Tuesday, 8 May 2018

TUESDAY, 8 MAY 2018

TUESDAY, 8 MAY 2018

The Speaker took the Chair at 2 p.m.

Prayers.

Obituaries

Hon Katherine O’Regan QSO

Tony Steel

SPEAKER: I regret to inform the House of the death on 2 May 2018 of the Hon Katherine O’Regan QSO, who represented the electorate of Waipā between 1984 and 1996 and was a list member for the National Party from 1996 to 1999. During her membership of the House, she was Minister of Consumer Affairs and Associate Minister of Women’s Affairs, Health, and Social Welfare.

I further regret to inform the House of the death on 4 May 2018 of Tony Steel, who represented the electorate of Hamilton East from 1990 to 1993 and from 1996 to 2002. He was chairperson of the Education and Science Committee from 1996 to 1999.

I desire on behalf this House to express our sense of the loss we have sustained and our sympathy with the relatives of the late former members. I now ask members to stand with me and observe a period of silence as a mark of respect for their memory.

Members stood as a mark of respect.

Oral Questions

Questions to Ministers

Government Financial Position—Reports

1. WILLOW-JEAN PRIME (Labour) to the Minister of Finance: What recent reports has he seen on the strength of the Government’s finances?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister of Finance): Today, Treasury released the Financial Statements of the Government for the nine months to March. These showed core Crown tax revenue at $57.5 billion, $1.1 billion higher than forecast in the Half Year Economic and Fiscal Update (HYEFU). The Crown’s operating balance before gains and losses surplus was $3.3 billion, $910 million higher than the HYEFU forecast. This shows that after six months of this Government’s financial management, the economy continues to perform well.

Willow-Jean Prime: What did Treasury say contributed to these better than expected results? [Interruption]

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: Modesty prevents me. Treasury said that corporate and income tax revenue was above forecast, indicating that business profits have grown more in 2018 than Treasury thought and that employment growth has remained strong. This is consistent with figures released in the household labour force survey last week, which showed the unemployment rate has fallen to its lowest level since December 2008. It is very pleasing indeed to see businesses continuing to succeed and create jobs.

Willow-Jean Prime: What do these results show about the Government’s fiscal management?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: These numbers show that the Government is delivering on its commitment to manage the books responsibly. While it’s encouraging that the economy is delivering additional revenue, it is important that we use this revenue wisely. In Budget 2018, we will continue to balance the important priorities of responsible fiscal management and making the investments—

SPEAKER: OK, that’s enough. The member—

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: Oh, they were so interested!

SPEAKER: Well, they’re so interested they’ve got an extra two supplementaries.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Could I ask the finance Minister as to how it is that unemployment has fallen as the Government has announced an increase to minimum wages—or, in short, why hasn’t the sky fallen in?

SPEAKER: The Minister can answer the first part. I think he’s not claiming responsibility for the second.

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: No, no. I’m most certainly not, Mr Speaker. What I can say is despite the regular prognostications that the minimum wage increase will lead to huge reductions in employment, that has never been the case, and in fact we’re very proud of the fact that unemployment is now the lowest that it has been in 10 years.

Business Confidence—Employment Law, Immigration Policy, Offshore Oil and Gas Exploration, Overseas Investment, and Primary Industries

2. Hon SIMON BRIDGES (Leader of the Opposition) to the Prime Minister: Does she stand by all her Government’s policies and actions?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN (Prime Minister): Yes.

Hon Simon Bridges: What effect on business confidence and investment will there be from David Parker’s announcement on Q+A in the weekend regarding nitrates and his statements that he hasn’t done any analysis on the economic impact of reducing the country’s dairy herd because “We’ve won the political battle. Now it’s about implementation.”?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: The characterisation of this issue is totally incorrect. We have been talking about—[Interruption] The member may have missed this, but we have been talking about water quality and our desire as a Government to make sure that our rivers and our lakes are swimmable again, as the rest of New Zealand wants, since the election. We’ve been talking for months about the need to update our national policy statement, which, I have to say, was totally ineffectual under the last Government, and we’re currently consulting the Land and Water Forum, as we speak, which is also the group that the last Government used.

Hon Simon Bridges: Well, in light of what David Parker’s been saying, is switching to apricots the Government’s new economic strategy?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: If the member wants to make a mockery of making good land-use decisions, which is the example that the Minister was making in that interview, then be it on his head, but what we want to do is make sure that we up the value of our exports, that we take into account the environmental impacts of our current economic use of our land, and that we get better outcomes for New Zealanders. This side of the House is a bit more ambitious than that side.

Hon Simon Bridges: What effect will there be on business confidence and investment from Damien O’Connor signalling a climate tax for farmers, significant cost recovery for Mycoplasma bovis, and the Government no longer supporting large-scale irrigation projects?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: As I’ve said, we’ve got to make land-use decisions that make good, sound economic sense. That’s why we’ll no longer subsidise large-scale Crown irrigation schemes. When it comes to the issue of Mycoplasma bovis, we would not be having this debate if that last Government funded biosecurity properly. We’re cleaning up the mess that Government left.

Hon Simon Bridges: Will the decision to end offshore oil and gas exploration be attractive to overseas investors in oil and gas specifically, or in New Zealand more generally?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Why rely on me when we can use a quote from OMV, which has agreed to buy the Māui fields and holds half this country’s exploration permits, “This has no impact on existing licences, neither on production licences, neither on exploration licences. We are in a very good position in New Zealand.”

Hon Simon Bridges: Well, then is the Prime Minister aware that Ballance Agri-Nutrients has this morning stated that a decision on its future $1 billion ammonia-urea plant is “a lot murkier” because of the Government’s oil and gas ban, and can she see the ripple effect on investments not just in the oil and gas sector but much more broadly?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Any—and that member knows this; he’s being mischievous—exploration permit that would be issued in a 2018 block offer would not be available for at least 10 years. If any business says they have a security of supply issue, that’s something that would have had to have been resolved probably 10 years ago, not today.

Hon Simon Bridges: Are the Government’s changes to the overseas investment regime likely to be good for business confidence and inward investment?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: We want to encourage foreign direct investment that contributes to our productive economy. That’s where all New Zealanders benefit, and we make no apologies for making sure that New Zealanders find that residential housing and farmland is affordable, and that they are able to contribute to their own economy domestically.

Hon Simon Bridges: Well, what about her Government’s industrial law changes; what effect are they having on business confidence?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: I’d say that the current unemployment rate, the current revenue that we’ve just announced today, says that this economy is looking in pretty good shape.

Hon Simon Bridges: What’s the Government’s current position on immigration policy?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: I have to say, in a recent business meeting I had there were significant concerns raised about the last Government’s policy settings and the impact that it’s having on their ability to meet skills gaps. What this Government has said it wants to do is make sure that we’ve got an education sector we can be proud of, a proper labour market test, and that the regions aren’t left high and dry with skills gaps like we’re already seeing.

Hon Simon Bridges: So what is the Government’s current immigration policy?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Exactly the same one we campaigned on.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Could I ask the Prime Minister to publish the coalition agreement so that these naïve, innocent questions aren’t in the House like they are today?

Hon Simon Bridges: Does she think the business community understands what the Government’s current immigration policy is?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Yes. There has been no change in that policy. There is a small issue of making sure that we do the policy development work, which is under way now. But what I have to say is that in the intervening period, I’ve had significant concerns raised with me around the effects of that last Government’s policies and the impact they are having on people’s ability to fill shortages.

Hon Simon Bridges: Does she think that the various issues I’ve raised in question time help explain the decline to a negative 23 percent in business confidence in New Zealand?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: I think it explains why this Government’s popularity has gone up in the polls.

Hon Simon Bridges: Aren’t there very real, very significant reasons for the business confidence “elephant in the room”, as she’s recently described it?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Let’s look back on history. The last time we saw this trend—look, as I’ve already acknowledged—was when Labour had what was dubbed as the “Winter of Discontent” but at the same time had the strongest continuous economic growth since World War II, the lowest unemployment in the OECD, and delivered nine consecutive surpluses. It’s all about proof of what the economy’s doing, and on this side of the House we’ve got good signs.

Economy—Crown Debt

3. Hon AMY ADAMS (National—Selwyn) to the Minister of Finance: Can he confirm that the Half year Economic and Fiscal Update shows the Government borrowing an extra $10 billion of net core Crown debt?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister of Finance): Without the benefit of knowing what time period the member is referring to, it’s difficult to give a definitive answer. I can, however, confirm that the Government will, using the debt measure that the previous Government did, reduce net core Crown debt to 20 percent of GDP by 2021-22. I can also confirm that the Half Year Economic and Fiscal Update (HYEFU) shows that, given that the economy is growing during this period, the amount of cash borrowed will rise while that percentage reduces.

Hon Amy Adams: What will be the annual debt servicing and finance costs—to the nearest $100 million is fine—of the extra $10 billion this country will now have in core Crown borrowing in 2022?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: As I said in my primary answer, the member will just have to wait to see the final cash amounts of the debt track when it comes to the actual accounts of the Government. But what I can say is that this Government has said from day one that we will slow down our debt repayment track because we actually need to invest in infrastructure like housing and make sure we restart things like contributions to the Superannuation Fund.

Hon Amy Adams: Is the Minister saying, 10 days out from the Budget, that when he announced in the HYEFU in December his commitment to borrowing an extra $10 billion, he did so without knowing what the debt servicing cost of that extra borrowing will be?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: No, that’s not what I’m saying at all. What I’m saying is that this Government has never made any secret of the fact that in order to clean up the mess left by the previous Government, we need to slow down our debt repayment track. Next Thursday, the member will be able to see all of the detailed costings that she’s after.

Hon Amy Adams: So, over and above the $10 billion of extra debt he has already announced, how much additional debt will Crown entities incur in 2022?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: As I’ve just said in my previous answer, the member will get all of the numbers that she’s looking for when the accounts come out next week. But what I can say very clearly is that this Government has a plan which is fully costed. There are no ghost cheques written out—like the previous Government did—for houses or anything like that. This is a Government with a fully costed plan.

Hon Amy Adams: So at the same time that he’s touting large Government surpluses and a growing economy thanks to the previous Government, why is he racking up billions of dollars in extra borrowing—

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Too long.

Hon Amy Adams: —and committing hundreds of millions of dollars in financing costs to New Zealanders?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: Well, all of that—

SPEAKER: Order! The right honourable gentleman knows that the only judge of the length of a question is me. He also knows that we have a practice now of not interjecting during question time. So, because it’s a double problem, I will give the Opposition an extra two supplementaries.

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: All that list emphasises is the scale of the challenge that the previous Government left us. When you’ve got $2.4 billion worth of underfunding in health, when you’ve got early childhood centres who’ve had a real-terms funding reduction, and when you’ve got police stations closing and leaks all through our hospitals, it’s going to take quite some time to recover from that. But we’ve got the plan to do it.

Hon Amy Adams: So do the larger Government surpluses he has today touted mean that the Government now won’t be cancelling its commitment to lower GP costs for all New Zealanders?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: The member will have to wait to the Budget to see what happened there, but I can understand her concern. Given that GP costs went up by 44 percent under her watch, this Government’s actually going to do something about that.

Housing—Homelessness

4. ANAHILA KANONGATA’A-SUISUIKI (Labour) to the Minister of Housing and Urban Development: What is the Government doing to reduce homelessness this winter?

Hon PHIL TWYFORD (Minister of Housing and Urban Development): On Friday, the Prime Minister announced the first step in tackling New Zealand’s record rate of homelessness. Investment of $100 million will provide more than 1,500 additional emergency and transitional public and Housing First places. Budget 2018 will also fund Housing First services for more than 1,450 households over the next four years.

Anahila Kanongata’a-Suisuiki: What effect will these measures have on homelessness?

Hon PHIL TWYFORD: Past neglect means that homelessness is likely to get worse before it gets better. Initiatives that we announced will mean 1,500 fewer families and individuals living in cars and garages this winter. This Government is committed to increasing supply. We’ve stopped the State house sell-off, and now we’re expanding Housing First. There’s a lot to do, but this Government is committed to ending homelessness in New Zealand.

Anahila Kanongata’a-Suisuiki: What will the funding boost for Housing First deliver?

Hon PHIL TWYFORD: The $20.5 million of new spending in Budget 2018 will properly fund Housing First to more than 900 households in Auckland, Christchurch, Tauranga, Wellington, and Lower Hutt, which the past Government did not fully fund, and $43 million will expand the Housing First programme to a further and additional 550 households in other regions.

KiwiBuild—Cost, Private Sector, and Supply

5. Hon JUDITH COLLINS (National—Papakura) to the Minister of Housing and Urban Development: How many houses will be built under the KiwiBuild programme?

Hon PHIL TWYFORD (Minister of Housing and Urban Development): We will build, on average, 10,000 homes per year over 10 years. The KiwiBuild programme includes a larger, faster ramp-up than the Christchurch rebuild. It’s comparable in scale to the first Labour Government’s State house building, which went from 400 houses in the first year to 4,000 in the third. That member would know these things take time if her party had built any houses.

Hon Judith Collins: When he said in November 2017 that the Government would build 16,000 KiwiBuild homes before the next election, what did he mean?

Hon PHIL TWYFORD: What I meant was that we would build 16,000 homes in the first three years of the KiwiBuild programme—1,000 in the first, 5,000 in the second, 10,000 in the third. That building programme—16,000 in the first three years—kicks in when the $2 billion Budget appropriation takes effect on Budget day.

Hon Judith Collins: So why did he tell Parliament last week that the Government would now build only 8,000 KiwiBuild homes before the next election?

Hon PHIL TWYFORD: Well, it depends when the election is held, but our plan is to deliver 1,000 in the first year, 5,000 in the second, 10,000 in the third, and 100,000 homes by 31 June 2028.

Priyanca Radhakrishnan: How will the private sector be involved in building KiwiBuild houses?

Hon PHIL TWYFORD: The private sector will be engaged in the building of KiwiBuild houses through the buying off the plans initiative, which we’re announcing today. Under this programme, and we’re releasing the tender documents very shortly, KiwiBuild will be underwriting or buying off the plan houses—KiwiBuild homes—in private developments that would otherwise not be built. If the member knows the first thing about what’s currently going on in the residential housing market, she will know that there are many developments that are stalled or not happening because developers do not have access to finance.

Priyanca Radhakrishnan: What interest has there been from members of this House in building KiwiBuild houses?

Hon PHIL TWYFORD: Well, we’ve had a great deal of interest from members of this House in the KiwiBuild programme, and I want to acknowledge in particular interest from one member of this House, who’s passed on a developer in her electorate who would like to be part of the KiwiBuild programme. I thank the member Judith Collins for passing on that interest in the KiwiBuild programme.

Hon Judith Collins: Perhaps the Minister would like to table that.

SPEAKER: Order! I can’t quite tell if that was a point of order or not. I think, seeing as it was a letter that mentioned the honourable member, there is an expectation now that it be tabled.

Hon PHIL TWYFORD: I seek leave—

SPEAKER: No, you don’t need leave. It’s just going to be tabled.

Hon PHIL TWYFORD: OK.

Hon Chris Hipkins: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I suspect the rule that you’re referring to talks about official documents and an obligation on Ministers to table official documents. I think it would be somewhat of a stretch to argue that a letter from a member of the Opposition is an official document. It’s not been produced by anybody official. However, I think, therefore, the appropriate course of action, given there is interest in this, is for the Minister to seek leave to table it.

SPEAKER: My view is that it is a document which is received in the official capacity by the Minister. He has it in the House—I have seen it—and therefore I think it is appropriate that it is tabled under that Standing Order. So it will be tabled.

Document laid on the Table of the House.

Hon Judith Collins: How many KiwiBuild houses has he built in his first eight months as Minister?

Hon PHIL TWYFORD: We announced the other day, at McLennan, in the honourable member’s electorate of Papakura, that at McLennan we have stepped in to save a failing development that the private sector was unable to take up. KiwiBuild has moved in. We’ll have 30 KiwiBuild homes completed, with families moving in before Christmas. If KiwiBuild hadn’t intervened at that point, there would still be grass growing on those sections.

Hon Judith Collins: Is the answer none?

Hon PHIL TWYFORD: Those buildings are not yet completed, but I urge the member to stay tuned because there is going to be a procession of KiwiBuild announcements every week, and after a few months I guarantee she’ll be sick of hearing about KiwiBuild homes that have been completed.

Hon Judith Collins: If the private sector is on track to deliver 127,000 houses over the next four years, as the Reserve Bank estimates, how does he propose building his now 8,000 KiwiBuild homes without taking carpenters, electricians, and plumbers from the private sector?

Hon PHIL TWYFORD: The member should know that at the moment in the construction industry there is actually some increasing amount of capacity that’s becoming available because financing constraints are holding up many developments. That’s exactly the idea behind the KiwiBuild policy, which is about intervening in a failed housing market that under that Government completely failed to deliver the affordable homes that young Kiwi families need.

Hon Judith Collins: Would he like to take this opportunity to explain to New Zealanders why his 16,000 KiwiBuild homes, costing taxpayers $2 billion, have now become 8,000 KiwiBuild homes, costing taxpayers $2 billion—in just eight months?

Hon PHIL TWYFORD: We’ve always been very clear that the KiwiBuild programme will be ramped up over three years. The $2 billion capital kick-start that will be announced in the Budget will be spent approximately 20 times over the 10-year period. That is the most efficient investment that any Government could make in making affordable homeownership available to a generation of young Kiwi families, which is the opposite of the touching faith that that Government showed for nine years in a market that completely failed to deliver the houses that young Kiwi families need.

Hon Chris Hipkins: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. Speakers’ rulings 142(2) and 142(3) contain descriptions of what’s deemed by previous Speakers to be official documents. The definition adopted by previous Speakers is much more narrow than the definition that you have just adopted. The last sentence of Speaker’s ruling of 142(3) is: “It must be of an official nature and written by a Government official in the course of the officer’s official business.” That’s significantly narrower than the definition that you have adopted, and I’m concerned that it does actually set a difficult precedent for the House if any correspondence between members and a Minister is judged to be official documentation.

Hon Gerry Brownlee: I don’t have it at hand, but there’s a Standing Order that makes it very clear that documentation used to attack a member of Parliament can be tabled in Parliament. There are other remedies for members. You’ve taken a pretty middle course here today, which has seen it dealt with. It’s quite clear that that question would not have progressed or been settled on by the Government if they did not have that letter. So it seems quite reasonable, given it is part of authentication, although not required for the question, that it’s tabled in the House, as you have suggested. The other point I would point out to the Leader of the House is that Speakers actually do make rulings themselves, without reference to the past.

SPEAKER: Sorry, I’m just going to look up the—[holds up Speakers’ Rulings]. I think the member needs to consider the whole of the Speaker’s ruling, and the beginning of the Speaker’s ruling is “An official document includes a document”. It doesn’t say that that is the only sort of document; it says “includes”. I think if the member had read the Standing Order in full—

Hon Chris Hipkins: Read the one above it.

SPEAKER: I’m not going to read the one above it. I am going to give the Opposition two extra questions because a member’s interjected while I’m on my feet. But my view is that where a document has been received officially by a Minister, including by correspondence, the author of the document has indicated that she has no objection to it being tabled, and it is within my power to order it to be tabled; I have. Right—where were we at? We’re at Question No. 6.

Economy—Offshore Oil and Gas Exploration, Primary Industries, and Saudi Agri-hub

6. Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH (National) to the Minister for Economic Development: Does he regard it as good practice to carry out economic analysis of the likely effects of proposed major policy decisions?

Hon DAVID PARKER (Minister for Economic Development): Yes.

Hon Paul Goldsmith: Will he insist, then, that a proper cost-benefit analysis is done before the Government makes decisions affecting stock levels in this country?

Hon DAVID PARKER: We don’t need cost-benefit analysis to decide if it’s the birth right of New Zealanders to have rivers clean enough to swim in. Cost-benefit analysis is used to compare the costs and benefits of different ways to remedy the problem, as will happen when we make our changes to the national policy statement on water.

Hon Paul Goldsmith: Why, then, did he not insist that a proper cost-benefit analysis was done before the Government made its oil and gas decision?

Hon DAVID PARKER: Economic cost-benefit analysis that does not take into account environmental consequences is about as useful as an udder on a bull—therefore, I’m not surprised that the member’s party is advocating for it.

Hon Paul Goldsmith: What would he say to the proposition that a Government that’s not interested in understanding the effects of its decisions on jobs and on people’s livelihoods is negligent in its basic duty to New Zealanders?

Hon DAVID PARKER: I reject the implication in that question. I would further note that there is an enormous amount of analysis of the impact of climate change caused by fossil fuels, which I recommend that the member reads.

Hon Nathan Guy: Did the Minister tell the Land and Water Forum that New Zealand’s dairy herd numbers need to be reduced by one million cows?

Hon DAVID PARKER: No.

Kiritapu Allan: What Government initiatives is he aware of that have not involved a robust economic analysis?

Hon DAVID PARKER: I’m aware of a scheme to spend $11.5 million—in fact, it’s still spending it—building a sheep farm in the Saudi Arabian desert, paying millions—

SPEAKER: The member will resume his seat.

Hon DAVID PARKER: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I’m being asked this question as Minister for Economic Development. I have responsibility for that project that is spending $11.5 million on a farm in the desert, and associated abattoirs. I believe it is in order for me to alert the House to the nature of that project.

SPEAKER: And I think there are two points: one, I’m not sure that the member will add anything new; and, secondly, it’s been repeatedly indicated that it is not appropriate to use Government patsy questions in order to attack the Opposition.

Hon DAVID PARKER: Speaking to the point of order.

SPEAKER: No, I’ve dealt with the point of order, Mr Parker.

Hon DAVID PARKER: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker.

SPEAKER: I want an assurance from the member that he’s not going to contest my ruling.

Hon DAVID PARKER: This question went to the need for economic analysis. This question goes to the need for economic analysis, and I’m at a loss to see how it is not within the range of supplementaries on the primary question.

Hon Nathan Guy: Has the economic development Minister been able to ascertain from the environment Minister why he told the Land and Water Forum that New Zealand’s dairy herd numbers need to be reduced by one million cows, reducing exports by $3 billion a year?

Hon DAVID PARKER: Given that I hold both roles, I can absolutely assure the House I made no such request or assertion to the Land and Water Forum. What is clear is that cow numbers have already dropped. The point that I have been making in the media in recent days is that if you want to have swimmable rivers, you have to decrease nutrient discharges to water bodies. A cap and allocation of nutrient discharge rights in some area does impact on cow numbers. Regional councils understand that. They need a hand so that they don’t repeat the same scraps as to the proper nutrient allocation methodology through each region in New Zealand when this can be achieved through national guidance.

Health Services—New Dunedin Hospital

7. Dr LIZ CRAIG (Labour) to the Minister of Health: What recent announcements has he made regarding Dunedin Hospital?

Hon Dr DAVID CLARK (Minister of Health): Last week, I announced the location of the new Dunedin Hospital. It will be built on the site of the former Cadbury’s factory and parts of surrounding blocks. It’s a major milestone for the project and represents a major step forward to delivering the 21st century hospital that the people of the South have waited for for far too long.

Dr Liz Craig: So why was this site chosen?

Hon Dr DAVID CLARK: Early on, we made a commitment to build the new hospital in Dunedin’s city centre to give certainty to the local community, including local business owners. This is important because it means the new hospital will retain important links with the University of Otago and existing medical facilities nearby and, indeed, the polytechnic. The site also provides flexibility for the design process and allows for further development down the track if it is required.

Dr Liz Craig: So what are the next steps to progress this project?

Hon Dr DAVID CLARK: Now the site is selected, planning and design will progress with haste, feeding into a detailed business case to be presented to Cabinet in the middle of next year. Work will also start on the resource management consent process. We remain on track to start construction before the next election. The people of the South have waited too long for their new hospital, which is exactly why we’re moving ahead without delay.

Hon Michael Woodhouse: On what date, to the nearest month, did the Southern Partnership Group first resolve to recommend to the Ministry of Health that the preferred location be the former Cadbury’s site and surrounding blocks?

Hon Dr DAVID CLARK: I don’t have that detail with me today, but it was not so long ago, I can tell the member.

Police—Increase in Sworn Staff

8. CHRIS BISHOP (National—Hutt South) to the Minister of Police: Does he stand by his statement last November that his Government will be hiring 1,800 sworn police officers; if so, why did he tell The Nation this weekend that not all 1,800 officers will be sworn police officers?

Hon STUART NASH (Minister of Police): Yes, I stand by my statement, and, since last November, the New Zealand Police have provided me with more advice around the 1,100 community officers and 700 officers in the organised crime squads. This Labour - New Zealand First Government has always been clear that we are striving to deliver 1,800 new police officers over three years. That, Mr Bishop, is 920 more officers than the previous Government promised in Budget 2017.

Chris Bishop: Why has he spent the last six months talking big about 1,800 extra sworn police officers, when it turns out the Government is actually only going to fund 1,100 front-line officers and 250 non-sworn, authorised officers?

Hon STUART NASH: Well, first of all, your figures are wrong. But the member does seem confused. Let me—

Chris Bishop: That’s what you said—that’s what you said on The Nation.

Hon STUART NASH: An authorised officer is considered a sworn officer, in all stats, by this Government and the previous Government, but they’re more clearly understood as a front-line officer. For example, a police forensic accountant or a police electronic crime investigator can have the power to arrest a person, take finger prints, search a person, and execute a court warrant. The one power they do not have is the power to stop a vehicle. What they will be stopping is methamphetamine and other illicit substances being traded through international shipping networks and cyber networks such as the dark web.

Chris Bishop: Why did he say on The Nation that it hasn’t been completely decided what the mix of front-line and non - front-line police will be when the Budget is under two weeks away and decisions should have been locked away weeks ago, and does this explain why he didn’t take any papers to Cabinet or Cabinet committee in the first three months of this year?

Hon STUART NASH: I’ll reiterate what I said on the The Nation. The member seems confused. The allocation between community officers and those in the organised crime squads hasn’t been determined—

Hon Simon Bridges: But we did that—we did that.

Hon STUART NASH: —but what we’re thinking at the moment is around about 1,100 community officers and around about 700 in organised crime squads. So the organised squads, Mr Bridges, are those men and women who are out there fighting crime on the front line. In fact, the member will be very interested to know that the new organised crime squad in Tauranga has just busted a serious crime ring that was responsible for spreading and distributing synthetic cannabis into Auckland and up and down the country. These—

SPEAKER: Order! Order! The member’s been going on for far too long.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Is this the most dramatic increase in police numbers since 2005-08, the last time Labour and New Zealand First were involved in getting police numbers up?

Hon STUART NASH: That member is dead right. The last time the police received any new numbers was when Labour and New Zealand First had a coalition agreement to increase new numbers. Thank you very much, New Zealand First.

Chris Bishop: Well, following on from that question from the Deputy Prime Minister, can he confirm the extra 383 cops on the beat since he became Minister were all funded through National’s 2017 Safer Communities package?

Hon STUART NASH: What I can say is that we are striving—[Interruption]. What I can say is that there are about 400 officers who leave the service every single year, so to deliver on our 1,800 we need to train about 1,000 new officers a year just to replace churn. We are striving very hard to deliver 1,800 more. This is, as the Deputy Prime Minister mentioned—

SPEAKER: All right. OK—OK.

Hon STUART NASH: —the largest increase in police numbers—

SPEAKER: Order!

Hon STUART NASH: —ever.

SPEAKER: Order! I just say to Mr Nash, when he sees that I’m on my feet, he will resume his seat. He doesn’t deliberately look away like a naughty child.

Hon STUART NASH: Oh, for goodness’ sake! Stop that—I reject that.

SPEAKER: The member will stand, withdraw, and apologise.

Hon STUART NASH: I stand, withdraw, and apologise. I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I do not—you know, I find it objectionable that you would stand there and compare me to a naughty child. I take personal offence to that.

SPEAKER: Well, Mr Nash, it is my experience of naughty children that when they see their parents have observed them doing something they shouldn’t do—I was on my feet; you saw I was on my feet, and you, after that, looked away and continued to speak. That, in my opinion, deserves that sort of approach.

Hon STUART NASH: Well, I disagree.

SPEAKER: Well, the member might want to disagree, and the National Party will have an additional two supplementary questions for the interjection while I was on feet—again.

Greg O’Connor: What assurances has the Minister received from the Commissioner of Police about the capacity to deliver on this coalition agreement commitment?

Hon STUART NASH: The Commissioner of Police has given many assurances, most recently in the select committee for the Police financial review, that Police were on track to recruit, train, and deploy. It is anticipated that around 400 officers will leave the service during the average year. We are planning for this attrition with a target of around 1,000 new recruits to be trained each year, in order to meet our commitments.

Chris Bishop: Can he guarantee to the House that entry standards and police training standards will not drop under his watch, as part of the drive for 1,800 extra sworn front-line officers?

Hon STUART NASH: Yes.

Job Creation and Employment—Bay of Plenty, Fruit Picking, and Hawke's Bay

9. Hon PAULA BENNETT (Deputy Leader—National) to the Minister of Employment: How many unemployed people are there in the Bay of Plenty and Hawke’s Bay?

Hon WILLIE JACKSON (Minister of Employment): As of March 2018, there are 9,800 unemployed people in the Bay of Plenty and 5,900 people unemployed in the Gisborne-Hawke’s Bay region. Statistics New Zealand does not publish a breakdown specifically for the Hawke’s Bay.

Hon Paula Bennett: Does he stand by his statement of 13 February, “we still have 343,000 workers who want more work but can’t get it.”; if so, does he think unemployed New Zealanders who can pick fruit should?

Hon WILLIE JACKSON: Yes, I do stand by my statements on 13 February. In terms of unemployed New Zealanders picking fruit, it’s not so simple. There are a number of complex reasons why people are not picking fruit. [Interruption]

SPEAKER: Order! Can I ask members on my left to settle down, please—especially members not very far to my left, who are quite noisy.

Hon WILLIE JACKSON: It’s not just about getting a big bat and whacking people and telling them to go out and pick fruit. There are lots of circumstances that come into play, like accommodation, like family obligations, like community obligations. It’s not about using a big-bat approach all the time.

Hon Paula Bennett: Does he think that it might be difficult for people to come from the Pacific Islands to a country they don’t know, stay in a region where they don’t have family, get up every day and pick fruit, yet they’re able to do it, yet he doesn’t think New Zealanders should?

Hon WILLIE JACKSON: Obviously, it’s hard for some of our Pacific Island brothers and sisters, but this Government is clear that we are committed to employing and increasing the workload for our people. We want to get New Zealanders first into this industry rather than go down the easy route that the National Party did for nine years. They never put a plan in or any organisation with regards to seasonal workers. We only have to go back to 2009 when John Key talked about a plan for seasonal workers and we got nothing.

Hon Paula Bennett: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I appreciated the Minister answering my question but felt that the bit about the National Party was unnecessary and going on.

SPEAKER: Well, the member will now stand, withdraw, and apologise. I’ve made it clear to the Deputy Prime Minister earlier in the day that the responsibility for the length of answers and their quality is mine. He was punished, and the member will withdraw and apologise—

Hon Paula Bennett: I withdraw and apologise.

SPEAKER: And with a light punishment.

Hon Paula Bennett: If unemployed New Zealanders in the Bay of Plenty and Hawke’s Bay that are on an unemployment benefit are asked to do work and don’t show up, should they be sanctioned?

Hon WILLIE JACKSON: We’re still going through that process at the moment. This is not a punitive Government. Our Prime Minister has made it very clear that we are a caring Government, we are addressing that issue right now, and we won’t be punishing everybody who mucks up, like the previous Government.

Tamati Coffey: What is the Minister of Employment doing to improve employment in the Bay of Plenty and the Hawke’s Bay region?

Hon WILLIE JACKSON: What a great question.

Hon Simon Bridges: You wrote it.

Hon WILLIE JACKSON: Ha!

SPEAKER: I did not.

Hon WILLIE JACKSON: We are investing in our regions. We’re investing in our young people with He Poutama Rangatahi. We have Government initiatives like the Sector Workforce Engagement Programme, who are specifically working with key stakeholders in the horticulture and viticulture industry, and we have industry partnership engagement through the Ministry of Social Development—so much going on at the moment. We’ve got a plan in place in terms of what’s happening in the Hawke’s Bay at the moment. We won’t go down the easy route and just hire foreigners all the time. We’ll do the business right now to fix the problem, but our overall goal will be to employ New Zealanders.

Defence Force—Repatriation of Remains

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

Hon RON MARK (Minister for Veterans): Thank you, Mr Speaker. Tēnā koutou i ō tātou tini mate, koutou kua whetūrangitia ki te korowai o Ranginui, koutou kua wehe atu ki Te Pō, ki Te Atua i te ārai, ki te okiokinga o ō tātou tūpuna, haere, haere, haere!

[Salutations to you collectively in regard to the myriad of our deaths, you who have become immortalised as a star upon the cloak of the great Sky Father, you who have departed to the void, to the god at the barricade and to the resting place of our ancestors, go forth, depart, farewell!]

Yesterday, I, on behalf of the Government, attended a ramp ceremony at Ōhākea airbase, welcoming home three New Zealand Defence Force personnel, who were repatriated from Fiji and American Samoa. It was a privilege to stand with the families of our fallen, as a Royal New Zealand Air Force C-130 Hercules returned Flight Lieutenant George Beban, Leading Aircraftman Ralph Scott, both from Fiji, and Royal New Zealand Navy engineering mechanic First Class Russell Moore, from American Samoa, to New Zealand soil. The repatriated personnel were received with a pōhiri and a tri-service guard of honour, after which they were handed over to their families. A short, private family service was held, followed by a moving haka. The families will now reinter their loved ones in a place and at a time of their choosing in New Zealand.

Darroch Ball: What can the Minister tell us about the military personnel who were repatriated?

Hon RON MARK: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. Mr Speaker, my office contacted you and said this answer may be a little longer to do it justice.

SPEAKER: Yes, yes, I understand that.

Hon RON MARK: Thank you, Mr Speaker. I can report to the House that flight lieutenant George Thomas Beban MBE served in the Second World War as an RNZAF medic. He was discharged at the conclusion of hostilities. He re-enlisted in 1948 as an RNZAF secretarial officer. In 1954, he was posted with his family to an RNZAF station at Laucala Bay as a senior secretarial officer and press liaison officer. He died of natural causes aged 40 on 31 August 1956 in Fiji, and was buried in the military section of the Suva Cemetery.

Leading aircraftman Ralph Henry Scott enlisted in the RNZAF as a fireman on 27 December 1956. He also served from 1952 to 1956 in the Royal Air Force as a fireman. After a period of basic training, he was posted to RNZAF Base Ōhākea as a fireman. In August 1960, he was posted to the fire crew at RNZAF station Laucala Bay in Fiji. He died of natural causes aged 28 on 15 October 1960 and was buried in the military section of the Suva Cemetery.

Engineering mechanic 1st class Russell James Craig Moore enlisted with the Royal New Zealand Navy on 28 July 1955. He was posted to the survey vessel HMNZS Lachlan, and while on the ship in Pago Pago, American Samoa, he died in an accident aged a very young 19 on 9 July 1956. He was buried in the naval section of Satala Cemetery in Pago Pago.

Darroch Ball: When will the remaining repatriation ceremonies take place?

Hon RON MARK: I can report to the House that there will be three more tranches of service personnel who will be repatriated: 29 service personnel and one child will come from Malaysia, and one service person from Singapore. They will be repatriated as one group and will arrive in New Zealand in mid-late August 2018. Two service personnel from the United Kingdom will be returned to New Zealand in mid-September 2018, and two more service personnel from the Republic of Korea will be returned to New Zealand in mid-October 2018. All of the ceremonies will follow the same format as that that was conducted yesterday, and will include senior representatives of the nation, senior defence officers and officials, and representatives from the veterans’ organisations and communities.

Darroch Ball: What additional support is the Government providing to the families?

Hon RON MARK: The coalition Government is funding the disinterment, repatriation, and reinternment of the deceased at no cost to families—

Hon Gerry Brownlee: You appropriated it.

Hon RON MARK: The contribution of $1,000 will be made towards a memorial—

Hon Gerry Brownlee: You appropriated it.

Hon RON MARK: —for those reinterred in a public or private ceremony. The New Zealand Defence Force, Mr Brownlee, has assigned liaison officers to the families, and will also offer additional support to reinternments if families request it, such as pallbearers, a chaplain, and a bugler. If families do not wish for their loved ones to be repatriated, then the Government will continue to care for their graves overseas.

SPEAKER: Before we move to the next question, during question No. 8 there was an interchange between myself and the Hon Stuart Nash. I twice used an expression which, upon reflection, I think was inappropriate. I want to apologise to Mr Nash and to the House.

Electoral (Integrity) Amendment Bill—Commentary

11. Hon Dr NICK SMITH (National—Nelson) to the Minister of Justice: Does he stand by his reported statement on submissions on the Electoral (Integrity) Amendment Bill that he was surprised by how many were flawed and “I am stunned at the number of times professors, legal experts, constitutional experts have actually got their analysis about the bill wrong”?

Hon ANDREW LITTLE (Minister of Justice): As I said to the member last week in response to, essentially, the same question, yes. However, I realise now that I was erroneous in the original quote that he made of me in that when I referred to academics, legal experts, and constitutional experts I clearly omitted Opposition backbench MPs!

Hon Dr Nick Smith: Would it be possible under his bill, as stated by Auckland University constitutional law professor Janet McLean, for a Government to avoid losing a vote of no confidence in this Parliament by dismissing and replacing an MP who has lost confidence?

Hon ANDREW LITTLE: As I also said to the member last week, decisions made by MPs, two-thirds in each caucus, as well as all the other people who accompany them in their decision making, are political judgments. Under the bill, when it is enacted, MPs will continue to make the same sort of political judgments they always have, including the last time we had electoral integrity legislation.

Hon Dr Nick Smith: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. My question was a very serious question about votes of no confidence and how this bill would change those, and I quoted one of New Zealand’s most serious constitutional lawyers. The member did not answer the question as to whether it would be possible for a Government to avoid defeat in a no-confidence motion with this bill.

SPEAKER: But he did address it. Is there a further supplementary?

Hon Dr Nick Smith: Has the Minister read the highly critical editorials of his bill in the New Zealand Herald in Auckland, the Dominion Post in Wellington, The Press in Christchurch, the Otago Daily Times in Dunedin, or is it his view that these editors also all have got it wrong?

Hon ANDREW LITTLE: I have read those editorials and other things besides, and, as I said in the quote where he quoted me in his primary question, I am stunned that in all of those cases they proceeded on the basis of asserting that the legislation provides for the leader to remove a member from the House. That is not what the bill provides for.

Hon Dr Nick Smith: Does the Minister stand by his statement in Parliament in which he specifically said his bill was consistent and compatible with the Parliamentary Privilege Act 2014, when the Clerk of the House has made a submission saying it is not; or is the Minister now saying the Clerk of this Parliament is wrong?

Hon ANDREW LITTLE: That member is incorrect in his adumbration of the Clerk of the House’s submission to the select committee on the application of the Parliamentary Privilege Act. He did not say it does not comply with the Act. He raised some concerns about what he described as a potential blurring of the boundaries, to use my language, of that Act. The bill is totally consistent with the requirements of the Parliamentary Privilege Act 2014.

Hon Dr Nick Smith: How can the Minister say that his bill is consistent with that Act, when our Clerk of the House says that he has significant concerns about the compatibility of his bill with the Parliamentary Privilege Act, and why is he continuing to insist that everybody is wrong, including the Clerk of the House, on his bill?

Hon ANDREW LITTLE: I can say it because I have read the Clerk of the House’s submission to the select committee, and I’ve read it very carefully. I do not share that member’s understanding—or, I suspect, misinterpretation—of the Clerk’s submission to the select committee.

Energy and Resources—Natural Gas Supply

12. JONATHAN YOUNG (National—New Plymouth) to the Minister of Energy and Resources: When was the last significant hydrocarbon discovery in New Zealand?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS (Minister of Energy and Resources): I’m advised that the last significant hydrocarbon discovery was Tūrangi onshore gas in 2005. Tūrangi currently represents about 5 percent of New Zealand’s total natural gas production. This was followed by Kōwhai in 2008. This is also an onshore gasfield and represents about 2 percent of total production. I’d point out to the member that both those fields are onshore and, of course, a block offer process for onshore Taranaki is currently under way.

Jonathan Young: Why is the Minister so upbeat that, of the 100,000 square kilometres of permitted area, 10 to 15 percent could turn into producing fields, when, as reported, the last 79 wells drilled since 2006 have not seen a commercial discovery of gas?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: It’s not just my natural optimism that makes me so upbeat; it is the fact that we have OMV—the company that owns more than half the mining and exploration permits in this country—who, just at the end of last week, said the exploration acreage is “enough to keep our firm busy for the next 10 to 15 years. The ban declared last month does not affect producing assets.” They went on to say, “This has no impact at all. It has no impact on existing licences, neither on production licences nor on exploration licences.” They went on to say—I’m sure the member will be very heartened to hear—“We are in a very good position in New Zealand.”

Jonathan Young: Considering the recent history has not been as positive as the Minister sounds, what is her plan for homeowners, businesses, and industries who rely on gas, when by the end of next year current gas reserves start to fall short of meeting current gas demand?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: I reject the assertion in the member’s answer. The current quality assured—

SPEAKER: Question.

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: Sorry, question. The current quality assured estimates for what the gas reserves are in New Zealand are published annually in the Energy in New Zealand publication. That currently sits at around 10 years. The numbers are currently being quality assured for 2018 and will be released. I’d like to reassure that member that when the company that holds more than half the permits for mining and exploration in this country is proudly proclaiming “We are in a very good position in New Zealand”, I have good reason to share their optimism.

Jonathan Young: Is the Minister aware of how many terawatt hours are required to switch gas users to electricity, in their thinking that this is a sunset industry?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: That is a hypothetical question, but what I would like to point out to the member is the potential that we have in the consents that exist out there—100,000 square kilometres, roughly the size of the North Island. If you take the industry’s own conservative estimates of a 10 to 15 percent chance of finding a find that is economically viable to drill—this is 10,000 to 15,000 kilometres. We currently have 1,756 square kilometres in production. We are talking about an area 5.5 to 8.5 times the area currently in production. I think that member should stop scaremongering.

Committees

Business of Select Committees

Reporting Dates

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Leader of the House): I move, That the date by which—(a) the Overseas Investment Amendment Bill be reported to the House by the Finance and Expenditure Committee be extended to 21 June 2018; and (b) the Financial Services Legislation Amendment Bill be reported to the House by the Economic Development, Science and Innovation Committee be extended to 31 July 2018; and (c) the Trusts Bill be reported to the House by the Justice Committee be extended to 5 September 2018.

This motion extends the report-back date for three bills that are currently before select committees. It extends the report-back date for the Overseas Investment Amendment Bill to 21 June 2018, it extends the report-back date for the Financial Services Legislation Amendment Bill currently before the Economic Development, Science and Innovation Committee to 31 July 2018—

SPEAKER: Order! Can members not have conversations in the aisles now.

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: —and it extends the Trusts Bill report-back date, a bill currently before the Justice Committee, to 5 September 2018. In all of the cases of these extensions, the chairperson of the relevant committee has written to the Business Committee via the Speaker requesting this extension, and in all cases the Minister in charge of the bill has agreed to that extension.

Normally, this would not be a matter that would need to come before the House, but at the meeting of the Business Committee that these requests were presented to, the Business Committee was unable to meet the requirement for near-unanimity. Near-unanimity has been interpreted in recent times as, effectively, a supermajority of the members of the House—which, basically, means Labour and National, normally—and without the National Party present at the meeting that test is unable to be met, and therefore matters that normally would be determined by the Business Committee will have to be determined by the House until such time as that changes.

I hope that this won’t become common practice in the House, and I hope we won’t have to do this regularly. I hope that the Business Committee will be able to resume its normal functioning.

I would make one plea of the members opposite, and that is that on occasion—I spent nine years sitting on that side of the House, and on many occasions I found that I disagreed with the proceedings of the House. I was a member of the Business Committee for most of the last six years that the Labour Party was in Opposition, and whilst I disagreed very vigorously with some of the rulings that we were subject to, I never—and the Labour Opposition never—sought to stop the Business Committee from functioning and conducting the affairs of the Parliament as it should. I simply leave that as something that I hope the members opposite will reflect upon.

Hon GERRY BROWNLEE (National—Ilam): I should thank the Leader of the House for his gentle lecture at the conclusion of his comments. There are a number of ways you could look at these sorts of things. Firstly, the Business Committee is something that does its work behind closed doors, and, you know, it would be kind of odd that we don’t have something in front of the Parliament during what I understand is “Transparency Week”, where there should be a greater look and a degree of scrutiny at everything the Government is up to.

What sits behind this, of course, is a totally dysfunctional legislative programme being run by the Government. Take, for example, the Overseas Investment Amendment Bill. Well, there are some very relevant points here. Firstly, this is the third time the Government has sought to extend the period for report back of that bill. We know why it is—we know why it is. It’s because foreign investors are running from this country at a rate of knots. So you get the housing Minister coming in here today saying that the private sector can’t function properly in the housing market because of a lack of finance. So the Government is stepping in, alongside the finance Minister, who’s confirmed that, yes, the Government is going to borrow an extra $10 billion to try and facilitate some of these things. So there’s never, you would say, the scrutiny on some of these provisions that perhaps there should be, and maybe the House does need to, from time to time, take a little moment to work out whether or not the way the Government is operating its legislative programme is to the betterment of all New Zealanders.

We have no particular desire to see relatively straightforward matters that can be dealt with by the Business Committee not done so, or for the Business Committee to be rendered ineffective. But I do have to say that perhaps the threats that came through during the last week about not supporting some of the select committee changes that are consequential to a previous Business Committee agreement sort of indicate an attitude that the Government takes that the Parliament belongs to the Government. It doesn’t; it belongs to parliamentarians, and it is incumbent on the Government to get the votes for every stage they want to put a piece of legislation through.

Also, if the Parliament is to grant leave for particular actions, then, quite clearly, there has to be that support. I was a little concerned to hear that when you’ve got a Government that forms, I think, now, 62 or 64 or 63 seats—whatever—and then an Opposition that sits at 58 seats, that apparently, if they get together, that’s near-unanimity, but if there’s a sort of hint that there might be some kind of new near-unanimity declared from this Speaker, I hope that’s not the case.

Hon IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY (Deputy Leader of the House): It wasn’t my intention to participate in this debate, but I do need to correct a statement made by the Hon Gerry Brownlee. It is not true to suggest that the Government has been making threats about not supporting changes that the Opposition members want to make to their select committee membership. Those changes are, of course, made by the Business Committee under the auspices of near-unanimity, and, of course, when we cannot achieve near-unanimity, the Business Committee cannot make such a determination. The members who were present at the Business Committee agreed to the Opposition’s proposed changes to select committee membership, but, unfortunately, due to the failure of the National Party to show up, we were not able to make that determination. The Government is not—

SPEAKER: OK. Order! Order! I’m now going to—after having sort of two and a half speeches mainly not on the motion before the House—require all members to speak only to that motion now.

Hon IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY: Thank you, Mr Speaker. I just want to conclude by saying I agree with the Leader of the House that this is not a habit that the House should get into. These are matters that can easily be dealt with in a constructive fashion at the Business Committee, and we look forward to the resumption of normal business at that committee as soon as possible.

SPEAKER: What I’m going to do is ask Iain Lees-Galloway to very carefully consider the comments that he did make on reporting back from the select committee, because it’s certainly not consistent—the member indicated that the committee had agreed but that there was not a majority. The matter was not put to the committee. I think the member might want to correct his statement.

Hon IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY (Deputy Leader of the House): I seek leave to correct the statement.

SPEAKER: Yes.

Hon IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY: To put it precisely, the people who were in the room were of a view that the Business Committee should support those changes. The Business Committee, of course, did not consider that formally or make any determination because it was not able to.

SPEAKER: Thank you.

Hon Dr NICK SMITH (National—Nelson): The motion that the House considers is the extension of a number of bills, of which I want to particularly talk about the Overseas Investment Amendment Bill, for which the Parliament is being asked to extend the report-back date to 21 June. I want to remind the House what this bill is about. This bill was one of the 100-day programme bills. It was a bill that was presented by Government members as a very simplistic, straightforward exercise of just ensuring that homes were only able to be purchased by New Zealanders. The issue is that this is the third extension that has been sought to this bill—that is, the Government’s programme is so confused and the Government’s original policy was so poorly thought through that here we are, over six months after the Government coming to office, still messing with the timetable of passing a bill.

Now, I perfectly understand why the extension is being sought. You see, the core issue here is that overseas investment in the property market has been quite critical to supporting the massive growth in house construction. Over the last five years, we’ve seen 20 percent compound growth, and where the Government today in question time admitted that a major problem in continuing the rapid growth in new home construction is the issue of the access to finance and is the issue of the access to investment, and that further confirms—

SPEAKER: Order! Order! I did indicate while Mr Lees-Galloway was speaking that I would from now on require members to speak narrowly to the motion. We’re not going to speak at all about the benefits of the bill or the reasons to be for it or against it. We are only going to talk about whether or not it should be extended. This is the second warning.

Hon Gerry Brownlee: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. Isn’t it a little hard for the House to consider whether or not it should extend a report-back date on a bill if there isn’t some discussion about the rationale for the bill existing in the first place and perhaps some of the reasons why the extension is being sought? We haven’t heard from a select committee chair. We didn’t hear anything from the Leader of the House. We didn’t hear anything from his associate.

SPEAKER: Well, I thank the member for his intervention. I think Dr Smith is well past that point.

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: Thank you, Mr Speaker. So the issue for the House is whether we should be further extending the time frame for this bill to be resolved. We have seen contradictory issues around the detailed importance in this bill and the issue around housing. It should not take this Government until 21 June—next month—to finalise these issues. I’d further point out in terms of the time line that Government Ministers have made the point that they want this bill passed quickly in respect of the programme around trade negotiations and the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which was the original justification.

We’re also considering the extension for the Trusts Bill. That is to be extended by the Justice Committee to 5 September. Those of us that are members of the Justice Committee will know that there is an enormous workload before that committee with a whole range of bills. But it reflects very poorly on the Government that a piece of legislation that literally involves hundreds of millions of dollars of investment—the way in which trusts right through the banking and the private sector work—is to be delayed by a further three months. We need to acknowledge that by making that extension, we are extending the uncertainty for those tens of thousands of trusts, that high level of interest in that trust law, and the implications for so many in the sector. In this House today, we’ve been talking about the decline in business confidence that is driven by uncertainty, and the further extension for the Trusts Bill will add to the business uncertainty that there is about law in that regard.

The third bill that we are being asked to extend the time frame on, taken through to 31 July—another three months—is the Financial Services Legislation Amendment Bill. Again, I have to ask the question of Government members to justify as to why, in an area of financial services—an area, again, where there are billions of dollars of investment and of issues of uncertainty—the House would want to grant that further extension. This is not a new bill; this is a bill that’s been on the Order Paper and that’s been through processes of public consultation going back all the way to 2015. Why is it that it is not possible for the Economic Development, Science and Innovation Committee to get on and consider that bill, to report it back by its timetable, and not to further extend that programme to 31 July 2018?

What we see in this motion is a Government only six months old and its programme of legislation is facing delay after delay after delay because of a lack of finalisation of the policy in three bills, all of which actually have substantial financial implications, whether those financial implications are in respect of the trust law, whether those financial implications are in respect of the large scale of investment that’s taking place in cities like Auckland in respect of housing development, or whether it’s in the financial services sector in the bill before the Economic Development, Science and Innovation Committee. So my challenge is that Government members need to justify the delay, justify why it is that these bills—I can hear the words of Opposition from only two years ago, that banning foreign buyers was very straightforward and the Government could do it yesterday. Well, actually, this piece of legislation—

SPEAKER: Order! Order! The member has, for the third time, gone off the topic of this and on to the quality of the legislation. His speech is terminated.

Hon DAVID PARKER (Minister for Trade and Export Growth): I am briefly responding to the reason why an extension is sought for the Overseas Investment Amendment Bill. The last speaker is correct that underlying the timetable is the date for the coming into effect of the Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) agreement. When the bill was originally introduced, there was doubt as to when it was going to come into effect. That is beyond the control of the New Zealand Government because it depends on the ratification moves of other countries.

As events have unfolded, it’s become clear that we have a little more time. There is a need to get it right, not just in respect of overseas investment in existing homes but also in respect of foreign direct investment into forestry. Because of the greater knowledge we now have as to the date when other countries will be likely to ratify the CPTPP, we can allow the select committee that additional period of time to finish its business.

Hon LOUISE UPSTON (National—Taupō): I rise to speak on the Government motion that’s been put forward by the Hon Chris Hipkins today, which, as my colleagues have said, extends the time line, extends the report back of three very important pieces of legislation. Finance is really at the heart of an economy, and the ability to ensure certainty and stability, whether it’s in the area of investment, whether it’s the area of trust law or of financial services.

So in terms of the Overseas Investment Amendment Bill—this, of course, has been around the traps a couple of times seeking extensions, and many people have been contacted about this particular piece of legislation. There are grave concerns about just what direction the Government is heading in. In terms of investment decisions, the lack of certainty that has been provoked by the incoming Government is quite disturbing, and that is on a number of fronts.

The Minister that spoke before me, David Parker, referred to a number of matters. One was related to changes in the forestry settings. The Minister will know in terms of that particular piece of legislation just how complex it is, and so it would have been helpful for the select committee to have had the decent level of scrutiny required, a longer period of time for the submitters themselves to have input, and many of those that submit—as a previous Minister, those who get very involved are actually the legal fraternity—

SPEAKER: Order! Order! I’m now going to require the member to address the question before the House.

Hon LOUISE UPSTON: Thank you, Mr Speaker. So in terms of an extension to the report back, there is a significant number of players who are involved in this work who are seeking certainty, who perhaps have already made decisions not to invest in New Zealand. The Government has talked about its housing priority. So the time frame of this report back of the Overseas Investment Amendment Bill being reported back to the House by the Finance and Expenditure Committee—the motion is to extend that to 21 June 2018—will, of course, create a number of issues. The select committee has needed, in the past, time to consider the issues fully. There hasn’t been any reassurance in this debate on this motion to extend the report back of the Overseas Investment Amendment Bill around what that will actually entail.

The Minister spoke before me. He raised the issue of forestry. He raised the issue of housing. He raised the issue of what was the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which has had a name change. But nothing really has provided certainty in terms of the report back on this important piece of legislation and, of course, the others that I haven’t referred to—the Financial Services Legislation Amendment Bill. The motion seeks for that extension to the House by the Economic Development, Science and Innovation Committee—gosh, these select committee names are a bit of a mouthful—to be extended to 31 July 2018, and then, of course, the Trusts Bill to be reported to the House by the Justice Committee, seeking an extension to 5 September.

Extensions aren’t granted lightly. In the 52nd Parliament, there’s been a very clear indication that extensions shouldn’t be sought. They shouldn’t be sought lightly. The House, I don’t believe in this debate, has heard why these should be extended sufficiently. I’m hopeful that the members opposite with responsibility for this legislation—I would’ve looked forward to a longer contribution from the Minister responsible for the Overseas Investment Amendment Bill. It is a complex piece of legislation, and if it requires an extension it hasn’t really had the full issues of why that extension is being sought in addition to the earlier extensions that had been sought and granted.

I would be hopeful that members opposite would provide the House with very good reasons why extensions should be granted when other pieces of legislation have had shortened report-backs and shortened ability for the public to contribute. I think there’s a responsibility, when there is a shortened report back and less ability for people to participate in the select committee process, that then, when the select committee is seeking an extension to a report back, there is some balance that is put in place.

I’m curious to know from the Minister responsible for the Overseas Investment Amendment Bill why it is that the submitters would have less time and the committee would have a longer period of time, given something that was originally thought to be quite simple. The Overseas Investment Amendment Bill has a number of different components in it, as the Minister has referred to, both in terms of the purchase of land, the purchase of houses—

SPEAKER: The member is now into the substance of the bill. Her speech is also terminated.

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS (Minister of Energy and Resources): I move, That the question be now put.

Motion agreed to.

The question was put, That the date by which—(a) the Overseas Investment Amendment Bill be reported to the House by the Finance and Expenditure Committee be extended to 21 June 2018; and (b) the Financial Services Legislation Amendment Bill be reported to the House by the Economic Development, Science and Innovation Committee be extended to 31 July 2018; and (c) the Trusts Bill be reported to the House by the Justice Committee be extended to 5 September 2018.

Motion agreed to.

Bills

Tariff (PACER Plus) Amendment Bill

First Reading

Hon DAVID PARKER (Minister for Trade and Export Growth): I move, That the Tariff (PACER Plus) Amendment Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee to consider the bill.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the Tariff (PACER Plus) Amendment Bill be now read a first time.

Ayes 111

New Zealand National 55; New Zealand Labour 46; New Zealand First 9; ACT New Zealand 1.

Noes 8

Green Party 8.

Bill read a first time.

Bill referred to the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee.

Bills

Exclusive Economic Zone and Continental Shelf (Environmental Effects) Amendment Bill

First Reading

Hon DAVID PARKER (Attorney-General): I move, That the Exclusive Economic Zone and Continental Shelf (Environmental Effects) Amendment Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Environment Committee to consider the bill. At the appropriate time, I intend to move that the bill will be reported to the House by 11 June 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 of the Wellington area, despite Standing Orders 191, 193, and 194(1)(b) and (c).

This bill is relatively short. It makes an amendment to the Exclusive Economic Zone and Continental Shelf (Environmental Effects) Act 2012—an Act that was amended just last year. One might ask oneself why this Act, which regulates activities in New Zealand’s exclusive economic zone and the extended continental shelf, which is necessary in order to promote the sustainable management of natural resources and protect the environment from pollution—why it is that this Act is necessary at all.

The sad reality is that this amendment bill, which we hope will be an Act in due course, is necessary to correct one of many, many, many errors in the Resource Legislation Amendment Act that was passed by this House by a fair majority—I think it was one or two votes—pushed through by the Māori Party in support of the National Party, when the ACT Party, United Future, the Labour Party, and New Zealand First were all voting against it because it was such an appalling piece of legislation. What that Act did, amongst many other mistakes, was take away the right of the Crown to recover the costs of applicants in respect of resource use applications made in the exclusive economic zone (EEZ). The prior law had been that the costs of the applicant, by and large, can be recovered so that they don’t fall on taxpayers. The effect of the bill that the National Party promoted was to accidentally remove that power.

The effect of this is that if this amendment legislation is not passed by this House, and until it is, the taxpayer foots the bill for the incompetence of the National Party. The average cost recovery, in respect of some of these very significant applications, for mining in the EEZ, for example—the costs of those often run over a million dollars. So the effect of this, if it’s not passed, is hard to quantify in that we do not know how many applications are going to be made in the EEZ in the future, but we do know that in the past they have been, and when they are made, the cost of dealing with the application is significant. At the moment, that cost now falls on taxpayers—hard-working taxpayers—who should not foot the bill of costs, and, as a consequence of the mistake of the last Government, they had that effect.

The process cost—and the cost in respect of this intervening period—will still be significant. This legislation is not retrospective. There is a current application before a board of inquiry that will incur costs on behalf of the Crown that cannot be recovered from the applicant because of the incompetence of the last Government. This will run to many hundreds of thousands of dollars, which is a bill that will be borne by taxpayers.

In addition to that additional cost to taxpayers, there is the cost of this process. The cost of legislative processes is not cheap: all of us here are paid; our officials are paid; the Clerk of the House is paid; we have occupancy expenses. The cost of any piece of legislation is—you know, it’s necessary as a part of a democracy, but you ought not to waste that on legislation that is unnecessary but for the incompetence to pick up this error in the earlier legislation.

It wasn’t for haste, in respect of the Resource Legislation Amendment Bill, which became an Act. As the select committee report notes—well, actually, the select committee report on that piece of legislation records the appalling process that was run in respect of that application. The bill was referred to select committee on 3 December 2015. Submissions were heard throughout the country by the then select committee—about 130 submissions. I was unlucky enough to be involved in that prolonged process, and we heard submissions in Wellington, Auckland, and Christchurch. Many were complex, but those submissions were heard by 2 June 2016. By the time this work had been finished by the select committee, there had been numerous provisional time periods that had passed. Everyone was put to enormous effort. By the time they did their deal with the Māori Party, they’d used up another six months and their departmental report ran to 400 pages. I was part of that select committee, and by the time it came to be considered, virtually every hard-working member of that select committee—we’d actually forgotten a lot of the submissions and detail that we had been given.

Hon Scott Simpson: Only the Labour members.

Hon DAVID PARKER: “Only the Labour Party”, says Scott Simpson. The Hon Scott Simpson said—well, actually, I think, at the time, he was chairing the select committee, and he failed to pick up this error as well.

Hon Scott Simpson: So did the member.

Hon DAVID PARKER: Not only did his colleagues do it, but the chair—he says “So did that member.” Well, actually, we criticised that legislation. We criticised the process. We actually warned the House that this legislation was so flawed that it ought not to proceed. We lamented the poor process. We actually said that that poor process hadn’t been the fault of the committee and then, somewhat generously to the chairperson, we also said it wasn’t his fault; it was actually his master’s fault. But the process for considering that bill, as was recorded in that select committee—it says the process for selecting the bill has been a shambles.

There are many aspects of that bill that were detailed in the select committee as being poor, but we warned of this very outcome—that rather than making the resource management processes both under the Resource Management Act (RMA) and the EEZ better, they were making them more complex, they were making them worse, and they were going to add to costs. This is just but one example of where that shambolic legislation added to costs. Those costs are falling on taxpayers—they are falling on taxpayers both by having to pick up these costs that the last Government managed to remove the cost recover provisions in respect of and through the cost of this process.

Now, I am hopeful that we will hear from the National Party that they agree they shouldn’t be wasting more time on this process and not arguing for hours and hours the referral motion, which says it slightly shortens the report-back time for the select committee. It is a very narrow bill. We don’t, in this bill, try and fix all of the other numerous errors in the underlying piece of legislation, because that requires a bit more time and thought and hearing from submitters. But this particular amendment should fly through, I think, because the National Party should be craven in their apologies to New Zealand, be craven in their apologies to the House, be craven in their failure to respond to the select committee report that warned that these sorts of errors were going to happen in this legislation, and admit that the Opposition had it right—that the Labour Party had it right, that the Green Party had it right, that the New Zealand First Party had it right, that the ACT Party, on that occasion, had it right, and that that legislation was always deeply flawed, as is proven once again by the need for this amendment legislation. With that, I support the first reading of this bill.

Debate interrupted.

Amended Answers to Oral Questions

Question No. 7 to Minister

Hon Dr DAVID CLARK (Minister of Health): I seek leave to make a personal explanation to correct an answer given in question time today.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Is there any objection to that? There is none.

Hon Dr DAVID CLARK: Today in question time, in response to a supplementary question following Question No. 7, I said that a detailed business case relating to the Dunedin Hospital rebuild would be presented to Cabinet in the middle of next year. It is currently my intention to take a detailed business case to Cabinet this year.

Bills

Exclusive Economic Zone and Continental Shelf (Environmental Effects) Amendment Bill

First Reading

Debate resumed.

Hon SCOTT SIMPSON (National—Coromandel): Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. Methinks the Minister who introduced this bill doth protest too much. He was a member of that select committee that I chaired in the last Parliament, and, at the time, he went on and on and on about perceived inadequacies of the bill. The Resource Legislation Amendment Bill was the largest bill considered by the then Local Government and Environment Committee in the last Parliament, and it was a very detailed bill. It ran to some 700 clauses, it ran to over 250 pages, and, as the Minister said, the departmental report ran to about 450 pages. We heard submissions from interested parties from all around the country. Much of it was very detailed, much of it very technical, and if the Minister, who was so critical in introducing this bill, was so clever and so smart, as he likes to be—usually the smartest man in the room is how he likes to define himself—why didn’t he pick it up? Why didn’t he and his smart colleagues pick it up? Well, the simple answer is that it was a minor drafting error in a large, complicated, and technical bill.

Really, when the Minister introducing the bill criticises this legislation and the need for a slight amendment, really what he is doing is criticising the very hard and dedicated professional work of the Parliamentary Counsel Office, who did, on that bill, an extraordinary job—an absolutely extraordinary job. How those folk manage to do the work that they do on such long and complicated pieces of legislation always amazes me. They do a great job on behalf of this Parliament and on behalf of the people of New Zealand. To, effectively, criticise them, in the way that the Minister has, I find reprehensible and appalling.

This is a very minor, technical piece of amendment legislation, and, indeed, actually, it really doesn’t need to be a bill in its own right. This is something that normally would be amended by way of a statutes amendment bill, and there is opportunity for the new Government to do that. But so bereft are they of their legislative agenda and their legislative programme, that they appear to be using this very minor, technical, administrative amendment to correct a mistake—a mistake that was a drafting error: a simple drafting error in a large bill. We know it was a simple drafting error, simply, because the Cabinet minute indicates that the ministerial policy was set correctly and right and it followed the principle that is well established in the principal Act: that the user pays. So the Cabinet minute—and there were some 400 Cabinet minutes relating to this bill—clearly indicates, as it does in the impact summary that has been provided by the Ministry for the Environment (MFE), that the error relates to cost recovery provisions for boards of inquiry appointed under the Exclusive Economic Zone and Continental Shelf (Environmental Effects) Act 2012, and that this has resulted in a misalignment between what Cabinet intended when it approved proposals to align the decision making under the Exclusive Economic Zone and Continental Shelf (Environmental Effects) Act with the Resource Management Act. So it’s a simple matter.

Then that asks, and begs the question, as to why the Government is seeking to use the time—the valuable time—of Parliament and a select committee process to make an amendment of this sort through a full legislative process. Really, all it can be is one of two options. The first option is probably that they want to flesh out and fill out, somehow, an incredibly thin legislative agenda to keep the House busy, in some way, over the next few months while they find a way to bring effect to their grandiose promises and slogans of their election campaigning to policy fruition. They’re all finding that an awful lot more difficult than they first imagined. The process of turning slogans into policy action is incredibly difficult, as the new Government is finding out. So that’s one option that they have, in terms of bringing this legislation to the House.

The second one is rather more cynical and, I suspect, may have something to do with their real agenda. That is that they propose to use this very simple, technical amendment legislation to act as some kind of Trojan Horse for bringing to the House some kind of Supplementary Order Paper that will fulfil a wider agenda than we are being told about today. Now, I would hope that that’s not the case, because this is a Government that campaigned on openness and transparency. They haven’t delivered on that, of course, and, only six months into it, this has been one of the most closeted and deeply hidden Governments that we’ve had in the history of our Parliament. So we know to be suspicious—we know to be concerned and worried about what they want to do.

If we come back to this bill, it’s a very simple matter. There were five submissions made when MFE went out for discussion with it. All five came back and said that they supported it. So, I do wonder what the motive of the Government is in bringing this to the House. We do know that there does need to be a correction, and we accept it on this side—it was a technical error and it does need to be corrected. We argue that this is not the best way to do it, that this is not the most efficient or effective way to do it, but we will support this bill. What’s more, we will support the Government’s intention to bring it quickly to resolution so that the error can be corrected and so that the taxpayer is not going to be put at expense unnecessarily, due to a very minor drafting error. It will be, probably, during the course of this administration—no matter how short it might be—that they will probably bring legislation to the House that does need amendment at some stage too. So there will be a lot of that yet to come in this Government’s short tenure, I’m sure.

To sum up, and because we don’t want to extend it any longer than is necessary, this is a minor, technical, administrative correction of a drafting error to an incredibly long, detailed, and complicated principle Act that had many moving parts. On this side of the House, we support the bill, and I commend it to the House.

I seek leave that, at the conclusion of first reading, the bill proceeds forthwith through all remaining stages without debate and on one vote.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Leave is sought for that. Is there any objection? There is objection.

Hon NANAIA MAHUTA (Associate Minister for the Environment): I rise to take a very brief call on this particular bill. It is the case that the devil is in the detail. The point was well made by my colleague Minister Parker when he said that there were a number of fixes that needed to happen but he was going to tackle this one first because, fundamentally, he didn’t believe that costs should be attributed to the taxpayer when they should have rightly gone to private interests—in this case, an applicant.

I have heard the comments raised by the speaker before me, Scott Simpson: the issues about filling in time in the House and that the bill is a guise for wider reform. Actually, the bill is an opportunity to find a necessary response to a fix that was intended but never got done, and that the Minister could have done but didn’t, and that the select committee, in all its consideration of all the submissions that went before it, still didn’t pick up. So while the previous speaker has said it was the intention, the simple fact of the matter was that it was never ever done. So one has to ask the question: was it really the intention to implement the fix that Minister Parker is proceeding to undertake today? Was it really the intention of the sponsoring member of the Resource Legislation Amendment Act to actually ensure that costs didn’t pass on to taxpayers? Well, we have to assume, actually, when the Resource Legislation Amendment Act was passed and there was no change of this nature, that, actually, it was what we believe it to be—a set of amendments that intended to pass on costs to the private taxpayer.

So I’m pleased that Minister Parker has addressed a small but important issue. I’m pleased to see the advice that has come forward in terms of the need to ensure that a fix is addressed. Although we have received advice that the exact costs that will be recovered aren’t exactly known, it’s an important fix that has to take place. I would invite the select committee, in their consideration of this matter, to investigate further the range of cost recovery that could be contemplated or that will apply. I’m sure that will attract some attention, and it certainly will attract attention from those submitters who were briefly contacted on this amendment.

As I say, Minister Parker recognises that it’s a simple but important fix to address the issues around cost recovery.

Hon Gerry Brownlee: It could be done today.

Hon NANAIA MAHUTA: It could be. The comment was made that it could be done today, but by sending it to the select committee, by ensuring that there’s consultation on this necessary fix—where, actually, a user-pays system will impact on somebody—then, through the submission process, those views can be heard. We certainly don’t want to ignore the views of people who will actually absorb the costs and the impact of the amendment of this particular bill.

Again, I didn’t intend to take a huge call. It is a simple but necessary fix to the bill. It’s important to ensure that submissions are heard at the select committee, that the select committee get the opportunity to ask the questions on exactly the range of costs that may attribute to the applicant, and investigate the impact of that and perhaps what the perceived issues might be around that, to ensure that we don’t have to come back to the issue again. In fact, what we can be assured of—and certainly Minister Parker is that kind of Minister—is that a thorough consideration of all the issues will take place at the select committee. I’m sure once it is heard in full and comes back to this House, we can be assured that it will achieve what it’s intended to, that costs don’t pass on to taxpayers when they don’t need to, that those who will be absorbing the costs, namely the applicants, will be fully aware of the range of costs that will attribute to them, but also the select committee would have had the opportunity to investigate whether there are any unintended consequences of attributing costs to users.

Hon Dr NICK SMITH (National—Nelson): I intend to take only a brief call on this, the Exclusive Economic Zone and Continental Shelf (Environmental Effects) Amendment Bill.

Hon Shane Jones: Why? Why?

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: The member opposite, Mr Shane Jones, questions why. That is because this corrects a minor drafting error in a bill last year. It was the largest bill that was passed in the course of the Key-English Government. It had made over 140 changes to both the Resource Management Act and to the Exclusive Economic Zone and Continental Shelf (Environmental Effects) Act 2012.

This bill does two things. In the course of that legislation, new Part 3A was added to the exclusive economic zone (EEZ) legislation. If you look at the Cabinet minute, it was clear that the intent of the Government was that Part 3A would not be subject to the powers that a Minister has to direct the Environmental Protection Authority (EPA). That was not carried through in the way in which the legislation was finally drafted. It certainly said a direction could not be provided for Part 3, but it did not specifically refer to Part 3A.

The second issue in the bill is in respect of cost recovery for marine permits. The larger bill, as a consequence of improving the economics within the Environmental Protection Authority, aligned the board of inquiry process with the decision-making process of the EEZ legislation. It failed to provide for insurance that the EPA could recover the costs in that change. Again—and I note, there were 241 Cabinet minutes from that—if we refer back to the Cabinet minutes, they make it quite plain that the Government’s intent was for cost recovery. So what this bill does is correct those two minor drafting errors.

I’ve listened to the Minister’s introductory speech, and he has made criticisms of the previous Government. I would draw to the attention of members opposite that it was actually members on this side of the House—National members—who insisted that that bill be subject to a full select committee process, and it was actually members of the Labour Party that opposed the substantive Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) going through a select committee. I would suggest that any Minister that’s brought a bill over 500 pages long through the process of the Parliament would not be surprised that sometimes there’s a legislative error of this sort.

Hon Shane Jones: Unheard of!

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: Mr Jones says “Unheard of!”; my response back would be, “Only those that have done nothing have never made a mistake.” Now, I would finally—

Hon Scott Simpson: Ask “Matua Shane”.

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: “Matua Shane” might, in some time, reflect on that.

The last point I’d make is that the Minister made a big deal of the fact that the longer that this lack of cost recovery exists there’s a risk that someone may lodge an application for a marine permit with the Environmental Protection Authority and not have the capacity for cost recovery. My colleague Scott Simpson, who heard the submissions on the original bill, very wisely said that this bill was totally consistent with the original intent and sought the leave of the House to get the bill passed through all stages today and to correct that error. It is somewhat unusual for a Government member to block that occurring, and that really does raise a question. Actually, the Government seems more interested in using this bill for a narrow political purpose than actually acting in the Government’s and New Zealand’s interests of ensuring that this minor error is immediately corrected.

The last point I’d make is that I note that on the Table of the House is a 600-page SOP on another bill. If there is a lesson to learn for Parliament from this amending bill it is that where we do have SOPs, at the very least, send them to a select committee. And, even when you send them to a select committee, for very large substantive reforms there will be drafting errors, and what our job collectively as parliamentarians is is to ensure that they are minimised. So National is indicating it supports this bill. Our only question for the Government is why we would not want to get on, correct this error today, and ensure that there is no potential cost to the taxpayer.

JENNY MARCROFT (NZ First): Kia ora and thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. It’s my privilege to stand on behalf of New Zealand First and speak on the Exclusive Economic Zone and Continental Shelf (Environmental Effects) Amendment Bill.

I’d like to note my thanks to the Minister, the Hon David Parker, for his opening comments about fixing one of many, many, many mistakes in the original Act. This is an error in legislation—somewhat shambolic legislation. And noting, too, the Hon Scott Simpson who mentioned that it was in fact a minor drafting error and does not need to be in a bill of its own right; but actually, we on this side of the House feel that it must. I’d also like to acknowledge the previous speaker for his training video.

To this bill in hand: it will amend the Exclusive Economic Zone and Continental Shelf (Environmental Effects) Act 2012 to ensure those that are applying for notifiable marine consents pay for the board of inquiry that considers their applications, rather than the taxpayer picking up those costs. So New Zealand First believes that this in fact is a very sensible piece of housekeeping legislation.

So what will the bill do—this small, technical bill? It will amend the Exclusive Economic Zone and Continental Shelf (Environmental Effects) Act 2012 and it will enable the Minister to recover from an applicant the actual and reasonable costs incurred in relation to a board of inquiry appointed under the Act—all those reasonable costs that will be incurred in relation to that board of inquiry appointed under the Act to decide an application for marine consent.

This change will ensure that a process conferring a private benefit results in a private, rather than a public, cost. It’s a very narrow scope—this bill. It relates only to that cost recovery for marine consents under section 20. Now, what are those activities under section 20? They are the construction, placement, alteration, extension, removal, or demolition of a structure on or under the seabed. Maybe it’s a submarine pipeline on or under the seabed, the abandonment of said submarine pipeline. It could in fact be the removal of that said submarine cable that’s on or under the seabed; the removal of any non-living natural material from the seabed or subsoil; the disturbance of the seabed or the subsoil in a manner that’s likely to have an adverse effect on the seabed or subsoil; also the deposit of anything or an organism in or on or under the seabed, and the destruction, damage, or disturbance of the seabed or subsoil in a manner that’s likely to have an adverse effect on marine species or their habitat. So, yes, it is a very important amendment to this piece of legislation.

I’d just like to take a little pause for a moment and take our time back to those early days in the 1800s—the era after the Napoleonic Wars, and when we had kauri forests. It was in hot demand for ships’ spars. Now, as the Australian colonies grew, they also needed a lot of timber for their housing. So when the first Europeans came to New Zealand, to the northern parts of the North Island, Tai Tokerau, in fact—the vast kauri forests and 1,200,000 hectares of this beautiful taonga. Now, today, barely 4,000 hectares of the original forest remain. The rest was felled for timber or cleared for farms.

Legislation like the Exclusive Economic Zone and Continental Shelf (Environmental Effects) Act is similarly important for our natural resources. Obviously, times have changed, and attitudes have changed towards the natural environment—but not for some National Party members. They still hold, in fact, the view that the natural environment is a resource that must be handed over to industry at no cost—take what you want; total pillage. Now, you may remember, in fact, how full of enthusiasm the National Party was to gut the Resource Management Act. In fact, that tragic coalition partner, the “Dancing Queen” from Epsom, wanted to throw the whole thing out and indulge in a kind of colonial consumption of natural resources. It amazes me that this shell company is still existing today.

In 2017, the National Government made a series of amendments to the Resource Management Act and the exclusive economic zone—so much for the revolution. Instead, what we got was added complexity and costs being shifted on to the taxpayer. That’s the crux of this matter. As we now know, the main feature of the Key Government was to transfer as much of the taxpayer-generated wealth as it could from ordinary New Zealanders up to the big end of town.

The first amendment the Government wants to make to the Resource Management Act is to shift those costs back to where they properly belong, away from the taxpayer. So, similarly, taxpayers should not pick up the bill for marine consents. This is why New Zealand First absolutely supports the Exclusive Economic Zone and Continental Shelf (Environmental Effects) Amendment Bill. It fits perfectly into our policy.

This bill was introduced to ensure that those applying for these notifiable marine consents pay for them themselves rather than the taxpayer picking up the cost. This was a National Party mistake, due to the Exclusive Economic Zone and Continental Shelf (Environmental Effects) Act not having cost recovery provisions for boards of inquiry. It takes brains and diligence, though, to sort this stuff out, and we are doing just that right now—not the short-term sloganeering mentality of the previous Government. That is why this Government is taking a painstaking approach to getting it right, and this bill is a prime example of how the previous Government didn’t do the job properly. This Government is now spending time fixing it up.

New Zealand First supports the Exclusive Economic Zone and Continental Shelf (Environmental Effects) Amendment Bill as being a very sensible piece of legislation. We are proud to support it, correcting a series of legislative mishaps and pointing towards more important work on the Resource Management Act, which will come shortly. I commend this bill to the House. Nō reira, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā tātou katoa.

TODD MULLER (National—Bay of Plenty): Seven months—seven months we’ve sat in the Environment Committee, reflecting on “I wonder what this Government is going to prioritise in terms of the environment?” Seven months we’ve sat there. We’ve had inquiries on plastic bags. We’ve had fantastic should-be inquiries on plastics in the ocean, and we reflect every Wednesday “I wonder what we’re going to get when this Government finally fronts with their priority?” Well, here we go. It is the Exclusive Economic Zone and Continental Shelf (Environmental Effects) Amendment Bill. This is it. For those of you watching at home, this is it. One page—one page only that simply changes a single section that enables the Crown to, essentially, get cost recovery from any party that’s a party to marine resource consent.

That’s it—a single drafting error. These things occasionally happen. We had, as you’ve heard the speakers on this side, an extraordinary piece of legislation that had 700 pages, 250 substantive clauses, and there was one line that was omitted. Here we have it: one page—minor change full stop. We sit here on this side saying, “Yep, that has clearly been omitted.” We didn’t pick it up through the select committee, despite having the self-professed brain of the House, David Parker, pour over every single line. Somehow, it managed to get through the keeper.

Hon Scott Simpson: You mean it slipped past him?

TODD MULLER: It must’ve slipped past him, Mr Simpson. It did. But here we are suggesting that we spend a few minutes reflecting in unison on the importance of this process in terms of acknowledging it needs to be done and agreeing between us that let’s get it done. We’ve had this fantastic suggestion from Mr Simpson that we have this conversation today, none of us are in disagreement, everyone can read the clause, and it all makes sense. Let’s pass it. Let’s get on with it and move on to more substantive—

Hon Scott Simpson: Let’s do it.

TODD MULLER: Let’s do it, even. Let’s move on to more substantive pieces of legislation, which, one assumes, now we’re into month eight, isn’t going to be the signature policy of the Labour - Greens - New Zealand First Government, but, hey, it may be. But, either way, let’s support it here today, get it done, and actually show New Zealand that occasionally the Government can agree with the Opposition and be efficient in terms of the legislative process. I support this.

KIRITAPU ALLAN (Labour): I raise a point of order, Madam Speaker. Whilst I thoroughly enjoyed the contribution from Todd Muller, the man from Te Puna, I do just want to draw the House’s attention to the comment made in respect of my senior colleague the Hon David Parker. A comment was made in that member’s remarks to this House that he was the self-professed brains of this Government. I haven’t heard that statement made by that member, and I felt that it was an inappropriate articulation of that member.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): I don’t think that’s an appropriate point of order.

Hon EUGENIE SAGE (Minister of Conservation): Tēnā koe Madam Assistant Speaker. Thank you. I am pleased to speak on behalf of the Green Party on the Exclusive Economic Zone and Continental Shelf (Environmental Effects) Amendment Bill.

Now, Mr Muller’s comments previously—of course, if the National Party was occupying the Government benches, they would be proceeding full tilt into changes that would make no sense to the Resource Management Act and to the Exclusive Economic Zone and Continental Shelf (Environmental Effects) Act, which serve to complicate the legislation, which override public participation rights, which shut out the public, and which made it easier for their developer mates to go ahead with subdivisions, without any opportunity for public participation. This Government does things differently.

This has got to be corrected, because at the moment it would cost the public and taxpayers and cost the Environmental Protection Authority (EPA), if the bill doesn’t get passed, for any notified applications that go to a board of inquiry under the Exclusive Economic Zone and Continental Shelf (Environmental Effects) Act. There will be change coming on the Resource Management Act, but it will be a lot more coherent and carefully thought-through than that complicated Resource Legislation Amendment Bill (RLAB), which the National Government introduced and which completely turned the whole process into a shambles. Has it demonstrated any benefits to the administration of resource management in New Zealand now? No.

So this bill is necessary because of a major oversight by the last Government. The EPA has a small budget of some $30 million; $25 million of that comes through Vote Environment—the balance is from applicants’ fees. The EPA is organised to recover from applicants the fees for processing their applications, because, as Ms Marcroft noted, the benefits are to the applicant. But here, because the Government made the mistake under the RLAB legislation, it meant that any applications in the exclusive economic zone (EEZ) for things like seabed mining and for things like new drilling that went to a board of inquiry and were notified for public submissions—it left the EPA bearing the costs of that process. So what this bill will do is it will ensure that those costs can be recovered.

This consultation, done with industry participants and others, indicated that there was broad support for that. What it does too is correct the inconsistency which currently exists in the legislation that if it was a non-notified activity going through a marine consent process under the EEZ legislation, the cost could be recovered, but if it was going to a board of inquiry, it couldn’t. It also corrects the inconsistency with the Resource Management Act where boards of inquiry, under that piece of legislation—their costs can be recovered from the applicant.

So given the way in which the past National Government starved the EPA of resources, given the fact that it only allocated a measly $4 million a year for the last three years for the EPA to undertake its functions in the exclusive economic zone—the fourth-largest EEZ in the world—the last National Government did not provide that as baseline funding. So this bill is critical to prevent taxpayers and the public being burdened with the cost of processing. So it’s fixing mistakes of the last Government, and it’s ensuring that those costs can be recovered if they’re actual and reasonable. Of course, it’s a factor of National Governments that they look to socialise the cost but privatise the benefits. So this bill is correcting that under the Resource Legislation Amendment Act.

The costs of not putting the bill through are significant, because the decision-making committees, which are appointed by the EPA—they, in the oil and gas space, have generally cost between $450,000 and $950,000 per application. Under the Resource Management Act, the average board of inquiry costs in the region of $1.6 million. So those are significant costs for a small organisation like the Environmental Protection Authority, and those costs should rightly be borne by applicants.

This bill will ensure that it only applies to applications that are made after the Act comes into force, so it is not retrospective. It is a good piece of legislation that corrects the mistakes of the last Government, which ensures that private applicants have to pay for the cost of their application rather than the public. I commend the bill to the House.

JONATHAN YOUNG (National—New Plymouth): I’m very pleased to stand in support of this bill. Indeed, the Resource Legislation Amendment Bill, which went through the last Parliament, through the select committee process, as we understand, 700 clauses, 250 pages of legislation was an incredibly significant piece of legislation that is probably one of the most complex bills that came before the last Parliament; certainly, a very broad bill with very, very many submitters. So for a situation where there was an error in drafting to get through that committee, the Local Government and Environment Committee—I guess, you know, in many regards, a committee made up of different parties—it’s important for us right now to rectify that, because, as the previous speaker, Eugenie Sage, said, the change is to ensure that the process that confers a private benefit or marine consent results in a private rather than a public cost. I think everybody across this House understands and supports that principle.

So we are very pleased and happy to support this bill—a very minor adjustment, as previous speakers have said. Perhaps a statutes amendment bill would have been the right vehicle that would take far less time in the parliamentary process to correct this change. So, with that, I’m happy to support and commend this bill to the House. Thank you very much.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): I call Angie Warren-Clark. This is a split call, as I understand it.

ANGIE WARREN-CLARK (Labour): Yes, thank you, Madam Assistant Speaker. It is my pleasure to stand and take a split call on this Exclusive Economic Zone and Continental Shelf (Environmental Effects) Amendment Bill. It’s a long name, so I think people will hear, for the benefit of those at home, the EEZ bill as abbreviated. Now, the Act came into place in 2012 and was amended in 2017, and that’s predominantly what everyone is talking about here today.

I need to commend the Minister for the Environment, David Parker, for his excellent and timely intervention into a law that had an error in it. Now, we have the Opposition saying that “Oh, you know, it was a very big and complicated and complex bill.” We have the Opposition saying that, and that this is a very minor thing that needs to be repaired. Well, some of us here believe that the hundreds and thousands of dollars that this may potentially cost us here is actually an important matter, and it needs to be addressed and it needs to be addressed quickly.

The hundreds and thousands of dollars that this error has created and may potentially, going forward, create—it’s important that we address this matter. It’s important because some of us across the House believe that hundreds and thousands of dollars is a lot of money. Now, the Opposition may not, but we do. So we do not apologise for bringing this matter directly, and here, and now, to get this matter addressed.

I’ve just thought, for the benefit of the listeners at home, of two things in regards to this. First of all, what is the exclusive economic zone (EEZ) in the sea? So we’re talking about this. For the lay person, it’s the 200-nautical-mile zone that we’re talking about, that we—

Stuart Smith: What’s that in kilometres?

ANGIE WARREN-CLARK: Nautical miles.

Stuart Smith: I said how many kilometres?

ANGIE WARREN-CLARK: It’s approximately 15 times the size of our country, and if you do want to know, sir, it is approximately 14,883,744 kilometres. So for those people who are interested at home, it’s actually about 15 times our land mass.

Hon Scott Simpson: Wikipedia’s done well today.

ANGIE WARREN-CLARK: Wikipedia is amazing. However, the important thing here is not everyone listening at home has a computer. So I think it’s important that we’re actually talking to an audience that needs to know these things.

Hon Member: Arrogant Opposition.

ANGIE WARREN-CLARK: Absolutely arrogant Opposition.

So, moving right along. As I say, I support the Minister, moving forward, in this, and I’d also like to thank the member Jenny Marcroft for explaining section 20 on the activity. I think she did a really good job of that, and it, basically, talks about why we would need these boards of inquiry. I’m also proud to state that the Minister for the Environment has signalled, going forward, that this is just the first. The reason we’re doing it now, the reason we’re doing it this way, is that we actually need to get it moving to prevent large bills.

There is currently a live application. It’s currently under way at the moment. That EEZ board of inquiry process is likely to cost quite a lot of money, and, as the Associate Minister for the Environment, Eugenie Sage, stated, that party across the floor only gave $4 million for that. So if we’re looking at the many, many hundreds of thousands dollars, we actually need to fix this quickly, we need to fix it appropriately, and we need to address it now today.

Finally, I would just like to state that we’re spending the country’s money to get this fixed. We hope that we’re not in this position again. We will continue with our legislative movement forward in terms of remediating any errors in the Resource Management Act amendments and this amendment. With that, I commend the bill to the House.

ERICA STANFORD (National—East Coast Bays): Thank you, Madam Assistant Speaker. I’m very pleased to take a call on this, the first reading of the Exclusive Economic Zone and Continental Shelf (Environmental Effects) Amendment Bill.

I listened very carefully to Mr Parker earlier. He was very concerned about the costs of this legislative process and what these costs were incurring and how terrible that was, and saying that we’d made a mistake, and wasn’t it terrible that all of these costs are being incurred. So if the Minister is so concerned about these costs that he spent quite a bit of his speech talking about these costs, why is he putting this bill through as stand-alone legislation? Why are we not seeing this as a statutes amendment bill? Why are we not seeing this as a truncated process—as we earlier said it should be but were voted down?

I suspect that the answer to this is that the Minister isn’t so concerned about the costs of the legislative process when he gets to have political point-scoring out of it. When it comes down to it, if it’s going to cost money, he doesn’t mind, as long as he gets to put the boot in. So his concerns about costs are absolute tosh.

Mr Parker is enjoying his time today up on his high horse over a very small technical drafting error that was overlooked in what was a massive piece of legislation. Mr Parker should perhaps be a bit more careful, because when a small drafting error occurs in some of his massive legislation that I presume is coming—we haven’t seen it yet; maybe it will come—as it does happen from time to time, we will be all over that like a rat up a drainpipe, because we have been listening today to speech after speech of members trying to take up their full allocation of time, wasting this House’s time and the public’s money on a bill that should always have been put into a statutes amendment bill.

Can I just say, look, this is a very small technical amendment. If someone wants to put in a marine consent requiring a board of inquiry process, accidentally, now the costs currently fall on the Crown. It was a mistake. It was a drafting error in the legislation. It was always the intention for the applicant to wear these costs.

If you want to apply right now for a marine consent to lay an underground cable or pipes under the seabed for private benefit, those costs do fall on the Crown. It was a mistake. It was a small drafting error that we are here to correct today.

This bill will align this board of inquiry process with the existing Environmental Protection Authority process, as well as with the Resource Management Act. It is a very sensible change. It needed to happen. Why we had to have a long process of speeches and select committee and more speeches is beyond me, because it is costing the taxpayer money, which Mr Parker said that he didn’t want to do. So, in saying that, I commend this bill to the House.

Dr DEBORAH RUSSELL (Labour—New Lynn): I think the Opposition needs to learn the difference between speed and haste. We want to do this, we want to get it done quickly, but we do not want to do it so hastily that yet another mistake is made.

Now, let me just go back to what this bill is about. This bill is about fixing up a mistake. We all concede that it was a mistake. We all concede that something went wrong in this 700-clause, 250-page bill that the then Government brought to the House to reform the Resource Management Act (RMA). We all know that something went wrong and we all want to fix it. So exactly what are we trying to fix here? The reason why we want to fix it is because money is at stake, because it’s actually costing us money and we do want to get the job done, but we want to do it properly.

So in order to do this properly—and I’d like to just point out that this in fact is part of our job. Our job, as parliamentarians, is to discuss the legislation, is to debate it in the House, is to take it through a select committee process. There is no need to truncate processes just for the sake of rushing stuff through the House. This House’s time is well spent debating this bill. Refusing to speak on the bill, refusing to take the time to deal with it in select committee—that is a waste of the democratic parliamentary process that we have built up over generations, and I urge the members of the Opposition to take this process seriously. It is our job to be here and to discuss this legislation, and I am proud to be doing it.

So let’s have a think about exactly what is in this legislation. It does fix a mistake, and it fixes a mistake that means that we cannot recover the costs associated with a board of inquiry into section 20 permissions under the Exclusive Economic Zone and Continental Shelf (Environmental Effects) Act. So what is in this section 20 that matters so much? What’s going on here? Well, it’s when people apply to conduct an activity, a particular activity specified in section 20 of the Exclusive Economic Zone and Continental Shelf (Environmental Effects) Act 2012, within our exclusive economic zone, which extends about 200 nautical miles from our coast—[Interruption]

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): Order! Settle, members.

Dr DEBORAH RUSSELL: —or, for the benefit of the Opposition, about 370.4 kilometres, for those who needed to know it.

But, more seriously, let’s have a look at what’s in section 20. So the sorts of activities that we want to make sure we inquire into properly to make sure that they are conducted well, using a board of inquiry, which incurs expenses, are listed in section 20 of the original Act. It’s the construction, placement, alteration, extension, removal, or demolition of a structure on or under the seabed. We’re talking about stuff that’s going on, on the seabed. It’s the construction, placement, alteration, extension, removal, or demolition of a submarine pipeline on or under the seabed. It’s the abandonment of a submarine pipeline that is on or under the seabed. It’s the placement, alteration, extension, or removal of a submarine cable on or from the seabed—so the removal of non-living natural material from the seabed or subsoil. It’s the disturbance of the seabed or subsoil in a manner that is likely to have an adverse effect on the seabed or subsoil. It’s the deposit of any thing or organism in or on or under the seabed. It’s the destruction, damage, or disturbance of the seabed or subsoil in a manner that is likely to have an adverse effect on marine species or their habitat.

This is important. This actually matters. We actually care about what happens on our seabed. We actually care about what happens in our exclusive economic zone. That’s exactly why in order to do this we have a board of inquiry, but they cost. And the way that the previous Government left the legislation, that cost was not going to be sheeted home to the user. And, like us, they agreed that we need to make sure that whoever is using this, whoever is going to benefit from it, actually needs to pay for the costs. But the mistake that was left in the legislation means that right now it is not the user who is going to wear those costs; it is the taxpayers of this country.

Now, they keep on saying, “Let’s rush it through. Let’s get it done hastily. Let’s make sure that we don’t waste any more time and money.” But already there are applications in place which now have to be funded by the taxpayer because of this mistake. So we are moving speedily but without haste to make sure that we get this right. That is exactly why we wanted it to go through a select committee process. It is exactly why we need to go through a process. It will be a truncated process, it will go quickly, but we will at least try to make sure we get the legislation right.

You see, I suspect that the real reason that the Opposition, the former Government, are just a little bit uptight about this is because it’s actually an object lesson in MMP Government. You see, we know that the former Government had a lot of trouble getting their RMA reforms through. We know they had to negotiate hard. We know that some of their support partners rejected many aspects of the RMA bill. We know that the particular reforms that have come through, their reforms of the RMA, have been left with perverse incentives sitting in there. That is because they couldn’t easily get a majority for it in the House. On this side of the House we have three parties who are working together to make sure we get it right—three parties holding the majority of votes between them, working to make sure that we will actually fix up this mess that has been left to us by the former Government.

I just want to sort of address some of the issues that the members of the former Government raised—that members did—in particular, this one. It was a line given to us by Mr Scott Simpson, the Hon Scott Simpson, that slogans are harder than Government. Well, I agree: slogans are harder than Government. We know that that bill was complicated. We know that it became harder than that. Sure, we know that they tried really hard to get it right, but the fact is they didn’t, and that’s why we’re having to fix it up now and having to take the process through the full stages to make sure that we get it right. I mean, they’ve been telling us that it’s a minor technical matter, but we already know that those boards of inquiry cost somewhere between $450,000 and $900,000 to pursue. That’s a lot of money to be worn by the taxpayer.

Now, look, the annual budget for this Government is usually in the order of $80 billion or so, and you might think that somewhere between $450,000 and $900,000 doesn’t matter so much in the context of a budget of $80 billion. But, really, a million here, a million there—soon you’re talking about real money. We actually do need to watch this and to make sure that it gets sheeted home.

We’ve been told that in fact we’re only having this process, that we’re only debating it in the House for a narrow political purpose. I suggest to the members of the Opposition that saving taxpayers’ money is never a narrow political purpose. It’s actually part of our job in this House. They’ve cried and cried and cried and are saying, “We must be efficient; we must get this through properly.” I tell you, there is no efficiency in having to go back to fix mistakes. There is no efficiency in having to bring this to the House again. But we will not confuse efficiency with effectiveness. We will get this bill right. We will take it through a proper select committee process to make sure that we really do understand what is going on. We really will give people who will be affected by this bill the opportunity to come and talk to us, to explain their concerns, and to talk about how they will adjust to it.

We will make sure we get it right and we will make sure that we save taxpayers’ money, not by wasting our democracy, not by wasting our hard-fought-for democratic processes, not by wasting the skills and expertise that we have built up through generations in how to develop good legislation, but by processing this speedily but without haste. Madam Assistant Speaker, I commend this bill to the House.

STUART SMITH (National—Kaikōura): Thank you, Madam Assistant Speaker. I will say to the member Deborah Russell, who has just taken her seat, that this is a very small bill—the Exclusive Economic Zone and Continental Shelf (Environmental Effects) Amendment Bill—but she managed to exsanguinate every possible Government argument to support this bill, and I thought that was not a bad effort seeing as it was a pretty poor argument.

One of the main purposes of an Opposition, particularly when it comes to select committees, is to hold the Government to account and to go over the legislation with a fine-tooth comb to make sure—even though the Opposition may not agree with the legislation that it’s looking over in select committee, it needs to make sure it’s fit for purpose. That means making sure there are no mistakes, no unintended consequences in those bills, and that means calling people in to submit on it and hearing their submissions, ensuring that the Parliamentary Counsel Office has got the drafting right, going through the revision-tracked versions, etc., etc.

Now, it is a 700-clause bill, 250 pages—as we’ve heard ad nauseam; I’m not going to go on too much about that. But we had that select committee process, and two of the loudest wailers in this whole process this afternoon are David Parker and Eugenie Sage, both of whom were on that select committee. So if it’s such an obvious and poor mistake and it should have been found, why didn’t they find it? It’s really an admission of their own guilt.

Another point was made earlier about what this bill is about, and the Resource Management Act has been referred to several times in here and how they’re going to amend it. It makes one very suspicious. We saw a motion before to debate, at the end of this reading, and to go through all the other processes without debate, and that was voted down. Why would they want to take this on? Perhaps this is a Trojan Horse for a Supplementary Order Paper that we are unaware of. And this is the so-called transparent Government, which is really a joke when we’ve seen so many examples of it being anything but.

I’m going to finish with a quote from Craig D Lounsbrough which is on transparency, or the lack thereof: “To be found is to be exposed.”, so it’s little wonder that the Government is so lost. I support this bill. Thank you.

Dr LIZ CRAIG (Labour): Thank you, Madam Assistant Speaker. It’s an absolute privilege to talk on the Exclusive Economic Zone and Continental Shelf (Environmental Effects) Amendment Bill.

As we’ve already heard, this bill is going to be amending the principal Act to make sure that those applying for notifiable marine consents have to pay the cost of the board of inquiry that’s considering their applications, because at the moment the bill for that is being picked up by the taxpayer.

What I want to do is just talk a little bit about what the original Act was trying to do, and then why we need to fix it. If you go back to the wording in section 10 of what the original Act was trying to do, it was “to promote the sustainable management … of the exclusive economic zone and continental shelf; and … protect the [marine] environment from pollution.”

So what this actual Act is about is the equivalent of the Resource Management Act (RMA) on land, and what it’s making sure is that if we do any activities in the marine environment, we are considering the protections of that natural environment. It’s pretty much very similar to the RMA in that it breaks up things into things that are permitted, discretionary, or prohibited. What we’re talking about today is about getting marine consents—very similar to resource consents under the RMA—for discretionary activities. So a lot of these consents have to be heard by a board of inquiry.

What are we talking about with these consents? Well—as Deborah Russell read out—in terms of the kinds of things you need to apply for, it’s things like seabed mining, putting in place pipelines, cables, construction of any kind of structure on the seabed, and anything that will disturb the seabed in a manner that’s likely to adversely affect the subsoil marine species and habitat.

I think the thing is, for me down South, we rely on our marine environment for a lot of our economic activity. So if you think about the Bluff Oyster and Food Festival and the contribution that makes to our local community, and the fact that we rely on those oyster beds to be in pristine condition—thinking about our tourism down in the Catlins, we’ve got a lot of wildlife that brings in a lot of visitors every year: the penguins, the sea lions.

I think the thing is if you think about things like pipelines that are laid on the sea-floor, they are seldom likely to contain substances that are conducive to a positive marine environment. So if we’re tinkering around with them, removing them, amending them, we need to make sure that we’re doing it properly. And to do that properly, we actually need to have proper consents in place to make sure we’re doing it in a safe way.

So what we are actually trying to do with this bill, though, is we’re trying to correct that legislative error that everybody’s been talking about, to make sure that the reasonable costs of those boards of inquiry get recovered from the applicants rather than having to be met by the Ministry for the Environment (MFE) and collected by the Environmental Protection Authority (EPA). What we’ve got at the moment is people that are benefiting or are likely to benefit privately from their applications and then the taxpayers picking up the cost, when in reality the cost of those applications—for the cost of the hearings, the technical advice, all those kinds of things—needs to be borne by those who are going to get the economic gain from those activities.

Unfortunately, what we’re doing at the moment—and this is why we need some haste—is that the taxpayer is picking up all of the bill. What we’re asking the Ministry for the Environment to do is to, in effect, write a blank cheque. The problem we’ve got at the moment then is that people are coming in for resource consents, for consents under the current Act, and we know that many of those consents, because they are very technical and of a really important nature, are likely to cost half a million, a million, two million dollars. So the problem we’ve got is at the moment the MFE’s going to have to pick up that tab every time somebody makes an application.

The other issue we’ve got is that we’re not going to be putting this in place retrospectively. And so what that means is until we change the legislation anybody that has got a consent currently in process won’t be having to foot the bill. And you know, for me in the health area, we’re already in an environment where budgets are constrained, because what we’ve had is nine long years of underinvestment across our health and social services, and yet what we’ve got here at the moment is a situation where one of our ministries is having to write blank cheques for several million dollars, potentially, at a time, and so we need to correct this as quickly as we possibly can.

So it’s actually quite a technical small amendment and it’s just got two or three main points. What it basically allows is the Minister to recover from an applicant the actual and reasonable costs in relation to a board of inquiry. It also allows for applicants to actually write in to the Minister and ask for an estimate of what those costs are likely to be, because if you are going to be putting in place something that’s going to have a huge financial outlay in an investment, you need to know up front what that’s likely to cost and factor that into your budgets. The other addition, basically, puts in that the Crown will be recovering those by the EPA on behalf of the Crown. So it’s very, very important that we are able to do that.

What we’re actually doing with this bill is making sure that this current Act is very closely aligned to the way the Resource Management Act does the same kind of consenting process on land and allows, under that legislation with the RMA, these costs to be recovered in a very, very similar way. But as I was saying, these amendments won’t come into force until the bill’s been enacted, and so what that means is there is some urgency in this space.

So I think, in summary, what we’re doing—the underlying Act—is aiming to protect our marine environment, and that is very crucially important for our tourism, for our fisheries. We can’t be having activities happening offshore where we get things like a pipeline that hasn’t been laid properly and we get ruptures that come in and affect our marine environment, our beach environment.

It has crucial economic impacts, and so what we’re allowing is for the EPA to recover the costs of these consents from those who are going to be getting private gain from those applications. What we’re talking about here is, you know, $1 million to $3 million at a time, so it’s potentially a significant financial risk. So we need to do this quickly. We just need to get on and do it with due process, but, as with any other application, we need to make sure that everything’s in place and correct. I therefore commit this bill to the House. Thank you.

Bill read a first time.

Bill referred to the Environment Committee.

Hon DAVID PARKER (Minister for the Environment): I move, That the Exclusive Economic Zone and Continental Shelf (Environmental Effects) Amendment Bill be reported to the House by 11 June 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).

The Standing Orders require there to be a debate in the House where there is a truncation of the normal length of a select committee hearing. There are good reasons for that. We in New Zealand have a unicameral parliamentary system, so we don’t have the effective ability of an Upper House to have a look at legislation that’s passed by the House of Representatives. There’s quite a lot of power that rests in the New Zealand system—effectively, in the executive. Therefore, if the executive, like me, come down and say, “Look, we think there should be a shortened select committee process.”, then it’s good that the House gets the opportunity to consider whether truncating the normal processes, given the absence of other checks and balances in the system—whether that shortened period of referral to select committee is justified. There’s no general proposition that you should never shorten select committee periods, and, indeed, the rules of the House even allow things to be done under urgency without any reference to select committee.

The judgment of the Government in respect of this issue is that we need to fix it within a relatively prompt period of time. There has been some limited consultation with industry and affected parties in advance of putting this legislation into the House. If I could summarise that, the result of that consultation was that they agreed that this was a mistake and that the underlying policy objective of reinstating a cost recovery right on the part of the Crown for the reasonable costs that are incurred by the Crown in dealing with an application in the exclusive economic zone—that it ought to be fixed—when the Government had decided that this isn’t an appropriate case for retrospectivity. So the people who currently have an application—there’s only one current application and that is, effectively, getting an exemption from cost recovery at the moment. We believe that there should not be retrospective effect in respect of that application, but we are concerned to bring this into effect within a reasonable period of time so that taxpayers aren’t meeting the cost of additional boards of inquiry.

It’s obviously possible for someone to bring an application before this comes into effect, and so there is some additional risk to the Crown in that regard. We think the appropriate balance is by seeking this to be reported back to the House by 11 June 2018 so that this loophole can be closed.

The bill is a simple one. It has about seven clauses, one of which is an amendment to the schedule in respect of transitional provisions. The main provision is set out in the proposed new section 52A in the underlying legislation, inserted by clause 5 of the bill. It’s readily understood. It will be readily understood by submitters.

The relevant select committee, as the Opposition has pointed out, actually hasn’t got a lot of existing business on its agenda, and so it’s well placed to put all of its attention—

Hon Scott Simpson: It’s a filler.

Hon DAVID PARKER: —into this. “It’s a filler.”, said the Hon Scott Simpson. It’s actually not. It’s fixing a mistake of the prior Government. I won’t go through that again. I would suggest to the House that it is appropriate that we have a shortened period of select committee consideration, to enable this to be reported back by 11 June 2018.

Hon SCOTT SIMPSON (National—Coromandel): The Opposition finds itself in an interesting position in regard to this motion from the Minister for the Environment. The Minister has indicated that this is a small, technical, administrative correction to a legislative mistake—an error, an omission, made in the principal Act last year. We’ve heard debate during the course of the first reading that the substantive bill that was being considered last year was a big bill—complicated, and with many moving parts—but we’ve also heard from Government Ministers and members on that side about the need for urgency in resolving this matter, if for no other reason than to protect the long-suffering taxpayer from the potential cost of a board of inquiry if a consent application was to be received before this legislation could be amended.

Now, it appears that there is one such consent application pending and that, very shortly, the process by which a board of inquiry is to be established and set up will need to commence, and at that point, costs start clocking up. At the moment, unless this legislation is amended, and amended quickly, those costs will be sheeted home to the taxpayer.

We on this side agreed, as did the whole House—there was unanimity about the first reading decision—and at the end of my contribution in the first reading, I sought leave to have this bill, at the conclusion of the first reading, proceed forthwith through all remaining stages—without debate and one vote, forthwith. Now, bizarrely and strangely, that matter was objected to—as is, of course, allowed for—but when we heard contributions from a variety of Government members about the need for speed and haste in terms of sorting this out, we find that their objection to sorting it out right now, here, today, without further cost to taxpayers and without sending it to the long, albeit truncated, process of select committee that is, according to the Minister—he’s suggesting that it should be reported back in a shorter than normal period, by 11 June this year. We find ourselves on this side wondering why the Government wants to have it both ways.

Now we had two Ministers contribute to the first reading debate, both of whom served on the select committee, and they didn’t pick this error up at the time. We know that the error occurred unintentionally, because the Cabinet minute makes it very clear that the original intention of the Cabinet minute and the Cabinet proposal was to allow for charging for boards of inquiry by the applicant who was seeking consents under the exclusive economic zone legislation.

So there’s nothing here that any party in the Parliament disagrees with. It’s a very simple piece of legislation. There isn’t any contentious element to it. It is a remedial attempt to just correct—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): Order! You’re speaking to the substance of the bill. You need to be speaking to the substance of the motion at hand. Thank you.

Hon SCOTT SIMPSON: OK, thank you, Madam Assistant Speaker. Well, the substance of the motion is that the Minister wants a truncated select committee process, and the Opposition is suggesting to the House to let’s do it now. Why waste further time of the House, of the Parliament, and of the taxpayer on something on which there is unanimous agreement, when, in fact, we could resolve this matter right here, right now, today, in a way that would achieve legislative certainty and that would achieve an outcome that is agreed across the House by all members?

This needs to be done, it needs to be done quickly, and it needs to be done efficiently. It’s not contentious. It isn’t a matter that is going to require debate or scrutiny or intention. This is a matter that has actually already been considered by a select committee in the last Parliament. The good people at Parliamentary Counsel Office made a drafting error, and it seems now, to me on this side, that actually we’re wasting the time of Parliament by even sending it to a select committee when, with a simple agreement of members of the House, we could find ourselves resolving this matter this afternoon, here this very day, in a way that would provide absolute certainty for the taxpayer and for any applicant who’s seeking an exclusive economic zone consent under the legislation, and in a way that was absolutely intended by Cabinet during the last Parliament. It was just merely a drafting error on behalf of the hard-working and professional folk who are our parliamentary counsel officers.

So, on this side of the House, we would like to hear from Government members as to why they feel it necessary to send this bill, upon which there is unanimity across the House, to a select committee. We heard at first reading a frankly embarrassing speech from the chair of the Environment Committee, who clearly wasn’t able to divert herself from her pre-prepared speech notes to juggle nimbly her way to the situation where, on this side of the House, we’re prepared to do the job today. Get it done. Do it now. Do the job.

So I’m keen to hear from Government members as to why they want to actually delay this process. Yes, the select committee doesn’t have much work on its agenda at the moment. This does seem to be a strange piece of legislation to be the first Government legislation to go before the committee. This is not a piece of legislation or a time frame that one would have thought was the most demanding environmental matter on the Government’s agenda. Yet the Minister has come to the House and he’s said, “Look, we want to have a truncated select committee process. We want the committee to do its business, which should take very little time—in fact, probably no time at all—and report back by 11 June this year.” Now, what we’re saying is, well, why wait until 11 June when we’re ready, willing, and able, as a Parliament, to legislate today to resolve this matter once and for all, to give this matter finality, and to make it certain for everybody involved.

The one application that is before the Environmental Protection Authority will require attention sooner rather than later. On this side of the House, we’d like to help the Government. We’d like to help them work their way through this adjustment to Government and find that they can, with the cooperation of the Opposition—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): Order! We are getting a bit repetitious. Do you have any new material to add to this debate?

Hon SCOTT SIMPSON: I think that there may be other members on this side who want to participate in this debate, Madam Assistant Speaker. Certainly we are keen to hear from Government members as to why they think it necessary to have a truncated select committee process at all. I’m sure that there will be a number of them, including the Hon Ron Mark, who will want to make a contribution to this debate on why this select committee should be taking through to 11 June to do its work when we could solve it today.

Hon EUGENIE SAGE (Minister of Conservation): The previous speaker, Scott Simpson, obviously hasn’t been listening. The Minister for the Environment and also the chair of the Environment Committee, Deborah Russell, set out very clearly the benefits of it going to a select committee. Unlike the Opposition, this Government believes in democracy. It believes in select committees. It believes in the opportunity for the public to make submissions. It believes in the process of select committees being able to improve legislation, having heard public submissions and considered them. That is why it is going to select committee. That is why there is a truncated process—because it is a small bill, it doesn’t need a long select committee process. But just ramming it through the House, as Mr Simpson is proposing, suggests that there is nothing to be gained from public submissions. Generally, bills are improved by having the public comment and the select committee listen and consider those comments. That is why we believe in democracy rather than, as National is suggesting—by going on and on in the House. What Mr Simpson also failed to realise is in relation to the current application by Tamarind, because this Government—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): Order! [Interruption] Order! We must stick to the substance of the motion—[Interruption] I just need to remind the member that this is not about the select committee process; that is agreed. It is about the report-back date.

Hon EUGENIE SAGE: My apologies, Madam Assistant Speaker. But the report-back date has been truncated in order to allow for some consideration, but not for the bill to take unnecessary time.

Hon LOUISE UPSTON (National—Taupō): Thank you, Madam Assistant Speaker. I am pleased to take a call in this debate on the shortened report back that the Minister for the Environment, Hon David Parker, has proposed. For those who are listening and may not have seen one of these debates before, when the suggestion of a truncated report back is being proposed, it’s a month. The normal report back for any piece of legislation is six months. So to have a report back in three days over a month is, quite frankly, appalling.

But I’m finding myself in a bit of a contradiction in terms of when the Government wants the public to have scrutiny and when it doesn’t. So in terms of one of the other points that Hon David Parker made, I felt it was worth explaining, not just to the House but to those who might be watching over the internet or listening on their radio or watching this debate live on TV. Because we do have a unicameral system, it means that our Parliament and the scrutiny of the executive and decisions that are made by the Government is more precious—because there isn’t an Upper House. There is no other scrutiny. So when a piece of legislation like the Exclusive Economic Zone and Continental Shelf (Environmental Effects) Amendment Bill is put before this Parliament, then the only opportunity for scrutiny is by the select committee—and not just the select committee; the key opportunity is for members of the public.

The Minister’s made a number of comments about the fact that it’s a simple piece of legislation, but, actually, from a public scrutiny and accountability consideration, whether it’s simple or complex is irrelevant. It is about scrutiny. It’s about public accountability. It’s about transparency. So when we have a shortened report back with little over a month, and a Budget in the middle of it, I might add—the ability for submitters to consider the implications—particularly when members opposite have said that they want to make sure that there are no mistakes.

Members on this side have talked about the need of the parliamentary process of the select committee to go through the legislation with a fine-tooth comb to make sure there are no mistakes and no unintended consequences. That is the role—that is a precious role—that our Parliament holds dear in terms of the scrutiny of legislation. I would be deeply concerned if this is a continual habit, to have shortened report-backs for pieces of legislation.

The other side say, “Oh, it’s not significant.” I would’ve thought the Greens would have thought it was incredibly significant for those who are requesting permits in this piece of legislation—the Exclusive Economic Zone and Continental Shelf (Environmental Effects) Amendment Bill. I would have thought they thought it was critical—the ability for the public to have a say, for the public to hear from the parliamentary select committee who will look after this piece of legislation, and for them to advertise that this bill is open for public consultation; the commitment of this Parliament to get legislation right. Particularly in this case, given that there has been an error, which is why this legislation is before us, I’m somewhat puzzled.

The Minister opposite didn’t outline and did not explain why only a month is being given, in terms of this report back. That is a crying shame, in terms of scrutiny. If it is, as the members opposite say, that it is simple—so I’m going to argue the other side of this one to see if they are listening. If it is as simple and straightforward as they would have the House believe, why don’t they take my colleague Hon Scott Simpson’s proposition? Why didn’t they put it through all stages today, if it was so straightforward and so urgent? So the Government can’t argue both ways on this extension—sorry, on this report back that’s been shortened.

Hon Scott Simpson: Truncation.

Hon LOUISE UPSTON: It’s truncated to just over a month, when the normal period is six months. So it puts a huge burden on the public who might want to submit on this legislation—a huge burden. Let’s say, for example—I’ll walk the House through it. If the report back is 11 June, then the public submissions, if they’re lucky, might get a week. They might get a week to consider what that side of the House has already said is a significant and important piece of legislation, and our exclusive economic zone is a critical part of New Zealand’s environment—so less than a week for submitters to submit on a piece of legislation that every member of this House wants to ensure is accurate and is correct.

So I’m deeply puzzled as to why we have a Government that insists, and persists, on shortened report-backs for select committees. It’s a trend that we’ve seen in a number of different pieces of legislation.

Hon Member: Oh!

Hon LOUISE UPSTON: It’s a trend that is damaging New Zealand’s democracy. That side of the House might think that it’s boring, but the members of the New Zealand public who hold this democracy dear to them want to know that this is a Government that is committed to transparency, to accountability, and to the ability for scrutiny of legislation that’s put before this House. Unfortunately, I’m not sure that the Ardern-Peters Government can give that commitment to the New Zealand public.

This is important. When we talk about a truncated select committee process—so, giving members of the public potentially less than a week for them to provide a submission—

Kieran McAnulty: Five minutes ago you wanted to get on with it today. Now you’re complaining it’s truncated.

Hon LOUISE UPSTON: Members opposite can change their minds. I’m sure my colleague would be happy to put the motion again, if you’re in such a rush. But you can’t have it both ways. You can’t have a shortened report back and truncate it to just over one month, which is absolutely outrageous in terms of the public’s ability to interact with our Parliament, to interact with the legislation. It’s sort of smacking of a Government who knows best, and I would really hate to see that the new Government, only six months in, has a bit of a pattern of not allowing New Zealanders to participate in the legislative process.

I’m happy to suggest to the House that my colleague put the motion again, if that side of the House is indicating it, which they are. They are indicating very strongly that that they are ready to pass this legislation through all stages. It would be good, the Hon Scott Simpson, to put your motion again. They’ve obviously had a change of heart, which is interesting to see. So, for those in the whips’ chairs, text the Minister and make sure that he’s happy to change his perspective on the report back, which he’s currently truncated to 11 June. Just make sure he’s now ready to come on board with the motion that the Hon Scott Simpson has put on the floor.

Simon O’Connor: Great motion.

Hon LOUISE UPSTON: It’s a great motion, to get this piece of business dealt with. That is, of course, unless the Government wants it fast back to the House so that you’ve got more legislation to debate and that’s the real reason behind a truncated select committee process. This side of the House is still failing to understand why, on the one hand, you say you need the time and, on the other hand, that side of the House is saying, let’s get on with it. “Let’s get on with it”—that’s the invitation from the Ardern-Peters Government for this particular piece of legislation.

If this is indeed something else, and it’s not about the importance of the legislation, and it’s about the need for the Environment Committee to have a piece of work—if that’s the real agenda behind a truncated report back, well that’s sad; that’s really sad. But that is an option. It is one of the reasons that the Minister may have wanted to have a truncated report back to 11 June.

There are a few members of the select committee opposite that are sort of looking down a bit now. Maybe that is the real business. They’re looking for things to do. They’re a bit bored. Being a backbench MP is not that much fun unless you’ve got crunchy select committee work to do. Well, in terms of scrutiny of legislation, that’s the critical part, that’s the critical role, for the Government backbench MPs. So you have to examine the legislation, make sure your Ministers haven’t made mistakes, give good scrutiny to every single piece of legislation, and not be willing to tolerate shortened report-backs such as this one, which is just over a month, which is outrageous, and New Zealanders will be disappointed in the Government for doing this.

SIMON O’CONNOR (National—Tāmaki): Thank you very much. Look, I’m very pleased to speak to, I suppose, examining the whole question of why we are looking to truncate this process around the Exclusive Economic Zone and Continental Shelf (Environmental Effects) Amendment Bill.

There are a number of things that I think need to be looked at. The fundamental one—if this House is going to do something, then we have to do it properly. So we’ve heard from the Government that this is a simple piece of legislation. I don’t intend to get into the specifics of it, except to say it is very, very simple. It provides the House really, or the Government in particular, with two options: either we push it through the House very quickly because everyone agrees with it, or we take it to a full-length approach.

We’ve heard in some of the discussions, if not the banter across the House: first and foremost, the Government said it’s simple; it’s very, very simple. Well, the offer is here and remains, from the Opposition, that we are more than happy to sit down, if you will, right now and move through all the processes. In fact, the irony is that this House has probably spent more time debating the undemocratic move to truncate this process than it would have taken to move this bill through all its stages and have it done and dusted, and to allow the Government to move on to other pieces of legislation.

The other side—we’ve heard it from the Greens, from one of the Ministers, that really the reason they want to have this go to a select committee, albeit for only a couple of weeks, is that they want a full democratic process. It’s always said, with the great intentions of the Greens, in that rather serious tone. Well, if that’s true, I come back to my first adage: if you’re going to do it, then do it properly. So I suggest to the Green Party members and to the Ministers of the Crown that if that’s truthful and they really want the New Zealand public to have their say on this vitally important piece of legislation, well then allow the committee to have a full amount of time to have that discussion.

So I suppose for me, and it’s probably my philosophical training, I don’t like contradictions. And all that we’re getting, unfortunately, from the Government is an array of contradictions here. Unfortunately, these contradictions are habitual. It’s only been a few months ago that we had the Government truncate and force through another piece of legislation. I don’t intend to get into the substance of it, but it’s illustrating a problem—

Hon Member: Arrogant.

SIMON O’CONNOR: —an arrogant Government, as one of my colleagues—

Hon Scott Simpson: An arrogance.

SIMON O’CONNOR: —as two of my colleagues have now said. Does anyone want a third? No. It was the overseas investment law and now Act, pushed through at speed—at speed, unnecessarily. It is, for me and for this side of the House, a growing concern of why the Government is continuing to put these shortened, truncated processes in place.

I had questions myself when the overseas investment one was done. I have further questions now—probably even more so with this one. The overseas investment one was actually quite a technical, rather deep policy issue: why did we not allow people to have their say? On this particular one, around the economic zone, it’s been a fault which has been identified. In many ways you could argue that we could have actually dealt with this even through a statutes amendment process.

Hon Scott Simpson: That should have been where it went.

SIMON O’CONNOR: It could have been an option. In fact, we’ve only just had that coming through recently. But here we are, truncating the process.

If it is, ultimately, incredibly simple, easy, and, I suspect, with agreement—with everyone in the House in fact disappointed that the motion by the Hon Scott Simpson has been defeated. But if it is completely, utterly simple, then let’s get that piece of work done now. If it is something which requires the New Zealand public to have their in-depth say on, well then why not allow a full select committee process?

One of the reasons I’m having I suppose a growing alarm in my head is: what’s the agenda? I know it’s a hypothetical—

Hon Scott Simpson: It’s hidden and secret.

SIMON O’CONNOR: It’s a hidden and secret agenda, potentially. As the Speaker will know, and certainly those members of the House will know, once you go through a select committee process, there is the opportunity to add SOPs—what they call Supplementary Order Papers. If this House was to move through the process immediately—

Hon Andrew Little: It’s not a speech by a philosopher.

SIMON O’CONNOR: No, I could actually switch to Greek, if you like.

Hon Andrew Little: Try Greek. It’s all Greek to me.

SIMON O’CONNOR: That would be more double Dutch to that side. What we’re dealing with here is a truncated, quick process through the House. If we were to just go through all stages, in effect there’s no chance to put SOPs—we would only deal with the substance of the bill. I have to wonder whether or not the Government is planning, in some way, to add SOPs into the process over the next couple of weeks which may actually expand what this supposed amendment bill is meant to do.

Then we end up in a whole new, much higher level contradiction. The first contradiction is that, again, if it’s simple, why are we not dealing with it now; or, if it’s complicated, why not give it a full process? But the worse contradiction is if an SOP is tabled by the Government around this bill, it will be done after—after—the public’s had its say. It’s a way of avoiding dealing with the public. So this is just filled with contradictions. It is, ultimately, I think—for the benefit of Mr Little—a pyrrhic decision. It’s a pyrrhic decision. It’s one that has no real value—it looks good, but has no real value.

So I’m going to wind up—truncate, if you will—this speech, which is symbolic of what this House should be doing today: to rip through the process and to have supported the Hon Scott Simpson’s motion that we just pass it through all stages. I have but one piece of advice to the Government, if I would, to end with. It’s something that they will be familiar with. I mean, it’s something, I suppose—a fairly easy concept, and something which the Government has supported before. So in relation to this bill, the third item on the Order Paper, this relatively simple bill: let’s do this.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): Before I call the next member, if there are any new arguments and debating points, now would be the time to bring them out.

STUART SMITH (National—Kaikōura): Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker. Well, it is a pleasure to actually have a say on this. I think truncating a select committee process is a serious matter, actually, and it is quite a confused argument we’re getting from the Government: that this is a serious bill and it needs to go through all the processes, but then saying, on the other hand, that it’s such a short bill that it doesn’t require the full select committee process.

We often deal with bills in this Parliament that are—in the case of the original Act that it seeks to amend—700 clauses, 250 pages. There are far bigger ones than that, and quite small bills. Often, members’ bills can be even half the size of this one, and that’s quite a feat, but quite small. Yet the select committee stages are all the same length. You can seek an extension, which is a very wise part of the way Parliament works, so that if there are more submissions coming in or its too complex to deal with—and I think a good example of that would be the euthanasia legislation, the End of Life Choice Bill, which is before the Justice Committee. That sort of bill can and will seek extensions because of the time taken to collate and organise those submissions, then to hear them—those that wish to be heard. On this piece of legislation, that process is going to be truncated so much that the people that could and, perhaps, should submit on this won’t have the opportunity to do so. I think that is the very case in point.

I’m going to go back to my colleague who just took his seat, Simon O’Connor, and I think he made some very good points. What is behind this? It really does make one suspicious when they speak with different tongues, as it were—

Hon Scott Simpson: Forked tongues.

STUART SMITH: Forked tongues—indeed. To have them saying that, I suspect it is absolutely the case that we’re going to see a Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) come in that is not related to this, so this is a Trojan horse. I would love to hear—

Hon Andrew Little: Trojan horse? We are talking Greek.

STUART SMITH: —someone from that side actually have the courage to talk now. Stand on your feet and have a chance—when I take my seat, Mr Little, you’ll get your chance. Stand up and give us an assurance there will be no SOP put forward on this bill. That’s all we want to hear. Do that and we might be relaxed about it.

This is a Government that said it would be transparent, and yet we’re seeing, time after time, the opaqueness of—I don’t know what; black walls, I guess. This is just absolutely a Government that doesn’t—

Hon Andrew Little: Opaqueness of black walls?

STUART SMITH: Yes, read your literature, Mr Little.

Hon Members: Stone walls.

STUART SMITH: Yes, indeed. Well, I wish they would stonewall. Let’s have a full select committee process, or take Mr Simpson’s advice and go through a very much truncated process and let’s deal with it today. You guys on that side should really just stand up and get on with the job and let this pass right through its processes this afternoon. Thank you.

JONATHAN YOUNG (National—New Plymouth): Thank you, sir. I will definitely try not to replicate what previous members have said. Can I say that my concerns around this process are: I asked a question in this House that permits that are to be protected by this Government—that we would not see any surprise legislation come in that would change those conditions. I would say that either my choice is that we see this bill, which is agreed on both sides of the House—

Hon Scott Simpson: Unanimous.

JONATHAN YOUNG: —unanimously, proceed through all remaining stages without debate and be voted upon, or that we go to a full select committee process. What this bill is dealing with is consent applications specifically for extractive industries, whether it’s fishing or whether that’s petroleum exploration. My concern—why I asked the question last week—is that when this Government say they will protect permits, my question was that they will not enter any further conditions. My concern is that in a very short select committee process, that doesn’t put out the full intent or give opportunity for full community and industry discussion, we could—and I hope not, but we could—have a Supplementary Order Paper land in this House in the committee stage that changes those conditions. That’s the reason why I asked that question last week.

We know that the Minister said that she believes in democracy. Well, democracy needs to have its full opportunity for expression, and that is a full committee process. Or if it’s indeed true that we have total agreement across this House regarding this simple error; that we agree to see that change—and I’ve read it, and it’s very simple. New clause 52A in the bill is a very simple addition to the Act that we could actually agree across this House, and across benches, to support now. It would align this bill with the Environmental Protection Authority, and that’s the way that I would prefer to see it—either that process, or a full process through the select committee process, so that we don’t get hijacked.

Look, I hate to have this suspicion, but it’s possible, and when I asked for that assurance last week it was not given to me. So that is my concern, and I wish to express it to this House and to those who are listening tonight. Thank you.

ERICA STANFORD (National—East Coast Bays): Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker. I am very pleased to take a call on this debate around the shortened select committee process. Mr Parker got up and said that he wanted to get through this with speed and haste because it was so important that we clear it up immediately. It was a small, technical amendment; we need to get it done—let’s do it. But speed and haste from that side of the House is not happening today. We had to sit here today and listen to all of those Government speakers get up and pontificate for 10 minutes each. They stretched it out as long as they could—so speed and haste, but not today.

So while we had to listen to them all speak for 10 minutes today, we are not going to give the public that same allowance. We’re going to truncate that process because while we all have to sit here and listen to them talk for 10 minutes, we’re not going to give the public of New Zealand that same allowance. We’re not going to give the public any time to actually have their say, and they’re the people we want to hear from. We don’t want to sit here and listen to these Government MPs stretch out their speeches for 10 minutes; what we want to do is hear from the public of New Zealand, and if we’re going to have a select committee process, let’s do it right. As my learned colleague said earlier, let’s do it right. You do it, or you don’t do it at all. It is so important that we hear, because we heard from all of the Government speakers today that we must do this properly, we must get these mistakes corrected in the select committee process, and that if we’re going to do it, we have to give them the full process. It’s not fair to have to listen to these guys for 10 minutes but not give the public that same allowance.

I think it is only fair, and I call today for one of two things to happen. Either we allow for the full select committee process and we are fair to the people of New Zealand—to have the proper process happen—or we do what Mr Scott Simpson said earlier, which is let’s get this done today. We can do the whole thing today. It’s a small, technical mistake. It shouldn’t have happened; it did happen. We all agree that it can be fixed today—and we could do that. But they didn’t want to do that. So what they’ve said instead is we’re going to have a truncated select committee process whereby the public are cheated out of the chance to have their say, and that’s not fair. Let’s do it and do it right or, as Mr Scott Simpson said, let’s just get it over and done with today, because it is a very small technical amendment. We don’t need to be wasting all of this time and money, as I said earlier. Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): The question is that the motion be agreed to. Those of that opinion will say—

Jonathan Young: I seek leave for this bill to proceed forthwith through all remaining stages without debate and on one vote.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): I started putting the question, and I’m inclined to finish, but I’ll just take some advice on that. As I thought, there is a motion on the Table and I am putting the question for that, so that leave can’t be given.

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

Ayes 63

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

Noes 55

New Zealand National 55.

Motion agreed to.

The result corrected after originally being announced as Ayes 64, Noes 55.

JONATHAN YOUNG (National—New Plymouth): I seek leave for the Exclusive Economic Zone and Continental Shelf (Environmental Effects) Amendment Bill to proceed forthwith through all remaining stages without debate and on one vote.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): Leave is sought for that purpose. Is there any objection? There is objection. I call on Government order of the day No. 4—[Interruption] Apologies to the Minister. I need to amend the vote. The Ayes were 63; the Noes were 55.

Bills

Social Security Legislation Rewrite Bill

Discharge and Referral to Social Services and Community Committee

Hon LOUISE UPSTON (National—Taupō): Have you called that next Government motion, sir?

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): Yes. I have announced it, yes.

Hon LOUISE UPSTON: Great. The Government has taken a very hard line today about legislative mishaps, as indicated in the debate we just had on a three-page bill that is being referred to a select committee. This is one of two Supplementary Order Papers that’s been tabled—

Hon Andrew Little: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): I’ll hear this point of order first, sorry.

Hon LOUISE UPSTON: —today, and it deserves full legislative scrutiny so that there are no legislative mishaps. I move, That the order of the day for the second reading of the Social Security Legislation Rewrite Bill be discharged and that the bill be referred to the Social Services and Community Committee for further consideration.

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

Ayes 55

New Zealand National 55.

Noes 63

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

Motion not agreed to.

Second Reading

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI (Minister for Social Development): I move, That the Social Security Legislation Rewrite Bill be now read a second time.

This is a landmark bill, rewriting a piece of legislation that is more than 50 years old. It will be only the second time that the Social Security Act has been rewritten. The first Social Security Act was passed in 1938 and rewritten 26 years later, in 1964. The 1964 Act is long overdue for a rewrite. When it was first passed, it had 135 sections. It has since grown to well over 500 sections, and, of those, only four remain unchanged, with other sections repealed or amended, sometimes hundreds of times. Altogether, that makes for a very disjointed and confusing Act, and there have been many calls, both from within this House and outside of it, for it to be completely rewritten.

The previous National-led Government introduced the rewrite bill to the House. The Hon Christopher Finlayson said, “It is [time] that we have this rewrite, because the Social Security Act 1964 is a shambles. It is unintelligible … The public do not know what it means, in a critically important area of law,”. Labour, Green, and New Zealand First MPs all spoke in favour of this sentiment. All parties in the House were united in thinking the Social Security Act needed to be rewritten. Sir Geoffrey Palmer and Professor John Burrows, members of the Law Commission, even identified the Social Security Act as the worst statute on the book.

When the bill was being considered at select committee, many submitters expressed the same sentiment and supported rewriting the legislation to improve its clarity and accessibility. It was, therefore, concerning that the select committee was given a shortened time frame for consideration of this bill—slightly ironic given the debate this afternoon—in the expectation that the bill would be passed by the end of 2016. Despite this, the bill languished on the Order Paper throughout 2016 and 2017. It was not given the attention it deserved as one of the most significant pieces of legislation in New Zealand.

The previous Government had indicated the rewrite bill would be a neutral legislative clean-up. When the bill was introduced, however, there were several new policy proposals. The principles of the Act had been amended to include a principle relating to the investment approach. The emergency benefit was reformed, and two benefits were merged together, amongst other changes. In the Labour Party’s view, these changes were significant and should not have been included in a rewrite bill. The Green Party and New Zealand First also stood in this House at the time to express similar views.

At the select committee, submitters expanded on these concerns, with the vast majority of submitters opposing the policy changes. More generally, they noted a deep concern with the direction of New Zealand’s welfare system. In the Labour Party’s minority view, set out in the select committee report, we noted our disappointment that their advice was not taken on board by the National-led Government of the time. Labour, Green, and New Zealand First joined with the vast majority of submitters in opposing the rewrite bill. Whilst we all committed to rewriting the Act, the significant policy changes included in the bill made it impossible for us to support it.

At that time, I submitted a Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) to include our own policy changes, as it was clear the original rewrite bill presented by the previous National Government had a political policy agenda. I want now, as Minister for Social Development, to progress this bill as a genuinely policy-neutral rewrite of the Social Security Act. To ensure this, I have withdrawn my own earlier Supplementary Order Paper, which I introduced following the select committee stage, as I did not want these policy changes to derail this critical piece of legislation. In further support of a neutral legislative rewrite, I have released a new Supplementary Order Paper that will be considered at the committee of the whole House stage, which removes the significant policy changes from the bill.

This could have all been avoided if the previous Government had had a truly policy-neutral rewrite of the legislation when they had the opportunity to do it. This builds on the widespread support for rewriting the Act, whilst removing the contentious parts of the bill.

There are seven policy changes that National included in the original rewrite bill, which are taken out through this SOP. These are, one, a new regulation-making power to identify specific client circumstances where compulsory redirection of benefit payments is deemed appropriate. This would have reduced the security for beneficiaries and allows these changes to be made outside of the public arena—which is of significant concern. Two, merging the orphan’s benefit and unsupported child’s benefit into a single benefit named supported child’s payment. The policy settings were to be aligned so that step-parents would not be eligible. Three, renaming the emergency benefit as the exceptional circumstances benefit. Four, case managers being given discretion to apply work or work-preparation obligations to a person granted the exceptional circumstances benefit—emergency benefit. We deemed this inappropriate given the nature of this benefit payment, especially as most recipients are over the age of 65. Five, both parents in split-care situations—which is when a parent cares for at least one dependent child from the former relationship—are to be eligible for sole parent support. Submissions during the select committee outlined concerns that this may encourage children to be split up between parents, which is something we do not believe is in the best interests of children. Six, including the objectives of the investment approach and the overarching principles of the Social Security Act 1964. The former Government’s investment approach was seriously flawed and had a narrow focus on fiscal risk and liability.

The seventh policy change, which has been taken out with this Supplementary Order Paper, is the one that was about a single rate of sole parent support for single carers who are paid the supported child’s payment, orphans benefit, and unsupported child’s benefit. While we acknowledge that that was a positive step, it does not belong in a policy-neutral rewrite. We believe, on this side of the House, that it is essential to clean up the legislation first without rushing through policy changes that haven’t been properly thought out. What we see the role of this being is, basically, prior to an overhaul—it’s like sweeping the floor before we put the furniture down.

I want to make progress in this rewrite, as it will bring the old, patched-up Act into the modern era, where legislation can be read and understood by people without years of legal training. The bill looks very different to the 1964 Act. It has a logical structure and flow. For example, in the 1964 Act, the various main benefits are separated and supplementary assistance is in seven different parts, and assistance for young people is tacked on at the end. By contrast, in the rewrite bill, all the financial assistance measures are grouped together.

This bill uses a modern drafting style and provides more explanation and guidance for users. There is a full contents table at the start of the bill and a further contents table is provided for each part and each schedule of provision. Taken as a whole, the bill is easier for people to navigate, use, and understand. This will help ensure New Zealanders understand and have access to their entitlements.

A modern, clear, and accessible Social Security Act will provide a solid legislative platform for changes that stem from this Government’s overhaul of the welfare system. The focus of the overhaul will be on making substantive policy improvements to social security. Completing work on the rewrite bill separately will ensure that potential policy improvements can be considered without any distractions arising from questions about the Act’s clarity or structure.

This Government has already taken steps to improve the fairness of the current system through the Families Package, we’ve provided more targeted assistance through Working for Families to make it easier for people to work and raise a family, we’ve introduced the Best Start tax credit to help New Zealand families and whānau to give their children the best start in life, and we’ve got a new winter energy payment that will help about a million people with the cost of heating their homes in winter. The Supplementary Order Paper includes the relevant changes from the Families Package legislation, including the winter energy payment.

I would like to acknowledge the work of the Social Services Committee, ably—at the time that this went through the select committee—chaired by the Hon Alfred Ngaro. I’d also like to acknowledge the 121 submitters, including the 52 who gave oral submissions. Their evidence was invaluable in scrutinising this bill.

In order to maintain momentum on the bill, I support the adoption of the recommendations of the select committee. The recommendations were predominantly minor and technical improvements to the bill. I have tabled a Supplementary Order Paper, which amends the bill to create a truly policy-neutral rewrite. I commend the bill to the House.

Hon LOUISE UPSTON (National—Taupō): I agree with probably a couple of minor things that the Minister Carmel Sepuloni has said. One thing that surprises me is that in the House this afternoon, there’s been vociferous debate about select committee scrutiny, about the extension of report-backs for the Environment Committee to provide additional scrutiny for the Exclusive Economic Zone and Continental Shelf (Environmental Effects) Amendment Bill—which is a three-page bill to go back to a select committee for scrutiny—and yet, today, we have 500 pages of a Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) that no member of the public, let alone this House, will get to scrutinise, and—

Hon Member: Policy neutral—listen.

Hon LOUISE UPSTON: Policy neutral. So we’ve heard a comment from the other side of the House about the significant rewrite legislation, which, of course, hadn’t been touched for 50 years, and legislatively it was a mess. It was unintelligible and absolutely needed to be tidied up. But one thing that puzzles me is that the Government, who supposedly want to have a more empathetic and responsive system, don’t see that the Government of the day should’ve taken opportunities to make some minor policy changes to ensure greater well-being for vulnerable children, to enable greater flexibility to support some beneficiaries, and to support the very New Zealanders that that side of the House purports to represent.

So let’s just have a look at what these minor policy changes were and see if our listeners disagree about whether or not they would advance the best interests of children. Here’s one around children whose parents are separated, so it is a situation of split care—one parent might have one child, the other parent might have two, and both are not in work. This change would allow both of those parents to claim the sole parent support, but no—that side of the House says “No. We’re going to make those children suffer.” because of this minor change.

Let me give you another one—and, again, I’ll remind the Minister of her own comments, which were about having Work and Income, having a social security system that was “empathetic and responsive”. So guess what? If you are a step-parent, if you have a child and both its biological parents have passed away, that is one vulnerable child that every New Zealander should support, but no, they’re not entitled to the same support as other parents. So the Government’s decided to kick out minor changes that at the very heart of the intent were about supporting children who needed the support the most—which is unbelievable—and about having a system that is easier for front-line staff to navigate and easier for the very people who need it most. It is absolutely staggering.

I want to introduce a couple of other issues, because there is another item that has been amended by this Government, and that is official advice. So the Government is ignoring official advice from the Legislation Design and Advisory Committee 2014 guidelines about how to improve the structure of legislation, which is about what should be in primary legislation and what should be in secondary legislation. I know for some people that doesn’t mean a lot, but when you are rewriting a piece of legislation for the first time in 50 years, make sure you follow the advice of the legislation advisory committee.

But no—no—this Government knows best! They don’t think the public should have a say on 500 pages of an SOP. They’ve dumped it on the table a couple of hours before this debate, with the intention of ramming it through the committee stage tomorrow. Well, I say that’s not good enough. For a Government that’s supposedly open and transparent, who’s open to public scrutiny, this is absolutely lousy, lousy process.

I want to give you another example of how lousy this process is. Normally what happens when a piece of legislation is drafted—or, you could argue, a Supplementary Order Paper of this magnitude—the officials then write a departmental disclosure statement or a regulatory impact statement. Has this been done? No. So here’s another example of a Government short-cutting due process, good process. This is all around making good law.

So I say to the Minister of Social Development, is the Minister saying there is not one mistake—not one mistake—in this SOP? We saw in the bill previously that there was one mistake. One mistake has been quite significant for this House—quite significant. But that one mistake is being fixed and is being scrutinised by a select committee—this isn’t. Five hundred pages is absolutely outrageous for the Government to do, particularly since it’s “Transparency Week” this week. Perhaps they didn’t read the memo about “Transparency Week”.

It’s really interesting. I want to draw your attention, as the Minister did, to the Labour minority view. In the Labour minority view, the Labour Party members were worried about—guess what?—public accountability and scrutiny. The Minister doesn’t care about it now, and is too arrogant to think about members of the public who have an interest in this—the very beneficiary advocacy groups she’s too busy quoting, getting the next person to speak to make sure they fill in the blanks that she didn’t cover. I bet the House that there’s at least one mistake in this SOP, so you’ll be bringing it back to fix it.

But the other interesting thing from the Labour and the Green minority view is—and I would have thought the Greens would be really disappointed with this legislation, because the one critical thing for them as they went into the election was the removal of excessive sanctions. The Minister had the ability in the Families Package before Christmas but didn’t do it. The Minister’s had the ability to remove sanctions in this legislation—hasn’t done it. So the Greens must be pretty gutted that their principal social welfare policy is being ignored by the Minister.

The interesting thing is that this is a completely missed opportunity for the Government. The Minister has said that there’s a significant overhaul required to make the system more empathetic and responsive. The first opportunity, first piece of legislation, is a missed opportunity—not doing it; not doing things that support the very New Zealanders, the very children, that you have said are important.

There’s another item that I thought was worth bringing to the House’s attention. On numerous occasions, the Government of the day, led by the Prime Minister, have talked about the fact that this Government will put the interests of children at the heart of everything they do. I bet the House that this piece of legislation, this 500-page SOP, has not gone through the scrutiny to see what the impact is on children. There are children living in the households who should be getting more than they are today—getting entitlements, Minister, that they’re not entitled to today—and you’re missing the opportunity to help those families, to help those very poor and vulnerable families to get more income, to get more benefits than they are today.

It’s a hugely missed opportunity. I’m staggered. I’m absolutely staggered that the Ardern-Peters Government is ignoring a golden opportunity to support those who need it most, and is instead taking away changes that simplify the system and make it easier for people to get the support they need. The principles that are being removed—the principles of social investment—are about supporting those who need it most. So that’s what I’m finishing on.

This bill originally was about supporting those who need it most, and having legislation that was understandable, workable, easy for the Ministry of Social Development to navigate, and easy for the very people that are supported by it to understand it and get better access to what they’re entitled to. It is a complete contradiction and an absolute outrage that that side of the House won’t allow scrutiny for an SOP that is 500 pages long.

Hon PEENI HENARE (Associate Minister for Social Development): Tēnā koe e Te Māngai o Te Whare, kāti rā tēnā tātou katoa.

[Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker, and greetings to one and all.]

It’s clear that on the other side of the House they’re scared of a bit of hard work. What’s also clear in that particular contribution to this particular bill is that that side of the House don’t understand what a policy-neutral piece of work looks like, because almost half of the speech that was given by the member Louise Upston, who just resumed her seat, are new policy initiatives and ones that are tainted by their agenda. That’s an important part to remember when we consider this particular bill. Why? Because it’s important that when we do this, we make sure that we provide the best platform for what truly is something that is going to take a systematic change—a systematic change.

In order to do that, it’s important that we tidy up some areas. It is important that we—how shall we say?—tidy up the backyard. In the order of tidying up the backyard, only then can we find a platform that will actually make meaningful change for the New Zealanders out there who the member who just resumed her seat purported to be speaking on behalf of. What we see from the submitters on legislation or bills like this—and we saw it under the last Government, when, actually, submitters were very clear about what they saw in the work that was carried out under the last Government on social welfare reform.

Might I add too that submitters were clear about taking a policy-neutral stance or position on the rewrite of the Social Security Act. They were very clear about that policy-neutral stance. We wanted that to happen. The submitters wanted that to happen, and the last Government absolutely ignored them. They were very clearly ramming through—and the member used those words “ramming through”—their policy changes, ignoring completely the submitters who were very clear on a policy-neutral approach.

So some of the aspects that are not included in the bill are those policy platforms that the last Government were really keen on ramming through, to use member’s words. The Minister actually already highlighted the seven policies that won’t be considered in this particular bill, and some of those are pretty straightforward to me. Why they seem pretty straightforward is because, as I mentioned just previously, just earlier, the tidy-up of the backyard is important to get the platform to make the kind of changes into the future, changes that actually align with the agenda of this Government, the New Zealand First and Labour Government with the support of the Green Party; to make sure that many of the issues that we heard in our time in Opposition actually are addressed and addressed properly; to make sure that people get their full and correct entitlement, as the member who just contributed on this bill—things like that are important. But that particular side of the House actually are opposed to that and, I’d argue, take a very punitive approach to the administration of the Social Security Act. So it’s important that we do these things.

So some of the technical parts of this particular bill are—and I’ve mentioned it—making sure that it’s policy-neutral. So the aspects that we won’t see in there, as mentioned by the Minister—there are seven in particular. One of those is, of course, the emergency benefit, renamed the exceptional circumstances benefit. Another one is the regulation-making power to identify specific client circumstances where compulsory redirection of benefit payments is appropriate in order to ensure positive outcomes for clients.

It’s in that vein that I actually want to touch on a point that the member who contributed to this bill before me made. She talked about investment and social investment. When I look at the parts that have been removed from the original piece of work that was started with regard to this bill by the last Government, it’s important then, as we progress forward, that, actually, investment and social investment takes on a meaning that will provide more change and better outcomes, in my opinion, for Kiwis, for New Zealanders, out there.

Some of the parts that are being retained under this particular bill are the rebalancing between primary and delegated legislation as drafted, except the definition of “accommodation costs” and “cash assets” for the accommodation supplement will be returned to primary legislation and the eligibility criteria for funeral grants will be returned to primary legislation. These are all technical aspects that need to be tidied up, and I can’t reiterate this point enough: those have to be tidied up to make sure that, like I say, the pathway that we lead the social security legislation on into the future is one that is more responsive to our people and the communities that it’s there to serve.

We talk all the time about the kind of administration of public services that our people have received outside the bubble of this particular House. We know that there are some significant issues there. So for the systematic change to happen, I say it once again: this is why we are proposing this particular bill, as a rewrite to make sure that the platform, once again, is a lot more solid into the future.

So, look, I don’t want to go on too much longer, but I do want to just make it clear that that side of the House have also moaned about the truncated process. I’ll say it once again: they seem scared of a bit of hard work, and they also are scared that in the true progression of a policy-neutral piece of work, their agenda—that didn’t work for our people over the past decade—is going to be scrapped and thrown to the side. That’s the important point that we want to make with a piece of work like this—to make sure that the navigation of the public, when they come into the requirement of services like the Social Security Act, actually meets their needs, is more responsive, and caters to, obviously, the needs of the public and those who need it the most.

So, look, I won’t labour the point any more, but I do want to support the Minister in this particular piece of work and say that I commend this bill to the House.

SIMON O’CONNOR (National—Tāmaki): With respect to that member, Peeni Henare, both of us worked within the Ministry of Social Development, and I suspect both of us know that a document of 501 pages, which then sits on top of an existing 500-and-something pages—something like this is not policy-neutral. In fact, that member will know, as I know, that pretty much when any Government, Labour or National, gets into power, there’s very little which is policy-neutral.

I also take a little bit of umbrage around the notion that we’re scared of hard work. I don’t think any member in this House is scared of hard work. But if the suggestion, ultimately, is that we are best to somehow deal with 501 pages of Supplementary Order Paper in the committee of the whole House—that that’s where the hard work takes place, what’s being implied, I suppose, consequently, is we don’t need a select committee process. If this is about hard work for the members of Parliament by going through 501 pages of a Supplementary Order Paper in the committee of the whole House, then we just don’t need select committees. I don’t say that because I’m a select committee chair, but, actually, hard work continues in two ways in this House: one, obviously, through the committee of the whole House, but, importantly, engaging with the public. That is hard work, but it’s rewarding and useful hard work.

So we’ve heard a lot about this rewrite bill—that it’s to be policy-neutral. That was certainly the intention of the previous Government, but what we’ve heard from the other side—and it was in their minority report—is that they did not believe it was policy-neutral. So let’s for a moment accept that whatever came through from the previous National Government was not policy-neutral. You would expect, then, having the new Government taking the moral high ground that they couldn’t vote in support for this bill because it wasn’t policy-neutral, that they themselves would introduce something like that, but no, they haven’t.

The incredible irony has been for them to take what they deemed to not be policy-neutral, which is this document here, and to add their 501 pages, if you will, of a Supplementary Order Paper to really sort of ratchet up the policy quality of their own side. It’s a huge, huge paradox.

It’s also a paradox in light of our previous discussion—

Hon Member: It’s an abuse of Parliament.

SIMON O’CONNOR: Actually, it is an abuse of Parliament. It’s actually an abuse, I would suggest, too, of the public, who should have their say. I was talking about it briefly in the previous Government order of the day around the exclusive economic zone—that the public should be allowed to have their full say.

The thing about Supplementary Order Papers that are introduced in the committee of the whole House, in a stage after the second reading of this legislation passes, is that the public do not get to have a say on this. They get no chance to have their say. This is 501 pages of Supplementary Order Paper dropped on this Parliament at the very last moment around arguably one of our most important areas, which is that of social welfare or social development. For me, this is 501 pages of legal jargon which really dismisses the importance of the people that I used to work with on the front line, who deserve better.

So what we have here is, ultimately, a good intention which has gone array. The bill started as a rewrite, an attempt to modernise our legislation. I think all of us can accept that, and, in fact, if that’s where this bill had remained, that would be excellent. However, it has not. It has returned as a particularly legislative implementing, if you will, of the legislative programme of the Government in a variety of areas.

My colleague the Hon Louise Upston pointed out one area which to us is not policy-neutral, and cannot be policy-neutral, and that’s affirming that a sole parent benefit will only ever be paid to one parent. Under the arguments of some in the social sector that to split the payment on occasions where parents may be actually dually looking after multiple children—so we’re not talking one child; we’re splitting the payment. If you’ve got two or three children—let’s say the dad’s looking after two, the mum’s looking after one—the current proposal in this 501 pages of early-drop Supplementary Order Paper says that that benefit can only be paid to one parent, with the argument being from the social sector that it could cause the splitting of families. I think it’s a valid argument, but that’s probably a small number of people compared to the large number of people who rely on the sole benefit and those parental arrangements, and I can think of a number in my own electorate that would fit into this. We could debate that policy aspect all night, but it is not policy-neutral. The most concerning element of this whole process is that the New Zealand public will not get their say.

The final thing—because I’m conscious the bell will go for the dinner break soon—is that in the minority view from Labour, the now Minister Sepuloni made a big, big plea that her push to, basically, create an affront to the United Nations Declaration of the Rights of the Child, to say that a father doesn’t have to be named—we could get into that, of course. She made a big play that she wanted that removed. She didn’t want that to be part of the legislation; she made a very big push that she’d remove the sanctioning. She was very strong on this. It’s very strange that as the Supplementary Order Paper comes, she’s neglected to add that in. I’m pleased she hasn’t added it in because, again, I know the UN and a number of people have a lot to say about that. So at that point I think the contradictions continue to abound.

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

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Good evening everyone. The House is resumed. When we broke for dinner, we were on the second reading of the Social Security Legislation Rewrite Bill. Simon O’Connor had the call and he has three minutes and 51 seconds remaining to speak, if he wishes to take it. He is not calling.

DARROCH BALL (NZ First): Thank you very much. I’m not surprised that Mr O’Connor couldn’t fill another three minutes’ worth of what he was saying just before the dinner break, because it was just rubbish and I don’t think any honourable member in this House would want to repeat any rubbish they’ve already mentioned.

There’s a couple of things that I’d like to highlight firstly, before I get into the substance of what I was going to talk about. I’m going to react to a couple of the things, a number of things, that the National Party has spoken on already. One of the things they keep saying is this term “policy-neutral”. What they’ve failed to mention is that that was the actual intent from the National Party. When they put the bill in, in the first place, it was a policy-neutral bill. I remember coming into this House—and it was quite a while ago now. I think it was over a year or two years, I think, for the first reading. I remember thinking to myself that this wasn’t a policy-neutral bill. In fact, it was quite the opposite—it was quite the opposite. And not only was it full of policy changes, what the National Party and the Minister at that time were saying was that they were minor policy changes. They weren’t minor policy changes; they actually were changes in policy that had some quite substantial flow-on effects that a number of submitters actually challenged and actually had some big issues with, and that the current Government parties as well had a big number of issues with.

One of them—which was a huge one, from New Zealand First’s point of view and perspective, and I think from the Greens and the Labour Party as well—was how, nestled into the half a dozen so-called minor policy changes, there was a change in principle, a change in the guiding principle of the entire Act. That isn’t minor, in anyone’s books—not minor in anyone’s books—especially since at that time, when New Zealand First, the Greens, and the Labour Party were in Opposition, we had vehemently opposed the social investment approach, which was what the then National Government was trying to put into the principle of the Act.

I noted back then, during the first speech of the Minister for Social Development—back in 2016, I believe it was—there was not one mention of the social investment approach being put into the principles. So I think that the National Party needs to recognise where this bill has come from, what the absolute intent of this bill was originally when they were in Government, how they didn’t manage to be able to do that, and where we are today, with, ironically, going back to the original intent of what the National Party wanted it to be, which was a policy-neutral bill.

We’ve also had complaints from Louise Upston, I think it was, that this wasn’t a policy-neutral bill and that’s why it should go back to select committee to be scrutinised by the public. What the Hon Louise Upston needs to do is just read the explanatory note of Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) 25, and it might give it away that it’s not full of policy.

So it states that “This Supplementary Order Paper sets out amendments to the Social Security Legislation Rewrite Bill. The amendments are in 4 groups:”, and I’ll just read the titles and not read through the couple of pages. First of all: “Removing some identified changes to effect of current law”. So that is what we’ve said it would do—it is going to remove the policy that the National Party wanted to place into the bill in its original form. So we’re going to remove it to make it policy-neutral.

The next heading is “Adding some minor … clarifications to effect of current law”—so just some minor clarifications. Then: “Making some minor drafting corrections or improvements”—making some minor drafting corrections or improvements. And: “Updating since Bill reported from [the] Social Services Committee”, because that’s how long ago it was—the law changes since then and now. So all of the law changes that have occurred between when the original bill came back, reported from the select committee, to now—logically, we’ve got to put in and update the laws that have been put in place to make it sensible. The references we updated, the commencement date will be updated, and that’s it. There’s no actual policy changes in this SOP, just like the Minister has stated, just like every other Government member has stated, and that, clearly, the National Party and the Opposition have not been reading.

There’s been a few changes since this was in its first reading in this House. There were originally a few small changes recommended by the select committee. There’s definitely changes been made through this SOP getting rid of those policies, but the biggest and most important change to this that happened since its first reading in this House is that the Government has changed. So now we can actually make some sense of what the process should be in actually rewriting the social security legislation.

The original intent was to make it so that it is more readable, more accessible, and easier to understand. That’s the starting point at which we need to start adding policy through the overhaul that will be coming later on, through this Government. But what the previous Government and National Party wanted to do was add in their little bits. They could have had this bill through a lot earlier, a lot sooner, and likely with the support of every party in this House if it was just a policy-neutral bill and tidying up, because we all agree on that. I believe that 99 percent of all of the submitters praised what the bill was intending to do. The original intent was to make the Act more readable.

I am—like I mentioned—happy, and New Zealand First is happy, to see that the social investment approach is not going to be used as a guiding principle in the Act. We have forever stood in this House and given evidence upon evidence and reason upon reason about why the social investment approach doesn’t work with the provision of social services to the people of this country. It’s got evidence from around the world where they have implemented it or had trials of implementing it, and it does not work. It just simply does not work.

What the National Party would like to do is to try and own what the term “social investment” means, the definition of social investment, because even with bills going through this House at this moment, with the Social Services Committee, we get the National Party members asking submitters—talking about what the social investment definition is and why and if it should be implemented in the legislation coming through. They believe that the social investment approach is investing wisely in the people who need it the most. Now, that’s a nice-sounding thing and sound bite, and if that was the actual case then I don’t think we’d have any problems with it. It’s not the fact that New Zealand First or the Government is against investing socially responsibly or the social investment approach. It’s how the previous Government—the National Party—took the social investment approach for what it was, and it was totally wrong.

What I’d like to just quickly do, in my last couple of minutes, is have a look at the departmental report from the Social Services Committee. It’s dated August 2016. One of the things that I got highlighted for me was the comments from the submitters around the purpose and the principles of the Act and what social security actually means and what it should mean. A number of them mentioned that social security should be acting as a safety net and a minimum social floor that no one falls below.

With the nine years of the National Government, when they moved through with this legislation and the social investment approach, that was not their main purpose. That was not their definition. What they hooked themselves on was Better Public Services targets—things like reducing the number of beneficiaries, and not necessarily at all looking at where they are going to if they move off the benefit, or whether that is a good thing for that individual. What the National Party lost over the last nine years—or the better part of a decade—was the meaning of what the social security blanket should mean.

New Zealand First will be supporting this bill and the changes that the current Minister is wanting to make over the next little while because we support the original intent of this bill, which is being policy-neutral. Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker.

JO HAYES (National): Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I stand to take a call in the second reading of the Social Security Legislation Rewrite Bill. It’s been interesting sitting back here listening to the contributions in the House and some of the, I suppose, explanations from the Government about why they’ve done what they’ve done, especially around Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) 25, this 500-page document, which I must say is going to take a bit of reading to get through. But I also see it as a Government that talks about transparency and openness to the public, and yet this here arrived, as everybody knows, on our desks just before question time today and heading towards the second reading, and the public won’t get to actually have any say or contribute to any parts on Supplementary Order Paper 25. So I find that rather extraordinary about this Government, who state that they are a transparent Government.

I just want to look at a couple of the entitlements that were spoken about today. My colleague the Hon Louise Upston spoke about step-parents that would be looking after a child or children of parents that have passed away, and how this bill will not actually include them—they will not be able to actually access any sole parent benefits for these children. I just want to add that that could also mean the role of the grandparents as well, when parents pass away and their children end up living with their grandparents. The grandparents, in some cases, may be on a pension and may need to have some extra support to actually help them to look after those children, and I think that it does actually put them way behind in that support. I just feel for the grandparents that may be faced with a situation like this.

In the bill, it actually states that there’s nothing there for parents of a shared care situation, where one parent may have one child, the other might have two children, and both are caring for those children, but what it actually does is it adds hardship to one of the parents. So while one parent will be able to access the sole parent benefit, the other one will miss out. So what’s to say that that other parent might say, “Well, OK, you look after all the kids and we’ll leave it at that.”? It does put hardship on that other parent, and, at the end of the day, it also takes away the freedom of the parents to be able to parent their children and still be able to access that sole parent benefit as well.

I just want to also add, around the naming of the father of the child, that I think that that particular piece of policy that we, the National Party, had—whereby those accessing the DPB would have to name the father, otherwise it would penalise between $22 and $28 a week in their benefits—hasn’t actually come through in this bill, and I think that’s rather amazing after all the furore that the Labour-led Government went on about it when it came to light. I think that it seems a little bit hypocritical, but I’m pleased it’s not in there.

I want to also add, around when Minister Peeni Henare got up and said that this side of the House—the National Party—aren’t hard workers, that I have never ever been in a group that works this hard, if not harder, as a political party. We will continue to keep working hard. We always work hard. We work hard and give voice to the people that support us; even those that don’t support us, we also give them voice.

So this is going to take us some time to get through, but we will get through it and we will give it the best review that we can possibly give it, and we will continue to look at the various funny little idiosyncrasies that this Government seems to throw our way at the last minute. So I thought that was rather an insult to this side of the House, because we are hard workers.

Once again, I just want to say that this particular bill is actually supposed to help those that need it, and, to be honest, I don’t think it does help all of those that need it. I think it helps a certain section of the community, and that’s it. But what about all the others that are left to actually carry the rest of the childcare and other areas within this SOP, within this bill—what happens to them? I think it’s going to be those people that are going to be sorely disappointed with the areas within SOP 25 and all the other changes that are being made to this bill. It does disturb me that this is what the bottom line of this bill is going to do. It’s going to marginalise a number of good people who can deliver very good, caring services to the children and it’s going to just wipe them out. So even though we are supporting the bill in the second reading, we are not supporting SOP 25. Thank you.

JAN LOGIE (Green): Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I rise to take a call on this, the second reading of the Social Security Legislation Rewrite Bill. At first reading, I indicated that in spite of the Green Party having previously—many times—raised concerns about the complexity of the social security legislation, and having, in fact, called on the Government to simplify it, we were, sadly, unable to support this piece of legislation because, despite promises to the contrary, the bill that we were presented with by the National Government was not a policy-neutral rewrite. It was, in fact, an entrenchment and embedding of the National Party ideology that went as far as changing the principle of the Act, an Act that is pretty—it’s hard to see how anyone could interpret that as policy-neutral. So we were forced into opposing a piece of legislation that we had been calling for for years.

I do want to just reflect on the importance of this piece of legislation that we know is one of the most important pieces of legislation on our books. This legislation can support or deny people the ability to keep a roof over their heads, to put food on the table, or to have any semblance of dignity. We absolutely need this piece of legislation to deliver certainty and to be simple and easy to read. That is why the Green Party was calling for the rewrite of this legislation—to give us that foundation to work with.

As I think the Minister mentioned in the introduction, this is legislation that had been last rewritten in 1964. It has been amended over 131 times, with at least 54 new sections added to it since then. I think it has now over 500—or around 500—sections in it, including 50 points of discretion, where it is up to the judgment of the staff to be able to interpret the legislation and the need. This does not—did not—deliver certainty or make it easy for people who need this legislation to be sure of what their rights were. So we supported—and support now—a policy-neutral rewrite to give us a foundation for moving forward, to be able to move forward to a comprehensive overhaul of our welfare system to return the safety net to our society.

I want to address, too, the point that was made by Jo Hayes, the previous speaker, challenging the lack of transparency of a Supplementary Order Paper being introduced at this stage in the debate and there being no chance for the public to comment and participate in that process. The irony of that just cuts rather deep, considering we sat through the submissions on this bill, hearing from so many people telling us what needed to change in this legislation—that they did not want the social investment approach embedded in this legislation or the principles changed. They thought there was too much being put into regulation as opposed to the substance of the bill, and they raised serious, deep concerns about the legislation.

So a party that says that it’s very concerned that the public should have the opportunity to be able to comment and help make us make decisions doesn’t make sense to me. It doesn’t seem quite consistent that they would have heard all that information and not made any changes in response. So I really do want to call them out on that. I do also want to just draw people’s attention to their concern that this isn’t progressive enough.

It is traditional in second reading speeches to reference submissions, so I would like to do that now. I would like to share in this House some of the stories people told us in select committee, because it is very rare—in my time in Parliament in the over six years, it is seldom I have heard beneficiaries give submissions, whereas they did on this piece of legislation. What they told us was that there are some terrible things happening under the previous Government’s social investment approach to welfare.

We heard of a woman on supported living who had never had enough to cover all her basics. She didn’t have enough for petrol and food, so when her children had an event on at school that she needed to drive to, she would go without food. This is a woman on a supported living payment who is medically unable to be in employment.

We heard from a woman for whom slippers, heating, and new knickers are a luxury; a woman who regularly has to wait until benefit day to pay for her prescriptions; a woman who could not afford to go out for dinner for her daughter’s graduation.

We heard of a man who went into Work and Income to get a food parcel because he didn’t have enough to cover his bills and food. He told them how he didn’t have enough to buy food and so he had been eating at his girlfriend’s house, and then the staff interpreted this as being in a relationship in the nature of marriage and sought to cut his benefit.

We were told how life is such a constant struggle it doesn’t enable people to get well enough to get into work.

We heard from the Disabled Persons Assembly. One of the people presenting with them told us her story about how she had spent three years as a job seeker with a medical exemption because of her muscular dystrophy, which meant that she wasn’t able to work. She realised that she needed to transition to a supported living benefit, rather than being on a job seeker’s benefit. That was a really tough decision for her because she had spent her life as an HR manager and was used to being financially independent, and to come to terms with the fact that she was not able to be looking for work or to be in work was a tough personal decision.

Before she made the appointment, she spoke to three different Work and Income officers about what she needed to bring with her, and then cross-checked that against the information on the website. She turned up to her appointment with all of the documentation, and was told by her case worker that it was insufficient and that she would need a new medical certificate with different information on it. To get to that point, she’d had to make trips to her GP in Lower Hutt—in a different city—and a specialist in Wellington. This was exhausting and painful, and the Work and Income offices in her region do not have disability car parks outside, so she had to walk further than she should have. She then had to wait an hour on inappropriate seats, and then the appointment was another hour, again, on inappropriate seating.

She was upset to be told that the information she had taken so much effort to provide and get right was not enough. When she expressed this frustration, she was told the case manager couldn’t help unless the right information was provided, and when she was upset and stood up to leave, they called security because they were worried that she was a risk. Then it took a long time, three medical certificates, a Work and Income officer calling her GP and asking the GP to change her certificate, and three formal complaints before she finally managed to get the supported living allowance.

Is this what the Opposition heard and considered was fine? In all of their nine years in Government, they decided to ignore all of those stories and go ahead and embed their social investment approach, which has a concept of dependency in it which is exactly what the submitters told us feeds that type of response in the institution. It tells those workers in Work and Income that if you’re not in work, then, actually, there is a problem with you and that you need to be fixed, rather than given the support that you need. So I am so pleased to see legislation coming back in that gives us a foundation for a comprehensive overhaul to fix that and ensure that everyone is supported to live a decent life in this country.

Dr PARMJEET PARMAR (National): Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I’m taking this call to support the Social Security Legislation Rewrite Bill in its second reading, in its current form. So I want to make it very clear from the start that this side of the House will be supporting this bill in its second reading only in its current form.

It was the previous Government—that is, the National Government—that undertook this huge task of rewriting the Social Security Act 1964. This Act was passed 55 to 56 years ago. Yes, it started with around 130 sections, but now we have more than three times that number of sections in this legislation. So not only have we added more sections but we have amended almost every section of this Act, and, obviously, what happened with that is there was a lot of patchwork. It turned out that it was causing some confusion and a rewrite was needed. Given it’s huge legislation and very important legislation for our social welfare assistance, when we were in Government, we undertook this huge task of rewriting this legislation. So, yes, when we took this opportunity to rewrite this legislation, we also wanted to reflect the modern-day approach towards social welfare assistance.

I want to remind the member who has just resumed her seat, Jan Logie, that it was the National Government that increased benefits for the first time in 40-odd years for families with dependent children.

Jan Logie: Ha, ha!

Dr PARMJEET PARMAR: Yes—that’s not a laughing matter. It’s a very serious matter, because we care for children in families that are dependent on benefits.

So what we are seeing is that this Government is changing their stance hugely from the stance that they had when they were in Opposition, and that is reflected in the Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) that the Minister has come up with. So, yes, the bill went through the first reading, it went to the Social Services Committee, it went through the select committee scrutiny, and then it has come before the House for the second reading, and just this afternoon, before it came before the House for the second reading, what we see is that the Minister has come up with SOP 25, which is 500 pages long.

With this SOP, what I can see is that this Government and this Minister are letting down all the submitters, because submitters—[Interruption]—yes, the submitters took time—

Hon Carmel Sepuloni: She must have been asleep during the submission process.

Dr PARMJEET PARMAR: —and made a special effort. They took time—don’t undermine the submitters’ efforts, honourable Minister Carmel Sepuloni. Don’t undermine their contribution. So they turned up, thinking that they were being heard. Some appeared before the select committee, and I know that some of them actually travelled from far distances. The purpose of having a select committee process is giving the public of New Zealand an opportunity to be heard. Now it’s come back for the second reading—

Hon Member: They don’t like the public, Dr Parmar.

Dr PARMJEET PARMAR: Yes, they don’t. Now it’s come back for the second reading, and what we see is this Government, this Minister, coming up with this SOP. Yes, very rightly, the Hon Louise Upston wanted to seek the leave of this House to send this back to the select committee, but, no, the Government refused.

So how is it fair? How is it fair for those submitters, those who were thinking that they were heard—actually, they were not heard, because of the stance that this Government is taking with this SOP before the House. They think that they stand for children, that their policies are going to be children-focused, but no. We have several examples.

I just want to give a couple of examples, one which is outside of this bill, and that is my member’s bill, which is to see that all newborns are enrolled with general practitioners before they are six weeks old, but this Government will not support that legislation because it needs more resources. In this SOP, what we see is that the Government—just giving an example. If there’s a family, for some reason they split—for example, if they have four children and one parent decides to look after three dependent children and the other parents decides to look after one dependent child, then in that situation this Government thinks that both parents getting a sole parent benefit is not fair.

So what I see is that there’s a huge change in their stance since they have come in Government, from the stance they had when they were in Opposition. So, yes, with this SOP and the stance that this Government is taking, actually, they are really letting down all the submitters. So we will support this bill only in its current form. Thank you.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: The next call is a split call.

GREG O’CONNOR (Labour—Ōhāriu): I stand to speak on the Social Security Legislation Rewrite Bill. Like so many things when you first come to the House, when we get a new piece of legislation before us, it is something of an awakening, an understanding. As someone who just likes to look at the history—and someone looking at my age would say I’ve been part of some of that history—how we’ve arrived at where we are today, I think it’s pretty important we understand that.

I see that this piece of legislation went back to 1938—the Social Security Act of that year. I’m reminded of going through an elderly uncle’s—great-uncle’s, actually—belongings after he died, and reading his diaries. He was one of those people who was unemployed during the Great Depression, the sugar-bag years. Seeing a slip of paper that he’d kept where he was ordered to go to a work camp and leave the family behind—it was necessary for him to do so, just so they could survive. So it’s really important we do understand in our history of where we’ve arrived, and why such legislation was important.

What makes New Zealand so much different from many other places—and I think those who are critical of our system we have today, who think somehow it’s too soft, I invite them to go to places that don’t have systems like this in place, and they’ll understand just why we have it and how it is something we should be so proud of. So something that really forms the basis of that which we are so proud of in New Zealand should be updated. It should be something that’s modern, and it should be something that is relevant.

So the rewrite bill, obviously, is the second time this has been done. The Social Security Act 1964 was passed—

Andrew Bayly: Looking forward to hearing about this bill, Gregory.

GREG O’CONNOR: As I say to those members, just understanding that life is a building block; you can’t fix things, just one little short thing, without a full in-depth understanding. If that member would sit down and be quiet, he would just understand and he will get such a necessary lesson.

The Social Security Act: the Minister in 1964 then talked about the present Act—nearly 26 years old—being amended approximately 30 times. It is extremely difficult to follow, both by the general public and by those whose responsibility it is to administer the Act. For that reason alone, the Government thinks a consolidation is well overdue.

I come to this Act and why we need to rewrite it. Well, it’s just long overdue for a rewrite. There are over 500 sections in the current Act, and only four remain unchanged while other sections have been repealed or amended, sometimes hundreds of times. Again, I go back to one of the most important pieces of legislation that makes it our point of difference so often with the rest of the world. It will make social security legislation easier for people to navigate, use, and understand—again, bringing the legislation into line with the modern times.

I speak about one particular aspect of it that is straight from the bill. This one, Mr Bayly will be pleased to know, has the rewrite bill talking about the role of nurse practitioners in the new legislation. Although I only have one minute and 10 seconds left, Mr Bayly, I will endeavour in this time to educate you through the bill.

The rewrite bill enacts existing provisions, allowing nurse practitioners to give certificates to certify that the capacity for work of an applicant for job seeker support on the grounds of health condition, injury, or disability is affected by their health condition, injury, or disability; the nature of this problem; the extent to which their capacity is affected; and how long it is likely to last. Once again, in bringing this into modern times—nurses. We’ve seen in so much other legislation that nurse practitioners have been given so many more other roles that were the sole province of medical practitioners in their day. So this, again, will ensure that for those who it is absolutely necessary—they do get the assistance.

There is a little bit of an attitude that anybody who is on welfare is in some way undeserving: “It’s about time they got off their backsides.” I think that so many of the other failures that we have bring people to that place, so it’s important that when this time in their lives arrives, we have a fair, modern piece of legislation which ensures they get what they need. So I commend this.

MAUREEN PUGH (National): I stand tonight to speak to the Social Security Legislation Rewrite Bill in its second reading here tonight. There’s no question that this is an extremely huge piece of work. In fact, the original—the Social Security Act of 1964—has been very overdue for this overhaul, but it was such an enormous task that had been filed away into the too-hard basket. So who was it who took the initiative to make the legislation clearer, more user-friendly, and appropriate for the 21st century?

Hon Members: Who?

MAUREEN PUGH: The former National-led Government, of course. This bill is simply about making the law clear, about updating the language so that it is fit for implementation in the modern world.

The Social Security Legislation Rewrite Bill will repeal the Social Security Act of 1964 and the Social Welfare (Reciprocity Agreements, and New Zealand Artificial Limb Service) Act of 1990. It does provide consistency and clarity across all of those Acts.

I support this bill in its current form, but what I do not support is this [Holds up Supplementary Order Paper 25]. Earlier today in this House, I heard a very passionate speech from a Green Party member who insisted that that Government believes in this process, that it believes in the select committee, and that it believes in the right of the public to be able to have its say, yet this afternoon we received this, and we have only had time to print it and bind it before the second reading debate happened in this House today. What we have got here is a 501-page rewrite of a rewrite.

Today, there was no time for the public to scrutinise this bill, because we have short-circuited the select committee stage. Now the public’s opportunity to speak to these changes in this Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) is gone. I think it is disingenuous of this Government to dump a document of this magnitude—and it does propose changes to the original bill after the public has made its submissions.

There were concerns with this SOP and the original bill, and they were raised by the Regulations Review Committee. There were three regulation-making powers that were highlighted, that provide for the making of regulations to identify persons or benefits that are exempt from requirements set out in the bill. The Regulations Review Committee was really clear about the fact that they should set out clear purposes for the granting of exemptions, that they should set out clear criteria for the granting of exemptions and be consistent. They should give good reasons to state them in the exemptions instrument itself and they should expire within five years and should contain sunset clauses to that effect. But we don’t know if those issues have been dealt with in this SOP because there’s simply no time to scrutinise it.

There was no explanation for the purpose of these exemptions, no criteria included, no requirement to give reasons for the exemptions, and no time limit on the regulations made after this clause. So there is a lot of work still to be done, and especially now that this SOP has been dumped on us today, I say that this process has done the public no service at all. I thank the Regulations Review Committee for their feedback. It’s signed by the illustrious Andrew Bayly.

PRIYANCA RADHAKRISHNAN (Labour): Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. It is indeed an honour to stand and take a call on the second reading of the Social Security Legislation Rewrite Bill. As members opposite have pointed out time and again over the course of tonight’s debate, it is indeed a huge and significant bill.

I want to start with a well-known whakataukī: He aha te mea nui o te ao? He tangata, he tangata, he tangata. What’s the most important thing in the world? It’s the people, it’s the people, it’s the people. That’s what underscores this bill, or at least that’s what should underscore this bill, and that’s what underscores our rewrite of the social security legislation.

New Zealand has a proud history when it comes to leading the world on progressive social reform. In fact, it was the first Labour Government, back in the 1930s, who led on a wide range of progressive social reform and set the tone, really, for this country’s economic and welfare policies for a long time. My colleague Greg O’Connor has reflected a little bit on the history and the roots of this legislation rewrite bill, so I won’t rehash that except to say that the 1938 Act was a cornerstone of that Government’s welfare programme, in fact. The values that underpinned that Act and continue to underpin today’s rewrite were the fact that we believe, on this side of the House, that everyone has the right to live with dignity.

What we do agree on—both sides of the House—with regard to this particular bill is the fact that it is disjointed, that it’s difficult to navigate, and that those to whom this bill will apply specifically don’t find this bill user-friendly. We’ve heard, of course, that there are about 500 different parts, and there are a whole bunch of different discretions that are contained within this bill. And, of course, all of us, regardless of which side of the House we’re on, agree with the fact that it needs to be user-friendly and that it needs to be modernised and that it needs to be cleaned up. So we definitely agree with that—the modern drafting style, the logical structure, and all of that, and making things much more discrete.

But here’s what we’re concerned with, on this side of the House. This is particularly taken from, I guess, the Labour Party’s minority view at the Social Services Committee, but it holds true obviously today as well. The emergency benefit—so this is one part of the bill that we don’t agree with, and that we’ve consistently disagreed with: the fact that it will change to what the Opposition members, formerly in Government, wanted to call the exceptional circumstances benefit. It wasn’t just a name change; it was also that with this name change came a whole bunch of work obligations. The fact of the matter, though, is that the primary demographic of those who were availing themselves of this benefit are those who are over 65 years and don’t qualify for superannuation, largely because of residency constraints. So these are people who need this benefit in order to be able to survive. What the Opposition members wanted to do was to change that around and bring in work obligations as well, which is completely unfair.

The other aspect of the bill that we found incredibly problematic was the redirection of benefit payments. They can happen, as it stands, without consent. But under the current Act, there needs to be good cause. What this bill would have done if it had been passed was to remove that clause, remove that need for good cause to be proven, which then means that you can just redirect benefit payments, and it largely could have been, and would have been, to the detriment of those who are most vulnerable. So when Opposition members then stand up and pretend that this was a bill that was being championed because they are those who fight for the underdog—I call you out on that because it absolutely was not.

The other aspect of this bill that members opposite have been waxing lyrical about is the fact that the bill allows both parents in split custody care situations to be eligible for sole parent support, but those in shared parenting arrangements cannot access this. Now they’ve stood there and they’ve lauded this aspect of the bill, and they’ve said, “Oh, but it’s so unfair.” Now, if you split the family up and one parent has custody of two children and the other parent has custody of two children, well they should avail themselves of this. Why didn’t they then change it to allow for those in shared parenting arrangements to avail themselves of that as well? Why not actually keep the family together and ensure that we’re not actually forcing families to split their children up, just to avail themselves of this? Why didn’t you do it the other way?

But regardless of all that, what we on this side of the House actually find disingenuous—and that’s a word that’s been bandied about by members opposite as well—is this: members opposite claimed that this was a policy-neutral rewrite. But was it, though? Because they snuck in all these things. They snuck in all these absolutely punitive measures. They snuck in the fact that what they wanted to really do was to write into legislation their social investment approach.

At that point, let me bring in a part of one submitter’s submission. I’m going to read that out in a bit, because it’s absolutely worth listening to. It’s the bit about the social investment approach. It’s about enshrining that in legislation, in a rather sneaky manner, that we object to. We’ve consistently objected to that, and we continue to.

This was a submission from E tū, and I quote: “Unfortunately”—[Interruption] Well, yes, they are the largest private sector union, with 55,000 members. If you want to turn your noses up at that, that’s your call. But this was their submission: “Unfortunately, the Ministry of Social Development has an Investment approach that seems to focus solely on the cost of people receiving a benefit and to focus on investing in employment and work readiness services and supports to reduce the long term costs within [the] Vote Social Development [budget].”

They then go on to point out, quite rightly, that this is about reducing the people of New Zealand to a financial cost—“future liabilities that need to be dealt with.” That is the social investment approach that members opposite laud. It goes on to say: “Often people go on benefits through circumstances that no-one would wish on another: redundancies, death of partners, relationship breakup, unexpected pregnancy, ill-health, mental illness, to name a few. These are not future liabilities that need to be reduced within a budget line. These are people that are hurting, are stressed, and need to be treated with dignity and we help them get back to being in a position to help themselves.” That is what a true investment approach would look like, but instead it was this whole limiting of liabilities that members opposite wanted to enshrine.

The public scrutiny of legislation has come up. Again, members opposite, multiple members, have gone on and on about this and pointed to the fact that—I don’t know what they pointed to, but they were trying to make out that we didn’t agree with the public scrutiny of legislation. Can I just point out that this bill, when it went through select committee, received 121 submissions—52 of them wanted to be heard. But the time was reduced to six weeks. When those of us on this side of the House were in Opposition we pushed for that to be given an extension, so that members of the public had more than six weeks to submit on a bill of such substance. But did they agree? No—it was truncated. The submission period was truncated by the former Government to actually shut people out. And then when those who came to submit actually submitted, were they heard? No. The submissions fell on deaf ears. Did they change?

Do they understand what “policy-neutral” means? We’ve been hit on the head on this side of the House for not including substantive policy in this rewrite, but let me just point out to you: this was supposed to be policy-neutral. It was your former Government that snuck in bits of substantive policy; now, when we remove it, you slam us on the head for that? Do you not understand? Do the members opposite not understand what “policy-neutral” actually means?

I’ll end on this point: we’ve heard from members opposite that they’ve been slammed with a Supplementary Order Paper, but others have quoted it. So which one is it? You can’t have it both ways. Thank you.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: I’d like to try and have it both ways, actually.

NICOLA WILLIS (National): I rise to speak on the Social Security Legislation Rewrite Bill 2016. This was a very sensible piece of legislation. It sought to do very sensible things: to rewrite the Social Security Act 1964 to make it clearer; to deal with some of the inconsistencies; and to make sure that some of the sections, which had been amended as many as 286 times, made sense to members of the public. The Government was doing a good job of it, and then today we get landed with this: a 501-page Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) dumped on us a couple of hours before the second reading—[Interruption]

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! Order! Come on.

NICOLA WILLIS: And so we ask ourselves—we ask ourselves: what is so important in this SOP that means that there should be no departmental disclosure statement, that means there should be no regulatory impact statement, and that means there should be no public scrutiny—that there should be no select committee process? We ask ourselves: what is in this SOP that’s so important? Let me answer that question.

The really important thing that this SOP has in it is removing something that members on the opposite side of the House say is a terrible, awful thing, and that is this principle in the bill on social investment. The principle, in clause 4(e), reads this way, and I challenge members opposite me to explain to the member of the public why it is bad to say a principle of this legislation should be “to help achieve the best possible outcome for people at risk of long-term welfare dependency”, and “MSD may identify appropriate assistance, support, and services, under [that] Act, for [these] people.” Now, members opposite us oppose that principle, and so they land on us an SOP that seeks to overturn what is the most sensible policy for ensuring that people are not trapped in lives of long-term welfare dependency.

So we ask ourselves: what is it that will come into this bill instead of such a sensible principle? Is it the things that the members opposite have been talking about—things like making sure that people shouldn’t have to name the father of their child? Is it things like ensuring that people in the public shouldn’t have to face too many obligations when they are seeking welfare? Well, we don’t know, because it’s not contained in this bill and it’s not contained in this SOP. But I think we would be right, on this side of the House, to fear that a Government that will land an SOP this big without scrutiny may also seek to remove some of the fundamental principles of this Act in due course, which require people to be in work, which say that being in work is a good thing, that say that paid employment offers the best opportunity for people to achieve social and economic well-being, and that say that that should be our priority. That’s why the principle of social investment was in this bill: because it allows those things to happen.

On this side of the House we proudly support those principles, and we oppose Government members landing SOPs like this that do not further the bill, that are not for the betterment of New Zealanders, and that defy common sense. Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker.

Hon AUPITO WILLIAM SIO (Minister for Pacific Peoples): Madam Deputy Speaker, the Hon Carmel Sepuloni has had to table 500 Supplementary Order Papers (SOPs)—

Hon Carmel Sepuloni: 500 pages.

Hon AUPITO WILLIAM SIO: Five hundred pages. Five hundred pages—sorry—of Supplementary Order Paper to amend and remove the punitive measures that that particular Government, now in Opposition, had introduced, when this bill was supposed to be policy-neutral. So the question is: what is being policy-neutral?

I would draw your attention to the original Social Security Act of 1938, where the overarching purpose of that is set out in the preamble of the legislation, and it reads: “An Act to provide for the Payment of Superannuation Benefits and of other Benefits designed to safeguard the People of New Zealand from Disabilities arising from Age, Sickness, Widowhood, Orphanhood, Unemployment, or other Exceptional [Circumstances]; … and, further, to provide … other Benefits as may be necessary to maintain and promote the Health and General [Well-being] of the Community.”

That’s the policy setting that should have remained and should remain right throughout this process, but the Opposition changed it, and that’s what we’re resetting tonight. Furthermore, the underlying principle of the Act said that every citizen had a right to a reasonable standard of living and that it was a community responsibility to ensure that its members were safeguarded against the economic ills from which they could not protect themselves. That’s what needs to remain constant throughout the rewrite that we’re doing on this legislation, but that Opposition, when they were in Government, changed all that. They introduced punitive measures which weren’t about helping and supporting those in need; they were about punishing them. They were about forcing them into things that they had no control over.

This new Government will now continue this work because it is significant work, and because when we were in Opposition we objected to that previous form. This new Government’s vision is for a welfare system that ensures people have an adequate income and standard of living, are treated with and can live in dignity, and are able to participate meaningfully in their communities. Progressing the rewrite bill now will provide a solid legislative platform to undertake the overhaul of the welfare system, and will assist users of the social security system. I want to acknowledge the Hon Carmel Sepuloni, a new Minister with a huge portfolio. She’s come in and seen the mess that that previous Government has left, so she’s gotten to work and this is the result. It will pass—it will pass—because if I had a bucket, that bucket would be filled with the crocodile tears that I’ve heard time and time again from that Opposition.

You see, the underlying principle of the 1938 Act was also carried through in the 1964 Act, and this is what one of the—during the neutral rewrite of the 1938 Act, in the Minister of Social Security’s first reading speech, that Minister said “The present Act, which is nearly 26 years old, has been amended approximately 30 times and is extremely difficult to follow, both by the general public and by those whose responsibility it is to administer the Act. For that reason alone the Government thinks a consolidation is well overdue.” In 1964, the Social Security Act had 135 sections; it’s now since grown to over 500 sections, with only four remaining unchanged.

Why do we need to rewrite the Act? The 1964 Act is long overdue for a rewrite, and the Social Security Act 1964 is one of the most important pieces of New Zealand legislation. It sets out the financial support available to people who aren’t able to fully support themselves and their families, and the rewrite bill will make social security legislation easier for people to navigate, use, and understand. But I think, more importantly, it’s about delivering the help and support to those who are less fortunate than many of us and to those whose situation is because of things that are out of their control.

I draw your attention to the Social Services Committee, when they received the bill in the first instance, and the select committee made a useful contribution in identifying areas where the bill could be further tidied up. The committee responded to a submission by practice nurses who want to make life easier for the patients who consult them. The changes prompted by that submission will save patients from having to wait for a further appointment with a doctor before they can have the documentation they need for their benefit assistance.

I don’t know what it is that that other side in the Opposition keep harping on about as if their rewrite, in the initial stages, was truly neutral. It wasn’t neutral. If it was neutral, we wouldn’t be having this debate at all. The fact that you’ve got 500 pages introduced by the Minister is evidence that there is a lot of work to be able to bring the legislation back to what it was originally set up to do, and that is to be able to safeguard the people of New Zealand from disabilities arising from age, sickness, widowhood, orphanhood, and unemployment and, further, to provide other benefits as may be necessary to maintain and promote.

In no other time has it ever been more important than now. Because of the circumstances that many in this country of ours face after nine years of neglect, it is now more critical that the rewrite takes place and that we remove what the previous Government had done by setting the course into something that the framers of the 1938 Act had never envisioned. I don’t know how it is that members on that side could get up in this House and talk about what they had done by grounding our safety net, which is what I call our social welfare system, into an instrument where they can hold up punitive measures to punish people.

How do you encourage somebody that is unable to find a job? [Interruption] Sorry, Madam Deputy Speaker. How does one encourage somebody that is in a desperate situation—a solo parent, young children to feed—when that previous Government would tell those people, “If you don’t find a job, we will cut your benefit. If you don’t get an interview, we will deem it that you are not genuine about looking for a job.”? That’s the kind of goings-on under the previous Government.

Simon O’Connor: What a load of rubbish.

Hon AUPITO WILLIAM SIO: That member might say it’s a load of crap, but it isn’t. That member, that member most of all—how sad it is that that member, who should know better, would say something like that in this House? I’m ashamed that he’s a member of this House, because a lot of people think that he would be defending the needy, the poor, the orphaned, the disabled, and those who are widowed, but he doesn’t—he doesn’t. He pretends he does, but he doesn’t. Certainly, that kind of commentary should reveal to his constituency that he’s all talk but he can’t deliver, and for nine long years he associated himself with a Government that didn’t have a heart, that didn’t show any kindness whatsoever to the very people that they now pretend to be defending.

As I said, if I had a bucket, it would be filled with the kind of crocodile tears that I’ve heard over and over again from the members of that side. Shame on them. Shame on them if they’re now going to be supporting this. They disguise their rhetoric by saying it was a neutral rewrite, but we now know better: 500 pages—500 pages to redo and rewrite the damage that they were trying to cause to this country. Shame on them.

Amendments recommended by the Social Services Committee by majority agreed to.

Bill read a second time.

Bills

Brokering (Weapons and Related Items) Controls Bill

In Committee

Part 1 Preliminary provisions

Hon DAVID PARKER (Attorney-General): Thank you, Madam Chair. I rise to take a call in respect of Part 1 of the Brokering (Weapons and Related Items) Controls Bill. I made a contribution in respect of the second reading of this, and, when I read this legislation, I thought that I’d like to have some clarity as to what the effect is of the definition of “brokering activity”, which is set out in clause 4 of the bill.

In clause 4, it says “has the meaning set out in section 5’”. Section 5—or clause 5 of the bill, as it is more properly described now—says, “In this Act, brokering activity (a) means arranging, facilitating, or negotiating a transaction that involves the international transfer of weapons or related items from a place outside New Zealand to another place outside New Zealand; and (b) includes,—(i) in relation to a transaction described in paragraph (a), acting as an agent for a person involved in the transaction or as an intermediary between 2 or more persons involved in the transaction; and”—also includes—“(ii) acquiring or storing weapons or … items in a place outside [of] New Zealand for the purpose of transferring [those] weapons or related items … outside [of] New Zealand; but (c) does not include the provision of service that is merely ancillary to [that] … (for example, the provision of administrative, customs broking, or financial services …”.

So it seems to me that we’re going after more than the person who is the broker; we’re going for agents of the broker. But I’m just wondering, as I read this, what level of involvement is required on the part of a New Zealander in order for them to be found an agent.

Now, one of the reasons why this is important is that this is an unusual piece of legislation in that it grants New Zealand courts the ability to prosecute New Zealanders for their actions outside of New Zealand. As I’ve already said, this also includes the facilitating or negotiating of transactions that involve the transfer of weapons outside of New Zealand. My understanding is that that work can, effectively, be done by a New Zealander outside of New Zealand and it will still be caught within the New Zealand criminal code, because, of course, a breach of this legislation carries with it penalties, which are set out in other parts of the Act. But, in order for that to happen, you have to be caught as being someone who is involved in a brokering activity.

This includes dual-use goods, and there’s some complexity around this. So I would be grateful if the Minister could explain—not immediately, but before the end of this debate—what level of involvement is required for you to be seen to be an agent. I don’t see that specifically. I know this is legislation that the Minister has inherited from the prior Government and that it’s been well considered by the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee, but as I read the legislation I wasn’t clear what, in practice, would amount to that level of activity that would be caught by the bill. I know that there will have been some actual examples, probably, given by officials to the select committee as to what amounts to involvement that would be sufficient to bring this into play.

In the one minute and fifty-nine, fifty-eight—in the minute or so that I have available, I would also look to see whether we could also have some clarity as to what dual-use goods means. I understand that goods can have a civilian use but are intended for military end-use and they fall within a specified category. Could we have some indication as to how we’re going to find what is on that specified category? I’m thinking, for example, of global positioning systems. We know that some of the work that, for example, is done with global positioning systems—that that work can be used for a farm purpose or to position a device relative to an orchard, but it can also be used for military purposes. So we’re going to have to have some way in which we practically define that, so that we don’t catch, unintendedly, the things that shouldn’t be caught.

SIMON O’CONNOR (National—Tāmaki): Excellent. Inspired choice for the call, Madam Chair—humble, of course, as well. Look, I’m very pleased to be standing up in this committee stage. I was very pleased to be chairing the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee over the recent weeks and, as I always do, I want to thank the committee members for their work, and in particular the Minister, and the officials as well, who provided us with fantastic advice. I will apologise in advance that some of the questions I ask are as much, I suspect, for the education of the committee and the public than a lack of knowledge myself, because I noted in the second reading speech that this is actually a very good bill.

The overall context, without taking too much time, is we’re implementing a treaty here to bring into effect an international approach to arms brokering. Really importantly, we’re talking about, effectively, a third party who’s bringing weapons from one group or supplier and getting it to another. So we’re not talking about the selling directly of military weapons made in New Zealand. I mention that because a number of people, as they’ve approached me round this bill, are often questioning why there is nothing in this bill in any of the parts, including within the definitions, of why we’re not mentioning the selling of weapons from New Zealand. Fundamentally, there are other pieces of legislation which deal with that.

In terms of Part 1, I’d be interested to hear from the Minister in the chair, Tracey Martin. It’s really a small element, but clause 3 around the purpose—it’s an ordering question to the Minister. The purposes of the proposed Act both make sense. The first is to regulate the brokering of weapons and related items, and the second is to support New Zealand’s commitments under the Arms Trade Treaty. It’s probably a pedantic element, but why’s it in that order? I mean, in effect, this is an Arms Trade Treaty. Is that not the first purpose to bring about in this bill—to make sure we are good international citizens and that, as a consequence, New Zealand wishes to regulate the brokering of weapons and related items?

So it’s a small item. It wasn’t something which the committee spent a lot of time discussing but it’s—I suppose, again, when we look at the catalyst, Minister, for this bill, it was a treaty that was signed, I think, in New York a few years back. I’m sorry that the date slips my mind. You may be able to elucidate further for the benefit of the committee. But we are reacting to an international treaty. So it’s a simple point, but why has the Minister continued to allow paragraphs (a) and (b) of clause 3 to be in the order that they are?

The speaker that just resumed his seat, David Parker, did begin to pick up some really interesting points around brokering activities. Really importantly in the bill, this starts within clause 4, the interpretation clause, and then points to clause 5 around the meaning of brokering activities. As I indicated at the start, what we’re discussing here—and perhaps the best way is just purely to illustrate it—is a New Zealand citizen who, for example, is buying weaponry from Russia and selling it to Syria. That is what this bill attempts to capture and to stop. Well, I suppose an element which would be useful from the Minister, if time allows, is just to elucidate what is and is not noted as brokering activity—just how wide does that go?

The definitions are quite clear, I think. I think the select committee was relatively confident in them, but it’s always a welcome opportunity when we have the committee of the whole House to hear the Minister in charge of the bill, or a representative of the Minister in charge of the bill, to go into a little bit of depth. As the bill—the proposed Act—states in clause 5, brokering includes “arranging, facilitating, or negotiating a transaction that involves the international transfer of weapons”. So, again, we’re not expecting that a New Zealand citizen is the one necessarily picking up said items. It could just simply be, I’m assuming, facilitating activity online, be that through email or, God forbid, some sort of TradeMe equivalent in foreign arms. In fact, I shouldn’t be surprised, actually—one thinks of the dark net. We can think of a number of ways.

So it’s really just to give surety to the committee, if the Minister would, through the officials, talk about whether the definition of brokering activity—being “arranging, facilitating, or negotiating”—is full enough and captures it. I think we don’t want, as a committee, to fall in to the traps of a hole. We’ve even just seen in the paper today a small element around the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment where someone has missed out on payments. These are oversights which happen, so just some surety there would be most welcome.

In clause 4 within Part 1 there’s also the whole question—[Bell rung] Gosh, such enthusiasm from the other side—look, it’s fantastic.

I would just want to end, if I could, this contribution around the question of dual-use goods. Again it’s been lightly touched on by the Hon David Parker, who has just resumed his seat. A bit more elucidation from the Minister would be useful, probably, at this stage, just for that broader understanding of the committee. Not all items which are made are purely for military purposes. I mean, the most simple example, of course, is when we manufacture firearms. I’m not sure—although it would be interesting, Minister, if you could tell the committee—that anyone in New Zealand is manufacturing firearms. You can make a firearm, obviously, for the purposes of war but firearms can also be used, as is quite appropriate at the moment, for a bit of duck shooting. It’s similar too with guidance chips.

Obviously, we have a very successful company in New Zealand, Raycom, which makes guidance chips, which are particularly of use in joint direct attack munition bombs, if my knowledge serves me right, but also these chips can be used for other guidance services. One only does need to think of global positioning systems and so forth. So how exactly is the Minister’s ministry going to delineate between these dual-use goods, because particularly in the brokering space, and we heard this through the select committee, there are those items which it is just abundantly clear that New Zealanders should not be brokering between countries. But once you get into that dual-use area it gets rather complicated. We can see with countries overseas—the likes of Syria come to mind, even North Korea at the moment—that when certain items are being blocked for military purposes it can actually have an impact to the civilian side.

So I think the committee would—well, I certainly would and I suspect the committee would—appreciate some greater surety and clarity around how dual-use goods are defined, to give some certainty to us. I’m particularly thinking around the humanitarian side. We don’t want to end up being so tough on the brokering, or the military use of goods, that we are affecting the civilian population. I won’t go into it for too long, but there are enough stories that come out of the international media where various medical devices and products, particularly in the pharmaceutical space, are actually blocked because they supposedly have a military component to them, be it the nature of the drug or the fact that said drug or said medical device could be deployed by, or employed for, military personnel. But the corollary or the flip side to that, of course, is that it can help a civilian.

So it’s a very particular point, I have to say. When officials were in front of our committee they gave, I think, a very good explanation around these various dual-use goods but a little bit of elaboration would be good there. I suspect that plays into clause 4(1)(a), following around the whole notion of what is a military end-use, and it is clarified that—I’m pretty sure it is my understanding—it’s not only a specific and singular military use but there are elements which may both have a military and a non-military use.

The other elements of the definitions, I think, are relatively clear. In terms of the notions of dual-use goods it really begins to end with clause 4—I’ve lost track. We’re still in clause 4(1), to do with “strategic goods list”. I think it’s a really good decision in Supplementary Order Paper 24. Something that we did miss in the select committee is that, of course, we have the Customs and Excise Act being updated, so I think some our previous references were around 1996 and now most of it comes in to play in 2018. So, Minister, I think that’s been a good update from your officials. It’s really important that that Strategic Goods List is publicly available. I don’t believe that’s specifically noted in the—oh, I do apologise; we have added that in. In fact, I’m sure, as I look to my colleague Louisa Wall across the Chamber, there’s an element that we were keen to have, in that here we are noting that the secretary’s required to maintain and to publish that Strategic Goods List.

What might be of interest, whether or not the Minister can answer, is how often that will be updated. It wasn’t something the committee prescribed. I’m sure there’s a fairness and a natural justice, but we’re not expecting the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade to be updating the Strategic Goods List every five minutes, but is it going to be every 3 months 6 months, a year? Some sort of indication around that would be quite useful.

Look, I have a few other contributions to make, but I think I’ve left the Minister a number of questions—brokered, if you will—and thoughts in my mind, and I look forward to the response.

Dr DUNCAN WEBB (Labour—Christchurch Central): Thank you for picking me from such a great array of possible speakers, Madam Chair.

Mr Simon O’Connor’s been talking about the dual-use goods list, and I will just touch on that very briefly, because, of course, the Strategic Goods List does set out exactly what the dual-use goods are—that is that everything after about page 30 falls into the dual-use goods. But in terms of that list, I would put to the Minister in the chair, Tracey Martin, whether there are satisfactory controls around that list, because as the bill says in the definition section, that list may be added to by a Gazette notice. Now, that, as I understand it, is a departmental decision and not a ministerial one. It is a very significant move to put something on that dual goods list, because people may be dealing in those items without realising that they have a military application. But, as we work through the legislation, we can see that the consequences of doing that are very significant. We know that people don’t tend to want to fall foul of the law through ignorance, but it does seem that it would be possible.

The Gazette notice is a disallowable instrument, but I would put it to the Minister that perhaps—I’d be interested in the Minister’s response as to whether that alone is a satisfactory protection. This will be a significant part of a network of legislation we have both in New Zealand and elsewhere in terms of arms control. As Mr O’Connor noted, it’s implementing the Arms Trade Treaty, and that is very, very important. Minister Parker also identified the question about what a brokering activity is, and whilst he looked at the activity itself, I would inquire as to whether, in fact, the cross-border nature of that definition is in fact appropriate, because the definition requires the international transfer of weapons. So if we’re going to be engaged in some way in brokering international transfer, we need to be registered and have a permit.

My concern is intranational transfers of weapons—that is to say a transfer of weapons which might occur entirely within a conflict zone like Afghanistan or Syria. Now, borders in those areas are so very porous that there’s a very good argument to say that that is a transfer and a brokering transaction, which should be regulated. Even though it happens entirely within one country’s national borders, there’s a very good argument to say that it should be regulated by the law of the State of the citizen who’s undertaking that transaction, because we know that the law of Syria or the law of Afghanistan—the civil society is not functioning in those jurisdictions, and that’s when we need to stand up and undertake our international duty. So, I would ask the Minister to consider the international transfer of weapons and whether it should, in fact, be any transfer of weapons in a foreign State or across a foreign State’s borders, for that very reason.

The other question is overseas equivalent regimes—so if a person is complying with an overseas regime, that is, in fact, a defence to any charge and you’re considered to be complying with it. The question is: what is an equivalent overseas regime? Obviously, it’s not going to be a mirror regime. In fact, our Strategic Goods List is a lot longer and a lot more extensive than a lot of other strategic goods lists in less-developed countries. So, in terms of that equivalent overseas regime, does it just mean a loose brokering and permitting regime, or does it mean a fully fledged and robust regime which, essentially, tracks our own legislation in quite a close way? There is a danger. There is the danger of finding the weakest link. So the difficulty is that arms brokers will simply look for the jurisdiction with the weakest regulatory regime and comply with that. If that happens, that’s really going to undermine to the Arms Trade Treaty and everything that New Zealand is aiming for. So that’s a further question I would ask the Minister to address.

Dr SHANE RETI (National—Whangarei): Thank you, Madam Chair. It’s a pleasure to speak to this bill and to be a part of this debate. I think it’s interesting to look at the concerns that MPs brought to the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee, how that was shaped by the select committee, whether there were still concerns at the end of the process, and how that aligned with the various submitters. I think if we look across some of the party positions—we heard my colleague David Parker speak a moment ago about his initial concerns and clearly still raising some of them with the Minister around dual use, and, in fact, he raised that at the first reading. Now, at that time, we were all actually working through the Rocket Lab legislation, and so we were doing parallel legislation, looking at dual-purpose situations—particularly GPS, as he’s mentioned. Although, I would note that one of the submitters also raised the question around drones and what the position with drones would be—clearly, some could be for sport but some might also have a military basis.

I think the question’s been put to the Minister: does the legislation correctly address this? I think we’ve heard the chair of the select committee talk to recommendation (b), clause 4(2), that does provide some clarity around dual use, but I think there is some work for the Minister to do there. I think Barry Coates also brought some concerns initially to the committee—some of them, I think, have been addressed in the committee process, some not. More specifically, Barry raised the question around whether mercenaries should be included in this sort of legislation. Now, I wasn’t privileged to be part of this committee, but I have had a brief look through and I don’t see that addressed. Maybe it’s outside the scope, or it’s something new that hasn’t subsequently been addressed, and maybe the Minister in the chair, Tracey Martin, could talk to that also.

If we then go across to the other party who I would mention, New Zealand First, Ron Mark was very emphatic as he came to select committee as to what his position was. He said in the House that, basically, this should be an amendment to the Customs and Excise Act, and I think his words were “What sort of palaver and waste of time is this?” It’s kind of interesting, now that it’s in the name of his leader, Winston Peters, that suddenly the member is quiet on that. Be that as it may, that was certainly what he brought to the first reading.

I think if we look at the nine submitters, there are a wide range of submitters. I think their submissions, as I looked at them, were thoughtful. They did raise questions that the officials needed to go away and work on. As we look at the recommendations that come from the select committee, as we interpret them, they seem to be addressing relatively well the concerns of the submitters. I think the recommendations are clear. I think the points we’ve heard raised—again from David Parker—around dual use do need just a little bit further clarification, but, otherwise, I thought, as the chair of the select committee had said, that most of the work was pretty straightforward.

So, there are a few points for the Minister to talk to. Again, I’m interested to know if New Zealand First are assuaged by this—with their vehement opposition to the first reading, did the select committee process change or help that? Are the Greens feeling that in Barry Coates’ absence the select committee addressed his questions around mercenaries, as well? I’d be very interested to hear that sort of response from the Minister, as well. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Hon TRACEY MARTIN (Minister of Internal Affairs): Kia ora. Thank you, Madam Chair. Just to address, or try to address, some of the questions raised by the honourable members: in the first instance, if I can just pick up on Mr Simon O’Connor’s question with regard to the order of the purposes: “(a) regulate the brokering of weapons and related items; and (b) support New Zealand’s commitments under the Arms Trade Treaty.” Mr O’Connor requested an explanation as to why they were in that order—for example, he suggested that that order should, in fact, be reversed because, in his view, this bill was here, in reality, to merely enforce the Arms Trade Treaty. My response to Mr O’Connor’s question is that, in the first instance, we tend to give items priority that affect New Zealand and what we are doing inside a New Zealand context. So when we regulate, we regulate inside the New Zealand context, and that is why clause 3(a) is “regulate the brokering of weapons and related items”. In the second instance, this is a supporting mechanism for a trade treaty and an arms trade treaty, as Mr O’Connor quite rightly pointed out, but we would always put first what it is that we are doing inside our own nation, because, obviously, the members of this House are here to serve this nation in the first instance.

If I go on to Mr Parker’s questions—and Mr O’Connor’s, I think, also; actually, I think every member has asked for a greater understanding of dual-use goods—dual-use goods are those goods that are included, as we have heard, in New Zealand’s Strategic Goods List (SGL). That is available online, Mr O’Connor, if you’d like to Google it with “strategic goods list” and then possibly put “NZ” at the end of it. You won’t get Singapore’s; you’ll actually get ours. That is maintained by the Secretary of Foreign Affairs and Trade under the regime established by section 56(2) of the Customs and Excise Act 1996. This will be covered by section 96 of the new Customs and Excise Act, should Mr O’Connor wish to look it up. In short, it’s called the SGL, and the SGL includes dual-use items listed by four international export control regimes that New Zealand participates in. The list is updated yearly, for those who asked when it was to be done. As an example of the types of things that you will find, should you go to have a look at the dual-use goods: nuclear reactors are on the dual-use list; chemicals of many different sorts, because they have two purposes, Mr O’Connor. You can either make them to harm someone, or you can use them to actually create something that helps people. Control rods: a variety of control rods are actually on that list. Cryogenic heat exchangers would be another example of something that is on the dual-use list.

There are some other questions that I do have from members. I will continue to try to get that advice for you as the debate goes on, but I hope, in the first instance, that has given some confidence to Mr Parker and to Mr O’Connor that there is nothing untoward, nothing scary, with regard to the piece of legislation. I hope that they have a clearer understanding of the two issues that they raised.

STUART SMITH (National—Kaikōura): Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you to the Minister in the chair, Tracey Martin, for that explanation; it is helpful. I know, certainly in my own electorate, of two manufacturers that supply military equipment which could easily be classed as dual-use—for example, mounts for weapons that go up on to a helicopter. Now, if any layperson saw those, they would have no idea that they have a military use. My concern would be if people were unwittingly buying those goods and then shifting them off overseas, how are the people who are those manufacturers captured by the bill? I’m for the bill; I’ve got no concerns about that. I just want to make sure we’re not spilling over and catching people who are quite innocently going about their business.

I also have another business within my electorate that supplies and fits out specialist boats for special services. They also could be bought, in parts, and retrofitted to another use, a military use, in another country. That could easily be a brokered deal. I know they are not the broker, and supposedly not captured in this bill, but they could be part of the chain of the deal. That’s how these deals are done, often, these days. You don’t need to be the person holding the goods, necessarily, to be a part of that chain. So I would like some assurance around that from the officials, perhaps, if the Minister doesn’t have those to hand.

But I do note, on the dual-use thing, that it is pretty broad, and, you know, one could imagine boots, for example, being dual-use goods that could be quite innocently also used. I see in the clause in the bill related to the definition that “military end-use means—(a) incorporation into military items that fall within a specified category; or (b) use, production, or testing of equipment and components for the development, production, or maintenance of military items that fall within a specified category; or (c) use of any unfinished products for the production of military items that fall within a specified category.”

I guess that’s the bit—particularly that last bit, “unfinished products”—where you have a known manufacturer that can build components that are quite specialised and could be ordered in isolation, and the manufacturer may not know that that’s going to be utilised as a mount for a military aircraft, for military weapons which could be used for sinister use. So how does that work for that specific manufacturer, and are they captured by this bill? I mean, the bill is laudable in its intentions, and I think we will get there, but we just have to ensure that we aren’t catching or capturing people who are going about their ordinary, lawful business with no sinister intent.

There’s no doubt at all that all of the conflicts in the world that are fought by terrorists and, sort of, quasi-armies—they get hold of their weapons somehow. This bill is trying to ensure that we, on our shores, have our laws squared away so that we are not a part of that problem. Meeting our treaty obligations is obviously very important in an international sense, and it’s great to see that New Zealand First have come along on this, because I note from Mr Mark’s speech from August in 2017 that, and I quote, “The peaceniks in the other parties loved the opportunity to dance around the maypole, sing Kumbaya and bag our boutique defence industry but not us.” So I’m wondering how long it took Mr Mark to learn to sing “Kumbaya” and to dance around the maypole. I would actually pay to see that. So, with that, Madam Chair, thank you.

Hon TRACEY MARTIN (Minister of Internal Affairs): Thank you, Madam Chair. Just to try and give some confidence around the definition of brokering, that has been asked for by several members: clause 5 defines brokering activity as “arranging, facilitating, or negotiating a transaction that involves the international transfer of weapons or related items from [one foreign country to another].” The definition includes a person who acts as an agent or intermediary for persons involved in the transaction, and someone who acquires or stores items outside New Zealand. Persons who provide services that are merely auxiliary to brokering activity are excluded. The purpose of regulating brokering is to prevent the movement of arms and military items to illegitimate users and undesirable destinations. It was considered appropriate to regulate those who have knowledge of the destination and end use of the weapons and related items. In a brokered transaction, that would most likely be the broker, including a person who acts as an agent or an intermediary.

Clause 5 of the bill has a definition of brokering which means “arranging, facilitating, or negotiating a transaction that involves the international transfer of weapons or related items from a place outside New Zealand to another place outside New Zealand” and includes “acting as an agent for a person involved in the transaction or as an intermediary between 2 or more persons involved in the transaction”.

The member who just contributed, Stuart Smith, mentioned boots and that he felt that the list that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade put together around dual use was rather diverse and possibly very wide, and he suggested that boots, for example, might be included because they have dual purposes. I have some confidence—I haven’t been through the whole list—that boots are not included on the list. I’m not sure the last time that a terrorist act was committed with a boot, although there was a shoe on a plane—there was a shoe on a plane. I would suggest that it would be the chemicals inside the shoe that are probably on the dual list. So I think therein lies the distinction. There needed to be another body of something to be added to that particular thing.

Goods either have to be military or on the dual-use goods list, and items such as boots—oh, there you go, I’ve had it confirmed. They are not on the list. They must be identified as military. Thank you.

Dr DEBORAH RUSSELL (Labour—New Lynn): Thank you, Madam Chair. I’m delighted to take a call on this. There are a couple of issues that have been touched on a little bit by some of my colleagues this evening, but I really want to speak to them a little more and find out a little more from the Minister about them.

The first is an issue that was raised by my colleague Dr Webb, and that’s the equivalent overseas regime. There’s a specific definition of it in clause 6 of the bill. As far as I can tell, an overseas regime is a regime that is roughly similar to the regime here in New Zealand, but the bit that I find very interesting in this is not just the idea that we might look for a roughly equivalent regime overseas, but someone has to make a judgment as to which regime is roughly similar, and in this case it’s the secretary—so that’s the Secretary of Foreign Affairs and Trade. I found that quite interesting because, I guess, the secretary is—her or his performance in their job is subject to review by the State Services Commissioner. Of course, they are appointed for a limited period of time, so what they do or don’t do in their job is subject to that kind of review as well. But I found it interesting that it is the Secretary of Foreign Affairs and Trade who makes the judgment as to what is an equivalent overseas regime. I would ordinarily have expected that it perhaps might be the Minister who made that decision. Even if it was on the advice of the secretary, it might have been the Minister who is ordinarily the person who is held responsible for those decisions. So I’m sure there’s a good reason for why the particular decision rests with the Secretary of Foreign Affairs and Trade rather than with the Minister, but I would be very interested to hear what that reason is so that I could understand.

I mean, it’s not unusual. It does happen in other legislation as well. We know that the Income Tax Act and the Tax Administration Act are full of references to the commissioner, who has a lot of discretion, but in this particular instance I really would like to know just exactly why that discretion has been shifted to the secretary. So that was the first aspect of this particular part of the bill that I would like to get some clarification on—just that little bit around the equivalent overseas regime.

The other bit that I find very interesting in this first part of the bill is who or what the bill applies to. I’m looking in particular at new clause 3A(1), and this has been inserted at the select committee stage of the process. So it’s obviously something that was very important, was raised by submitters to the bill, and that people wanted to see something going on here in the bill. I didn’t sit on that select committee so I don’t exactly know what the reasoning was. What it says is that “This Act applies to any brokering activity that is carried out—(a) in any place (… wholly or partially outside New Zealand [possibly]) and by a person—(i) who is in New Zealand or; (ii) who is a New Zealand citizen or ordinarily resident in New Zealand”. Now, that’s kind of interesting, because, ordinarily, if a New Zealand citizen commits some offence overseas, we normally rely on the other regime to prosecute them. We don’t try to prosecute New Zealand citizens for offences they’ve performed overseas. But in this particular instance, we are saying that a New Zealand citizen, no matter where she or he actually commits the offence against the Act—we’re asking that they nevertheless be held accountable in New Zealand.

Now, again, there are some equivalent sorts of laws. Actually, the ones that always come to mind for me are ones involving people who rape children overseas, and they can be held responsible under our laws here. So that’s the equivalent sort of thing. So I want to know why this has got that particular parallel in this law, that even if the offence is performed overseas we might nevertheless choose to prosecute it here.

So I’d really appreciate it if the Minister was able to just provide a little bit of enlightenment as to those two particular issues. Thank you.

Hon TIM MACINDOE (National—Hamilton West): Thank you, Madam Chair. Kia orana. I wonder if you would indulge me just for 20 seconds, Madam Chair, as a Waikato member of Parliament, to acknowledge that today the House stood to honour the memory of two Waikato members of Parliament, the Hon Katherine O’Regan and Tony Steel, who both died last week. I had the privilege of attending Katherine O’Regan’s funeral in Te Awamutu this afternoon, as did many former members of this House and some current ones. It was a beautiful service. Her memory was clearly upheld in a very appropriate way, and I know that she commanded respect across this House. I thank members opposite for the kind comments that they have made. I want to say how proud she would have been today of her extended family, and, as I say, it was a great privilege to be there. Madam Chair, thank you for that.

I have to say that as we return our consideration to Part 1 of this bill, it’s been fascinating to see so many members opposite, including Ministers and an under-secretary, all clamouring to take a call on this particular bill. I can only speculate as to why that might be, but it is, of course, a very significant and important measure. It should be noted that it was a measure introduced by the Hon Gerry Brownlee when he was a senior Minister in the previous Government. Others have already noted that it was something that was derided by one of the parties in this House, but it is good to see that there is a great deal of consensus around it.

Could I commend the Minister who is currently in the chair, the Hon Tracey Martin, for her willingness to engage so fully in this debate and to take the call on a couple of occasions now. I know that she has been ably assisted by some officials, as is often the case when people are in the position she is, but it is an important aspect of committee debates in this House that members are able to ask questions and, wherever possible, the Minister does his or her level best to answer them. So could I say to Mrs Martin, who inferred to me recently that I had gone off her Christmas card list, that I hope that by genuinely praising her for what she has endeavoured to do over the last 20 minutes or so, maybe I’ll get back on to it, because in the grand scheme of things, I would much rather be onside with her then offside with her.

But I also want to commend the member just to my right, the member for Tāmaki, Simon O’Connor, who does an excellent job in chairing our Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee and who has steered this bill to this point—yes, he’s getting his credit card out, and I have to say I’d prefer cash; I’m not so sure about the member’s card. But he has done an excellent job as the chair of this committee in steering this bill through the stages it’s gone through. The submissions were broadly supportive but also helpful, and I think that he has guided us, as have the officials who have assisted the committee, to bring back a bill that is even more fit for purpose and, as I’ve said, is a very significant measure on an international security issue that all like-minded countries need to ensure we are responding to appropriately. The brokering of weapons is something that, if mishandled or if inadequately controlled, could have devastating consequences, both in this country and abroad. So I am glad that members have understood its significance and have worked hard to ensure that we are playing our part as responsible global citizens.

As I’ve mentioned, several Ministers and members have already asked questions, and I imagine that the Minister in the chair will continue to try to answer some of those. It would be interesting to hear from her why her colleague the former deputy leader for New Zealand First took such a disparaging view of this bill and, as was mentioned earlier, spoke of the peaceniks in the other parties loving their opportunity to dance around the maypole and sing “Kumbaya”, because that, frankly, is a totally inappropriate remark to make about such a significant issue, and, perhaps less facetiously, he had said just nine months ago that this bill isn’t necessary. Well, quite clearly, now members of this House have concluded that it is, and as we move into later parts in this committee stage of the debate, we’ll look in more detail at some of its specific provisions. But here, as we look at the purpose of the bill in Part 1, it would be interesting to know why that was the view of the New Zealand First Party before the election and what has caused them to change their heart now.

Hon TRACEY MARTIN (Minister of Internal Affairs): I thank the honourable member Tim Macindoe for his contribution. I’ve just had some thank-you cards printed up; I may send him one just to acknowledge it. Can I just remark though, too, that I was a previous deputy leader of New Zealand First and I’ve never danced around a maypole, particularly not on this particular piece of legislation.

Can I refer to Mr Stuart Smith’s comments that people involved in the development of products that can have a military use are encouraged to engage with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (MFAT) to clarify the extent to which their items may be subject to controls. It’s better to check than be caught out. Not all brokering or export of such products will be prevented. The goal here is to regulate the brokering to ensure that items do not fall into undesirable hands, so we would encourage those who have not done so already to contact MFAT and actually just run through that.

If I can address the member from my right, Deborah Russell, who asked about equivalent overseas regimes and why it is that the Secretary of Foreign Affairs and Trade is the person exercising that particular power—which is not really a power, but if I just describe what it is: “equivalent overseas regimes” means regimes imposed by those countries which are members of the four export control regimes, all of which use the same list of military and dual-use goods. The regimes are the Missile Technology Control Regime, Nuclear Suppliers Group, Australia Group, and Wassenaar Arrangement on Export Controls for Conventional Arms and Dual-Use Goods and Technologies. The judgment of equivalent regimes is based on countries who have been accepted as members of a regime after meeting various criteria, and through analysis of the capability of that regime. So the secretary of foreign affairs, therefore, is not really exercising any particular discretion at all. It’s a process that goes through, and they merely get to be the person who has to ensure that that process has gone through.

If we can talk about extraterritorial jurisdictions, which I believe was also raised by the member, there is a need to control the actions of New Zealanders and New Zealand entities wherever they act, because of the cross-border nature of brokering and the need to work with other countries to prevent it. And quite rightly, as that member pointed out, these sorts of powers also apply to money-laundering, they apply to child sexual assault and some other quite nasty things, and I would suggest that the sending of weapons and other things that do harm to people is obviously one of those areas where if you are a New Zealander partaking in this sort of behaviour, then we will hold you accountable regardless of where you are. Kia ora.

MICHAEL WOOD (Labour—Mt Roskill): Kumbaya, Madam Chair; kumbaya, Minister Martin; kumbaya, Mr Macindoe. It’s a real privilege to take a call on this very important piece of legislation, the Brokering (Weapons and Related Items) Controls Bill. I want to speak to a couple of items in Part 1, particularly clauses 3 and 4, where the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee has responded to a couple of very well-reasoned submissions. But before leaping into that, I did just want to reflect on the member for Tāmaki, I think it was, who spoke of Barry Coates, a former member of the House, who participated in the earlier debates on this bill. As I was doing a bit of preparation for this debate, I read Mr Coates’ first reading speech on this bill, and he made the very good point in that speech that what we’re talking about here tonight isn’t actually academic for New Zealand. He pointed to a case in which a person who had a business based on Queen Street, I think it was, ended up, through an entity that he was involved in, possibly wittingly, possibly unwittingly, brokering arms trade between North Korea and Iran, I think it was.

So the bill that we’re debating is actually a really, really important one, because we as New Zealanders, not only in this Parliament, believe that we should be adhering to treaties of this kind—like the Arms Trade Treaty, which we are signed up to—as a matter of being a good international citizen. I think that most people in this country want to ensure, at an ethical level, that we aren’t in any way whatsoever involving ourselves in some of those awful conflicts around the world that cause mayhem, that cause death, that cause destruction, and that ruin many people’s lives. We should be minimising our involvement in those sorts of conflicts as much as possible, and this bill is a small piece in the wall there.

Just on that point as well, I think the question that the member for Tāmaki raised then—this relates to Part 1—was “Why doesn’t the bill specifically address the question of mercenaries?” And I think, actually, if we look in Part 1, clause 3, we just go straight to the purpose of the bill, which is really clear: “(a) regulate the brokering of weapons and related items; and (b) support New Zealand’s commitments under the Arms Trade Treaty.” So the purpose is actually really specifically defined—it is really specifically defined—around preventing brokering. Of course, brokering is not about weapons coming in or out of New Zealand; it’s about people in New Zealand, or connected to New Zealand, facilitating the transfer of weapons between people in other parts of the world, and, quite simply, that is what the bill focuses on. It doesn’t focus on who the people are who might be using them, which might be where you would get a question around mercenaries; it focuses simply on the question of brokering. So it’s a fairly simple and elegant bill there, and it goes to the purpose of the Arms Trade Treaty as well.

I might note that the Arms Trade Treaty started off, after agitation by people in the peace movement and civil society, way back in the 1980s—people like the Dalai Lama, but I also noticed José Ramos-Horta, who, of course, will be familiar to many people in New Zealand as being one of the people involved in the East Timorese independence movement. Of course, he and the people of East Timor were facing violent militias at the time of the independence movement in the 1990s, who were potentially being supplied by arms brokers around the world—so, very relevant there.

The two bits of the legislation that I wanted to focus on that have been amended by the committee relate to a couple of very good submissions that we received. The first one was from the New Zealand Law Society and what they noted, having considered the earlier version of the bill. What’s really important about Part 1, and a couple of other speakers have touched on this, is it goes to the jurisdictional issues. This bill is really interesting in that respect, and I think my colleague Deborah Russell mentioned this: that it doesn’t apply just to people in New Zealand doing things in New Zealand; it can apply to people who are ordinarily resident in New Zealand but are overseas engaging in brokering activities, or it could involve New Zealanders or entities connected with New Zealand who are overseas. So the jurisdictional stuff is really important to get right. What the Law Society say in their submission, at 3.4 of their submission is this, “The jurisdictional scope of the legislation is appropriate, but could be refined in three ways: [1] The territorial scope of the Bill should be defined upfront in Part 1 of the legislation, so that the reach of all of its provisions (including the registration requirements) is made clear;”—and I’ll touch on that in a moment, the detail of that—“[2] It may not be appropriate to extend the Act to persons who are not New Zealanders, who are not ordinarily resident here, and who have not conducted any brokering activities here;”. As far as I could read from the bill, the select committee has decided, in its wisdom, to proceed with that, but nevertheless! And [3] the Law Society says that “The exemption for employees should be tightened to prevent abuse.” and I think we’ll get on to that in Part 2 of the debate, which is where the select committee has made some changes in that area.

So let’s go back to No. 1, which is where the Law Society recommended some changes to—not really disagreeing with the intent of the bill but saying we really, really need to be specific and clear about the territorial scope of the bill. The select committee has responded to that by making amendments to clause 3A(1), which I don’t think you could make all that much clearer, notwithstanding some of the questions that have arisen in this debate. It’s very clear in clause 3A(1): “This Act applies to any brokering activity that is carried out—(a) in any place (including any brokering activity that is carried out wholly or partially outside New Zealand)”—so we’re going for belts and braces, and I think this was noted, and I think it was the Law Society’s submission as well, that some of the activity here could be quite fractional. So you have a person, potentially in New Zealand, who is engaging in some part of a transaction; you have a person in country B who’s engaging another part; and a person in country C; and one of the risks, if you don’t have the belts and braces approach to this kind of thing, is that each individual activity doesn’t amount to brokering; you’ve got to sort of make the chain. So by having that really clear language in clause 3A(1), it seems to me that we achieved that effect.

We then go on to note that it may be a person “(i) … in New Zealand; or (ii) who is a New Zealand citizen or ordinarily resident in New Zealand; or (iii) that is an entity incorporated or registered under the law of New Zealand;”—so individuals can’t skirt around this by putting these activities into a company or some other kind of organisation. And I think, very importantly, at clause 3A(1)(b) the activity could also be “wholly or partially on board a ship or an aircraft”, which sounds a little bit like it could be out of a James Bond episode or something. But, once again, we’re going for belts and braces there. So it seems to me that the select committee has actually really picked up on that quite important point about this being very, very specific about the jurisdictional scope and has really got the language right in clause 3A(1) of the bill.

The second submission I just wanted to speak to where a consequential change has been made was the letter that was written to the committee by the Regulations Review Committee. I did have to note one thing, though; and, of course, we always look to the Regulations Review Committee as being the committee that needs to be a paragon of exactitude and preciseness in terms of our parliamentary proceedings. In one of their paragraphs, there was quite an amusing typo, actually. It says, “Clause 9(1) of the bill imposes requirements on a person to be a registered broke”. I suspect it’s supposed to be a “broker”, because a registered broke could be a euphemism for an undischarged bankrupt, and I suspect that’s not who we are getting at. I am pretty sure that in the days in which the Hon Ruth Dyson chaired the Regulations Review Committee, we wouldn’t have had sloppy spelling mistakes like that one slipping into these letters.

But anyway, the point that the Regulations Review Committee makes is this one. I’ll get straight to the recommendation that they make and then how it’s been followed up by the committee. They recommend that the committee “consider amending clause 4(2) of the bill to require the Secretary of Foreign Affairs and Trade to publish a notice on a website administered by the Secretary of Foreign Affairs and Trade and, as the notice will affect items on the strategic goods list, ensure that the notice are published together with the strategic goods list.” I do think this is really, really important, and it links into some of the other submissions and some of the issues that I think we’ll also get to in Part 2, where there were some concerns that were threaded through the, I think, nine submissions that were received: that we have to be a little bit careful in this area; that people who might be caught out by what is quite a serious piece of legislation, which would certainly have serious reputational impacts and, potentially, has serious financial impacts—we have to make sure that the people who might be caught out by it know they have to register, know what the rules are, and that that’s very clear to people. So using a simple piece of technology like ensuring that it’s on the website, is, I think, an extremely important way of ensuring that.

I think it’s encouraging that we’re making progress on this bill. It goes to something that is, I think, not only about New Zealand’s international reputation; it’s actually an ethical issue about the kind of country that we want to be—the kinds of activities that we deem to be appropriate and ethical, or not—and saying that we’re not actually going to stand for people engaging in activity that could be to the detriment of people in other parts of the world. It seems to me, having had a good look at the submissions and having had a good look at the bar 2 version of the bill that we have before us, that the select committee has engaged really constructively and really sensibly around some of the good submissions that have been made.

On that note, I think, in line with other members—certainly on this side of the Chamber but, it looks like, more broadly—I certainly commend the bill to the committee as it’s been reported back. Kumbaya—peace out.

Hon MARK MITCHELL (National—Rodney): Thank you, Madam Chair. I’d just like to start by also supporting Tim Macindoe’s comments around it being good to see the Minister in the chair, Tracey Martin, actually taking calls. I have to say I’m not as worried about being on her Christmas card list. I’m sure she understands why.

I also wanted to actually mention a contribution made by Deborah Russell, because it was a very good one, and she raised a point that I’d still like the Minister to address, which hasn’t been fully addressed. I’m actually going to use a personal example around it, and that is the successful prosecution and conviction of Kiwis that are engaging in offshore transactions.

I’m actually really proud of this bill. I think it’s a very good bill, and, as a nation and as a country, we should be proud that we’re taking positive steps towards making sure that we can never be involved in the type of behaviour that’s being talked about tonight around weapons and the harm and the pain that they cause, especially in conflict areas.

So the example that I want to use—and the Minister can come back and address the issue that was raised by Deborah Russell—is that back in 2004, I was appointed by the interim Government in Iraq to establish what’s called the Provincial Joint Operations Centre. It was the centre that was formed to train—it performed two real functions. The first one was to train all the newly formed Iraqi security forces, so you had the Iraqi Police Service; you had the Iraqi National Guard; you had the tactical support unit, which was, effectively, like our armed offenders squad or our Special Tactics Group; you had the borders and customs police; and you had the facilities protections police, and the Facilities Protection Service was really about guarding critical infrastructure—so the ports, the airports, the port of Umm Qasr, or Khawr az-Zubayr. So we, fundamentally, had five services there.

The first function was to deliver all the training to the command element—so that was major rank upwards—and the second role was to provide command and control in an operations centre in terms of coordinating the operations that were going on, particularly in the Basra area but also more widely in the Dhi Qar province.

There were three real threats that we were dealing with. One was the highly organised criminal gangs that were normally sponsored by the tribes, the second was, obviously, al-Qaeda, and the third was the Mahdi militia, who were led by Muqtada al-Sadr, who is now actually part of the political solution in Baghdad, although you would have seen that there was a riot in Baghdad last summer and it was actually led by Muqtada al-Sadr, and he remains in Parliament. I’m not sure what would happen here if a New Zealand MP was to lead a riot, and I guess that’s why we’re so lucky to be living in the country that we are and having the democracy and the Parliament that we have.

So the issue that I raise—and it comes back to the point that Deborah Russell made—was that the biggest threat that these guys were having to deal with when they were out on operations was always coming up against—whether it was a highly organised criminal gang or whether it was al-Qaeda or whether it was the Mahdi militia or one of the militias operating, they were all heavily armed, and they were heavily armed with weapons that weren’t procured with an end use certificate or procured through the normal channels. They were procured on the black market, and obviously, the black market avoids regulation. It doesn’t want to adhere to regulation and rules, and so it’s very hard to police and it’s very hard to shut down when you’re dealing with very porous borders. But the good news is that the international community has become far more organised around it, and we see treaties like the one we’re now legislating to support and we see people like Viktor Bout sitting in a prison in Thailand, which is a good thing.

But it brings me back to the question and the issue that was raised by Deborah Russell, and that’s—quite simply—if a Kiwi engages with the procurement of weapons overseas and those weapons find themselves in a conflict zone without an end use certificate and without the proper paperwork or the proper process having been adhered to, talk us through how we’re actually going to gather the evidence and how we’re going to charge and going to convict that person, because I think every single one of us in this Parliament and in this country wants to see that person convicted. Thank you, Madam Chair.

The question was put that the amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 24 in the name of the Rt Hon Winston Peters to clause 4 be agreed to.

Amendments agreed to.

Part 1 as amended agreed to.

Part 2 Brokering activity, registration, and permits

Dr DUNCAN WEBB (Labour—Christchurch Central): This is really the substantive part of the bill, so I’m sure a lot of my friends in the committee will be leaping to their feet to discuss this part as well. I want to focus in particular on the offence parts of the bill, and these are found in clause 9 and clause 9A as well. Clause 9A is of particular importance because clause 9A carves out some particular exceptions to the offences of brokering without a permit or without registration.

There are a couple of things really that I would put to the Minister in the chair, the Hon Tracey Martin. I’m really just alerting them because I think they’re probably dealt with satisfactorily, but I do think they are worthy of the attention of the House because of the questions of onus that arise. It’s really about burdens of proof and presumptions of innocence. So we have, for example, clause 9, which doesn’t apply to a person who carries out a brokering activity on behalf of the person’s employer but only if, in relation to that activity, the person has reasonable grounds to believe that the employer complies with clause 9. So we’ve got a question there of whether there is a positive belief. The question, I suppose, is: what if there is no belief whatsoever? What if they never even turned their mind to that—no idea, for example, of the illegality?

We, only moments ago, were speaking of dual-use goods—the fact that things as innocuous-looking as software can be a dual-use good, which in fact is regulated under this legislation. So that’s one question there: what amounts to reasonable grounds to believe? And, of course, earlier on in clause 9A, in fact, we’ve got dual-use goods, where the person “has taken reasonable steps to ensure that the dual-use goods will not be used for a prohibited use.”

Dual-use goods raise particular problems because so many of them—and I have not read the entire Strategic Goods List, but I did actually have a good look at it. Some things you would kind of know have a possible military application—like, for example, a gunsight might have an entirely non-military application, but, equally, we would expect to know. But when we’ve got things which are things like software or even defensive clothing—a Kevlar vest which might have a perfectly good security use for a security guard but is in fact regulated as a dual-use good—is it reasonable to expect someone to turn their mind to that question and take “reasonable steps to ensure”? So that’s the first thing I’d say about that.

The next thing is how those defensives work. So the question then becomes, if there has been a brokering in arms without a permit, what are the procedural steps? We then turn to clause 10, and we note that in clause 10(1A) it is presumed “in the absence of any evidence to the contrary, that an exception … does not apply.” So the onus actually falls on the defendant, the person who is accused, in proving that a defence does apply. I think probably the appropriate threshold is that they have to raise some evidence.

We’ve got this quite unusual, at least to the layperson, problem of a shifting onus, where the defendant has the onus to show some evidence, and then the prosecution has the onus of showing that the evidence doesn’t go far enough to establish the defence. In fact, only then do we shift on to the onus to prove the offence itself. So there are some questions that I would raise around, really, the criminal procedure around these quite unusual provisions, particularly because they are unexpected. There’s a real risk that people may find themselves being charged for trading in goods which they had no idea were in fact regulated. Thank you.

Hon TRACEY MARTIN (Minister of Internal Affairs): I’ll just articulate some information I have, in an attempt to assist the member Dr Duncan Webb. There seems to be quite a wide concern that people will be caught trading with items that would be considered dual-use goods without any knowledge. That seems to be what the major concern is.

Weapons, military equipment, and dual-use goods and technologies are already subject to export controls in New Zealand and elsewhere, under the four international export control regimes. So we believe it is reasonable to expect a person dealing with weapons, military equipment, or dual-use goods to know that it is a controlled activity, and that they should look into how to broker these goods lawfully.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (MFAT) will publish extensive guidance on its website for prospective brokers on New Zealand’s brokering regime. The guidance will include outlining the circumstances in which registration and permits are required, and where an exemption may apply. MFAT encourages all prospective brokers to first inquire with them to seek advice on the status of the goods they are intending to broker, and whether they may or are likely to fall within an exemption. I think the other thing to note—so the first thing is, if in doubt call MFAT and find out before somebody shows up at your door. I think that’s probably the first piece of advice.

With regard to offences under the bill, they are subject to the Attorney-General’s consent to ensure prosecutions are not brought lightly, particularly when they involve the exercise of extraterritorial jurisdiction. The bill also does allow for civil enforcement, recognising that some breaches will be minor, but again I would encourage—if in doubt, check it out; give MFAT a ring.

LOUISA WALL (Labour—Manurewa): Tēnā koe e Te Māngai o Te Whare. I’d like to contribute a kōrero that’s based on some of the information that the Minister in the chair, the Hon Tracey Martin, has contributed tonight, and I want to thank her as well for her constructive engagement in this process. It really is about the Strategic Goods List, that I did find on the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade’s website, and the definition of “dual-use”. Essentially, this part is dealing with dual-use goods. If you’re brokering, you need to be registered and you get a permit. If you’re engaged in brokering dual-use goods that are not being used for military purposes—and I guess that’s the caveat—you don’t need to register and you don’t need a permit.

But you actually need to understand what dual-use goods are. So, by definition, they’re goods and technology developed for commercial purposes but which may be used either as military components or for the development or production of military systems or weapons of mass destruction. Herein lies some really interesting distinctions, because included in that are such things as technology. So it’s specific information or software necessary for the development, production, or use of a product. This information takes the form of technological data or technological assistance. It can be instructions, skills, training, working knowledge, consulting services, the transfer of technological data that may be blueprints, plans, diagrams, models, frameworks, tables, engineering designs, specs, and those sorts of things.

Herein lies, I guess, the challenge of this bill. What we’re essentially instituting in Part 2 of this piece of legislation, as my colleague Duncan Webb highlighted, is an exception, and we particularly focused on staff—you know, employees working for somebody in a factory, in a warehouse—and how would they know? I think that whole question of “how would they know?” is really important.

But I guess herein lies why clause 4(3)(b) is really important, and the gazetting of that Strategic Goods List, and ensuring actually that employees have access to information that ensures they understand the industry that they’re involved in and, I guess, the technology or the goods that they are handling on a day-to-day basis. It also—and I’d love the Minister to elaborate fully—is relevant to clause 18A, which is actually about brokers providing an annual report to the secretary.

The reason that we’re wanting that form of transparency is because if you are a broker, we want to actually know where those goods are going. It’s in the process of understanding where those goods are going that, actually, you possibly can make a determination about what the use of those dual-use goods is or the use of, I guess, the military goods and technology—what they will be used for.

So I’m really interested in the Minister’s perspective. Each of these parts isn’t discrete; they’re actually all interrelated. Everything in this bill fits together, and, I think, in a really nice way.

I would like some clarification, I do have to say, in terms of the offences—where did the fines come from? Where did the $100,000 for individuals and the $1 million in any other case come from? I mean, obviously that’s a deterrent, and what we’re trying to do is to ensure that people who are engaged in activities, either brokering or dual-use technology or goods, actually understand that this sector and the industry that they’re choosing to be part of is one that we must be vigilant about. We actually have to ensure that the Arms Trade Treaty isn’t being compromised by people who choose to engage in these activities.

What we also know is this isn’t just a theoretical exercise, from our perspective. There have been occasions and instances where people have tried to sell and to transfer the goods that this bill is talking about. So it would be really good to hear from the Minister about how this whole package is seen as the best deterrent for people who want to trade and to use dual-use goods in a negative way, and how this is going to stop that behaviour.

Hon TRACEY MARTIN (Minister of Internal Affairs): Just to answer a couple of questions that are still unanswered, with regard to a previous speaker questioning how there would be the enforcement of the bill. In the case of a clear breach, New Zealand would gather evidence in the usual way, utilising mutual legal assistance arrangements with other countries and wide law-enforcement relationships, including Interpol, to establish a case.

I think you would find that if there was a major incident, a terrorism incident, there is a lot of investigation and a lot of tracking back that goes on. I think people probably underestimate the high skill level that New Zealand has in participating to ensure that we are safe and that our world is as safe as we can possibly make it. So that answers that question.

With regard to safeguards so that somebody—an employee working in a warehouse—cannot be captured by this piece of legislation, the bill includes a number of safeguards to ensure that only appropriate brokering activity is captured, and that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade has a wide range of tools to address breaches of the Act. The bill’s focus is on core brokering activities and does not include services that are merely ancillary. For example, a person who acts as an agent or intermediary person for persons involved in a brokering transaction is captured; a person who merely provides administrative, customs brokering, or financial services in relation to brokering transactions is not covered. Somebody, I would assume, who is in a warehouse and is packing things—single items or whatever—and is not in a level of decision making or at the level that they could have some form of knowledge of the final end use of those items would not be covered under this legislation.

There are a number of exemptions to the registration and permit requirements. A person who brokers dual-use goods is exempt unless the dual-use goods are intended for a prohibited use in the bill, which is the use in weapons of mass destruction programmes or military end use. The prospective broker must undertake due diligence. I think therein lies the key: the prospective broker must undertake due diligence to ensure that the intended end use of the goods will not be used for prohibited purposes.

The onus lies on us all to keep the world a safe place. That means the onus lies on those who are selling; therefore, it is their business to know where their goods are going. So, no, we certainly won’t be whipping out there and arresting any store people, but if somebody knows that they are taking part in this, then we have the tools by which we will make sure they stop it.

TAMATI COFFEY (Labour—Waiariki): Thank you, Madam Chair. I talk delicately when I look at this bill because it wasn’t too far ago, in my own electorate, in the Waiariki electorate, that some people were accused of having weapons up in the hills of the Ureweras. When I look through this and I look at some of the penalties and some of the regulations that are in place, I personally think it’s a really good thing.

There are a couple of things—a few points—that I’d just like to get a bit of clarification about from the Minister in the chair, Tracey Martin, while we’ve got the opportunity. First of all is just about the situation having the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade assessing the applications. I think that New Zealanders will be happy to hear that there are some strong safeguards in place. I think the term “fit and proper person” is very good and very telling. I’m happy that there will be people there assessing whether or not people are fit and proper people.

The point that was made was about using the strategic goods criteria to assess applications, and I was just wondering, from the Minister, if she could just talk a bit more about what that criteria entailed. I knew that the refusal of an application, as it reads, is if the person that was applying was, in fact, going to somehow breach New Zealand’s obligations under the UN Security Council resolutions—also, any of New Zealand’s other international obligations as well—and, obviously, a person can be refused if the goods are going to be used in the commission of genocide, crimes against humanity, or war crimes. So I think they’re all very fair. I’m just keen to learn a bit more about those criteria, and also the other international export control regimes—just a little bit of information about them. I know that there are only four of them, but I just wondered whether or not the Minister could just give us a brief rundown on those four export control regimes that New Zealand participates in, if there’s a possibility.

I’m also just wanting to take a little step back and have the general conversation about how much of an issue weapons brokering really is in New Zealand. I’d never currently entertained the thought that there are people sitting in offices around New Zealand that are in this area. As I understand it, there are 11, I think, and of that only a small part of them are quite active. I just wanted to understand—and I think also for the people out there that are listening to this or watching this online—whether or not New Zealand is a big player in this game or a small player, whether or not we are potentially going to be bombarded with applications from people that decide that weapons brokering is the business that they want to get into.

Simon O’Connor: That’s a good pun.

TAMATI COFFEY: So, a wee bit more—what’s that?

Simon O’Connor: “Bombarded”—that’s a good pun.

TAMATI COFFEY: “Bombarded”. Thank you. I’ll take that pun. And also, I guess a key part of this legislation is just making sure—

CHAIRPERSON (Poto Williams): I’m sorry to interrupt the member. The time has come for me to report progress.

House resumed.

The Chairperson reported progress on the Brokering (Weapons and Related Items) Controls Bill, and no progress on the Families Commission Act Repeal Bill.

Report adopted.

The House adjourned at 9.56 p.m.