one is about the spousal protection law. This actually refers back to the Bible, and it traditionally refers to the wife. A wife was excused from criminal liability because she was obliged to, quote unquote, “obey her lord” and receive him into the matrimonial home—obviously, in much more chauvinist times was this law accepted. This is known as the doctrine of unity of husband and wife and privilege against self-incrimination. Obviously, we’ve moved on—not just since the law was written for New Zealand; this dates back a couple of thousand years, and we need to move on from that point. I think the bottom line with that part of the bill is that, when it boils down to it, the bottom line is that no individual should be protecting or harbouring a criminal once they’ve offended.

The second one—in regard to the blasphemous libel—is that this provision has been removed from many countries before New Zealand has done it, including France, Sweden, the UK, Netherlands, Norway, Iceland, Malta, and Denmark. It’s quite interesting to note that the majority of those countries, according to their population censuses, are more religious than what New Zealand is. So I think that that shows that getting rid of this bill is not really a religious matter or issue; it’s just one of common sense.

The last one: the year and a day rule. I think that the key thing here for this is it needs to catch up with the modern medical science—the life support technology, for example—victims would be able to survive a lot longer than the year and a day. It’s a very archaic law, it’s outdated, and we need to make sure that it catches up with modern-day society. I think one of the important features is that it only applies to future cases, as well.

I think that, hopefully, we’ll get some more substantial and more non-political and less arrogant contributions from the National Party members from this point forward—

Kieran McAnulty: Don’t hold your breath.

DARROCH BALL: —but I won’t hold my breath, like my colleague said. But New Zealand First will be continuing to support this through to select committee. Thank you.

Hon MAGGIE BARRY (National—North Shore): Thank you, Madam Assistant Speaker. I rise to support the Crimes Amendment Bill at its first reading. I’m not quite sure where the arrogant and ill-informed member who just resumed his seat, Darroch Ball, got his information from, but he’s clearly unaware that the changes that have been proposed in this are building on the work of the former justice Minister Amy Adams. So the idea that we don’t support the bill that we conceived and have led through its many cases and paces seems to have eluded that member. But, then, many things do, so perhaps rather than dwell on that person’s inadequacies, let’s move to the substance of this bill, which others have outlined.

As we’ve said many times before, we support the three small changes, which are a continuation of the work of the previous Minister of Justice, Amy Adams—

Clayton Mitchell: We just heard from previous speakers that it was useless and a waste of time, though.

Hon MAGGIE BARRY: —a member of the National Party—New Zealand First over there, ill-informed creature that he is. Other members have, of course, talked about the substance of the bill. There are, really, the three small changes. Naturally, we support them. They are a useful thing.

One of the more disappointing aspects of Labour, the Greens, and, I suppose their tag-on New Zealand First Party is that they have not put into this the Kirpan Authorisation Bill. I would say that one of the things that I have noted in my seven years in this place, having sat next to Kanwaljit Singh Bakshi, who is a Sikh, is that it is very important to them to be able to carry their ceremonial knives, the kirpan. Every baptised Sikh is allowed to have these and to carry them. Kanwal is a devout Sikh. He is very devout in the sense that he wants, not only for his own personal convictions but also for other Sikhs, to change the law so that these ceremonial knives are allowed to be worn—not just by anybody; I certainly wouldn’t want to see the member who just resumed his seat carrying a 10 centimetre blade, even though it should be blunt, which that member’s intellect clearly is.

There are four other articles of faith required to be borne by a baptised Sikh: that is the kesh, the uncut long hair tied up in a turban; the kanga, which is a small wooden comb; the karha, a steel or iron bracelet; and the kachera, an undergarment. I am sorry if I mispronounced any of those names. I speak very respectfully because I know from speaking to Kanwal that this was something he felt was very important, and it was an integral part of this bill because it’s an outdated and anachronistic law and, under the Human Rights Act—section 21 of the Act—it is important that those people be free from discrimination on the grounds of their religious beliefs. So, having made those points, I commend this bill to the House. Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker.

GOLRIZ GHAHRAMAN (Green): I rise in support of this bill. As previous speakers have laid out quite aptly, it has three components, the first—and probably, to the public, most shocking—being the year and a day rule, whereby our law prescribes the time limit, or a statute of limitations as it’s commonly known, for acts that have caused death to be prosecuted within a year and a day of that act having been committed.

Now, this kind of limitation is normally put in place to protect the fairness of proceedings. It is true that after many, many years proceedings can no longer be fair, especially in very serious criminal trials. Witnesses can pass away over time, memories fade, and it becomes no longer possible to defend cases properly. There’s also, in terms of natural justice, an expectation that a person shouldn’t be living with the stress of serious criminal charges hanging over them, without certainty. Having said that, this arbitrary time limitation does seem particularly short, especially in light of the advent of DNA evidence and other modern technological advances that preserve evidence and also mean that we can adequately investigate and prosecute crimes, over years of time, that we weren’t able to do previously.

New Zealand, obviously, has—as the Minister pointed out—experienced this limitation in the case of the Christchurch CTV Building tragedy, in which 115 lives were lost during the Christchurch earthquake. The police investigation took three years, we spent millions of dollars, there was a royal commission of inquiry, and the police team in charge of that investigation concluded that their case for criminal negligence was very clear. Even though that was the case, even though this could have been a case where negligence by the building team, the company that had undertaken that building, and the engineer himself could have been held criminally liable—which is actually very rare and would have been extraordinary in terms of bringing justice to those victims—the police had to abandon that case under legal advice because of this provision.

So the families were let down, but also, I would argue, a very important opportunity was lost for New Zealand to hold to account those who put profits, and expediency of their access to those profits, ahead of safety, and, in fact, risked lives. We know that bringing a civil case against a company in those circumstances will only result in a monetary fine or compensation, and we know that that can be circumvented through a declaration of bankruptcy—or, indeed, even if a payment is made, it’s only made by the company as a whole. Criminal charges in that case would have held individuals to account—the individuals who made those decisions, who were responsible for the negligence that resulted in death. We could have had a precedent case, whereby those types of reckless behaviours for profit could be deterred in future, but that opportunity was lost. I would argue, you know, putting form before function, the law didn’t work very effectively in that case, and so I am very happy that we’re going to be repealing that provision and that something like that can’t happen again.

The second aspect of this bill is, again, a very arbitrary line drawn in the sand in our criminal justice system, whereby immunity is given to spouses or civil partners from becoming accessories after the fact to a crime. It is a very important function of our system of justice that the police can prosecute those who assist in perverting the course of justice after a crime has happened, or who assist the principal in, essentially, getting away with a crime. To say that a special kind of relationship arises in marriage or civil partnership whereby the police can no longer hold someone to account in those circumstances does seem perverse and contrary to the intention of having accessory after the fact on our law books at all. It is almost always going to be someone in some kind of close relationship with the principal offender that commits a crime like that who helps them to cover up their actions, or helps them to get away, or helps them to pervert the course of justice. So it is a strange anomaly, again, that I’m glad we’re doing away with, to bring consistency and effectiveness to our criminal justice system.

The third aspect of this bill is something that the Green Party wholeheartedly supports, and I do want to congratulate warmly my friend and Labour Party colleague Angie Warren-Clark for bringing that member’s bill, which is now taken up by this Government bill and will pass, bringing our laws in line with the very secular, open society that New Zealand is in the 21st century. I was actually quite surprised that blasphemous libel remained on our criminal books, to be honest. It does seem medieval, and, of course, it hasn’t been prosecuted since 1922. The churches and church community who it was supposed to protect no longer agree that it should remain on the books, and, in fact, our former colleague the Rt Hon Bill English, a devout Catholic, supported this crime being removed from the books. So it’s no longer really consistent with New Zealand culture and our values.

It did remind me, when I thought about this, that my family and I did live under a different criminal justice system, where something like blasphemy was still a crime and could be used, in a reverse way, to persecute people in a very wide range of circumstances, in a way that actually limited their rights to freedom of speech, to freedom of religion—or to be free from religion, which is also an important right that we do want to uphold in New Zealand.

I am very happy that, in all three of these amendments to our Crimes Act, we’re going to be bringing New Zealand into the 21st century. We’re futureproofing our laws and we’re bringing a special level of consistency that was really lacking from our criminal justice system, so I commend the bill to the House.

CHRIS BISHOP (National—Hutt South): Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker. Look, I’ve been looking forward to the repeal of blasphemous libel for a number of years, so I’m very excited by this bill. I know colleagues have already mentioned Paul Foster-Bell. Paul Foster-Bell was a great crusader for free speech, wasn’t he? He was a great crusader for getting rid of blasphemous libel, and I know he’ll be—well, he probably won’t be watching the debate tonight. He’s almost certainly got better things to do, but I know that when he eventually gets round to seeing that this bill has been introduced, he’ll be very, very excited. So, Paul, this one’s for you, my friend.

It is of some moment, actually, that 96 years after the last prosecution for blasphemous libel—the only prosecution for blasphemous libel—we are removing this stain on free speech from the statute book. You might say, “Well, it’s not such a big deal: one prosecution, you need the leave of the Attorney-General,” and that would all be true, but, you know, we should always make sure our statute book is shipshape, and in particular we should always make sure that we’re as consistent with free speech as possible.

I did find Darroch Ball’s remarks a bit strange, because I don’t think he really got his head around blasphemous libel. He said, “Well, we agree with it, but we’ve got some concerns.” I thought, “Well, that’s interesting. I wonder what his concerns might be?”, so I yelled out, “What are your concerns?” He said, “Well, we just want to make sure”—I think I’m quoting him correctly—“that people aren’t able to insult religions.” Except—

Hon Member: That’s the whole point.

CHRIS BISHOP: —that is the whole point: that actually, you should be able to insult religions. So it’s a bit strange to say you support the repeal of blasphemous libel, which allows you to insult religions—it’s the whole point of repealing it—but then say, “We do have some concerns about whether or not people will be able to insult religions.” That’s sort of the point, Darroch. That’s sort of the point. It’s OK—I mean, it’s literally a one-clause segment. We will consider it in the Justice Committee. Sadly, there are no New Zealand First members on the Justice Committee, but if Darroch and the New Zealand First members want to write to the Justice Committee, we will consider those very well-expressed apparent concerns.

So I’m really pleased that blasphemous libel is going. As other members have mentioned, there’s only been one prosecution in New Zealand, and the jury found them not guilty. It was the publication of two Siegfried Sassoon poems in a publication called the Maoriland Worker in 1921, and then in 1922—

Hon Andrew Little: That’s the Labour Party’s paper.

CHRIS BISHOP: It was a Labour Party publication? See, there we go. The Labour Party, causing mischief for 96 years—I knew it. We knew it. The Maoriland Worker published two Siegfried Sassoon poems, and the jury, in their infinite wisdom—their freedom-loving wisdom—in 1922 returned a not guilty verdict, but they did add a rider to the verdict that the publication of things like this should be discouraged in the future. Isn’t that the classic Kiwi way? And I suspect it reflects the standards of the time. But it’s good we’re getting rid of this. The other changes, as other members have mentioned, are useful as well. The hard-working Justice Committee will add this to our very long list of business, and we’ll get on with it.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): This is a split call—five minutes. I call Raymond Huo.

RAYMOND HUO (Labour): Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker. I rise to take a call to support the Crimes Amendment Bill. This is a largely technically driven but very important bill which touches upon three important issues. The first is spousal or civil union partners’ immunity, the second one is blasphemous libel, and the third is the year and a day rule. These are all outdated sections of the Crimes Act, and well past their use-by date.

With regard to the spousal and civil union immunity, it is inconsistent with the way that spouses are generally treated in the law, and prevents prosecution in cases where a person has acted in order that their spouse or civil union partner escapes after arrest or avoids arrest or conviction. There is no justification to continue this immunity from prosecution where a person deliberately obstructs justice, in modern society. With regard to blasphemous libel, as the colleagues that spoke before me have acknowledged, it has not been prosecuted in New Zealand since 1922, and raises potential New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990 concerns.

The third one—the year and a day rule. I listened very carefully to the contributions from colleagues, especially from my learned colleague Mr Greg O’Connor, a veteran police officer with 40 or so years’ experience, who was nicknamed “Dinosaur” by our National colleagues. In the context of this bill, I wonder whether calling him a dinosaur would constitute—

Hon Andrew Little: Blasphemous libel.

RAYMOND HUO: —blasphemy. Ha, ha! That’s kind of a blasphemous libel, I rather doubt. Back to this particular clause, the year and a day rule provides that no one is liable for the killing of another unless the death takes places within a year and a day after the cause of death. Many colleagues used the CTV Building collapse as an example, and, actually, this particular issue has been highlighted in some of the high-profile cases in New Zealand. The Prime Minister, the Rt Hon Jacinda Ardern, made an undertaking to the families of the CTV Building collapse that changes need to be made; this is the Government delivering on its words.

There have been calls for the repeal of the year and a day rule in New Zealand for a long time, with most like-minded countries, such as England, Wales, Northern Ireland, having already repealed relevant sections. They have all abolished that rule, as well as Australia, Canada, and Ireland. In the US, it is complicated. In some states, the rule was rejected and the Supreme Court of the United States of America has confirmed such a complicated ruling. But in California, the year and a day rule has been changed to a three-year and a day rule. There’s no limitation period in New Zealand for filing charges for serious offences, and this is another reason to show that there’s no need for such kind of a clause, and, as such, the original rationale of the rule doesn’t stack up any longer.

MATT KING (National—Northland): It’s a pleasure to take a short call on this Crimes Amendment Bill. There are three parts to it—three small parts. We had a much wider-ranging review of the Crimes Act in our last term, and I see that they have picked out three small parts of it and they’re running with that. I’d like to acknowledge the former Minister of Justice, Amy Adams for the work she’s undertaken in this area.

Hon Andrew Little: She hasn’t brought it to the House. She hasn’t done it.

MATT KING: The fact of the matter is—let me speak—this coalition Government could’ve included it in last year’s Statutes Amendment Bill if it had been that urgent, and I’m not belittling it, because it is important. But if they had taken it last year when we were—several of those amendments, then we could have got it done then. But, anyway, we support it going to the select committee. We support the input from the public, and we hope during the select committee stage there’ll be a wider range of amendments included into it.

Now, let’s talk about blasphemous libel. It’s last century’s legislation. It’s outdated and it’s archaic. I’m glad to hear there hasn’t been a prosecution since 1922. I’ve never arrested anyone for it in the time that I was in the police. I understand that it conflicts with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act as well. In fact, I didn’t even know that it was in the law—ha! And so I’m glad—well, I knew it had been in the law, but I thought it had been repealed years ago. So I’m glad that it’s being repealed now and I see that the churches do support it.

Now, what’s more important is the year and a day rule. Now, that doesn’t stack up for a number of reasons.

Kieran McAnulty: Three minutes—that’s all.

MATT KING: Most other countries have repealed it—let me finish. The idea that an offender can’t be held criminally liable for the death of someone if they live beyond a year and a day is crazy to me. It’s just not right. The CTV Building is case in point.

In terms of the law around the protection of spouses and civil union partners in the terms of accessory after the fact—again, it’s yesterday’s legislation and needs to be updated. It defies logic why it was ever the law.

But, in reality, these are classic examples of Government “fili-bills”—filibustering legislation. It is a small bill of four pages, nine clauses, and two schedules. Like I said, we could have had it done last year in last year’s bill that we debated. They have even taken the members’ bills and put them in the Government Order Paper, but that’s par for the course for this coalition Government.

This demonstrates that this Government is disorganised and is searching for relevance. It proves they are out of ideas. Yesterday, during the Auckland fuel tax debate, they said we had no plan and that we lacked ideas. Their answer was another tax. If that’s the Government’s plan to solve everything, no thank you. I commend this bill to the House.

ANGIE WARREN-CLARK (Labour): Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker. I am pleased to rise and take a call on this Crimes Amendment Bill. I’d like to commend the Minister of Justice, the Hon Andrew Little, for bringing this bill to the House. We brought this bill to the House, something the other side failed to do. I certainly appreciate your excellent speech; I think you covered the sections really well.

It is my pleasure to stand and take a call to clean up this legislation. It’s outdated, it’s inappropriate, and it’s irrelevant to today’s society. I’ll quote Martin Luther King here, and I will read this: “Law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and when they fail in this purpose they become … dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress.” These three sections of the Crimes Act block the flow of social progress. We’ve heard today that the bill repeals three provisions of the Crimes Act: section 71(2), spouse or civil union immunity for prosecution after accessory after the fact; section 123, Blasphemous libel; and section 162, the year and a day rule.

The member Louise Upston congratulated me on having my member’s bill picked up by the Government—this was the repeal of blasphemous libel. Thank you, ma’am, for those kind words. However, it makes complete sense that this bill was withdrawn to be collapsed into what we have tonight. This saves the valuable resources of our Government and this House. The former Government actually had the opportunity last year to remove this section from the Crimes Act in a Supplementary Order Paper in the statutes repeal bill last year, and, actually, the Opposition—the then Government of the time—decided that they would not do so, despite the fact that, as the member has stated, the Rt Hon Bill English actually supported the repeal of this, as a very strong Catholic, that this part of the principal Act needed to go.

Now, all of these sections are really outdated sections of the Crimes Act; they’re well past their use-by date—no one disagrees with this. To maintain public confidence in the law, the criminal code should be relevant to modern-day society. The law must be upheld and issues must not be unaddressed due to historical anomalies. We here in the Government believe that our country’s laws should be current; they should be relevant and meaningful. These three sections require repeal because they are clearly not that.

It’s important to note, as well, that in repealing these provisions of the Crimes Act 1961, section 71(2) and section 162 will not be applied retrospectively. That means the law, as it exists today, and as these parts of the Act are repealed, will actually mean, going forward, we are safer. So those who wouldn’t be breaking the law today will not be retrospectively prosecuted. So we’re forward focused.

I’m going to talk very briefly on the year and a day rule. The year and a day rule provides that no one is liable for the killing of another person unless the death takes place within a year and a day after the cause of death. We all know now that modern technology actually means that people live, with medical intervention, much longer than a year and a day. We need to actually focus on what is relevant now. This isn’t relevant now. People are able to live a lot longer after a crime has been committed against them, and it’s important that we as a society recognise that those people, like we have heard tonight who have been king-hit or injured, are able to actually have justice served even though they may pass away a year and a day later.

I’m not really going to talk any more about that. I’m actually very excited to talk about blasphemous libel, and I thank the member Chris Bishop for his excitement tonight around the repeal of this. Who knew—who knew—that there was someone else who shared my excitement of repealing this? Ha, ha!

Chris Bishop: Oh, there’s many of us. Seen Paul?

ANGIE WARREN-CLARK: Oh, whatever. Ha, ha! Section 123 of the Crimes Act covers blasphemous libel, and we’ve all said it tonight: it is perhaps the least-used section of the Crimes Act that we have. It is simply no longer relevant to our country. We’ve all heard its origins date back hundreds of years, and, of interest, we have no definition of blasphemous libel in the Crimes Act. Now, that means that we have to look to the common law, or, for those who don’t know what that is—Matt King—case law.

Matt King: Guilty.

ANGIE WARREN-CLARK: Ha, ha! So we have to look to the case law. Now, we last had a case in 1922; this means the case law is very, very slim. I have taken the opportunity to look up what blasphemous libel is, and it is defined as—and there is a difference between blasphemy and blasphemous libel. This is the definition: blasphemous libel involves written publication of contemptuous, reviling, scurrilous, and/or ludicrous matters relating to the Christian faith.

Now, here we come to the part which actually makes this much more irrelevant today. We are a country of many faiths. We are a country where we have the right to freedom of speech. So blasphemous libel actually only includes the Christian faith, we believe currently, because there is no case law on this to broaden the definition or make it wider. We do not know specifically, right now, what blasphemous libel may mean or might have meant, because we’ve had no cases around this.

The other concern is whether section 123 is also compatible with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990. Section 14 of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act enshrines the right of freedom of speech, which includes all information and opinion, no matter how unpopular, distasteful, or offensive those ideas might be. We have that enshrined in our New Zealand Bill of Rights Act.

I also note that section 123 may only include or encompass the Christian faith, as I’ve stated, which means that, internationally, we may be in breach of international obligations. It also gives us the chance to be discriminated against on the basis of religion.

I’m really pleased to see blasphemous libel actually be repealed, and I hope that the conversations and the discussions at select committee are robust and thorough, and that everyone has the opportunity to discuss this matter and to understand the difference between blasphemy and blasphemous libel. It is a fundamental difference and completely changes the meaning of what people believe blasphemy to be.

So, finally, section 71(2), spouse or civil union immunity: I would just like to say that when we’re looking at protecting people, I think it’s really important that we remember that de facto partners aren’t included in this, so, again, it’s discriminatory. It is important that we remove this protection so that everyone is equal under the law, but I certainly welcome the conversation that will occur around coercion of partners. It is my pleasure to commend this bill to the House.

ANDREW FALLOON (National—Rangitata): Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker, for the opportunity to take a very brief call on the first reading of the Crimes Amendment Bill tonight. As has been outlined by previous speakers, National does support the bill, and I particularly want to echo Mr Bishop’s comments that it is a very positive move in terms of our legislation. I want to acknowledge Andrew Little for bringing it to the House, building on the good work of the previous justice Minister, Amy Adams.

The offence of blasphemous libel has existed in New Zealand for far too long, more recently as part of the Crimes Act 1961 but going back much further as part of English common law. Many jurisdictions around the world with legal systems based on common law have removed blasphemous libel as an offence; indeed, the UK did so in 2008. It’s well past time for us to do the same, and I look forward to this bill passing into law.

Before I finish, I do just want to note the proposed amendment by my colleague Kanwaljit Bakshi. Mr Bakshi will table a Supplementary Order Paper to amend the bill to allow Bhakti Sikh to carry kirpan in public places. People of the Sikh faith have been in New Zealand for more than a hundred years. Carrying the kirpan is very important for them for religious purposes. It is a very non-controversial amendment, and I hope that governing parties do consider it genuinely.

I’m not going to take any more time on this bill. It is a good proposal, and I commend it to the House.

Hon DAVID PARKER (Attorney-General): I want to refer, firstly, to the removal of spousal and civil immunity from being unable to be found to have obstructed justice that would otherwise amount to being an accessory after the fact of an offence. I want to reflect that this is one of those anachronistic pieces of law that hasn’t kept up with changing circumstance, but to put it in a historical context.

I was thinking about what the things are that have changed over the last century as we’ve tidied up these areas of law where there were some unusual rules, particularly in the criminal law, that used to confer special rights on spouses and, latterly, the equivalent civil union partners. It’s not so long ago that spouses were not competent to give evidence against their spouse in a criminal prosecution. Even if they’d seen the criminal act and they thought it was a terrible thing, they couldn’t turn up in court and say, “I saw that happened—he did it.” and be heard in court, because they were not competent to give evidence. There was some reasoning behind that that asserted that to have it otherwise would somehow undermine the institution of marriage and undermine relationships, because you shouldn’t be able to tell on your partner even when they’ve committed a crime.

Well, that changed and spouses thereafter became, in most jurisdictions, competent to give evidence in a trial against their spouse but not compellable—so not compellable for the prosecution: competent for the prosecution but not compellable—and then it further changed so that they were both competent and compellable in respect of giving evidence for the defence. I’m not sure of the exact timing of those different events.

The other one that came up on radio just a little while ago—it was just in 1967 that Sir Lloyd Geering was tried for heresy by the Presbyterian Church and found to be in doctrinal error for having asserted that the remains of Christ lie somewhere in Palestine and that the Church was in error in saying that resurrection meant resuscitation of Christ’s body. The Church also didn’t like the fact that Lloyd Geering, then practising as a Presbyterian minister, denied that God remains a supernatural being who oversees the world. The Presbyterian synod, when it went to the next level up, had the wisdom to dismiss the charges without trial. It is interesting that that’s not that long ago. As people who were listening to the national programme a couple of weeks ago, on the Kim Hill show on a Saturday—it was a fascinating interview with Sir Lloyd Geering, at the age of 100, still smarter than anyone in this House, I suspect. A very, very clever man, with all his marbles at 100 years—amazing. This is another example of where the law needs to move on, and spousal or civil union immunity now needs to be removed in respect of the crime of being an accessory after the fact.

The year and a day rule has already been covered by others. Can I thank the Minister of Justice for bringing this to the House. I think all of us saw the distress caused to the families of the people who died in the CTV Building, at there being, in the view of the Crown Solicitor—it wasn’t possible for there to be a prosecution that would meet prosecutorial guidelines, in part because of this year and a day rule. At the time, the Minister of Justice spoke both publicly and to me saying that he was dissatisfied with the law, and the Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, made the same comments and promised that we’d have a look at fixing it. So here we are, less than six months into our term of Parliament, having fixed this and making the law better.

Again, the historical context for this is that people, if they were injured badly in an act that might be criminal, they didn’t live for a year. In the old days they couldn’t be kept alive for a year. Nowadays, you can be kept alive on a ventilator virtually forever, if you’re artificially fed. And sometimes you may, in the hope that someone will regain consciousness from a coma, and therefore they may die after a year and there’s still evidence of criminality, but the year and a day rule means that no charge can be laid. That law needs to change and is being repealed by this bill.

The third area of change is to blasphemous libel, and, really, the example that I gave in respect of Lloyd Geering and heresy fits even more appropriately to blasphemous libel than it did to the antiquated laws relating to a spouse being an accessory after the fact. I enjoyed the contribution of the Green member Golriz Ghahraman, pointing out that—sorry, that wasn’t a literal expression; you’re actually looking quite healthy, ha, ha; excuse me—and making reference to the fact that there are many places overseas where people are, essentially, tried and sometimes stoned to death for criticising the Church or the Gods that are recognised in those other countries. I think it’s timely that that be removed and, as my own colleague pointed out, it’s a piece of legislation that’s in breach of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act, or inconsistent with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act—the rights to freedom of expression, including the right to criticise religion.

Now, that’s not to say that we should be blind to other people’s sensitivities when it comes to how we talk about other people’s religion. We’re not for one thing saying that you should be insulting about other people’s beliefs or religion. I’ve always been happy in that regard to note that I can no more prove my atheism than other people can prove their faith, and on that basis I’m happy to allow other people to have their faith in the same manner that I expect them to be able to respect my right to atheism. So whilst I have a different religious view to other people, I think that I should be respectful in the way in which I talk about their faith, because it’s an important matter to them.

I think one of the things that worries me as a consequence of the rise of social media is this rise of, sort of, hatred and vitriol in a way which is not subject to the normal societal constraints that you encounter if you’re speaking to someone one on one. It’s not subject to the old constraints where, if that was done through the media, you had a right of balance and standards being maintained by newspapers, who had their own accountability mechanisms through the Press Council and the like; similarly, for radio and TV. Social media seems a Wild West when it comes to inappropriate comments in a way that the world is still trying to grapple with.

Although we shouldn’t have the crime of blasphemous libel, it is interesting that overseas countries from Indonesia to Germany are grappling with these issues as to how it is that you appropriately have some level of control of what happens on social media. I wonder if we’ve made a mistake in the world, allowing those that make money out of social media, the Facebooks, the Googles, the internet providers that carry the message, to have no financial liability for the irresponsible things that happen on their platforms, because I suspect that as a society that has been corrosive. Unlike the fourth estate, which maintains scrutiny of the important institutions like Parliament in order to keep them clean and functioning, social media is not working that way. Anyway, I’m pleased to see the end of blasphemous libel.

Bill read a first time.

Bill referred to the Justice Committee.

Bills

Corrections Amendment Bill

First Reading

Hon STUART NASH (Minister of Police) on behalf of the Minister of Corrections: I move, That the Corrections Amendment Bill be now read a first time. I nominate that the bill be referred to the Justice Committee.

The corrections system exists to keep the public safe and to help keep New Zealand a just society. The Department of Corrections does this by administering custodial sentences and orders safely, securely, humanely, and effectively. The legislation governing the corrections system is generally working well. However, some opportunities have been identified to optimise the running of the system. The Corrections Amendment Bill will strengthen the corrections system by improving prison discipline and security as well as the fair, safe, and humane treatment of people in prison.

The bill contains 16 proposals, and I want to highlight several of these in this speech. The bill largely focuses on improving the treatment of people in prison. Prisons house some of New Zealand’s most vulnerable and challenging people. Many of them come through the corrections system in poor health. Around 62 percent of them enter the system with an existing mental health and addiction issue. They struggle with alcohol and drug use, have undiagnosed illnesses, and often have had violent, abusive, or otherwise chaotic lives.

Of course, nobody goes to prison without a reason. These people are in jail to keep the public safe. As a society, we hold them to account by restricting their freedoms. We must not forget that they have been sent to prison as punishment, not for punishment. And while prisons are places of incarceration, they must also be places of rehabilitation. Prisoners in New Zealand are four times more likely than the general population to have ever attempted suicide, so the first thing I want to highlight is that this bill introduces a comprehensive framework for managing prisoners who are at risk of harming themselves. It will make sure that these prisoners are assessed properly. It will make sure that whenever the Department of Corrections is required to segregate someone for at-risk harm, they are checked regularly, their needs are responded to quickly, and there is thorough planning for their care and their management.

I want to take time here to note that the Department of Corrections is investing $25 million into piloting new mental health services in a new model of care for at-risk prisoners. Combine this with the new legislative framework, and the care of prisoners who are vulnerable to suicide or self-harm will be more therapeutic and will take a longer-term approach. There is no good to society if prisoners who walk in the door with a mental health or an addiction issue leave prison with that same mental health or addiction issue without it having been addressed. These people will receive the intervention and support they need to improve their well-being so at least they have the chance to be productive citizens when they leave prison.

The second change I want to highlight is that this bill updates the ability of corrections to use imaging technology, like body scanners, in prisons. It will enable the use of imaging technology for searching for contraband. This technology is less physically invasive than rub-down or strip searches and much more accurate than basic scanners such as metal detectors. So imaging technology searches are effective at locating contraband and afford more dignity to the people being searched. This change will help keep prisons free from drugs and weapons, making them safer places for staff, visitors, and prisoners, and, at the same time, it will make them more humane places.

The Department of Corrections is, in effect, a sole provider of a service nobody wants to receive, and prisoners, let’s be honest, can be difficult clients. As I mentioned before, people often come to prison unwell, unstable, and dangerous. They can be a threat to themselves and to others. This bill will improve the disciplinary regime in prisons and therefore make it easier for corrections to manage people in prison safely and securely. Amending the definition of a drug to align with the Psychoactive Substances Act will allow corrections to test prisoners and discipline them appropriately for the use of a wider range of drugs including synthetic cannabis.

The bill will also make it a disciplinary offence to give a tattoo in prison either to yourself—not you, Mr Assistant Speaker—or to another person, or to consent to receive a tattoo from someone else.

Hon Members: Ha, ha!

Hon STUART NASH: I probably didn’t need to highlight that, did I? Prison tattoos pose significant health risks as equipment is improvised and often not sterile. This change will help corrections staff reduce the volume of tattooing that occurs in prisons.

In addition to establishing new disciplinary offences that will help corrections staff manage prisoners securely and safely, the bill adds a requirement for newly admitted prisoners to be given written information about disciplinary offences to ensure they know what the offences are. Knowing about the offences functions as a deterrent and also makes sure that no one can claim ignorance of the rules as an excuse for failing to comply. Obviously, this is about prisoners, but it’s also about protecting the men and the women who work for our corrections department who do a fantastic job, often unrecognised, and it can be thankless.

But, finally, the last change I want highlight is an improvement to the mothers with babies regime. One of the most unfortunate aspects of prison is that families are separated. This can be very difficult for children who are inadvertently punished through no fault of their own. Prisoners who are mothers of very young children can currently apply to have their children live with them until they are 24 months old in dedicated mother and baby units. These units give mothers and babies the chance to bond in a safe and supportive environment, when this is assessed as in the child’s best interests. Under the current settings, a decision made about placement or otherwise of a baby with its mother in prison is final. This bill gives mothers the statutory right to appeal the decision and introduces a review process.

Angie Warren-Clark: Nice. Nice, that.

Hon STUART NASH: Yeah. Thank you. The changes this bill makes to the legislative framework of the corrections system will help the Department of Corrections manage difficult people in a difficult environment and will also ensure that these people are treated fairly, safely, and humanely. When they are released, we want them to be equipped to participate positively in society so we can keep them and the rest of our community safe. I believe this bill contributes to this goal. I commend this bill to the House.

Hon DAVID BENNETT (National—Hamilton East): Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker. We all know that the Labour - New Zealand First Government is soft on crime and we see that every day in their approach in this House to the criminal justice system—

Hon Andrew Little: Especially blasphemous libel.

Hon DAVID BENNETT: Yes, we thank the last Minister, the Minister of Police, for his speech and the Minister in front of him, the Minister of Justice, but they are cooking up some ideas around the Department of Corrections that are yet to be put out into the public arena, and we look forward to them actually saying what they are actually going to do.

This bill is a great bill, because this bill was actually done by Louise Upston when she was the Minister. This is Louise’s work. It was the Minister Louise Upston who prepared this bill—actually not all of this bill. There are one or two things that have been added, which are minor but they have been added, and there are one or two things that were major, that were taken away from this bill by the Labour - New Zealand First “soft on crime” Government, and we see that every day in this House.

So I just want to, first of all, have a look at some of the bits of this bill that were taken out, and that’s really around rehabilitation. That last speaker, the Minister, made a very good point that if someone is in prison, there should be an opportunity for that person to get the skills to be able to go out into the workforce when they leave prison, to get the confidence in themselves that they have another future ahead of them, to actually, probably, engage with their communities, to understand their culture, their heritage, so that they actually have that self-belief and that ability to then be an active part of our community. To do that, you need the thing called rehabilitation, which was a big part of the bill that the Minister Louise Upston had prepared and has been removed by the Government from this bill.

So I challenge the Government to actually explain why they took out the rehabilitation clauses of this bill. If they say—and they’re genuine about it—that rehabilitation is needed for prisoners, then why did they take out the rehabilitation plans that were going to be there for individual prisoners? Why did you do that? Why did you take out the one thing that would make the major difference to prisoners? It’s bizarre that they would do that.

Then they left the bill, which has got about 16 points, which are points that are needed to tidy up the system—there’s no doubt about that. But they’re not the main driver of turning somebody’s life around. Rehabilitation is, and it’s been taken out of this bill. We know that they’re going to be very soft on crime soon.

Hon Members: Oh!

Hon DAVID BENNETT: We know that the New Zealand First - Labour “soft on crime” Government has actually got some plans that they won’t tell the community. Members may be shaking their heads in the front row there, but they don’t actually know what their Ministers are thinking of at this time, because what happens when you’re a backbencher like yourselves? They don’t get told until it goes to caucus the day before it actually comes in front of the Parliament. But your colleague across the aisle there, Mr Andrew Little—he knows exactly what’s going on. He knows exactly that they’re going to be soft on crime, and he knows exactly how they’re going to do that and just hasn’t told you.

And New Zealand First will be the last to know. New Zealand First, the lapdogs of this Parliament—the people with principle that always talk about how high and mighty they are. But when they see a bit of power, they just crumble away and become just the lapdogs of the Labour Party, and it’s great to see that we’ve got a couple of the fuzziest new members of that lapdog community here in those new members.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): Order!

Hon DAVID BENNETT: Mr Assistant Speaker, getting back to the bill—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): Order! Yeah, I want to refer the member to Standing Order 111 about relevance. I do want the member to come back to the bill now, please.

Hon DAVID BENNETT: So when we look at the bill, there are those 16 points that are in there, and they go through some of the issues like tattooing—that the Minister spoke about—imaging of those people that may be visiting a corrections facility, restraints on prisoners, cell sharing, and other things like that that are really an important part of our corrections programme and what we do in our corrections facilities. But it doesn’t take away from that fundamental point that whatever we do in corrections, if we’re not actually making a difference to that person’s life, it’s fundamentally just a band-aid approach.

This has taken up some of the good points that needed to be done in the corrections system that Louise Upston had put forward, but it doesn’t cover the really important part of the corrections facilities, and that is the rehabilitation.

Darroch Ball: Ha, ha! I can’t believe you’re doing this.

Hon DAVID BENNETT: These members laugh. They laugh at rehabilitation. They have got no sense of what is actually needed to turn somebody’s life around, and it is—

Hon Member: Disgraceful.

Hon DAVID BENNETT: Well, someone says it’s disgraceful. I don’t know if we’d go that far with the New Zealand First Party, but there’s time. But, you know, when we look at what could have been in this bill from the Labour Party, we could have seen, actually, how they intend to reduce the prison population by 30 percent. How do they actually intend to do that? That could have been in this bill, because they’re working frantically on it now, trying to work out how to do that. This bill could have been an opportunity—

Darroch Ball: This is a corrections bill.

Hon DAVID BENNETT: Yes, and corrections is the prison population. That’s where, you know, prisoners go to corrections, and the parties that you’re involved with have made it clear that they want to reduce the prison population by 30 percent. Thirty percent of prisoners will be out on the street under a Labour - New Zealand First “soft on crime” Government. That is exactly what they are doing here.

Members will see the result of that very soon, and I encourage the Labour Party to come out and be honest with New Zealanders tonight and say how they are going to achieve that. Why can’t they come into this House and debate why and how they’re actually going to release 30 percent of New Zealand’s prisoners? What is so hard about putting those ideas in front of this House tonight? They have them. Andrew Little knows exactly what he wants to do to achieve that target, and it’s a question of when and how they do that and what does that actually mean. Are they going to relax the bail laws? Are they going to reduce the sentencing? Are they going to make sure there are less remand prisoners by going soft on crime?

Those are the real things that the Labour - New Zealand First Government are looking at, at the moment, and this legislation is needed, but it is simply taking the legislation that Louise Upston had prepared in the last Government and reusing it here. It is not the fundamental change in corrections that we know is coming from the Labour - New Zealand First Government—a fundamental change that will release 30 percent of prisoners from our prison population into the general public. That is the plan that we will see from the Government, and I wish they had actually had the guts to come into this House and debate it here tonight and to actually be straight with the New Zealand public and tell them what their actual intentions were of how to achieve that, rather than hide behind legislation that has been prepared by the previous Government—needed legislation, I must admit, but still prepared by the previous Government—and with the biggest issue reduced and taken out of this legislation, around rehabilitation.

So the New Zealand National Party will be supporting this legislation through its first reading. We want to see these issues be tidied up in our corrections system. As I say, they are things that will actually make the system work better and that are important for many members of the corrections facilities that are there as inmates but also to enable the activities of corrections to be actually undertaken in a more thorough and successful way. They take into account new technology, they take into account some changes in the system that have been sitting there for a while that needed to be tidied up, and we will support that.

That is something that is important for corrections’ facilities and approach, but it doesn’t take away from the fundamental thing that we are seeing coming forward from the Labour - New Zealand First Government and that is a reduction in prison population at a time when all the indicators are that there will be an increase in prison population. They are seeking to reduce it by 30 percent. They will not tell us how they’re going to do that. We know they’re looking at options around that, of reducing sentencing, of removing bail conditions, and they are looking at how to reduce that prison population by being soft on crime, and this something this bill should address as well.

RINO TIRIKATENE (Labour—Te Tai Tonga): Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker. I’m very pleased to speak in support of this bill at its first reading. I do want to acknowledge Mr Bennett, his support for this bill. Aside from the bluster, deflection, the scaremongering, and the totally irrelevant material that he raised in his contribution, I do acknowledge the support that he has expressed for this important piece of legislation.

If I may, I’d like to actually just get back to the content and focus of this bill which has been introduced by Minister Little. Can I acknowledge the work Ministers Nash and Little and the executive are doing in this area in support of this bill. Because this bill is a whole suite of amendments; it is a whole suite of amendments to the Corrections Act and to regulations promulgated under that Act, all designed to improve the ability of the Department of Corrections to safely and humanely manage prisoners, to improve prisoner discipline and safety, and to ensure the fair treatment of prisoners. I think that’s very important that we focus on exactly what this bill is doing.

There are, as I’ve mentioned, a host of improvements that are being made right across the board which will have wide implications; positive impacts not only for the corrections system but also for our prison population. I guess it cuts deep, because, as a representative of a Māori electorate, too many of our prison population are young brown males, and clearly we want to see that reduced but also we want to ensure that the legislation that underpins our prison system and our corrections department is fit for purpose, it is keeping up with modern prison environments, and that it’s working effectively. And that’s what this bill actually achieves in a number of areas.

I’d like to now go over quite a wide range of the amendments that are being made. Many have been touched on by the Minister in his speech. I guess one of the main amendments is the creation under this bill of a new set of provisions which deal with the unfortunate issue of the risk of self-harm that many inmates suffer from. We know there are very many complex issues that are involved with prison inmates, and clearly the existing regime of putting those complex issues and very high-risk inmates into a segregation regime was completely inadequate. This bill creates a whole separate range of provisions dedicated to that issue of dealing with inmates that are at high risk of self-harm. So I commend the bill on that aspect.

Just looking at a selection of some of the other amendments that are covered in this bill—the ability to review the decisions for or against, mostly against, mother and baby placement decisions. The chief executive of corrections has a lot of decision-making powers, and it’s important that there is an ability for those that feel aggrieved by a certain decision of the chief executive, that there is that ability for a mother—or her whānau, I guess, would have the ability to review those decisions, as opposed to just being at the mercy of a chief executive, and that decision being final. So I do commend that aspect of the bill.

Just looking at some of the other provisions—there’s a whole range. One that caught my attention was the use of chains and irons in prisons. I guess, for those that may be looking at movies from back in the day—chains, a ball and chain, and those sorts of instruments were used. Clearly, that is out of step with not only modern-day practice but also the United Nations minimum rules on treatment. I commend that this legislation is being brought into step so that is completely outlawed.

But I must contrast that, because, on the one hand, we have the prohibition on the use of chains and irons in prison, but then we also have the use of mechanical restraints, which I believe must be handcuffs. Obviously, it’s a different type of restraint, but it’s different from the chain and iron variety. Again, if we look to the mechanical restraints, there is an amendment to ensure that the use of those handcuffs is for no more than a 24-hour—oh, it can extend, actually, through a 24-hour period where an inmate is being treated in a hospital.

Again, there’s a whole range of important measures that are being introduced by this bill. As I’ve touched on, it covers a whole range of different aspects. Just looking at a couple more—the bill makes it a disciplinary offence around tattooing; tattooing a prisoner or self-tattooing. I know that, I guess, the use of tattoos has become quite common, in vogue, these days, but I guess it’s for safety and security reasons that the disciplinary offence of tattooing in prisons has been incorporated. I’m very pleased that the advice that we have received from the Ministry of Justice in terms of the consistency with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act has looked into those important issues.

Whilst the right to self-expression is a very important right, there can be justified limits placed upon those rights, and certainly this bill imposes a limit. But I commend the Attorney-General for providing confirmation to the House that, notwithstanding that, the provisions are consistent with the provisions of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. Indeed, those checks have extended to the section covering the use of unreasonable search and seizure.

Just in my remaining time, I want to touch on that issue because the use of imaging and technology to detect contraband, not only for prisoners but for staff and visitors, is being committed under this bill. It’s important that those checks are put in place. But we have just recently concluded the Customs and Excise Bill. As part of the consideration of that bill, there was a great deal of attention paid to the issue of personal searches around the collection of information or the storage of data. I would expect that there may be some concerned citizens that may want to find out a bit more about the use of this imaging technology: around what, how far, how detailed those images may be, where that information will be stored, will it be used, how safe is that information? I think it’s good that those powers should be strictly prescribed just so people can be sure about their civil liberties. So there’s a host of provisions in here, and I commend this bill to the House.

CHRIS BISHOP (National—Hutt South): Well, here we go again. It’s a Wednesday night, and we’re here in the dead—well, not quite the dead of night, but reasonably late at night, and we’ve got another Government bill. It’s a Government bill that the last Government actually did all the work on. In fact, this follows on from the Crimes Amendment Bill. So we’re debating a bill that the last Government basically did the bulk of the work on—the heavy lifting, as they say—and it’s a bill that’s going to go to the Justice Committee.

I’ve got to say, I think the Standing Orders Committee made a mistake splitting off the Justice Committee from the Law and Order Committee. I thought it was a good idea at the time, because I enjoyed being on the Justice Committee and I thought, “The workload will be good. We’ll get through some chunky work.” But now it turns out, I think we’re going to be sitting almost every Wednesday and Thursday between now and the end of the year, because we’ve got the euthanasia bill to deal with as well. But that’s OK, we’re a very hard-working committee, well chaired by Mr Huo from Labour, and we’re a very bipartisan committee.

So here we go again. Look, this is a good bill. It does a lot of very useful things, and Stuart Nash, speaking on behalf of the Minister, outlined a number of different things. But it is a missed opportunity, I think, as well. As my colleague David Bennett made reference to, the National Government had some pretty ambitious plans about rehabilitation if we were re-elected, which sadly we weren’t—some pretty ambitious plans about rehabilitation, and this bill could have been a vehicle for those plans. So we’ll wait and see where the new Government is going to take rehabilitation inside the corrections system, but they’ve got a few other tricky things to deal with in the meantime.

Number one: Waikeria Prison—are they going to build it or not? We know they are desperate not to build it; meanwhile, on any given night there’s only 150 or 200 beds free in the system. We know that they’re running around desperate not to spend the money, desperate not to build a new prison, but I’m going to make a prediction: I think they’re going to have to. We’re yet to see how they’re going to deliver on this very ambitious target of a 30 percent reduction in the prison population in 15 years. Ambitious—laudable in some ways, if it doesn’t put public safety at risk, but you’re going to have to make some tough decisions around that. Are they going to reverse bail laws, or the bail amendment changes? Are they going to let prisoners out sooner than they otherwise would be?

And then, of course, you overlay that on top of it—apparently 1,800 extra police coming on board.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): And if the member—[Interruption] Order! The member needs to relate his comments to the content of the bill.

CHRIS BISHOP: Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker. It’s a good point. [Interruption] I’ve lost my train of thought, but I was making a point around the 1,800 extra police and the problem that the Government is going to have to deal with. We know that if you put more police on the streets, you’re going to end up with more prisoners. So when they get inside the corrections system, the question is how do you rehabilitate—

Hon David Bennett: Soft on crime, that’s what they are.

CHRIS BISHOP: My colleague says “Soft on crime”. I think you’re going to hear this rejoinder and this refrain from Mr Bennett quite a lot more over the next few years—quite a lot more. I for one—I served under David Bennett on the Finance and Expenditure Committee in the last Parliament, and he’s a robust figure, and I for one am looking forward to serving under him as his junior in the police and corrections and law and order space.

Look, this is a useful bill—this is a useful bill. It does a lot of things. The tattooing changes around the disciplinary process are useful. The letter-writing changes are useful. The communication around prisoner communication is useful. All of these things are, kind of, tidy-ups that Parliament has to go through when it comes to all elements of what Parliament administers, or Governments administer. This is a tidying-up piece of legislation. Parliament has to consider this every now and then. It’s a useful bill.

It could be so much more, and that’s the thing about so much of what the Government is introducing at the moment—it could be so much more. We know that they have to get it into the House because they’re desperate for legislation. They’re desperate to take the time up. That’s why we’ve got—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): Order! I’m afraid I must interrupt the member.

Debate interrupted.

The House adjourned at 10 p.m.