Wednesday, 9 May 2018

WEDNESDAY, 9 MAY 2018

WEDNESDAY, 9 MAY 2018

The Speaker took the Chair at 2 p.m.

Karakia.

Bills

Marriage (Court Consent to Marriage of Minors) Amendment Bill

Instruction to Justice Committee

JO HAYES (National): I seek leave for the Justice Committee or a committee of the whole House, when considering the Marriage (Court Consent to Marriage of Minors) Amendment Bill, to have authority to consider and, if it thinks fit, adopt amendments to the Civil Union Act 2004 and the Care of Children Act 2004 despite Standing Order 260, and for the bill to be an omnibus bill.

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

Points of Order

Parliamentary Precinct—Members’ Access to the Chamber

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Leader of the House): I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. Yesterday, on the way to the House, several Ministers and others crossing from Bowen House to the Beehive found it very difficult to actually make it to the House, because of the press gallery forming, effectively, what were five clusters all around the entrance, and I suspect that there is a delay today and that the member who is the subject of the first question is unable to do that. I wonder whether you would consider whether, in fact, there should be a time limit on that and whether that should end prior to when the bells stop ringing. Otherwise, there are going to be situations where Ministers are unable to answer questions in the House because of the delay.

SPEAKER: I appreciate the tactics that the member has just employed. I think the member is aware that if there is actually a physical hazard caused by anyone stopping members coming into the House, it is a breach of privilege and should be reported accordingly. If members want to come to me quietly afterwards and indicate chokepoints or specific problems, then, of course, I will take it up with the chairperson of the press gallery, but I don’t propose otherwise to take any action.

Oral Questions

Questions to Ministers

Government Policy—Education, Foreign Affairs, Health, Social Services Spending, Immigration, and Population Planning

1. 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: When she said yesterday that the Government’s current immigration policy is “exactly the same one we campaigned on”, can she do better than that and elucidate for everyone exactly what her Government intends to deliver on immigration?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: As I said, what we talked about in the campaign remains the same. We are developing policy and Cabinet papers on this issue as we speak. I’m sure the member can wait until those are available publicly.

Hon Simon Bridges: Does she agree that “the rate at which our population is growing is placing unsustainable pressure on infrastructure”, as stated in the immigration policy she campaigned on?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Do we have a housing crisis because the last Government didn’t do any population planning? Yes.

Hon Simon Bridges: Does she agree that the rate at which our population is growing is placing unsustainable pressure on infrastructure?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: This is, of course, a question in two parts. If we had the infrastructure we wouldn’t be having this debate. That Government did not do any population planning, immigration got to the highest level it has in some time, and there was no planning around transport or housing, and we’re having to pick up the pieces from that. [Interruption]

SPEAKER: Order! Order! There was a member who made an unparliamentary reference to the Prime Minister. That member will stand, withdraw, and apologise. I’ll listen to the tape and work out who it was.

Hon Gerry Brownlee: What was it?

SPEAKER: I’m not going to repeat the reference, Mr Brownlee—a very sexist remark. It wasn’t Mr Bridges; it was someone behind.

Hon Simon Bridges: Does she agree on immigration that “It is time to take a breather.”?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: As I’ve said, there is no question—ask anyone resident in Auckland—there was no population planning done. Now, whether or not you take into account returning New Zealanders or population growth generally, or the regions spilling into Auckland because there weren’t jobs available for them there, there are not enough houses in Auckland, there’s not enough transport infrastructure. We’re dealing with that problem now to try and make sure that everyone who’s resident there has a decent standard of living. It’s a big difference between us and the previous Government.

Hon Simon Bridges: What is the Government trying to achieve in its immigration policy—can we be clear: is it smaller numbers, is it a breather, is it something different now?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Given I was late to the House because I was having to correct the member’s confusion outside, I’m happy to do it in here as well. What we are focused on in our immigration policy is a quality education system for international students and proper labour market testing so that we fill genuine gaps in our labour market. It’s quite simple. [Interruption]

SPEAKER: Order! Order! I am going to ask the Leader of the Opposition to be a little quieter. When he asks a question, I think he should show the Prime Minister the respect of at least listening to the first half of the answer.

Hon Simon Bridges: Is the Government’s immigration policy Labour’s election promise to reduce net migration by 20,000 to 30,000 a year, or New Zealand First’s policy to reduce net migration to just 10,000 a year, or is it something else?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: As I said yesterday, and as I’m repeating today, our policy as a party has not changed. The Government is now progressing that policy. It is about quality education and about proper labour market testing, and the estimates off the back of those changes were in the 20,000 to 30,000 mark—estimates, not targets.

Hon Simon Bridges: Why did her Government favour $900 million for diplomats rather than fully funding universally cheaper GP visits from 1 July?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: I’m again happy to correct the member. We are not spending that amount of money on diplomats. In fact, we’re spending roughly the amount that that last Government spent on a bad Saudi sheep deal and a bad flag referendum.

Hon Simon Bridges: Why is that $900 million more important than cheaper universal GP visits?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: I correct the member again. The amount that he is quoting includes the amount that we are putting into overseas aid and development. When it comes to our health spending, we’ve yet to announce the full package that this Government has produced, and the member will just have to wait. But I do really question whether or not the National Party is now telling us they see that they have no responsibility for aid and development in the Pacific, because that’s a big change from what they purported to do when they were in office.

Hon Simon Bridges: How can she spend nearly a billion dollars on foreign affairs and aid and also claim that there’s a crisis in health and education funding?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Because there is.

Hon Simon Bridges: If there’s a crisis in health and education funding, why is it that she’s putting nearly a billion dollars into foreign affairs and foreign aid?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Of course we are having to invest in health and education as well, and the member will see at Budget time how we have balanced the range of competing demands that we have. I can tell the member why we’ve had to put this big boost in. When the last Government was in office, Official Development Assistance was at 0.27 percent of gross national income, but, as with everything else, in the next financial year, they let it plummet—plummet. So we’ve had to reinvest just to get it back up to meet our international responsibilities—shame on you.

Hon Simon Bridges: What analysis convinced her that we needed to open an embassy in Stockholm?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: The same analysis that meant it was open 10 years ago, and then shut by them.

Hon Simon Bridges: What was the rationale—what was the position in that analysis on the embassy opening in Stockholm?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: The member may have failed to acknowledge that one of the biggest opportunities that we have in trade is the potential to have an EU free-trade agreement that is worth potentially $15 billion. Now, that party may think that we can float around the international environment without having any representation internationally; they are wrong. We’re going to suffer if our voice is not heard within Europe and the international stage.

Hon Simon Bridges: For clarity, why are we reopening an embassy in Stockholm?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Because they should never have closed it.

David Seymour: Do immigrants ultimately build more homes than they occupy?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: If the question that the member’s trying to allude to is that we need to make sure that we meet the housing demands of everyone who lives here, then the answer seems pretty obvious to me.

David Seymour: Is it any different if the immigrants have Chinese-sounding names?

SPEAKER: The Prime Minister has indicated she’s declined to answer.

Hon Simon Bridges: When she said that all the issues around social services can’t be solved in one Budget, was that because she knew she had billions of dollars going to Winston Peters—and that’s simply in the first year?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Yes, I still stand by that statement. For example, this morning we announced the first increase in funding that family violence services like Women’s Refuge have had in 10 years—the first. We’ve managed to do—

Hon Paula Bennett: That is not true.

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: And if the member Ms Paula Bennett wants to demonstrate that she gave money to front-line services, I’d welcome it. But what that proves is that we, in this Budget, are balancing a huge number of competing needs, and we’ve done it well.

David Seymour: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. With the Standing Orders requiring a Minister to address a question, is it now possible that a Minister can address a question without even getting out of her seat? She just refused to address—

SPEAKER: Order!

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Mr Speaker—

SPEAKER: No, the Prime Minister will resume her seat. The situation is very clear: a Minister has a right not to answer a question. It’s always been there. I’ve seen it done on a number of occasions. I certainly can’t force a Minister to answer, and certainly not for that question.

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: I seek leave to answer the question.

SPEAKER: Well, the Prime Minister seeks leave to revert back one supplementary and to answer it. Is there any objection? There is objection.

Foreign Affairs—New Zealand’s Role in the Pacific and Stockholm Embassy

2. ANAHILA KANONGATA’A-SUISUIKI (Labour) to the Minister of Foreign Affairs: What recent announcements has he made relating to New Zealand’s role in the Pacific and the wider world? [Interruption]

SPEAKER: Order! Before the member starts, David Bennett is not to interject for the rest of this question time.

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS (Minister of Foreign Affairs): Yesterday, we announced the first steps this Government has taken to ensure New Zealand protects its prosperity, security, and democracy after a decade of neglect. To this end, we have committed to a $1 billion foreign affairs package composed of $150 million of additional operational spending over four years, which will bring 50 new full-time positions and diplomats, amongst other objectives; second, $40 million of additional capital spending to bolster New Zealand’s overseas offices; and, third, $714 million in additional funding for New Zealand’s Overseas Development Assistance—

Hon Maggie Barry: What about funding Te Reo?

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: —directed primarily towards the Pacific region. And if that member wants to talk about Te Reo, I was in the party that first funded Te Reo, and she wouldn’t know that because she’s only been here for five minutes.

Anahila Kanongata’a-Suisuiki: Why are the announcements in foreign affairs and trade in Budget 2018 necessary for protecting New Zealanders’ safety and prosperity?

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: That is a seriously responsible question. The prosperity and safety of New Zealanders rest on the ability of this country to protect and advance its interests offshore, and that includes trade. Trade has been declining as a percentage of GDP, despite the previous Government’s pledge to increase it. We announced yesterday changes which will see us facing an increasingly difficult world, with security challenges, sovereignty, nuclear proliferation, terrorism, myrtle rust, cyber-crime, domestic affairs interference from other countries, transnational crime, and humanitarian crises. The rules-based international system is struggling to adapt, and we’re going to step up and do our job for the first time for a long time.

Anahila Kanongata’a-Suisuiki: Has the Minister seen any other reports on overseas development assistance budget increases?

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: Perchance I have. Following directly on from our speech last night, the Australian Government announced its largest ever aid commitment to the Pacific, of $1.3 billion. This reflects a shared commitment to assist our closest neighbours and advance our common interests together in the Pacific region. It follows on from an agreement we entered into when we spoke at the Lowy Institute in March in Sydney, and I’m delighted that my Australian colleague has stepped up as well to arrest a decline in their funding. I’d also like to acknowledge our close partners, including the United Kingdom, the EU, France, and Japan. Three new high commissions are starting for the UK in the Pacific very shortly, and alongside that a greater commitment from the EU in terms of wanting to work with us and also a re-engagement with France. It’s all great progress. Thank you.

Hon Todd McClay: What explanation can he give to hard-working New Zealand taxpayers of why an embassy in Stockholm is more important than universally cheaper GP visits, free dental care for seniors—

SPEAKER: Order! That’s two questions.

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: Because my fellow citizens in this country are enlightened human beings and understand international policy, and foreign affairs in particular, better than the Opposition, I don’t have to explain that; they understand the necessity of that. In the last poll there ever was done, 72 percent of New Zealanders said they supported that, as did Australia last week, as reported in the Sydney Morning Herald, where a majority of Australians also said that they should step up and assist in overseas aid.

Economy—Tax Cuts, Trans-Tasman Migration, and Wages

3. Hon AMY ADAMS (National—Selwyn) to the Minister of Finance: What is the current difference in average full-time after-tax wages between New Zealand and Australia?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister of Finance): According to advice that I have received, the current full-time after-tax annual wage in Australia converted to New Zealand dollars is $70,478, compared with $50,957 in New Zealand, a difference of $19,521.

Hon Amy Adams: Is this after-tax wage gap going to get larger or smaller as a result of his decision to take away a thousand dollars per year of tax reductions from New Zealanders on the average wage, and Australia’s decision last night to give workers a $500-a-year tax cut?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: The details of the Australian tax package are to roll out over a number of years, so the impact will vary both in terms of time and on individuals. Clearly, this Government rejected the previous Government’s tax package, so therefore there will be an impact in terms of the after-tax annual average wage, but I hasten to add, for the member, that for many families and individuals in New Zealand they will be significantly better off as a result of our targeted Families Package.

Hon Amy Adams: Given that, since the end of 2008, take-home pay in New Zealand has grown twice as fast as in Australia, is he worried that all the work that has gone into making New Zealand more attractive than our neighbours for skilled workers is going to be eroded over the coming years?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: Far from it, because in New Zealand today the tax as a portion of gross income will be 18.9 percent, and after the changes made last night by the Australian Government, it’ll be 22 percent. So, actually, in New Zealand the impact of tax is, in fact, smaller in New Zealand on gross income.

Hon Amy Adams: Is he at all concerned that New Zealanders will simply vote with their feet and that, having turned around the exodus of New Zealanders heading to Australia from 35,000 a year in 2008 to actually now a small gain, the outward migration to Australia will now increase as a result of their growing after-tax wage advantage?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: No, I do not believe that will occur, because this Government has a plan to grow sustainable jobs and lift wages. Unlike the National Party Opposition, we actually believe that the reward for workers is higher wages. That is actually how people get rewarded, rather than tax cuts.

Hon Amy Adams: Why would skilled young New Zealanders choose to stay here if the after-tax wage gap starts to grow and they face a Government in New Zealand that’s actively slowing down the local economy by ending our oil and gas sector, large-scale cow culls, discouraging foreign investment, and restrictive industrial relations laws?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: I reject almost everything in that question from the member. We actually have a plan for New Zealand’s economy to be more productive, more sustainable, and more inclusive. I think New Zealanders want to live in a country that’s fair and where they get a chance to achieve their potential—that’s the plan of this Government.

Transport—Regional Fuel Tax

4. JAMI-LEE ROSS (National—Botany) to the Minister of Transport: Does he stand by all his statements and actions on fuel taxes?

Hon PHIL TWYFORD (Minister of Transport): Yes, when described and reported accurately.

Jami-Lee Ross: Will he support the calls from councils located in the Wellington, Canterbury, Bay of Plenty, and Waikato regions to have regional fuel taxes in place, when he only ever said it would be required in Auckland?

Hon PHIL TWYFORD: I’ve made it very clear publicly and to the councils in question that the Government’s intention, as demonstrated in the bill that is currently before the Parliament, the Land Transport Management (Regional Fuel Tax) Amendment Bill, that only Auckland Council will have the opportunity to put in place a regional fuel tax during this parliamentary term.

Jami-Lee Ross: Will he campaign for the next 2½ years for councils located within the Wellington, Canterbury, Bay of Plenty, and Waikato regions to tax their hard-working taxpayers more to have regional fuel taxes in place?

Hon PHIL TWYFORD: The member will learn the issues that we’ll be campaigning on in the next election a little closer to the time.

Jami-Lee Ross: Was he embarrassed when his officials told him that the total number of submissions in favour of his regional fuel tax legislation is 8 percent?

Hon PHIL TWYFORD: No, because I believe that Aucklanders understand that under this Government they are going to see action on fixing the gridlock that plagues our country’s biggest city and costs it $1.3 billion every year in lost productivity. Aucklanders want action, and as the New Zealand Herald said last week, let’s just do it.

Marja Lubeck: Supplementary?

SPEAKER: Question No. 5—oh, sorry. Marja Lubeck—supplementary.

Marja Lubeck: Will the proposed Auckland regional fuel tax be spent on the light rail network?

Hon PHIL TWYFORD: I thank the member for that question. I’m pleased to confirm that not one cent raised by Auckland Council’s regional fuel tax will be spent on the light rail network. In fact, today the Government launched a market-sounding and procurement process for the light rail project that will be funded from the city’s share of the National Land Transport Fund and, in all likelihood, innovative funding from other investors. It is another great day under this Government for growth and prosperity in Auckland.

Budget Policy Statement—Capital Allowances, Increased Spending Allowances, and Operating Allowances

5. KIRITAPU ALLAN (Labour) to the Minister of Finance: What were the operating and capital allowances in the Budget Policy Statement 2018 and how do these compare with previous periods?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister of Finance): In the Budget Policy Statement that this Government released in December last year, we allocated for 2018-19 $2.6 billion of new operating allowances and $3.4 billion of capital allowances. This compares to the pre-election fiscal update, which had $1.8 billion in new operating allowances for 2018-19 and $2 billion on capital. Final allowances for Budget 2018 will be outlined next Thursday.

Kiritapu Allan: What priorities has this Government signalled for these increased spending allowances?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: We have made rebuilding our critical public services, lifting children out of poverty, strengthening economic development in our regions, and better managing our natural resources as top priorities. Every New Zealander knows a story of how the services and infrastructure that we rely on have been run down in recent years. Just today, a group of health professionals delivered the stories of thousands of New Zealanders to us, which outlined the pressure that an underfunded health system has put on them. This is why we need these increased spending allowances.

Kiritapu Allan: What impact would lower allowances have on public services?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: Lower allowances would mean less funding for our critical public services, resulting in poorer quality services for New Zealanders. We can see examples of this in the current state of our health system, with leaky hospitals and overstretched staff, and in our education system, with more and more students enrolling but fewer teachers training. Anyone advocating for lower allowances would have to tell the New Zealand public what public services they would cut.

Housing—Emergency and Transitional Housing, and Homelessness

6. SIMON O’CONNOR (National—Tāmaki) to the Minister of Housing and Urban Development: Does he agree that nobody should be sleeping in cars this winter?

Hon PHIL TWYFORD (Minister of Housing and Urban Development): Yes.

Simon O’Connor: When he accepted, on The AM Show on Friday, “there are indications that, in fact, homelessness is getting worse before it will get better” under this Government, how much worse will it have to be before he increases funding to at least the level that the previous National Government funded?

Hon PHIL TWYFORD: It’s true that the housing crisis that we inherited, and a masked level of hidden homelessness that’s come to the fore in recent months, indicates that, in fact, homelessness may well get better before it gets worse.

Hon Judith Collins: What?

Hon PHIL TWYFORD: I want to respond—sorry, “get worse before it gets better”. I do want to respond to the member’s assertion that the former Government—

Hon Todd McClay: Are you going to get better before you get worse?

SPEAKER: Mr McClay.

Hon PHIL TWYFORD: —actually put more money into dealing with homelessness than this Government. The member should realise that, actually, we have continued to fund the emergency and transitional housing that his Government promised but failed to properly fund, and the $100 million that the Prime Minister announced only last week will properly fund the emergency and transitional housing that wasn’t funded fully by his Government. On top of that, we have been putting in place 1,500 extra housing places since last winter, on top of what that Government provided.

Simon O’Connor: When he said that the previous Government was “spending $140,000 a day putting people in motels.”—that “this is not housing policy; that’s an admission of failure.”—was the Minister wrong then, or is he now admitting that by funding motels he has failed by his own standard?

Hon PHIL TWYFORD: By rolling out more emergency and transitional housing in the last six months, we have cut in half the daily spend on motels that that Government was undertaking only a year ago.

Simon O’Connor: Will his housing for winter 2018 programme be of any use to people in winter if his plan is not to be completed until spring?

Hon PHIL TWYFORD: We ramped up the building of State houses. We stopped that Government’s sell-off of State houses. We’ve added more than 500 additional emergency and transitional housing places since we came to office. We started building extra houses. We’re not going to stop until demand is met and homelessness is ended.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Can I ask the Minister as to whether or not, after nine years, if he were to be the Minister of Housing for that period and the crisis was still the one he inherited, would he not regard himself as a “miserable blue failure”?

Hon PHIL TWYFORD: Yes, I say to the member that I certainly would. To take nine years and deny there’s a housing crisis, to hardly lift a finger to address the social and economic disaster—

Hon Gerry Brownlee: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. The Minister may well be responsible for his own condition, and may well want to explain that he would, in certain circumstances—although I can’t think what would be worse than now—describe himself as a miserable failure, but he has no ministerial responsibility or accountability to the House for his personal failings in that regard.

SPEAKER: The question was a hypothetical one and—

Hon Gerry Brownlee: It shouldn’t have been asked.

SPEAKER: Mr Brownlee: the member knows that hypothetical questions and matters of opinion have been allowed in this House for some time—most of that member’s career. So the question was in order. I will also say to him that he is sailing very close to the wind using the point of order process in the way that he did, to make inappropriate references to a member. It’s a very tight process and should not be used in that way. Shall we move on to the next question? It might be the best thing to do, I think.

Benefits—Entitlements and Welfare Fraud

7. Hon LOUISE UPSTON (National—Taupō) to the Minister for Social Development: Does she stand by all her policies and actions in the social development portfolio?

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI (Minister for Social Development): Absolutely.

Hon Louise Upston: Is it still the Government’s policy that if someone is found to have dishonestly claimed a benefit, they are responsible for paying back the fraud debt no matter what the circumstances?

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: Yes.

Hon Louise Upston: Has she, or anyone in her office, instructed officials or anyone in Work and Income to soften the Government’s approach to dealing with benefit fraud?

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: No.

Hon Louise Upston: How many people will be investigated for benefit fraud and other dishonest entitlements in the crackdown on gangs promoted by the Minister of Police?

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: I don’t have that information on me, but what I will say is that the previous Government should have had more of a focus on the number of New Zealanders who were not getting access to what they’re entitled to, and then, perhaps, they would have more effectively addressed the issues of poverty that we face as a country.

Hon Louise Upston: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. It was a straight question around benefit fraud and the crackdown on gangs, and the Minister didn’t address the question.

SPEAKER: If the member had something that had reference to gangs and crackdowns of that sort in her primary question, then I think it might have been more reasonable to expect the Minister to come with the required numbers. When a member asks a very non-specific primary question, she should not expect any detail in her supplementaries.

Jamie Strange: Does the Minister stand by her statement, “we as a State have to give people what they are entitled to, and so that is where our obligation lies.”?

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: Yes, I do, and I’m really concerned at some of the assertions that have been made by the other side of the House with respect to concerns that we would be doing that, given that we have a legal obligation as a State to give people what they are entitled to through the Ministry of Social Development (MSD). It is not just an ethical concern, although we are ethical on this side of the House and want to make sure people get what they deserve to get access to. What the other side of the House fails to realise is that when you don’t give people what they are entitled to through MSD, then the cost is shifted to other areas like health, like education, and like justice. It’s important that we give people what they’re entitled—

SPEAKER: Order! [Interruption] Order! Order! Too long.

Hon Louise Upston: How many more convictions for benefit fraud is she expecting following the crackdown on gangs by the Minister of Police?

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: Such a deficit approach from the other side of the House—such a focus on the negative. Instead of maximising the potential of the New Zealanders that come for support through MSD, they want to focus on litigation against New Zealanders. It’s a hypothetical question, and I’m not going to respond to it.

Family/Whānau Violence—Funding for Services

8. ANGIE WARREN-CLARK (Labour) to the Minister for Social Development: What recent announcements has she made about funding for family violence services?

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI (Minister for Social Development): Today, the Government announced a $76 million boost over four years to front-line family violence services—the first significant increase in 10 years. This is an almost 30 percent increase in funding, and is critical to the Government’s efforts to begin to turn around New Zealand’s tragic record of family violence. We know that many people who experience family violence can find themselves suffering alone. We’ve taken the step to increase funding in order to make more support available to these families and provide a safe space for people who are desperately seeking support.

Angie Warren-Clark: What impact will this have on family violence service providers?

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: The majority of this funding will go towards addressing demand at the front line. This means that around 150 existing Ministry of Social Development family violence service providers will be provided with extra funding in this Budget. These are the people who see and work with challenging and complex needs—often in crisis situations, every day responding to family violence. We know this is a long-term issue, but this is a step we can take now to try and stem the significant increase in demand for these services while we work to get these numbers down.

Angie Warren-Clark: Why is this funding important?

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: For so many reasons. Family violence has a damaging yet often hidden impact on victims. Between 2009 and 2015, there were 194 family violence deaths in New Zealand—an average of 28 family violence deaths per year. As the Prime Minister also said this morning at the Salvation Army breakfast, we’re also cognisant that if we are going to prioritise children as a Government, then part of that means making sure they are in safe households that are free from violence. In this country, there are too many people—many women and children—living behind doors, filled with fear and pain. This is simply unacceptable, and this Government will do better by them.

Hon Louise Upston: Since the Minister is pleased to provide funding in addition to the $169 million from 2016, how will she measure the impact of this new funding?

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: Mr Speaker, can she repeat the question?

SPEAKER: Yes, I think it would be good to repeat, because I didn’t quite understand myself.

Hon Louise Upston: If the Minister was pleased to provide additional funding, in addition to that $169 million in Budget 2016, how will she measure the impact of this new funding?

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: I don’t know what the $169 million additional funding that the member’s talking about is. In fact, today, the Women’s Refuge put out a release in response to our announcement saying that their baseline funding had remained static for the last nine years, and that they are immensely relieved that this Government is financially committing to addressing the chronic underfunding of the critical services to vulnerable women and children.

Mycoplasma Bovis—Compensation

9. Hon NATHAN GUY (National—Ōtaki) to the Minister for Biosecurity: Does he stand by all his statements and actions in relation to Mycoplasma bovis?

Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR (Minister for Biosecurity): Yes.

Lawrence Yule: What does he say to the White family in Pātoka, Hawke’s Bay, who’ve had 900 cattle killed and are still waiting for compensation, and, as a result, they can’t afford to buy their children’s rugby boots or replace their washing machine?

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Ask Nathan Guy.

Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR: I have sympathy for every farmer who’s in any way affected by this Mycoplasma bovis outbreak. Can I say that, by the end of today, 80 percent of all claims made to the Ministry for Primary Industries will be paid out. I can also say that if his colleague Mr Guy had moved more quickly when we first discovered Mycoplasma bovis, this wouldn’t be happening.

Hon Nathan Guy: Why doesn’t he direct his officials to provide a letter of intent to banks notifying them that compensation is on the way, to stop them pressuring nearly bankrupt farmers who are still waiting for terribly slow compensation payments?

Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR: Can I repeat for that member: by the end of today, 80 percent of all claims made will be paid out. This is not a simple process. Can I take, for example, one claim, where the number of animals in the yard, the number of animals put on to the truck, and then the number of animals killed at the stock works were completely different. There’s a lot of confusing information that has to be sorted through to ensure that the right payment goes to the farmers. In regards to the banks, the banks understand the situation. Wherever there has been a request for further information regarding compensation payments, we have delivered.

Police—Increase in Front-line Officers and Sworn Staff

10. CHRIS BISHOP (National—Hutt South) to the Minister of Police: From what date will he start to count the extra 1,800 sworn police officers that he says he is striving towards hiring?

Hon STUART NASH (Minister of Police): From the date this Government took office.

Chris Bishop: Can he confirm then that he’ll be including the extra 880 sworn police funded through Budget 2017 as part of his extra 1,800 sworn police?

Hon STUART NASH: Mr Bishop, I’ll take your 880 and I’ll up them 920, which equals 1,800, which is 1,800 more than your Government delivered over seven years.

Chris Bishop: How many of the extra 1,800 sworn police officers will be able to respond to family violence call outs?

Hon STUART NASH: That is a very good point, Mr Bishop, and it’s one of the reasons why, of the 1,800, we’re putting around about 1,100 into the front-line community positions, because we recognise that family harm and family violence is the scourge of our communities and we really want to deal with it. We think that a really good way to deal with it is to have police officers located in our communities. But having said that, all 1,800 work in the front line. [Interruption]

SPEAKER: Order! I do want to remind the Leader of the Opposition that my mike is open and when he refers to members inappropriately in the second person, everyone hears it. I didn’t stop him in any of the four times that he did it during that answer, but I will ask him just to take some care.

Health Services—Newborn Enrolment with a General Practice

11. Dr PARMJEET PARMAR (National) to the Minister of Health: Does he support the enrolment of newborns with GPs before they are 6 weeks old?

Hon Dr DAVID CLARK (Minister of Health): I want parents to have a simple process to ensure newborns get the care they need, including a GP practice, a Well Child provider, being on the immunisation register, and a dental programme.

Dr Parmjeet Parmar: Can he then ensure that he will not vote against my bill, the Newborn Enrolment with General Practice Bill, and then, in order to get political mileage, steal the concept of my bill and use it as part of a Government bill?

Hon Dr DAVID CLARK: Legislation is not the answer. If it was, I’m sure the previous Government would’ve acted on it.

Māori Language / Te Reo—Government Support, Maihi Karauna Strategy, and Reports

12. NUK KORAKO (National) to the Minister for Māori Development: What recent reports has she seen from the Māori Language Commission on the importance of expanding te reo Māori?

Hon NANAIA MAHUTA (Minister for Māori Development): I whiwhi i te ripoata nā Te Taura Whiri i Te Reo e aro ana ki te wā e mea atu, kia haruru a Aotearoa whānui i tō tātau reo taketake, arā [The report was received from the Māori Language Commission in regards to the moment namely saying] all New Zealand will resonate with our indigenous language.

Nuk Korako: Ā, e te huanga hoki ki ahau nei, nā wai ka ia ai urupare ki te pātai me te whāia nui rānei ki te whakaturinga Te Reo, he māngai ia mō Te Kāwanatataka, kāore rānei?

[And also to the relative to me, who indeed is she responding to the question and the main aim or turning a deaf ear to the language, is she a representative for the Government or not?]

Hon Kelvin Davis: Anō?

Hon NANAIA MAHUTA: Āe.

Mehemea ka tīkina e au te wairua o tērā kōrero, ā, ka hangaia e Te Kāwanatanga Te Maihi Karauna mā ngā kāhui minita e aro atu hei rautaki mō ā mātau nei mahi kei Te Kāwanatanga.

[Yes.

If I take the spirituality of that statement aboard, the Government will create the Maihi Karauna strategy for the ministerial clusters to take into account in terms of their responsibilities that the Government has for them.]

Rino Tirikatene: What work has been done on the development of the Maihi Karauna, the Crown’s Māori language strategy?

Hon NANAIA MAHUTA: Te Māngai Pāho, Te Taura Whiri i te Reo Māori, Māori Television, and Te Puni Kōkiri have worked very hard to complete the Maihi Karauna strategy, which was actually mandated by the previous Government, to guide the work of this Government as we seek to ensure that Reo revitalisation is something that all New Zealanders will benefit from.

Nuk Korako: Pātai anō.

SPEAKER: No, no, the time for oral questions has concluded. There are no supplementaries left to the member.

General Debate

General Debate

JAN LOGIE (Green): I move, That the House take note of miscellaneous business.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I want—in, perhaps, an unusual move for me—to congratulate New Zealand First, and Minister Sepuloni, for delivering on their coalition agreement for 150 front-line family violence services to get a well-overdue pay increase. This really, really matters, and I am so proud to stand up in this House and offer you my congratulations. These organisations, despite the rhetoric from that side of the House, have not had an increase in core funding for almost a decade, and they are an essential part of our response to family violence. Without them, our response lacks expertise, heart, and healing.

In a country like ours, everyone deserves to be safe in their home, and yet, right now, about 5 percent of women in this country will be experiencing physical violence in their intimate relationship. Some men will also be victims, though much less likely than women to experience fear or a loss of control of their daily lives—[Interruption]

SPEAKER: Order! Order! Can I ask members who are in the aisles or are standing up to sit down unless they’re whips, please. Thank you.

JAN LOGIE: Police are called out to a family violence incident in this country about every four minutes, and children are present about 80 percent of the time. We know that this means for those children that it can have a profound, lifelong impact unless we get those children and their families the right support. We can do better than this. Funding these agencies is important for victims. We need a range of services. We need to have services for people with disabilities, the elderly, men, migrants, LGBTQI people, Māori—we need a whole range of services.

But just to give an indication to this House about what some of these services do, let me describe some of the work of women’s refuge, where I used to work years ago. On any given day, they might have a number of phone calls from women who are reaching out to them. They may be in immediate danger and needing to call the police, or they might be wanting to discuss wanting better for their kids but not being sure what they need to do, or they may be worried about an escalation of violence in their relationship. They are probably considering how to leave and how to keep their kids but not knowing whether they can do that. They may be grappling with how to find a house, get money, manage their jobs, help their children find a new school and deal with the trauma of the violence, and how to tell their family, or even just how to help him stop the violence.

The police might also call the refuge, passing on the details and asking the refuge to contact one of the 400 women they are likely to be in contact with every day, and then the refuge will call up that woman, who’s probably been trying to manage her own safety by herself for years. They need to try and establish a rapport to break through for that woman to have a sense that, actually, there is somebody who can help them manage their safety and find a pathway to safety.

Some of these women and kids will need to come into the refuge safe house. Others will need support out in the community to be able to deal with the range of agencies like Work and Income and Housing New Zealand and schools and courts and police, many of whom will not understand what they are going through. The refuge does, and they might be trying to do all of this incredibly important, potentially life-saving work with, say, just two paid staff. I just want the House to think about that: all of those lives, and there are two people, potentially, who are trying to manage all of those needs, all of those difficult conversations. It’s clear that is not enough, but that is the consequence of the years of the previous Government refusing to increase the funding to these front-line organisations. It has meant that the agencies have been juggling and many have been unable to adequately support the victims, but that all changes today.

Hon JUDITH COLLINS (National—Papakura): Thank you, Mr Speaker. Does anyone remember that promise of the Prime Minister, the Rt Hon Jacinda Ardern, that she was going to lead a Government of relentless positivity? Does anyone remember that? Because what we saw today in Parliament was petulance—petulance; a refusal to answer a very decent question from David Seymour, a refusal to engage on the issues, a petulance that we were wasting her time having to come to Parliament. That’s the message that a lot of New Zealanders who watch Parliament at question time would have got from a Prime Minister who is too busy remixing music to go and visit the people in Taranaki and explain to them why she has completely stuffed up their industry; too busy going to have dinner with the journalist on Friday night, which was very inappropriate, I would have thought. She’s too busy doing that to go and visit the people of Taranaki. Her job is for the people of New Zealand, not for her own gratification to tell everyone in the world that she’s virtue signalling more than they are.

Let’s have a look at some of the broken promises. Another broken promise: oil and gas. Did she ever tell us in the election campaign that the oil and gas industry would be destroyed by her Government? Never; not once. Did she say she was going to be for the regions? Oh, yes, she did. And is she? No. Did she tell us that there would be no new taxes until the Tax Working Group came back? Oh, yes she did. And what has happened? Tax after tax after tax. Fuel tax: 25c a litre is more tax on people who pay for petrol. Why has she done that? Because she doesn’t have to pay for it. She’s got an electric vehicle at her place. She gets to use the roads for nothing. She’s after attacking every single group that she wants to do. She’s never promised that—she said no new taxes.

Let’s have a look at the KiwiBuild numbers. That’s always a good one. We were promised 100,000 new KiwiBuild houses, built by this Government. So far we’re down to 8,000 in the three-year term that they might actually get through to—8,000—and of those they’re all going to be bought off developers. So they’re going to pay more—this is how KiwiBuild works. They pay more money for houses than what they’re worth, and then they sell them to people at less than what they’re worth. So that’s a brilliant scheme if you are a developer and if you happen to be one of the people who is going to—

Rt Hon Winston Peters: No—that’s not true.

Hon JUDITH COLLINS: Now the Rt Hon Winston Peters has raised his voice, and good for him, because he can say he’s got $1 billion off New Zealand taxpayers for embassies. It’s great. He’s now going to go to Stockholm. And it’s interesting, isn’t it, that repairing the carpet in New Zealand embassies around the world is more important to New Zealand—$1 billion worth—and to New Zealand taxpayers than are the doctors visits for New Zealanders, free dental health for over-65s, and every other promise that they promised. So there’s $1 billion on foreign aid and also for embassies—because clearly we need an embassy in Stockholm!

I heard the Prime Minister today arrogantly tell the House in answer to the Leader of the Opposition as to why we had to have an embassy in Stockholm, and the answer was, essentially, “because you lot closed it”. So that’s the answer. So she needs to learn something from the Rt Hon Helen Clark. Helen Clark went after and helped and targeted particular groups in the community who needed help. This Prime Minister that we’ve got at the moment, she targets people she’s going to do over. Whether it’s the farmers, the oil and gas workers, the 8,000 people whose jobs will be lost because of her, the people in the regions—she’s after the people who buy petrol, the people who pay for the roads. She’s after everybody who actually helps make this economy work. And where is she for the farmers? Oh, don’t worry about that. She’s too busy mixing music and working out her next trip to Stockholm, because the Rt Hon Winston Peters—

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

Hon Dr DAVID CLARK (Minister of Health): I want to just acknowledge that contribution from the Hon Judith Collins and recognise the fact that it did seem to question the motivations of others. I think it’s important that everyone in this House should recognise that that particular contribution was brought to you by the letter “O” for Oravida. The irony of that!

Well, it’s just one week to go to Budget 2018; eight sleeps to go. Eight sleeps to go, and then we will see a Budget delivered in this House which will show a Government that is not afraid to tackle the challenging issues, that is not afraid to tackle and clean up the mess that the other side of the House left behind after their time in Government. Budget 2018 will make it clear once and for all that this Government has very different priorities from the previous Government. It was already clear, of course, when we cancelled the tax package that was skewed towards the wealthy and put in place instead a targeted package of family support that goes to 384,000 New Zealand families. That will be rolled out and will mean many families will get $75 a week more in the pocket—a targeted package that makes sure that those who need it the most are cared for. This is a Government that actually cares for New Zealanders.

We care about affordable access to quality care in health. We care about education. We care about housing on this side of the House. We know that the fundamentals have been neglected for too long and that is why we are going to have a Budget that addresses that critical infrastructure; that addresses education, the neglect, the social neglect; that addresses the infrastructure neglect in education and health and housing. It will take more than one Budget to address it all, and this is a fiscally responsible Budget that is determined to balance the books but also to address that historical neglect that we have inherited. We’ve got a plan to address it. We’re going to get on and do it.

There has been a legacy of time bombs out there left by the previous Government. Look at the workforce issues, the pressures that have been building up over nine long years of underfunding in the health system: $2.3 billion worth of underfunding is what an independent economist has assessed it at. That side of the House; they didn’t seem to care. Those dedicated professionals would turn up to work day after day, week after week, month after month. This side of the House; we do care. We will begin to make those workforces more sustainable. I met the nurses out today who were concerned about underfunding in the health system and we as a Government are determined to address that historical neglect.

We are determined to address the building issues that we’ve inherited. Everybody knows by now in this country that there is rot and mould in some of our hospital buildings. Those problems didn’t develop overnight; they developed because there was a Government previously that refused to acknowledge that those problems existed at all. I as health Minister have asked for a national asset management plan so that we can actually get a baseline across the country of all the buildings. We can prioritise them; we can address them. There is asbestos in many buildings. There are historical issues that need to be addressed and we have a plan to address them, and I think this current Government will be seen to be a Government that is prioritising that, addressing that historical neglect, in a way that the previous Government didn’t, come Budget day.

We will address that historical legacy of underfunding across the health sector, the deficits that are building up, and the health services that are now harder for New Zealanders to access than they used to be. We think New Zealanders deserve healthcare that is of a First World status.

Look at the helicopters. They left the helicopters undealt with; 29 years is the average age of that fleet. We need a sustainable, futureproofedservice that actually improves clinical outcomes for patients over time. We won’t let things drift. We won’t be afraid of tackling the hard issues. Bowel screening—they were hopelessly optimistic with bowel screening. No plan at all to address bowel screening, and they just said, “We’ll roll it out.” We are uncovering all the problems with that. We’ve had to instigate a review, in fact—because it was so horrendous—to get to the bottom of their poor planning.

We’ve introduced nearly as many reviews as the last Government did in their first year, because we’ve inherited such a mess and we’re determined to get on and deal with it. Mental health: New Zealanders—tens of thousands of them—called for a review of mental health, and we have kicked that off because we believe we need to listen and we need to address that serious crisis. Water: up to 100,000 New Zealanders every year—best estimate—are getting crook from poor water.

This Government will address the hard issues. We will address the infrastructure deficits we’ve inherited. We’ll address the service deficits we’ve inherited. We are a Government committed to a better future for New Zealanders—a Government that will tackle the hard issues. We’ve got different priorities, and we will deliver for New Zealanders.

SIMON O’CONNOR (National—Tāmaki): Look, one of the strange things I’ve found with all the claims around health from that member David Clark and others is that I haven’t seen one photo yet of all these supposed mouldy walls and asbestos and stuff. I’d just love that member to table some of them, because, as that member well knows, I’ve visited many of these hospitals over time and it’s just funny.

But we all know what the agenda is here. It is to try and create an excuse before we release the Budget—

SPEAKER: Order! Order! The member will resume his seat. Can I just say to members on my right that the comments may have been provocative and they could have had a quick and short response, but just a barrage is too much.

SIMON O’CONNOR: All I wanted was a photo. The other thing is we’re all hearing about care—that the other side of the House really cares. Do you know how the Labour Party, in particular, is illustrating the care at the moment? It’s to, effectively, re-announce National Party policy as its own, and the humdinger on Friday was this massive announcement of $100 million of funding for housing and homelessness—which is, in fact, less money than National had already committed. There was big talk about Housing First, this amazing new Canadian initiative, and about how Labour’s behind it. They forgot to mention that this was an initiative championed by Amy Adams on this side of the House. It was just a re-announcement of existing policies and, more often than not, underspending.

What it is, effectively, is a litany of completely broken promises. We’re hearing it around housing and even more around social housing, particularly from Phil Twyford—the whole “We’re not going to sell any State houses.” Well, how do you build new State houses if you don’t sell some of the existing ones?

I raised it in the House last week. Let’s look again at the Tāmaki redevelopment project—an amazing, an amazing project. In fact, some of my colleagues from the other side of the House were there. I won’t mention them by name in case they get in trouble from their colleagues. But you don’t build the warm, dry, new State houses without actually having to sell some of the existing State houses. You don’t make houses suitable for larger and smaller families by maintaining the old, damp, mouldy homes, which are not set up for these families. So I’m waiting for that broken promise—because the Government will wake up one of these days and realise that you have to sell some State houses to create the new ones for our people.

Look, the other one that’s coming up—and it’s because the Minister of Health got up—is around this whole issue of GP visits. As you know, I used to chair the Health Committee, which is now, I’m sure, very ably led by another, but Labour was hugely into promising cheaper GP visits, yet here we have already a broken promise. In fact, what we’ve seen in recent days—if I could put my foreign affairs hat on—is that, actually, spending a billion dollars in aid and on a new diplomatic post in Sweden is more important. In fact, there seems to be some sort of feeling—and, I suspect, from the Minister—that, actually, we’re going to be able to compete with China and the Pacific and elsewhere, and their trade, with our sort of measly contribution there.

Where are the priorities of this Government? In fact, we even had the Minister who’s just resumed his chair talking about all the nurses that he met. Well, I am looking forward to that Minister and the Prime Minister confirming to those nurses, as they’ve done in the past, that they will give them a substantial—a substantial—wage increase.

Look, the other element I find as an Auckland MP is the whole broken promise around taxes. Well, they waxed lyrical—I think it sort of waxed boring—around no more taxes, and yet here in Auckland now we’re going to be hit twice in the pocket on a fuel tax: once from the council, who at the moment is sort of prevaricating around the edges, pretending that it’s consulting—no one’s under any allusion that the Auckland Council will proceed with a regional fuel tax—and then we’re going to get hit by the Government. That is over 25c a litre which Aucklanders are going to be paying, and, as I’ve got feedback from my constituents in Tāmaki, they are all most, the man and the woman, opposed to this. There are some who understandably want their cycle lanes and so forth, but, actually, that’s not the point.

Most people in my electorate are using their cars. They choose to use their cars and they do not want to be paying 25c more, plus the GST that’s going to go on top of that, towards projects which don’t make any sense, such as light rail going down Dominion Road. It makes no sense at all.

They can’t even find the money to upgrade the regionally recognised Tamaki Drive, but they can somehow find billions of dollars to put in a little tram route to the airport. Again, even Mike Lee—even Mike Lee from the left—tells us that, actually, heavy rail is the way to go. It’s an absolute dog’s breakfast. There are broken promises after broken promises.

Look, I’m fascinated to see—well, it’s not really promises; it’s just plain suicide attempts, really, as they take out our oil and gas industry. They have mad ideas around trees, though we’re hearing a bit more about apricot fruits at the moment, so maybe Shane Jones will add those apricot trees. They’re getting rid of the cows and stuff—God knows what sort of country we’re being dragged through. And, seeing the Minister of Defence is here, boy, he’s got a few challenges ahead now in terms of promises as our defence forces remain very keen on the P-8s, and he and I know what it’s like flying in those P-3s. We need those P-8s, Ministers. We need those naval assets, and those in the army want their share of the pie, as well.

So I’m very much looking forward to what should be delivered being delivered, but I’m not holding my breath in this litany of broken promises.

Hon CLARE CURRAN (Minister of Broadcasting, Communications and Digital Media): Thank you, Mr Speaker. Well, I’ll do one better than a photo. I invite—this is a personal invitation—Simon O’Connor to come to Dunedin, and I’ll give him a tour through Dunedin Hospital and show him the leaks. I’ll show him the bits that are roped off because of asbestos, and where you have to wear a hazmat suit to go down to the basement to retrieve any records. I’d happily give him a tour, and I expect him to turn up in Dunedin for it.

When the foundations of the new Dunedin Hospital are laid by 2020, this Government can hold its head up high because it has delivered on its promises. That previous National Government sat on its hands and prevaricated and wasted tens of thousands, possibly hundreds of thousands, of dollars on countless circular reports with no outcomes—no outcomes. If that party was still in Government, Dunedin would still be waiting for a hospital. It would continue to wait, possibly for decades, because it was going nowhere. Now, Simon Bridges is complaining that we’re moving too fast on Dunedin Hospital.

This Government will deliver for the people of Dunedin. As the KiwiBuild homes gather momentum and a plan for emergency housing is in place; as there are new rules for warm, dry homes; and as there’s a winter energy payment, this Government can hold its head up high, because we have delivered. As the hundreds of thousands of new plantings of forestry are planted, this Government can hold its head up high, because we have delivered. As the regions stir and begin to prosper again with economic plans, with investment in those regions, this Government can hold up its head, because we have delivered. As productivity lifts, as there is an actual economic plan in place, this Government can hold up its head, because we have delivered.

The scale of the challenge that we have is enormous, where there are urgent capital needs in hospitals, ageing school classrooms, and a failure to plan for growth in the education system. There are years of neglect. A multibillion dollar funding gap in Auckland transport, the Christchurch rebuild that is beset by problems—we cannot make up for nine years of neglect with just one Budget, but this is a Budget that sets the foundations. It will set the foundations for that growth, and we will hold our head up high, because we will deliver, and we’ll deliver for all of New Zealand—all of New Zealand, not just some of New Zealand.

We have a huge infrastructure deficit in New Zealand—bricks and mortar, trains, transport, jobs, and a real economic strategy—but we also have a huge social deficit in this country. Part of that is a culture issue: a culture issue across many of our Government agencies, which is a sick culture, and a culture issue across our regions, which are sick and tired and lacking in hope. These things take time to rebuild. That is what this Government is rebuilding across our country. That is evidenced by the urgent need for a mental health inquiry and by the need for investment in family violence. There’s huge stress on our social services. That’s what this Government will deliver on, and we will hold our heads up high.

When I camped in my tent in the Octagon last July, in the middle of winter, I had a woman come to me and say that she was told by the Ministry of Social Development to go and buy a tent, and that they might reimburse her. That is the culture that we need to change. That is evidence of the change that needs to happen right across our country to rebuild hope. This Government will deliver on a Budget to reshape the foundations of our economy and our society, and we will deliver.

Hon SHANE JONES (NZ First): Soon, New Zealand will see from this side of the House a party of life, stamina, and energy—a party that reminds New Zealanders that over the last nine years, the other side earned the moniker and earned the reputation of being the dead horse party. Why do I say “the dead horse”? Number one, they continue to flog the notion that their policies of giving tax cuts to the rich, starving schools, a monstrous deficit, starving hospitals, a monstrous health deficit, and using the environment as a sewer—consequently, they now are the party of pollution.

Now, pollution is about contamination. That side of the House—not only are they still trying to trot out tired, ill-founded, hopeless ideas, but they have left a spirit of contamination in certain parts of the economy where they believe it’s fine to continue to sell the country to the highest bidders. Those days are over. They thought it was fine to melt down the infrastructure of the country and leave that debt to future generations, which is why—

Hon Dr Nick Smith: Like Waterview.

Hon SHANE JONES: Oh, Mr Smith. I just see Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species book in front of me. In that book, Charles Darwin points out that, occasionally, nature delivers some frightful outcomes—frightful outcomes. If there’s a person in Parliament on the other side of the House who licensed pollution, worsened the prospects of our environment, and enabled the entire farming community to continue to take for granted the fine name of our nation—the social licence that all industries need not only to cherish but to develop—it lies in that sad individual. I don’t want to say any more about Nelson’s product, sending him to Parliament, because the Nelsonians are encouraging me to step forward as the first citizen of the provinces. I have said, “What did Mr Smith do for you over nine years? Why do you continue to support him?” That is why I have encouraged the Minister of Education to offer special education in and around that man’s environment.

But let me continue about some of the areas that this Budget must address. Why should we have to defend this tawdry, tawdry record from that side of the House, when they made promises to regional New Zealand but couldn’t find more than $11 million? Well, New Zealand, in a very short period of time you will have not only $1 billion, not only $2 billion, but $3 billion to address the neglect, the sadness, and also the broken promises. But wait—wait! You will also have the opportunity to engage in a project of civic pride—nation-building—called the billion-tree strategy.

Now, I am not unlike a leopard: I have spots of modesty that are seen from time to time, and as we prowl around the country we find that there are scared rabbits. There are rodents. Why? Because that’s all that’s been left in some areas of our conservation estate—our local, regional areas. But this Government, it is going to spend the money the last crowd refused to. Why? Because we’ve been given a mandate by New Zealander voters to redress and to meet societal arrears that we’ve been left with. It is absolutely appropriate that every time this side of the House stands and speaks, we sheet home the responsibility where it belongs.

Biosecurity is something that lies at the heart of our nation’s wealth-creating capacity. It was an abject failure under the last Government. They stand every day and try and blame Damien O’Connor. Why did you short the funding?

Hon Nathan Guy: That’s you. That’s him.

Hon SHANE JONES: Why did you refuse to deliver an appropriate level of funding? It’s a sad occasion when Mr Guy stands up, limply trying to criticise the champion of the West Coast, when he had every opportunity, and his politics and his intellect are like the rear teat on the udder. Thank you very much.

Hon AUPITO WILLIAM SIO (Minister for Pacific Peoples): It is a pleasure to follow the “First Citizen of the Regions”. In that same vein, I now want to turn to the “First Citizen of the Pacific”. Yesterday a historic event took place in the halls of this Parliament, when the Rt Hon Winston Peters, the Deputy Prime Minister, delivered a speech entitled “First Steps”. This follows from a recent visit led by the Rt Hon Jacinda Ardern and Winston Peters round the Pacific, which we call the “Pacific reset”. I want to acknowledge that this is a significant step, even though members on the other side of the House may not see it as such.

You see, Pacific peoples are an integral part of this country of ours. More than 62 percent of the 400,000 Pasifika people who call New Zealand home are born here. This is their home. This is their tūrangawaewae, yet their historic connections to the region, to the islands, is similar to when urban Māori return to the marae or when urban Māori return to their iwi. For somebody like myself, if somebody dies in the family, we return them to our ancestral homes in the Pacific; we return them to our cultural lands in the Pacific. So that’s the context.

I think it really is significant that when we are talking about the essential foundational building blocks for New Zealand—in terms of housing, health, education, and lifting incomes for the residents of New Zealand—by its very nature and the connections of the Pacific people, we also must talk about the Pacific region. I feel that as a proud New Zealand citizen of Pacific heritage, I feel like I should be standing at the top of Māngere Mountain and shouting from the rooftop about what occurred yesterday. It’s not well-known by this region. The other side will throw stones.

SPEAKER: Sorry, we’ve got a slight clock problem. Two minutes.

Hon AUPITO WILLIAM SIO: That’s all right. Just give me five minutes then, Mr Speaker. The other side will throw stones, as if somehow we’re providing some sort of a beneficiary to the Pacific. That is not so. That is so far from the truth. The word that they are missing is “reciprocation”—“reciprocation”. It is never to the benefit to the Pacific; it’s usually benefiting New Zealand. It’s trade that benefits New Zealand; it’s the sports athleticism of the Pacific that benefits New Zealand.

Those family connections are so important but, more importantly, as the Prime Minister, Jacinda, has often said and was repeated—

SPEAKER: Order! The Prime Minister’s full name.

Hon AUPITO WILLIAM SIO: The Rt Hon Jacinda Ardern has said that climate change is the nuclear-free challenge of her generation. It is self-evident—we saw that with her carrying a child. She is speaking for the future generations yet unborn.

For the Pacific there is a sense of urgency. All of us who have family connection to Tuvalu, to Kiribati, to Tokelau—we are fearful of what will happen to those islands if the world does not get on board and reduce their carbon emissions. Now, we are doing all we can as a nation, but evidently we’ve also got to be looking to the Pacific region, because the emergency that I fear will occur at some stage if the world does not recognise the point of no return is that islands such as Tuvalu, Tokelau, and Kiribati will be knocking at our doorstep. That investment is about not just investing in the Pacific but also in investing for our security, investing for the betterment of New Zealand going forward.

Hon Dr NICK SMITH (National—Nelson): It is just so telling that not a single Government member, including the Minister that’s just resumed his seat, the Hon Aupito William Sio, has been able to answer the question that’s on the minds of every New Zealander and member of this House, and that is: why has the Government prioritised diplomats over doctors? Why have they been prepared to spend hundreds of millions of dollars—nearly a billion dollars—on indulging the ego of Mr Winston Peters rather than meeting the commitment that that member and every other member of the Labour Party made to New Zealanders over the cost of going to a doctor on 1 July.

Let’s be really specific about what Jacinda Ardern promised. She said that on 1 July every New Zealander would pay $10 less to go to the GP, and we’ve now had the Minister of Health admit that that promise—that was repeated tens of thousands of times in advertisements, it was in the leaders’ debate, and it was repeated by Labour candidates up and down New Zealand—is being ratted on. Well, I’ll give some advice to members opposite: ratting on promises is political suicide. We saw it with the Labour Government. We saw it with the Labour Government back in the days when it sold assets when it said it would not. I openly confess over the issue of surtax. It was highly erosive, and that is why—that is why—the Clark Government and the Key Government were so careful to say what they mean, to mean what they say, and to deliver on those commitments.

So I say to the new Labour member down the back there: what’s your excuse for breaking your word; for telling people to vote Labour on the basis of cheaper doctors’ visits, when the Government’s not 12 months old and it’s ratting on that promise? And to rub salt in the wound, members opposite are saying opening a new embassy in Stockholm to pay for gin and to pay for cucumber sandwiches is more important than Kiwi families being able to get to the GP.

Let’s just remember the background: our party introduced free doctors’ visits for under-fives. We said we would extend that, in the 2014 election, to under-13s by 1 July 2015, and we did it on time.

Hon Tracey Martin: You’re not correct; 2005’s supply and confidence agreement—New Zealand First and Labour.

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: What is the excuse, Tracey Martin? What is the excuse for your Government breaking its word? How often have I listened to comments from New Zealand First that said that honouring your word is all-important? Well, of course, New Zealand First will be more interested in indulging the ego of Winston Peters than in the Labour-led Government doing what it said.

We remember. You see, we’ve been round this paddock before. The Labour - New Zealand First Government, in 2006, poured hundreds of millions of dollars into the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, and you know what’s interesting? Look at the books—they couldn’t spend the largesse that was given to them. They underspent in 2006, in 2007, and in 2008—they were so awash with cash. So what we have is a Government that is more interested in feeding the ego of Mr Peters than helping families get to the doctor and helping families in the way in which they said.

This is shaping up as the “Budget of broken promise”. We’ve seen it in housing, we’ve seen it on the fuel tax, but it’s no more graphically illustrated than their promises over doctors visits.

MICHAEL WOOD (Labour—Mt Roskill): What a pleasure it is to follow on from the Minister who presided over the biggest housing crisis that this country has ever seen. His main criticism seemed to be that this Government is planning on doing more than one thing at a time, and I can tell that Minister that this Government will be delivering better health services as well as delivering a foreign service that is capable of building and enhancing our country’s reputation on the world stage. Of course, it’s understandable to hear that from that Minister, because he was incapable of doing the one thing that the people of New Zealand needed him to do, which was to build the affordable homes that our families lack so badly. At the end of that Government’s time in office, the homeownership rate in this country was the lowest since 1951—that is the record of that member, and that is the record of that Government, which we have, thankfully, replaced.

I am very pleased to be here just one week away from the new Labour-led Government’s first Budget in office, and what a Budget it is going to be. We’re going to rebuild the social, the economic, and the infrastructure foundations of New Zealand that have been left so tattered and so underfunded under that previous Government. I just want to speak about a few of those important foundations.

The first one is having foundations for a transport system that finally gets Auckland / Tāmaki-makau-rau, our biggest city, moving after years of gridlock and neglect under that Government. What a great thing it was to see the Minister of Finance, Grant Robertson, and the Minister of Housing and Urban Development and Transport, Phil Twyford, standing up today, only six months after this Government was sworn into office, with a fully-funded $28 billion infrastructure plan to get Auckland moving, and that sits alongside a transport plan for all of our country.

We’re going to invest to make sure that we have safer roads to get the record road toll down, that was left to drift upwards under that Government. We’re going to invest in our regions because they deserve safe roads, good regional rail, and proper transport networks as well. We’re going to invest in urban growth because, unlike that party over there that has such a myopic, conservative, and miserable vision of our cities, we believe in investing in urban growth so that we have international cities that can compete on the world scene and that have high-quality public transport. We are going to get Auckland moving.

I just want to add one thing on that note: one member on that side of the House who I haven’t heard any criticism of the light rail plan from is, of course, the Hon Nikki Kaye. I suspect that she is about the one member in that caucus who actually understands some of the urban growth issues that Auckland faces as the MP for Auckland Central, and I look forward to her contribution and seeing whether she rubbishes the light rail scheme as much as her colleagues on that side of the House have today.

The Budget next week is going to build the foundations for the health and well-being of all New Zealanders, and one of the things that I am most proud of is that this Budget is going to put our kids first. This Government has actually got the spine, has actually got the gumption, to embed in our Budget targets for child well-being and reducing the stain of child poverty in our country. That is something that grew under that Government over nine years. It’s a problem they wished away. It’s a problem they wouldn’t face up to. It’s words that they wouldn’t even utter—they couldn’t utter the words “housing crisis”; they couldn’t utter the words “child poverty”. This Government says we acknowledge those problems, after nine years of neglect, and we are going to do something about them, and we’re going to hold ourselves to account to them as well.

The health and well-being foundations that we are rebuilding have been mentioned, as well, by colleagues like Clare Curran, who’s pointed to the $1.5 billion investment in Dunedin Hospital. We believe that people, no matter what part of this country they are living in, deserve access to modern, First World, first-class health services—that is the ambition of this Government. Yet as I sat in the Finance and Expenditure Committee with some of my colleagues in the Chamber this morning and we read through and heard from Treasury on their four-yearly Investment Statement, we heard that 19 percent of the buildings in our health sector are rated by Treasury—by Treasury themselves, not by the Labour Party; by Treasury, who have looked at this independently—as not being fit for purpose. Through our investments in health and education we are going to undo that record of neglect as well.

Finally, I want to say that we are going to rebuild the foundations so that every single New Zealander has a warm, dry, and decent place to sleep. We’ve invested, already, $100 million in emergency housing to make sure that we don’t have the scandal of homeless people dying on park benches again this winter because of neglect and homelessness, and we are going to work to make sure that every single family in this beautiful country has a decent place to live. We’re proud to be rebuilding those foundations. Mr Speaker, thank you.

Hon NATHAN GUY (National—Ōtaki): I think the last week can be best summarised with the four Cs: carpet, cows, compensation, and cost. So let’s go through those.

In terms of the carpet, this is all about Winston Peters gaining $900 million through Budget 2018 to ensure that there’s New Zealand carpet in every embassy and high commission around the world. Can’t you imagine that Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade officials will be coming into his office saying, “Here we are, Minister. Can you select a carpet for the embassy in Sweden. It’s all New Zealand wool.”

This is all about Winston Peters’ retirement. When he goes up, in retirement, into the Pacific, he’ll get one of those flash titles, and he’ll be able to swan around the Pacific and they’ll all say, “Oh, Mr Peters. Isn’t it fantastic what you’ve done for us?” Yes, we admit more needs to be done in the Pacific, but surely you would think that cheaper GP visits would be more important to New Zealanders than opening an embassy in Sweden.

Then, if we move to the next aspect which has been the focus on cows this week, we had David Parker on Q+A actually musing on the fact that he wants to see a cow cap. He would really quite like to see one million less cows in New Zealand.

Hon Member: Fewer.

Hon NATHAN GUY: Fewer cows in New Zealand. When you equate that right through, that would cost about $3 billion. Then, if you roll that through those big dairying regions in New Zealand, that is a massive cost and job losses in regional New Zealand.

I want to know where New Zealand First are in this whole debate. We don’t hear from them. The so-called provincial champion of the region, Shane Jones—what do New Zealand First think about a cow cap? What we haven’t heard is the Government acknowledging the great work that New Zealand dairy farmers have already done: excluding livestock from waterways, riparian planting, nutrient budgets—the list goes on—upgrading their effluent system. That is all lost in this debate. Yes, farmers need to do more, but so does business and so does urban New Zealand. The most polluted water body is in downtown Auckland. Is that acknowledged? No it isn’t.

Then we move to compensation and costs—and this is where you get interesting politics to do with Mycoplasma bovis. This is a big issue for the Government, and now it’s about political management—political management for overseeing fast and fair compensation for farmers. It’s been too slow. The banks are circling. The Ministry for Primary Industries won’t give a letter of intent to the banks to say that compensation is coming. Farmers are hurting. We’ve had an example this afternoon in the House from Lawrence Yule, whereby one of his farming constituents was saying he couldn’t even purchase rugby boots for his family to get to sport on the weekend or buy a washing machine for their family home. This is what is happening because the Government is not ensuring that compensation is happening fast enough.

Also, we had an example last week where the Minister Damien O’Connor got the cattle industries into his office and said, “Don’t worry about the Government-industry agreement (GIA) that you’ve signed up to.”—and 16 organisations have, which is all to do with a framework for funding biosecurity response and costs and things like that—“That’s all out the window. I need you to pay 40 or 50 percent of these costs.” That is not fair. That is outside the mandate that Cabinet agreed to in 2013, and industry and farmers and growers are now wondering whether the GIA is actually on toast—whether it’s going to be parked up because of political interference. These organisations went back to their farmers and growers before they signed up and said, “We need a mandate to sign.” So I will be fascinated to see, when they get back in the Minister’s office in the next week or two, whether they get bullied by the Minister to pay even more than what they should. Yes, we realise this is a big cost on the Government, but it’s hugely important—

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

PRIYANCA RADHAKRISHNAN (Labour): Thank you, Mr Speaker. He aha te mea nui o te ao? He tangata, he tangata, he tangata.

[What is the most important thing in the world? It is people, it is people, it is people.]

It is with pride that I rise today to take my first call and contribute to a general debate, and it is indeed with pride that I speak in this week, in the lead up to this Labour-led Government’s first Budget announcement.

Before I begin, though, I just want to address a point made by the previous speaker, Nathan Guy, who’s just resumed his seat, who, basically, has been quite vocal about the fact that he feels this Government cannot both invest in foreign affairs and also in the health sector. I’d just like to point out to him that we are the Government of “and” and “and”. We actually can invest in multiple sectors to make sure that all New Zealanders are better off. If he thinks that trade and that foreign affairs are not important to us, to New Zealanders, he should actually talk to some of his colleagues who were part of the delegation that, in fact, you led, Mr Speaker, recently, where we went overseas and talked about opportunities for New Zealand, many of them trade opportunities, from the point of view that we are a small country, that we are geographically distant, and that we are heavily reliant on trade—and it is important for us.

That leads me, actually, to my next point, which is this. During the campaign trail—and we’ve heard from members opposite what members on this side of the House have been talking about up and down the country on the campaign trail—I’d just like to remind them that their candidates waxed lyrical about the fact that New Zealand has enjoyed a strong economy. I just want to say this: it’s true, but the problem is that too few New Zealanders have benefited from that strong economy. On this side of the House, we do believe, in fact, that we need a strong economy here in New Zealand, because we believe strongly in shared prosperity. We cannot invest in the sectors that have seen nine years of underfunding and neglect if we don’t have a strong economy—and we get that. What we want to focus on, though, and what this Budget will lay the foundation for, is an investment in our people—which is the whakataukī that I started with. What’s the most important thing in the world? It’s our people, it’s our people, it’s our people.

As I stand here today and I look forward to what our Budget announcements will be, I reflect on the stories that people have told me of their lives. I reflect on the young mother I met in Maungakiekie who had moved overseas, like many; started a family; came back home to New Zealand with her children; and moved in with her family as a temporary measure, thinking, you know, “This is the suburb I’ve grown up in. I want to be close to my family. I’ll find a house and move into that.” A year later, when I met her, she was still sharing the three-bedroom house with 16 other people. She was afraid to uproot her children again from school and move somewhere else, because she couldn’t actually find a place to rent that she could afford, in a suburb that was one of the most affordable.

I think back to the principals of low-decile schools who have told me about their children coming to school hungry, who can’t concentrate. Where’s the learning if a child goes to school without any food? That is what we heard today as I sat through submission after submission on the Child Poverty Reduction Bill. People who work in the sector told us how poverty affects children’s cognition, ability to function, health, and every potential indicator—every indicator—of the people that they are and the people that they are going to be.

I reflect on the international students who are sold one story, come to New Zealand, and find that the qualification that they end up with will neither get them a job here nor back home, but whose families are so entrenched in debt because they believed that they were sending their kids to New Zealand to get a world-class education. Our export education is actually a brilliant thing, but was jeopardised by the actions of the previous Government.

I think back to the small-business owners who have been robbed, who were assaulted, and who live in fear each morning as they open their shops that that will be the day that the offenders come back to finish their jobs. And I reflect on the fact that at a time when crime was actually increasing, the previous Government reduced police numbers.

I think back to the time that I spent in the family violence sector, where, as the member Jan Logie pointed out, often there were only two of us to work with women who were in incredibly unsafe positions, who have lauded this Government’s announcement of the first significant funding boost in 10 years. I reflect on the fact that this will be a Government of kindness and investment. Thank you.

BARBARA KURIGER (National—Taranaki - King Country): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I would just like to remind the member who just spoke, Priyanca Radhakrishnan, and gave the Hon Nathan Guy a barrel about trade that the party on the opposite who is now the Government—or part of the Government—actually stood against the Trans-Pacific Partnership when we were trying to do it last year. And I would also like to make a comment—again, the Hon Nathan Guy brought up about the wool carpets. And every question I’ve put in to the Minister for primary industries about wool has come back very vacant about what’s happening with wool, and I have to say that was a broken promise that the New Zealand First Party were talking about—wool carpets—and they can’t call themselves the provincial champions when they go round breaking promises like that.

But what I really want to talk about today is the golden egg. That Government over the other side talks about the golden egg. It’s welfare. OK. We’re going to give everybody everything! I know there’s a fable out there, and perhaps this Government could learn a lesson about the goose and the golden egg. This Government is going through the process of killing off the geese that are laying the golden eggs.

And the Hon Damien O’Connor, who’s over there, was at the same farmers’ forum that I was at yesterday, and the Hon Damien O’Connor would’ve probably heard Cameron Bagrie giving his presentation in the morning. I don’t know if the Minister was there for that part of the presentation, but the message was that we are going to end up with a growth void.

Yes, we have to change. Every industry is looking at change, and every industry accepts that climate change exists, but we cannot jump to the idealistic state, and that is exactly what this Government is trying to do. We are going to end up with a growth void, and we are going to end up having no money to fund the social policies that this Government believes that they are going to fund. We will not change the climate of the world by killing our economy. We have to come down to scale.

We forget how small we are. We forget that we have some of the most efficient farmers in the world. And while we might not be a large country, we have a large, large impact on the export market. So what happens if we kill that goose that lays that golden egg? We will have less efficient farmers across the world supplying food products, and guess what that’s going to do for climate change? Absolutely nothing. It won’t reverse it, and it will probably, at some point, increase it.

I want to say the same thing, although this message has been said time and time again in this House, and doesn’t seem to be getting to the other side, which is that if we cut off our gas supplies, which are going to cut off much quicker than what this Government believes they are—because what happens is the horses are being spooked, and we can stand here and think, “Oh, well, that’s fine. We’ve got 30 years.” Actually, those permits do go out 30 years, but if we don’t build that bridge and we don’t get that transition, we are going to have a growth void. Because do you think that some of those companies are going to hang around in this country for 30 years and wait? And some of the science that we need to solve some of our issues doesn’t even exist yet.

So yesterday we heard that horticulture is going to be the answer to everything, and our leader, the Hon Simon Bridges, asked the Prime Minister about horticulture and who is actually going to be the people who are going to harvest the apricots. So another broken promise.

We talk about immigration. We heard a lot during the election about immigration and about how we’re going to cut the numbers in immigration. And, hold on! We’ve got nobody—nobody—who’s going to be wanting to pick our fruit. We’ve got nobody—we’ve had people getting up and talking about no jobs in regional New Zealand. Well, tell somebody who doesn’t go there that. Because I’ve got jobs in my electorate for plumbers and electricians and truck drivers and you name it—farmers, all those sorts of people. We have got to get our students and our children transitioning out of school into those jobs.

So the warning is that this may be a nuclear moment for the Prime Minister’s generation, but if the geese that are giving us the golden eggs kill our economy and then fail to reduce climate change, then it well may be a nuclear moment—[Time expired]

The debate having concluded, the motion lapsed.

Bills

Accident Compensation Amendment Bill

First Reading

Hon IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY (Minister for ACC): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I move, That the Accident Compensation Amendment Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Education and Workforce Committee to consider the bill.

New Zealand’s no-fault accident compensation scheme is a national treasure, and the envy of many other countries. Overwhelmingly, people who are injured receive an excellent service from ACC in terms of their treatment and their rehabilitation. This Government is committed to ensuring that the accident compensation scheme remains fair, transparent, and accessible for all claimants.

For the most part, these changes are at the boundaries of the system, rather than at the core. I’ve asked officials to take a careful look at ways to improve the scheme, with the intention to bring a substantive bill to the House late this year or early next year.

While policy work on that broader package is under way, a pressing issue that needs to be addressed immediately has arisen, and I’ve taken the opportunity at the same time to make a series of other useful changes. The cumulative effect of these changes is to make the scheme fairer and kinder to groups on the margin of coverage.

This bill addresses a gap in ACC coverage for families of employees who are posted overseas in the course of their employment. I believe this is an important change to make, as we do not want to discourage people from representing New Zealand’s interests offshore if they feel that they cannot keep their families together without risk.

Employees who represent New Zealand in both our public affairs and private industry contribute a range of benefits to New Zealand’s economy and international relations. It is reasonable for employees and their family to be living together overseas while they carry out their employment duties. If these family members were in New Zealand and had an accident, they would receive full entitlement for any injuries. This is a return to how the issue was dealt with under previous Acts, and would return the spirit of those provisions to capture family units and dependants.

The Act was amended rather mysteriously in 1998, and there is no intact legislative record behind the reason for the change. The agencies working overseas are concerned that this gap may be a hurdle to filling overseas placements. I propose that these amendments should be retrospective to the date of the previous change. While there is a presumption that retrospective legislation should be avoided, the presumption does not apply in the same way where, as here, a benefit is being provided rather than a right removed. The Attorney-General is comfortable with the retrospectivity of this proposal, and ACC is best placed to deal with any historic claims.

This amendment applies to the existing coverage extension for a small group of people posted overseas. The existing cover does not include people who choose to work remotely offshore for lifestyle or convenience reasons or are participating in Volunteer Service Abroad programmes. I do not consider that there is a strong rationale for extending the scheme beyond New Zealand employees, and this approach aligns with the core principles of ACC as a replacement for the right to sue and an injury safety net in New Zealand.

This bill also makes a number of other changes. It amends the interface between weekly compensation and superannuation to provide for fairer transitions for those people who are injured near to retirement age. This means that people will be able to receive up to two years of weekly compensation and superannuation before transitioning on to superannuation. It is important to remember that treatment and rehabilitation does not cease based on age. This will provide a fairer, more consistent relationship between weekly compensation and superannuation to provide for fairer transitions for those people who are injured near retirement age.

The amendments to the interface between weekly compensation and superannuation align with our commitment to review the restrictions on superannuitants being able to receive both weekly compensation and New Zealand superannuation, given the changing nature of work for the over-65 workforce.

One of the amendments relating to this interface addresses the declaration of inconsistency by the Human Rights Review Tribunal that the requirement to elect between weekly compensation and superannuation was discriminatory on the basis of age. I’m pleased to be introducing an amendment that responds positively to this declaration. This amendment will mean that a client’s entitlement to weekly compensation as a surviving spouse or partner will no longer be affected by whether they are also receiving weekly compensation. Most surviving spouses or partners, including those of superannuation qualification age or older, will be entitled to a maximum of five years of weekly compensation based on their deceased spouse’s or partner’s earnings at the time of the fatal injury. This will ensure consistency and fairness between the entitlements received by surviving spouses regardless of age.

This bill disestablishes the historic Accident Compensation Appeal Authority, as maintaining a separate authority is no longer cost-effective or efficient, given the low number of appeals to the authority. This amendment is in line with this Government’s intentions to remove the complexity in costs that sometimes arises as to whether the authority or the District Court should hear an appeal. Following the disestablishment of the authority, all new appeals under the repealed Acts will be heard by the District Court. This will ensure that claimants’ rights are maintained. I’ve also included in the bill some minor and technical amendments that will increase ACC’s operational efficiency and improve the workability of biennial levy rounds. It is important that we take these opportunities for regulatory maintenance to ensure the effectiveness and efficiency of regulatory systems in the future.

As a final point, I would like to acknowledge the work of the Hon Michael Woodhouse as the previous Minister for ACC. Many of the policy proposals in this bill were developed and worked under his watch as Minister. They are a good start to the direction of travel that I plan for the scheme. I look forward to the discussion of these important matters, and I encourage people to consider submitting their views about the bill to the Education and Workforce Committee. I commend this bill to the House.

Hon TIM MACINDOE (National—Hamilton West): Thank you, Mr Speaker. May I begin by congratulating the Hon Iain Lees-Galloway for bringing his first piece of ACC-related legislation to the House since the change of Government. But I also thank him for acknowledging the fact that—as I think is quite notable—this is yet another piece of legislation that, essentially, will move to enact measures that were commenced under the previous National Government.

Of course, while they are important, nevertheless, they tend to be, and might even be, fairly technical and, in some cases, minor amendments to the primary legislation that, as I say, were in the pipeline and probably just couldn’t achieve the degree of priority in the legislative programme of the previous Government. But because the new Government has so little work of its own to bring to this House, they are only too happy to pick up the National Party’s good ideas and progress them. I’d also like to endorse the Minister’s praise of our ACC regime, which, as he’s rightly noted, is the envy of many other countries and jurisdictions around the world. So if they were under any sort of doubt, let me put them out of their suspense at this moment by confirming that the National Party will of course be supporting this very sensible bill.

I note that the Minister, in his introductory comments, indicated that part of the intention of the bill is to make it kinder and fairer for New Zealanders posted overseas. So I have to say that I am even more disappointed that the Minister and his colleagues didn’t see fit just three weeks ago, on a members’ day, to support an equally sensible and closely related measure—the Accident Compensation (Recent Migrants and Returning New Zealanders) Amendment Bill, which was advanced by my very good colleague Melissa Lee—because that particular bill was designed to fix an anomaly which prohibits migrants and returning New Zealanders from receiving ACC’s support once they reach superannuation age.

I dare say those who may be listening to this debate outside the House at the moment may even be a little bit confused as to why that particular measure doesn’t count, given the comments we have just had from the Minister, because had Ms Lee’s bill been adopted, it would have addressed the anomaly—which seems, to me, to be very unfair—that a number of returning New Zealanders, migrants, and citizens are currently ineligible for weekly compensation because they cannot qualify for the residential criteria. However, as I said, Labour and their coalition partners and confidence and supply partners voted that measured down, so I have to say that that means that one aspect of unfairness will remain in place under this particular piece of legislation.

But, nevertheless, we do have an opportunity through this Accident Compensation Amendment Bill to make minor but necessary changes to the principal legislation. As I’ve said, the proposals are sensible. They are changes that had been identified under the previous Government. They were in the pipeline, and there are aspects that some of my colleagues will cover in more detail later in this debate, but I just want to comment on the fact that the amendments in the bill were identified partly through the regulatory systems work programme of the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE).

For the benefit, again, of those who may be listening outside the House, it’s the chief executive’s responsibility under the State Sector Act 1988, section 32, for the chief executive to assist relevant Ministers with the regulatory stewardship of the legislation that the ministry administers. That may sound like a little bit of a mouthful, but it then explains why these particular provisions have been identified. They include—I won’t go through all of them—removing the election requirement for ACC clients to choose between weekly compensation and New Zealand superannuation after being entitled to a year of both, amending the current provisions to ensure that all clients who are close to or above superannuation qualification age receive up to 24 months of weekly compensation, allowing surviving spouses to receive up to five years of weekly compensation regardless of age, and disestablishing the Accident Compensation Appeal Authority, which hears cases under the 1972 and 1982 accident compensation legislation, and my colleague Dr Reti will be dwelling on that particular provision in more detail later in this debate.

The bill addresses fairness and sustainability issues, as the Minister has already identified. It includes an amendment that will treat the spouses, partners, children, and other dependants of New Zealand workers posted overseas who suffer an injury consistently with how they would have been treated had the injury occurred while they were living in New Zealand. That is important, because coverage would primarily be on return to New Zealand, as ACC doesn’t usually cover overseas treatment costs.

The Veterans’ Support Act of 2014 includes a mirror accident compensation scheme for veterans that is aligned with entitlements provided in the Accident Compensation Act of 2001. Also, the bill proposes a consequential amendment to Part 1 of the New Zealand Superannuation and Retirement Income Act. The proposed amendment is clearly beneficial for older people and will provide for a fairer and more consistent relationship between weekly compensation and superannuation by allowing an injured person’s financial situation to more closely reflect their income had they not been injured, because those people who continue to work past New Zealand superannuation qualification age are able to receive superannuation alongside any earnings from work, and that, of course, is one of the features that the Minister was referring to when he said that our provision is so envied in other parts of the world.

So, as I’ve said, most of the bill responds to measures that have been recommended to the Government. They arise from the New Zealand Productivity Commission’s June 2014 report Regulatory institutions and practices. I think the Minister has given a very comprehensive introduction to the overall features of the bill. Other speakers, I know, will elucidate some of the other factors. I have to get off to a select committee now, so I will leave it at that, and I warmly welcome the introduction of this bill.

Hon CLARE CURRAN (Associate Minister for ACC): Thanks, Mr Assistant Speaker. The ACC scheme was implemented by the third Labour Government in 1974. It’s had constant improvement since then, under Labour Governments, and it’s based on principle.

Just with a quick reference to Tim Macindoe’s—the previous speaker—mention of a member’s bill, the reason that that was opposed by this Government was because of a principle and consistency of a principle. Principles-based legislation is what we should be doing, and I think there is general agreement that this is a principles-based amendment to a piece of legislation. A more substantive piece of legislation is coming down the track, which needs to be based on principle and which needs to take the time to do that rather than be rushed. So we’ve commended the previous National Government for the preparatory work that was done on this. We’re now taking that through because we agree with the principles behind it, and that is as it should be, because for all of those who suffer personal injury caused by accident, whatever the cause, New Zealand needs to continue to lead the world in providing universal, comprehensive, no-fault coverage for all physical injuries. Those principles will be continued.

One of the anomalies that this piece of legislation corrects is the cover for dependants of New Zealand workers posted overseas. Now, it’s an obvious thing to correct. Also, it’s not a huge number of people affected, but the anomaly is actually quite curious. What really piqued my interest was that while this was the norm until 1998, it’s unknown as to the reasons and rationale for the change to take away that right in 1998. Now, 1998, it’s not that long ago—20 years ago—but the rationale for that change is unknown because the parliamentary record does not preserve it. The result has been that some agencies with posted workers have been forced to look for cover arrangements that were difficult or even impossible to find, and that has resulted in a discrimination situation. ACC, obviously, is best placed to manage these claims. People are posted overseas because they’re working for an agency—foreign affairs, immigration, whatever—and they’re doing a job on behalf of their country, and, as a result of that, they need to have their families with them. Therefore, their families should not be disadvantaged as a result. So one of the core things that this legislation is doing is correcting that.

The other thing that this legislation is looking at is retrospectivity for that, back to 1998, which is an unusual and rare step for retrospectivity to be covered off in a piece of legislation. I think, in this case, there’s a very strong element of fairness and principle that lies behind it.

Another element of fairness and principle relates to the bill responding to a declaration by the Human Rights Review Tribunal forcing surviving spouses of partners to choose between New Zealand superannuation and ACC survivors’ payments, which is discriminatory on the basis of age. I would imagine that most electorate MPs in this House would’ve had people into their offices over the years—I certainly know that I have over my nine-and-a-bit years in Parliament—where they have faced making that choice and have felt disadvantaged as a result, whether it be their spouses or actual people making that choice themselves. This bill, again, will correct that anomaly and make it a lot fairer by removing the election requirement for ACC claimants to choose between weekly compensation and New Zealand super after receiving a year of both, clarifying the current transitional provisions to ensure that all claimants who are close to or above superannuation qualification age receive up to 24 months of weekly compensation. This is to enable a fair transition, and I think, again, this goes back to a principle.

It also goes back to the principles that, generally, this Government is basing its whole strategy and plan around, and those are fairness and decency. And this piece of legislation—while the previous speaker, Tim Macindoe, criticises us for introducing a measure the previous Government started, surely nobody could argue that legislation that has been properly thought-out and that is correcting anomalies that are unfair should not go ahead. I think it’s the mark of a responsible Government to be doing this as quickly as possible, because anomalies in legislation that have created disadvantage, particularly for people who are posted overseas, doing a job in behalf of their country, and for older New Zealanders who are forced into a situation of having to make an unfair choice—these things are important to correct and to not leave hanging around.

So, ultimately, this legislation is a precursor to a more substantive piece of work that is being worked on now with more fundamental changes to the Act, and that will be coming either later this year or early next year. I’d like to think that the previous Government, the now Opposition, will treat that in good faith in terms of the principles that it will be based on as well. So I commend this bill to the House and look forward to discussion in select committee and hearing what comes out of the select committee to make our world-famous ACC scheme even better and fairer.

Dr SHANE RETI (National—Whangarei): Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker. It’s a pleasure to speak to the Accident Compensation Amendment Bill. As I was looking at this bill, there were three big parts that struck me, and I will particularly spend some time on the last, as my colleague, the ACC spokesperson for the Opposition, the Hon Tim Macindoe, alluded to.

I think the first part has been well canvassed by previous speakers, that this bill takes into account compensation for New Zealanders who qualify as ordinary residents who are paying New Zealand tax who go offshore and suffer personal injury by accident. It covers their children, spouses, and dependants. That’s clearly a good thing. I think there’s also some tidy-up of the relationship between claimants and superannuation, as they come to the age of superannuation and when they qualify. This bill tidies that up. But I particularly want to apply myself to the disestablishment of the Accident Compensation Appeal Authority, look at what that’s about, and give a cautionary word from some work done three or four years ago by the Hon Nikki Kaye that might want to be discussed in select committee, as well.

So if we focus on that, the disestablishment of the ACC appeal authority, the reasons for that are several fold. First of all, the extension is that it will then go to the District Court. The reasons behind that are that when they consulted stakeholders, stakeholders said, “Look, we don’t want specialist tribunals; we’d like a consistent court process.”—firstly. Secondly, the appeal authority hears very few cases, and the burden of two different appeals bodies is quite significant. Well, just how few? If we go into public domain and look at what the appeal authority has actually looked at, in 2015, there were 14 cases; in 2016, there were six; in 2017, just one; and there’s been none to date. So that’s 21 cases over nearly 3½ years.

Furthermore, if we look at the last case that was litigated with the appeal authority on 9 March 2017, the guts to this case is it’s an application for leave to appeal an out-of-time decision. So we can see the sorts of cases that the appeal authority has been dealing with. They tended to deal with situations that applied to old legislation, and, as we can see, the numbers got less and less—21 cases over the past four years. So, I think it’s a fair argument to say, “Few cases—maybe we don’t need the appeal authority.” I think it was also complicating having two appeal bodies: the District Court and the appeal authority, and there is certainly a strengthening of process with all appeals going through the District Court registry. It ensures that all interactions are with the same body and heard by District Court judges.

Now, before we get to the appeals process, we just want to reflect for a moment on all the steps that are taken before you actually get to appeal—and there’s a number of them. There’s an internal independent review. Sometimes, that then goes to alternate disputes resolution; other times, it then goes to the true independent review often carried out by FairWay Resolution. From there, from that stage, if there’s still not satisfaction, it then was either going to the District Court or to the appeal authority. Now, I think an interesting piece of work in this area was done by Nikki Kaye in 2015, where she looked at abolishing the District Court process and the appeal authority and replacing it with an appeals tribunal. The reason here I think this is important is because we don’t want to recreate that same sort of situation.

Eventually, just to conclude that story, there were significant issues with the appeal tribunal, so it actually didn’t progress. But if we look at the reason why this was being suggested, the situation was—the emphasis in 2015—the ACC appeals before the District Court had an average age of 669 days. So here’s something for the select committee to think about: if we funnel everything now through the District Court, are we going to get back to where we were in 2015—669 days before it could get to District Court resolution? The discussion document that went out to look at the tribunal, that raised this point, raised several questions. It raised whether we could just increase the number of judges. Well, it turns out to be an ACC appeal court judge you have to have seven years of judicial experience. That can be challenging sometimes, to find those sorts of people with those sorts of skills.

I think a lot of work was also done at that time around other parts of the appeals process, particularly the Acclaim Otago work of 2015. That was a body of work that came out of an NGO saying, “Look, the resolution process for ACC, the disputes resolution, actually isn’t fair and we don’t think people are getting their medical evidence in a timely way. They don’t have access to legal recourse. They don’t have access to expertise. Where there is legal advice it’s not fully accessible on the Ministry of Justice website.” And a whole body of work was done by a QC Kearn, as I recall, around the Acclaim report, commissioned by Nikki Kaye, and that’s informed this whole resolution process.

So, fundamentally, I just wanted to lay out the case as to why the appeal authority is on good grounds to be established and to also pass some work to the select committee, to just reassure that we don’t go back to the situation in 2015 where the District Court was 669 days behind. With that, I commend this to the select committee.

JENNY MARCROFT (NZ First): Tēnā koe, Mr Assistant Speaker. Thank you for the opportunity to stand and speak, on behalf of New Zealand First, on the Accident Compensation Amendment Bill. I’d just like to start my contribution this afternoon—I’d like to tautoko the Minister, the Hon Iain Lees-Galloway—by making note of his comment that New Zealand’s no-fault accident compensation scheme is, in fact, a national treasure and the envy of many countries. We know that to be a fact, and we are really proud of the fact that we do have this ACC scheme. Also I acknowledge the former Minister, the Hon Michael Woodhouse, who did a lot of work in the previous Parliament to get this bill ready. Just a couple of mentions too—the previous speakers—acknowledging Dr Reti and his focus with his contribution on the disestablishment of the Accident Compensation Appeal Authority. This is something that I would be particularly interested in hearing: what the select committee has to say about that, in the contributions that we’ll come to in hearings in the select committee on that.

This bill accords well with New Zealand First’s ACC policy, implementing a number of reforms that the party has been calling for and other common-sense amendments that are supported by the tenor of New Zealand First policy. Kiwis, as we’ve heard, are very proud of the ACC scheme. Nearly one in three Kiwis made an ACC claim in the years 2016-17. So we’re very well engaged with this scheme.

The bill has two broad objectives: to ensure that ACC continues to meet society’s expectations by providing cover and entitlements that are appropriate, consistent, and sustainable, and to improve the Accident Compensation Act 2001 by ensuring that it is effective, efficient, and accords with best regulatory practice. On behalf of New Zealand First, I’d like to voice our support for the Accident Compensation Amendment Bill. The bill is designed to tidy up aspects of the Accident Compensation Act of 2001. Now, over time, inconsistencies, duplications, gaps, and errors start to crystallise, and good housekeeping legislation is necessary to tidy up and improve upon major legislation. We believe that these amendments meet the twin tests of “fairness” and “common sense”. These are important amendments, and it is worth going through and making sure that the House has a clear idea of what the components of this amendment bill intend to do.

So the tidying-up legislation will remove any potential hurdle for those who work overseas, for example. We’ve heard that talked about already this afternoon. So if you work for a company that sends you off overseas for a period of time and you continue to pay your tax here in New Zealand, then, logically, you should be covered for ACC. Not only should the working parent be covered but the family—his or her family—as well. If the family does then return to New Zealand after suffering an injury overseas, they will now continue to be treated under ACC in New Zealand. So that’s a really good amendment in this bill. It’s also become apparent that the Accident Compensation Appeal Authority is a court too far. District Courts are, in fact, perfectly able to adjudicate accident compensation appeals, and we will hear more about that in the select committee. There is a duplication of work between the authority and the District Courts, and this amendment will end that.

These amendments seek to offer greater clarity to some of the grey areas of the ACC legislation. So, take another situation: maybe a person suffers an injury and receives compensation under ACC. Now, if that worker is approaching the age of 65 years and hadn’t intended to retire just yet, this bill will remove the requirement to choose between either weekly compensation or superannuation. Now, some, including New Zealand First, argue that having to choose is discrimination, because when you qualify for New Zealand superannuation, you are entitled to your superannuation as well as your income. As ACC compensation is in lieu of income, we argue that you shouldn’t have to forgo it when you reach the superannuation age. The Government has said that the age limit of 65 is justified discrimination, because it’s designed to protect the fairness and sustainability of the ACC system. A landmark ruling by the Human Rights Review Tribunal in 2015 found that this policy was in breach of the Human Rights Act. Claimants caught in this situation now will be entitled to up to two years of their weekly ACC even if they do receive their superannuation, and that includes surviving spouses and partners in the event that the injury is, in fact, fatal.

Alongside this clarification, the bill will also adjust the Veterans’ Support Act so that it maintains consistency with the updated ACC amendments. In a further attempt to streamline the process, it seems sensible to turn the annual review of rehabilitation amounts that the Accident Compensation Corporation is liable to pay into a two-year review rather than annually. Any attempt to reduce bureaucracy is, in our view, to be welcomed.

May I also make an observation, as a new member dealing with a great deal of legislation on behalf of New Zealand First: during the election campaign and after, there were all sorts of wildly exaggerated fears that the coalition Government would be unwieldy and wracked with the competing interests. We know that this coalition Government has big and important goals to help make New Zealand be a better and fairer country, but it is in the process of governing, dealing with the myriad of small but very important pieces of legislation that need attention, and fixing what we can so that the machine is operating smoothly. What I see is that a lot of the detailed but unspectacular work of government is getting done, and it’s getting done with thoughtfulness and efficiency.

So, from the engine room of the Government, I can report that, in fact, this coalition Government is functioning outstandingly well, and that is why it is easy to support legislation such as the Accident Compensation Amendment Bill. So, in conclusion, this Government is, in fact, determined that all New Zealanders deserve the best possible care when they are sick or injured, and that is why we’re repairing the previous nine years of neglect in the health system and also why we’re looking to make the ACC scheme fairer for all claimants. So, Mr Assistant Speaker, that’s my contribution this afternoon. I commend this bill to the House.

Hon JACQUI DEAN (National—Waitaki): Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker. I want to acknowledge the Minister for ACC, the Hon Iain Lees-Galloway, for his comments regarding the stewardship of ACC, particularly under the hands of the Hon Nikki Kaye and the Hon Mike Woodhouse, which really is the genesis of this bill as it comes to the House today, and I acknowledge that the current Minister saw value in the work that had been done under the previous Government.

I think it probably is a good idea to go over a bit of the history of ACC and go back a decade to when the National-led Government came into power in 2008 and we inherited an ACC scheme which had a fiscal hole to the tune of $4.8 billion.

Hon Chris Hipkins: Rubbish! Absolute rubbish!

Hon JACQUI DEAN: It’s in the papers, Minister. Over the time of our Government, we were able to return ACC to a fully funded scheme, and not only to do that but to reduce ACC levies to New Zealanders. Also, we were able during that time to deliver better services and we have now handed over to the current Government a fully functioning, fully funded, financially sustainable ACC scheme.

Also during that time in the National Government—and I do make those comments in light of the self-congratulatory comments made by the member who just resumed her seat, Jenny Marcroft. So having handed over a fully functioning, well-positioned ACC scheme to move into the future, former Ministers had also been undertaking some work on making a couple of aspects of the ACC scheme even better for New Zealanders. Those amendments are now in the bill and they are around addressing the regulatory duplication—there were gaps, there were errors, there were inconsistencies within the current legislation—and also keeping the regulatory system up to date and keeping it relevant to the ACC scheme and to New Zealanders today. So that’s what’s in this bill. Members who have spoken before me have canvassed those measures. I don’t propose to go through those in any detail because members and those listening have gone over those.

But I want to just briefly go into why it’s important that ACC should be delivering a good service to New Zealanders. As a constituency MP, over a number of years I have had a number of people coming to my offices stuck somewhere in the ACC system. Whether they were stuck because they were a person receiving support from ACC close to retirement and then having to make choices between ACC cover or national super, or whether it was somebody caught within the disputes complaints process, those people who came into my office—and there’s less of them now, to be fair, and there will be even less once this bill becomes law because it does make regulatory improvements to the ACC system.

But those people who come into a local MP’s office—and the Hon Clare Curran mentioned that herself because she also is a constituency MP—are in a very bad place. They have turned to their local MP, wherever they are around the country, because they were literally stuck within the ACC system at a time in their lives when they are not able really to deal with Government processes. So in my time as associate ACC Minister, I was involved in a body of work which was around making the process easier for New Zealanders to navigate ACC. Now that work is continuing and I’m very pleased to see that, and I thank the current Government for that. I endorse the work in this bill. The New Zealand National Party supports this bill, and I look forward to its passage through the House and through select committee.

JAN LOGIE (Green): Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker. I rise to take a call on behalf of the Green Party also in support of the Accident Compensation Amendment Bill. I too would like to acknowledge the Hon Iain Lees-Galloway and the previous Ministers Nikki Kaye and Michael Woodhouse for the process of getting this bill to the House and the unanimous support that we seem to have across Parliament for it.

I do just need to just very briefly though take exception with the rewriting of history of the previous speaker, Jacqui Dean, who spoke about the significant systems improvements under National to ACC, missing out the significant system breakages that happened under that Government before they saw fit to embark on improvement processes. I want to recall for that member and to put on record having heard a submission in the select committee around the funding for specialist sexual violence services. We heard from a man who was telling us how his wife was struggling to access supports after the changes that the National Government had made to the ACC sensitive claims process—how his wife committed suicide because she was unable to deal with the impacts of the abuse without help, which was explicitly due to the changes that have been made by that Government. So if they choose to tell history, it should be a full history. They certainly made improvements, but it was after some very significant loss and damage.

I would also just challenge the concept of the fully funded scheme and how they restored that. There is no evidence that we need to have a fully funded scheme. That money and the levying process to be able to pay out, in concept, every single person at one moment is quite a bizarre concept actually. So it was perceived, I think rightly, by many people at the time as an effort to undermine the system by driving up levies and undermining services to be able to have this money in the bank which is not necessarily needed.

So to the content of the bill, the Green Party is happy to support it. Our focus in our ACC policy is ensuring a fair system that’s there for all New Zealanders with equitable and adequate rehab and compensation, and that is generally the focus of this bill. It makes quite a number of changes that, as have previously been mentioned, were recommended by the Productivity Commission previously and cover a wide range of relatively minor issues. It is not the fundamental reform to the system to deliver better services; that will come later, and the Green Party certainly looks forward to that.

What it does is—as an example for people listening—it removes the requirement for ACC claimants to choose between weekly compensation and New Zealand super after receiving a year of both. It removes that requirement, and that is consistent, as a previous speaker mentioned, with a Human Rights Review Tribunal ruling around discrimination in that area of policy. It clarifies the current transitional provisions to ensure that all claimants who are close to or above superannuation qualification age receive up to 24 months of weekly compensation if they are entitled to it, so that it is not linked strictly to coming of age of entitlement for superannuation, and will allow surviving spouses to receive up to five years of weekly compensation regardless of age.

It also removes the requirement for another dependant to elect between weekly compensation and superannuation. So you can see that’s a whole package of work around the age of entitlement as well as surviving spouses, that brings the legislation to a more consistent position around our human rights commitments. It makes moves from an annual review to a biennual review of the accident compensation regulations—not exactly an earth-shattering change but probably quite a sensible bureaucratic shift. It automatically updates the maximum and minimum liable earnings to the minimum wage and labour cost index retrospectively to improve the workability of biennial levy rounds—again, hardly earth-shattering but probably important for the delivery of services and the efficient work of ACC. It disestablishes the Accident Compensation Appeal Authority, which hears cases under the 1972 and 1982 Acts and enables remaining cases to be heard in the District Court.

I did hear the previous National speaker Shane Reti talking about the select committee possibly needing to watch that area and consider evidence on that point quite closely because of a previous backlog of appeals in the District Court. My understanding is that this is in the legislation because there are so few cases going to their appeal and that there isn’t an expectation that those numbers would increase just because the Accident Compensation Appeal Authority is being disestablished. But we certainly will be listening with interest to submissions to make sure that we are getting that right.

Possibly the most substantive point in this piece of legislation is extending ACC cover to spouses and partners and dependants of New Zealand employees posted overseas. So that change will mean that those partners and dependants posted with New Zealand will align with how they’d be treated had the injury occurred while they were living in New Zealand, and the coverage would primarily be on their return to New Zealand, because ACC doesn’t usually cover treatment costs offshore. This was the case. It’s returning us to what was the status quo pre-1998. My understanding is that we’re not actually sure why it changed after 1998 and that there is some speculation that, in fact, it may have been a drafting error that led to that result. In practice, it seems that ACC have been handling this area inconsistently, perhaps under the belief that it was a drafting error and that the policy intent was to maintain that provision for people.

So, in effect, this is providing legal certainly, and it will be retrospective. It is unusual for the Green Party to support retrospective legislation, but considering it has been inconsistently applied up to this point, it seems just the fair thing to do.

It’s a fair question for people to ask what the costs of that might be, and we’re not sure, but the advice is that it’s likely to be a very small number of cases. As an example, probably the main employer, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, can cite only 10 cases since 1998 that were denied coverage. So, in all likelihood, it is a quite small amount of money. Considering the fully funded nature of ACC, it’s not going to break the bank, and it will certainly make things simpler for other Government agencies who are currently trying to provide interim cover for their dependants offshore.

So, in summary, the Green Party is happy to support this important piece of housekeeping. Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker.

ERICA STANFORD (National—East Coast Bays): Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker. I’m pleased to take a call on the Accident Compensation Amendment Bill in its first reading. Can I acknowledge Iain Lees-Galloway for bringing this to the House.

As we all know, legislation can, over time, become out of step with what society expects. Situations can arise that we never expected or accounted for in legislation, and as we evolve as a society, quite often parts of our legislation can become obsolete or not fit for purpose. So it’s a political reality and it means that we need to bring legislation to the House, quite often, for a tune up. As you would take your car in for a service, so too do we with legislation, from time to time, to make sure that it is relevant, it is up to date, it’s fit for purpose, and it fits with the expectations of modern-day thinking of the public and with their political expectations.

In this case, we’re making some very sensible changes to the accident compensation legislation to bring it into step with what we expect and how we expect it to deliver for New Zealanders. So this amendment bill is a result of the regulatory work programme of the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment, who are tasked with reviewing regulatory instruments under their portfolios to ensure that they’re fit for purpose and that they work as they should. This work was carried out under the previous National Government, and today we’re just formalising that work by amending the Act.

The bill makes a number of amendments to the ACC legislation, and previous speakers have gone through many of the parts of the legislation. In fact, Jan Logie just gave a really good summary in her speech and I commend her for that.

I’d just like to focus on one thing that I think is of particular significance to New Zealanders and to people in my electorate, and, firstly, that is the anomaly under existing legislation whereby a person near, at, or above the age of superannuation who is eligible for both superannuation and ACC payments must choose between those two payments in the second year of their injury. In most cases, they forgo their superannuation and collect just the ACC, and they are forgoing that superannuation payment that they should be entitled to.

Currently, if you’re working and receiving super and you get injured, you get both ACC and super entitlements for a year, and then in the second year, you must choose which of those entitlements to take. Most people choose ACC and, therefore, forgo their super payments, and in the third year, they go back to super. So there’s, firstly, no rationale for having to make this choice between the payments in year two, and it’s not in line with the premise that superannuation is a universal benefit and it’s not means-tested.

If a person is working past 65, they’re entitled to both superannuation and their working income. There’s no logical reason why in year two of an injury, a person aged over 65 must choose between those two payments and, in most cases, actually forgo their super payment. It’s not in line with the public’s expectations of how ACC and super should fit together. The current legislation also has an anomaly whereby if a person is injured prior to their 64th birthday, they are worse off than if they were injured just prior to their 65th birthday because they’re not able to collect that dual payment.

These anomalies have been highlighted because more and more Kiwis are beginning to work past the age of 65—something that was perhaps not considered during the original drafting of ACC legislation. This amendment to the Act makes the change, so the person who’s in paid employment prior to their injury can receive both super and ACC up to a maximum of 24 months. These people would have continued to receive their earnings and super had it not been for their accident.

So the cost of this change is relatively minor, costing ACC and the Ministry of Social Development just a few million by 2024. So it’s a sensible change, and it brings the Act into line with public expectations.

This bill makes a number of small regulatory reforms to the ACC legislation to address duplication gaps, errors, and inconsistencies. It’s a good, solid little bill, and I commend it to the House.

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

KIERAN McANULTY (Labour): Thank you, sir. It’s marvellous to be able to stand here and speak in favour of this bill, because it does something that is needed to something that is very special in this country. The ACC scheme is, indeed, the envy of the world. What a marvellous, socialist idea ACC is—the scheme that is no-fault. So it doesn’t matter who you are or what situation, if there’s an accident, then you will be covered for the needs that you have in that situation.

It was indeed brought in under the third Labour Government in 1974. There have been numerous attempts over time to undermine the ACC scheme, but it is wonderful to stand here today and see that there is a bipartisan approach to looking at making sure that ACC fits the needs of this country. It is wonderful to see the National Party stand up here and, indeed—actually no, fair dos. It’s wonderful to see a bill that they did a lot of the groundwork on when they were in Government, to introduce this. I commend them for that and, of course, the Minister now, the Minister for ACC, the Hon Iain Lees-Galloway—I commend the work of him and his officials to get this where it is today.

Nearly one in three New Zealanders made an ACC claim last year—in the 2016-17 year—most of whom, of course, received excellent treatment. It is indeed a wonderful scheme, ACC. I myself have claimed—as have, I’m sure, most members in this House—and called on ACC at some point. When you are as bad at rugby as I am, you need something like ACC there to protect you, and that’s exactly the situation that I’ve found myself in, a number of times.

What is good to see about ACC is that it is in tremendous financial health, and because of that, we are able to look at extending some of the provisions that the ACC scheme offers New Zealanders so that it does become relevant to New Zealanders today. This Government is, of course, determined to ensure that all New Zealanders receive the best-possible care when they are sick or injured, and that is why we are determined to repair the previous nine years of neglect in the health system and also why we’re looking to make the ACC scheme fairer for claimants.

There are a couple of things that come under here, in the package of amendments looking to amend the Accident Compensation Act 2001. A number of those have been covered already in this House thus far. Extending ACC cover to spouses or partners and dependants of New Zealand employees posted offshore is something that would not have been considered when this legislation was put in place, but, of course, now the changing nature of work and the fact that it draws people overseas mean that extending ACC cover to include people in that situation is indeed fair and right, so it’s good to see that that is included here.

Also, it is allowing surviving spouses to receive up to 5 years’ weekly compensation, regardless of age. On a bit of a personal note, I had an uncle that passed away on his farm as a result of an accident, and ACC was able to support his family, support his wife and his children, for a number of years after that accident. If ACC wasn’t in place, in order to do that my family would have missed out and been under severe financial strain as a result of that accident, so on a personal level it is very pleasing to see that we are not only recognising that which is in place but extending it now to become more relevant.

Moving from an annual review to a biennial review of the Accident Compensation (Liability to Pay or Contribute to Cost of Treatment) Regulations 2003, as well as automatically updating the maximum and minimum liable earnings to the minimum wage and the Labour Cost Index respectively may not seem, in isolation, to be significant things, but they are important, and that is why this Government has brought this bill to the House now, recognising that there is a review of ACC due in 2019. We could have waited till then, but if something needs to be done, we may as well get on with it and do it now. So it is pleasing, because, of course, this bill is about fairness. It’s about making sure that ACC is as relevant in 2018 as it was when it was first brought in, under the third Labour Government in 1974. Touching on some of the examples that people from both sides of the House have mentioned now, the issue around electing between superannuation and ACC is a big one. I congratulate the Minister for the work he’s done, and I commend this bill to the House.

ANDREW FALLOON (National—Rangitata): Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker, for the opportunity to speak this afternoon on the Accident Compensation Amendment Bill. I want to acknowledge the Minister who’s brought this bill to the House, Iain Lees-Galloway, and also note his recognition of the previous Minister for ACC, the Hon Michael Woodhouse, and the work that was done by him and by the previous National Government in bringing this bill to the House. We are very happy to support it.

I do note, though, that we’re now seven months into a Labour - New Zealand First - Green Government, and this is all that they’ve brought to the House for ACC legislation. Now, some of us have got very good memories about the nine years—the nine very good years—that Labour were in Opposition, and some of us do remember some of the things they said about ACC during that time. They made all sorts of claims, all sorts of complaints, and all sorts of promises.

Just last year, in July, we had Sue Moroney at the time—I don’t know quite what happened to her—saying that “ACC has become bound up in complex bureaucracy and needs a shake-up.” So where is that bill? Where is that shake-up that the Labour Party promised? We haven’t seen it. Well, I think I know what’s happened to that, because Ms Moroney also went on to say that “I can’t see the point in spending more money with layers of bureaucracy.” So I think I know what happened to Ms Moroney and why she’s no longer here, because not long after that, just days before the election, we had the now Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, the then Labour leader, coming out and thundering about the track record of ACC under the National Government. She went on to say that she believed that ACC needed independent oversight, but would not describe what that would look like. All she would say was that there was a requirement for further bureaucracy, but would not say what it looked like.

It is more evidence that the Labour Party did nothing in their nine years in Opposition in policy development. As we’ve heard from previous speakers, they’ve again pushed it down the road—another review, another inquiry, another working group. This bill is proof that once again the Labour Party are relying on the hard work of the previous National Government.

RINO TIRIKATENE (Labour—Te Tai Tonga): Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker. I’m pleased to take a call on the Accident Compensation Amendment Bill, and I’d like to acknowledge all the contributions that have been made thus far this afternoon. I think there is general support for the measures contained in this bill, for what are further improvements and refinements to ACC—the accident compensation scheme, a much-beloved scheme that we have here in New Zealand. I think back to its founding father, the Rt Hon Sir Owen Woodhouse, and the great vision that he had of creating the universal and comprehensive no-fault coverage for all personal physical injuries that we have with our ACC scheme, which we have been the beneficiaries of for over 40 years now.

This bill, as we’ve heard in contributions made, provides a lot of improvements. It addresses some matters to make things a bit fairer for certain individuals, and there is a range of technical amendments, as well. So we’re not going to the actual heart of the ACC scheme; we’re really just touching on and improving on a lot of periphery matters, but, as we know, the ACC scheme can be very, very technical and very complex, particularly for certain individuals that are trying to navigate their way through. I’m pleased to be standing to support the measures made, and can I acknowledge the Minister for ACC, the Hon Iain Lees-Galloway, and also the work conducted by the former Government in the preparation of this bill.

I want to touch on just a couple of the amendments that are being made through this bill, and in particular we’ve heard today around the cover for dependants of New Zealand workers overseas. That’s just about providing that spouses or partners of those Kiwis that are posted overseas, who are serving their country, are indeed provided with ACC cover should they require it. I understand that this goes back to—well, this was always in place. However, in 1998—unbeknownst, I guess—during the passage of the legislation that went through at that time, this particular provision was excluded or dropped out of the legislation. Fortunately, we’re here today to start the process to rectify that. But I’m curious—and I’m sure it could be borne out in the select committee process on this bill—when we’re talking about this small number of Kiwis that maybe work for Immigration New Zealand overseas or the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, does this legislation actually cover those Kiwis that are engaged locally by embassies and by our high commissions around the world?

I can understand that seconded high commissioners, ambassadors, and the like, and their spouses and dependants can be covered, but I think there’s an argument to be made that the coverage should be extended to those Kiwis that serve their country across the globe in the aid of serving New Zealand and Kiwis around the globe—that they can be covered also. I’m not too sure of the scope of this actual provision, but there are a number of appointments—in fact, quite a large amount of appointments—that are made whereby Kiwis are employed, but locally, in accordance with local terms and conditions. But, ultimately, they’re paid by the New Zealand taxpayer; it’s just that the terms and conditions that they work under are the local conditions for which they reside. It would be helpful, I guess, if that class of New Zealander working in the service of their country would also be covered by this bill, because I don’t think there is much of a difference. Again, ultimately, they’re being paid out of New Zealand for the work that they do in the service of New Zealand.

One of the other couple of matters I just want to touch on is the abolition or the disestablishment of the Accident Compensation Appeal Authority in place of the District Court. I guess having to navigate through those complex legal processes can be time-consuming and it can be very costly. All I would note is that I would hope that through the disestablishment of the appeal authority, which I understand has been used less and less in recent years, the instalment of the District Court as the sole forum for appeals should not—that the same access to the District Court or the access to that appeal authority equivalent is not unduly jeopardised by people not having the appropriate means to go through to the District Court, because they can be quite expensive processes.

I, lastly, just want to touch on the measures put in place on this bill, which I do commend, which are around making sure that those individuals nearing retirement age who are injured close to that age can continue to receive their work compensations in addition to payments of New Zealand super. I think it seems, no matter which way you look at it, that it’s the right thing to do. It’s the fair thing to do because those particular individuals would be entitled to continue in their work, which is why they are receiving those work payments. So ensuring that they can continue on, for a period, is a sensible measure.

Likewise, the ability for other spouses of the workers that, unfortunately, die, who are entitled to surviving payments—ensuring that those payments can continue and the spouses are not unduly jeopardised is also commendable. I understand that was affirmed by a Human Rights Review Tribunal declaration. It took that particular action to ensure that the legislation is being amended to include that.

There is also a range of many other technical amendments, which cover a whole range of other matters, from veterans to superannuitants and the like. These are all very welcome. Once again, I just would like to acknowledge the Minister for bringing these amendments through to the House now. There is a substantive piece of work which is going on, but these amendments are pressing. They will be very welcomed by those Kiwis that will be the beneficiaries of them. They will enhance our much-cherished ACC scheme. I commend them to the House. Kia ora tātou.

Hon NICKY WAGNER (National): I’m very happy to be here to support this Accident Compensation Amendment Bill. I’m happy to support it, because they are sensible changes to the Accident Compensation Act. It’s the work that was done—these changes were identified—when National was in Government, and I’d just like to make the point that the work was done under the auspices of the Productivity Commission, and done by the Hon Michael Woodhouse, as has been mentioned in the House today. So it is very good to see this finally coming to fruition.

The main changes to this Act are to make sure that the accident compensation regime is fair and is fair to those who are injured near their retirement age. Also, there are significant changes to streamline the complaints process, which, I think, is a good thing as well. ACC is a world-leading no-fault scheme. It is based on the idea that it’s fair for New Zealanders to be protected regardless of where they’re injured—whether it’s at work, whether it’s at play—and that no fault occurred in that injury. So it is a world-leading scheme, and I think it’s something that we should be very proud of.

In terms of these changes to do with being near retirement age, most New Zealanders these days work after they’re 65, whether it’s part-time or full-time work. In the past, under the legislation, somebody who was injured near to 65 years of age had to choose between taking ACC weekly compensation or whether they were going to take superannuation. Of course, those people had been working; they deserved to be able to have that compensation. But they did get a choice—they had to make a decision.

So the changes of this bill will make sure that they can access both their weekly compensation and their superannuation for a limited time: for 24 months. It also allows for spouses—surviving spouses—to get up to five years of those weekly payments. I think that’s an important improvement to the Act as well. There are other sensible changes. For example, it also protects New Zealand workers posted overseas. It was not right that those people posted overseas may have less protection than if they were working in New Zealand. So now they are treated exactly the same way as if they were injured in New Zealand.

In terms of the complaints process, they’re looking to streamline that process. At the moment, there are two separate systems, and one of them is not used as much as the other. So this bill disestablishes the Accident Compensation Appeal Authority—that’s the one that is little used—so that there will be less confusion in terms of complaints, more efficiency during one process.

So, as I said, these are sensible amendments. They were identified during the last Government. National worked on them, and it’s very good to see them coming to the House. I support this bill.

Hon RUTH DYSON (Labour—Port Hills): I’m delighted to be the final speaker in the first reading of the Accident Compensation Amendment Bill. I want to first of all commend the Hon Iain Lees-Galloway for his prompt leadership in picking up in part what was started by the previous Minister under the previous Government, but there are also some new initiatives in this bill. It’s great to see his first bill in this portfolio come before the House. I do want to also acknowledge the Hon Michael Woodhouse, who started some of the work for this legislation, and I’m sure he’ll be pleased to see it progressing as well.

A number of speakers during the debate have talked about the world-leading status of ACC, and I want to totally agree with that. I had many conversations with the Rt Hon Sir Owen Woodhouse, who was one of the instigators of this scheme, before his death, which was a great loss to not just ACC but a whole range of other contributions that Owen made to our communities. So I just want to acknowledge his contribution as the vision behind the ACC scheme. Not only is it a comprehensive injury prevention, rehabilitation, and compensation scheme but it also gives every New Zealander the opportunity to receive fair compensation and rehabilitation without having to resort to legal action.

Some people describe it as “We gave up the right to sue”, but, actually, only about 1 percent of injuries pre-1974 ever resulted in successful legal action against the person or incident that injured the person. So when we say, “We gave up the right to sue”, not many people had it, because it cost a lot of money and the level of proof was quite high. There were very few successful suing actions in New Zealand prior to this, so we gained a huge amount and lost very little.

When the scheme was introduced, it was indeed world-leading, and a lot of countries have since come to New Zealand and studied it, but very few other jurisdictions have had the courage to say, “We should try and prevent injury, we should provide compensation and rehabilitation for any injured people, and we shouldn’t have to resort to the courts in order to do that.” There are some parts of the world that have this, but none that offer it to every single citizen. They are limited to workers’ compensation schemes rather than our comprehensive scheme that we have now.

In fact, workers’ compensation schemes are probably much easier to administer because they wouldn’t come up against the challenges that this bill, in part, seeks to address. For example, the situation where the dependants, the families, of workers who are employed overseas and are covered by this scheme—they might be diplomats or public servants of some sort. They receive cover, but their families haven’t received cover if you look at the technicality of the law. This bill fixes that.

Jan Logie from the Green Party, in her contribution, mentioned that this provision was made retrospective in this bill and that the Green Party usually doesn’t do retrospectivity but agreed to in this situation. That is because nobody seems to be able to determine how this change in previous policy came to be—what was the policy thinking behind it?—and it seems as though it was never implemented by ACC anyway. They didn’t think the law had been changed; it appears it had been.

I was on that select committee in 1998, and I am going to research my notes of that time. I may speak to the then chair of the committee, the Hon Gerry Brownlee, who I know paid close attention to every detail in that legislation. He often mentioned that during the committee meetings, so I’m sure it’s correct.

Another committee member at the time was Derek Quigley, who at that stage represented the ACT Party. The House might be interested to know that Derek Quigley worked with New Zealand First and the Alliance—or New Labour; whichever it was at the time—and Labour to get over 400 amendments to the very bill that changed the dependant provisions. I’m sure I’ll have some record of that, but if the Hon Gerry Brownlee or the Hon Derek Quigley—or the Hon Laila Harré, who was on that committee as well—recall it, it would be very useful for the select committee that’s going to consider this bill to have that information. So we have the extension of ACC cover to the spouses and dependants.

The removal of the election requirement for spouses or dependants who receive superannuation—that was a Human Rights Tribunal recommendation; that we change that provision, because it’s discriminatory on the basis of age. The people who receive weekly compensation will now be able to continue to receive weekly compensation for up to two years after they receive New Zealand superannuation entitlement. This is a good step forward, and I commend the Minister for it. I don’t think we have yet got a clear determination of how long weekly compensation could be paid for if the person has a permanent impairment, and I would recommend to the select committee that they consider permanent impairment payments as an alternative to what is a very difficult and contentious issue. I’m sure that will come up in submissions.

Also, there’s the automatic updating of the maximum and minimum liable earnings. That’s another area that has never been updated properly. I know of many examples where young, quite poorly paid people—could even be on an apprenticeship or training wage—have severe and permanent injuries and are then consigned to a lifetime of being on a low income. Eighty percent of not very much is very difficult to live on, and it’s not increased enough, in my view, to keep pace with the increases in the cost of living.

The bill also abolishes the Accident Compensation Appeal Authority. That authority has been dealing with claimants’ appeals for review from 1972 and 1982 legislation. It’s probably not in use very much. It’s probably quite expensive to administer, and I’m sure that, once again, the Minister has made the right decision to move those cases from the authority to the court.

This is a bill that sounds like it’s got support from across the House, and I think that’s good. That’s the way the scheme was introduced. It has had some pretty challenging times between 1974 and now. I remember the 1998 legislation that I discussed earlier actually privatised the workers’ compensation account. We had private insurers—clearly driven by profit and policy rigour—in charge of workers’ compensation. That was a very sad time for New Zealand, and I was delighted that in 1999 the Government changed and Murray McCully was no longer the Minister, and the incoming Government sought to restore ACC to being a State organisation rather than having any private interests.

As the Minister indicated in his speech, this is a small bill in comparison with quite fundamental and progressive changes that we will see coming either later this year or early next year. I am sure, despite this only covering quite a number of small issues, that the select committee will be pleased by the amount of interest that I am confident will arise out of the points that have been made. They are all betterment to the current legislation—they all improve the Act. They make it fairer, they make it more transparent, and they resolve the frustrations that a number of people have had.

I might sub into this committee because I’m very interested in ACC and the scheme. It is a delight when people take an interest and come and give you submissions.

Hon Ron Mark: You’re the best Minister there was.

Hon RUTH DYSON: Oh, thank you very much, Mr Mark. I’d like you to put that on public record more often, please.

Hon Ron Mark: I have done so already.

Hon RUTH DYSON: Ha! Just one other point that I want to make—I’d feel that I would be short-changing parliamentary counsel if I didn’t mention that in the 1998 legislation, I actually presented certificates to the people who were working from nine in the morning till midnight five days a week on that legislation; who wrote “private domestic workers” more often than any other term. It was a new term to all of us, and it was one that was introduced or altered as part of that legislation. I know that they’ll be listening to this debate because they listen to pretty well everything in our Parliament, and I commend the work that they did then.

I’m pleased we’re not doing this under urgency from 9 a.m. till midnight as the privatisation was done by the then National Government. That was a pretty outrageous breach of natural process. This will go through a much better process, and I look forward to hearing the submissions and hearing the second reading on its conclusion. Thank you, Madam Assistant Speaker.

Bill read a first time.

Bill referred to the Education and Workforce Committee.

Bills

Local Electoral Matters Bill

First Reading

Debate resumed from 3 May.

VIRGINIA ANDERSEN (Labour): E Te Māngai, thank you for letting the debate resume on the first reading of the Local Electoral Matters Bill. This bill enables a greater degree of civic participation in local elections, which is always a good thing. This bill gives authorities—local authorities—the ability to decide how they wish to best engage with their voters, and that’s always a good thing.

Under the current law, under the Local Electoral Act, there are two main forms of voting that currently occur, and those are postal voting and the polling booth, but the one we know the best, probably, in local areas is postal voting. There’s a bit of a reality check in that space in terms of how very low voter turnout is, particularly with postal voting. Largely, some of the barriers that are put in place with the requirement to vote by post prevent quite significant sectors of our communities from being actively engaged in some of the decisions that affect their daily lives: the time it takes to actually receive the letter in the mail, to read it through, and, more importantly, to actually post it. I recall, last local election, I actually drove around with my completed voting forms on the front seat of my car for about two weeks while I was looking around for a postbox, in between driving. I don’t know whether it’s because the National Government got rid of them all, but I couldn’t find a postbox where there’d been one previously—or the fact that the post only came three days a week.

But it’s those barriers, in terms of getting people to vote, that this bill looks at alleviating. It’s the fact that we’re able to actually have the possibility of online voting being trialled in a safe and controlled way that is quite exciting in this piece of legislation.

Now, there’s always a risk involved when people are attempting to use online methods for voting, and this has been taken into consideration. There’ve been examples—I know, recently, of Australia—where the security of data or the way that the online voting has occurred has been compromised, so it’s always very important, if we’re introducing new methods of voting, to be able to make sure those systems are robust and that people have faith that their voting is being counted and being done in a legitimate manner.

This bill enables small sections to be trialled, to give local authorities the confidence that the systems that they’re using are able to be relied upon. Through the enabling of this legislation, small groups can be targeted. So you could choose to be just looking at those who are overseas or just voters who may be disabled, who cannot get to the polling booth or be able to complete forms, or maybe even it may be trialled through our younger people, who are not engaging as much through postal voting.

This mechanism provides an ability to limit the risks of trialling a new voting method. The addition to doing this, as well, is that it also gives local authorities access to data to find out who is actually responding, and, by holding that data, which would be verified through a birth date, that means that they can use that data to best engage with those populations who they are not seeing coming forward during local elections. It’s always important to increase voter turnout, and some of the lowest turnout groups in communities are Māori, Pasifika, and young people.

There’s sort of an irony in that space, particularly with regard to young people. When I think of some of the initiatives that are currently happening within Hutt South that the council is seeking to engage with, it’s those initiatives that the next generation will be using the most. They are the ones that will be using our roads, they are the ones that will be benefiting from local projects like RiverLink, which looks to open up the Hutt River, to introduce flood protection, and to put in better traffic mechanisms like the Melling Link to enable more free-flowing traffic around those areas. It is the younger people in our communities that will be using those facilities into the future, and so it’s within our best interests to make sure that what we are building, what is happening, reflects the needs and the wants of those people that will be using those facilities.

So by having online voting and having a mechanism where everybody has the opportunity of engaging far more readily with their local authorities, we increase our chances of building a future New Zealand that meets the daily needs of our communities, and that’s got to be a good thing.

When I look, also, at how we best engage with voters and how we get the best turnout possible, when you look at the recent general election, there was a new ability there for voters to enrol and vote at the same time, and we did see a real increase in terms of voter turnout in younger people. So, again, by removing barriers—by making voting more accessible, more easy, and straightforward—we are always going to increase the levels of voter participation, and that has to be a good thing for New Zealand.

I would just like to conclude by wrapping up. There’s one piece of information that I read that really interested me, and it was that in 2016 a post-election voter awareness survey conducted by Auckland Council saw that 74 percent of respondents said they would prefer online voting to postal voting, and the results, when they were broken down by age group, went across all age categories. So there is a real desire within New Zealand for an increased ability for online voting to happen far more readily, and it’s encouraging to see that we have a piece of legislation here that enables that to happen in a way where local authorities have the ability to control how that is rolled out and to make sure that that data is kept safe, as required.

This will largely benefit, as I’ve said, the next generation, and the key point that I really believe in is that it’s so important that communities help shape the key amenities that they will be using for the future. That’s how we get smarter roads, that’s how we get parks that people use, and that’s how we get facilities and libraries that are meeting the needs of our people. We do that through voter engagement, through people saying what they want and councils taking that into consideration when they make changes and use ratepayers’ money.

I would like to commend this bill to the House, and I congratulate the Minister on taking a bold step in enabling local authorities to better engage with people and to build a country where everybody has the opportunity of using facilities they need. I commend this bill to the House.

Hon JACQUI DEAN (National—Waitaki): Thank you, Madam Assistant Speaker. National supports this bill. It is very consistent with the work that the previous Government was undertaking with regard to making changes to the Local Electoral Act to provide for online voting. We support this bill but we support with caution the move to online voting.

A lot of work has been undertaken around the best way to engage New Zealanders in local elections—in elections and local elections. When I chaired the Justice and Electoral Committee a few years ago, we conducted a review into the general election. There were a number of submissions coming to us around the desirability of moving to online voting, and many reasons were given for that. One of those reasons was that it was the logical next step to allow for an engagement of New Zealanders. The second point was more focused on the engagement of those electors. I think that goes to the heart of the intent of changes to legislation to allow an online voting platform, and that is engagement of local electors. It is well-known to all of us that local elections are consistently declining in levels of engagement.

Now, the question about whether or not online voting is going to fix that or not is, I think, still open to discussion and, I think, probably not as a part of this piece of work, but no doubt submitters will raise it in select committee—the plethora of decisions that are presented to the voter. If I use our Order Paper, perhaps, just as a piece of paper, when I was confronted with my local authority voting papers in the last election, I was asked to make a decision around councillors, I was asked to make a decision around the licensing trust, and I was then asked to make a decision around the district health board. I didn’t know a lot of the names, even though I’m very familiar with my community, and, quite frankly, I would see this great number of decisions to be made all at once to be somewhat of a disincentive, as is the postal voting system, to voters. So that’s one thing that I believe Parliament and maybe the select committee should be considering. Also, it is the method. OK, we’ve got online voting on the table. We currently have a postal ballot. There are other methods of engaging voters that, perhaps, should be relooked at. Maybe we should go back to a ballot day. All of these issues were raised, and are raised, consistently in a number of contexts, and I predict that they will be raised in the context of this local electoral bill that we are debating at the moment.

So if I turn more specifically to the bill, the first part of the bill relates to better enabling a trial of internet voting, because it is recognised that, in some countries—Norway, for example, had a trial of internet voting, online voting, and have subsequently reverted back to a paper-based system over issues of integrity of the system. And if there’s one thing this Parliament—and I’m sure we can all agree—really wants to get right, it is to enhance and preserve the integrity of the voting system. So we need to be very mindful of international experiences, such as those as happened in Norway. It’s worth noting that the existing legislation already allows for a trial of online voting, but what this bill does is to allow that trial to take place, for example, in a ward—maybe in Auckland, maybe in New Plymouth—rather than across the whole district. That minimises, clearly, the risk if that trial is not successful. And I also think it’s important that a trial can be undertaken over a ward, because the last thing we need to do with our electoral system is to undermine public confidence in that system, because if a trial were to take place over a whole district—say New Plymouth District Council—and was found not to be as robust as was required, then the greater the area that was under trial, I think the greater the undermining of that particular form of voting, but also the electoral system could be. And I don’t think any of us want to risk that.

So we will support this bill to select committee. It does follow on from work under the previous Government. It is very consistent with our desire to see a more modernised system of voting which is more accessible to voters and is more welcoming to voters of all ages and circumstances. But we do need to be satisfied—we do want to be satisfied—that any shift to online voting is one that doesn’t compromise the integrity of people’s votes. Those people who engage in the democratic process do care about their communities. We want them to be able to vote with certainty.

The second part of the bill is a minor change only, and that enables age-related data to be able to be provided to local authorities in a format that they can use—in age bands. This will enable local authorities to have better information about their voting public, and so National also supports this part of the bill.

So we all look forward to submissions on this. We all look forward to being able to take a step forward in our electoral law and, potentially, improving engagement in local authority elections. Thank you, Madam Assistant Speaker.

Hon RON MARK (Minister of Defence): Thank you, Madam Assistant Speaker. It’s a pleasure to rise and speak for New Zealand First on this bill. I want to start by making a couple of comments. Firstly, I listened with interest to the last speaker on the ACC legislation. I’m going to put it on the record that I think the Hon Ruth Dyson is the best Minister for ACC that I’ve ever seen in all my time in Parliament, and I really appreciated the support we had down in Christchurch in those times.

I want to say, also, that this is one of a couple of bills that the Government is presenting, and they’re both linked, and it’s good to see the second one here, which seeks to reinstate the well-beings back into the Local Government Act—something that our party opposed, and I as a mayor was subjected to. It’ll be a very satisfying moment to see that legislation go through under this coalition Government.

The Local Electoral Matters Bill is a bit of bittersweet for New Zealand First. We are supporting this legislation, and we will be supporting the conversation that will ensue from the analysis of this bill by the select committee and the wider community, particularly the Local Government New Zealand community.

This bill, which aims to, principally, enable some changes to the methods of voting at local government elections is possibly somewhat overdue. Looking back at some of the more recent history under the last term of Government, it’s understandable why the honourable Minister Louise Upston had some concerns and did not progress this legislation.

I think, looking back on the history, it was very clear—if I step one step back again, it’s very obvious to everybody that there is something wrong with the local government elections when you consider that in the 2017 election, we had something like, amongst people in the cohort of 45 and over, a 79 percent turnout. Those aged 65-69—88.2 percent turnout. Those aged 70 and over, an 86.3 percent turnout.

Ironically, given all of the discussions as to how important young people feel it is to participate in Government and have their say and participate in formulating law and shaping this nation, the lowest turnout is in the cohort from 25 to 29, where less than two-thirds—some 67.6 percent—turned out to vote.

Now, if you look at those numbers for the general election and compare them to the turnout in the 2016 local authority elections, we’re looking at 43 percent for council and 42 percent for mayor—43 percent and 42 percent, as opposed to a turnout in the 2017 election, which sits up in the 80s. Something’s wrong.

Now, this legislation looks to enable—make it possible—for trials to be conducted within a frame of electronic voting. And I know that this has been something that some of my former family in Local Government New Zealand have championed and have thought would be the panacea and the silver bullet to overcoming this problem. I know it’s a view that’s held by many members of Parliament—that this is the silver bullet. This is going to shift the voting turnout in territorial authority elections from 40 percent to 80 percent.

Well, let me tell the House and put it on the record now exactly what I used to say as the Mayor of Carterton—and I’m looking across at the honourable member Lawrence Yule, who was the president of Local Government New Zealand at the time and was unfortunate enough to have to listen to me expressing my views as forcefully as I did on some occasions. I said it then, and I’ll say it now: this will not save the problem.

Electronic voting for local government elections in their current frame—and this is the message from New Zealand First, through the Hansard, to the committee. In the current frame, in the current structure of local government elections, this will not—electronic voting will not—solve the problem on its own.

Fundamentally, we need to accept that local government elections—it’s so good to look around this House and see other members of Parliament who have spent time in local government. There’s quite a few here. Fundamentally, the way New Zealand First sees it, is there’s two things that stand out when you look at local government elections and compare them to central government. One, local government elections are done by post. Well, therein is a problem. And for many, many years, both sides of the competing factions—left and right—have accused the others of rorting the system by having volunteers taking postal envelopes out of letterboxes of houses that are not occupied and submitting them.

Now, those are accusations that are thrown around quite regularly. But what they essentially say is that the postal system is able to be rorted. What I also see is that there is a lot of stuff that is posted out that never ever gets picked up by the person for whom it is intended, and if you look at the current housing crisis and look at the high transience levels of residents, and particularly those in low socio-economic groups and those who live in low socio-economic areas, we all know that there are many families who will change houses three to four times within an electoral cycle. So they will never see it. There is a high probability they may never receive their envelope. There is a clear possibility that someone else might receive it and fraudulently use it. Postal voting itself is an issue, and now with the denigration of services—and where I live, we only get rural post three times a week, and we’re only 6 kilometres out of Carterton. So postal voting is fraught.

There is another problem: central government elections are held on one day. We physically have to get out of bed, get dressed, get spruced up, go down to the polling booth, and cast our vote. That in itself lends an air of significance and importance and value to the day, and families do it together. Communities, rugby teams who have got a game on, netball teams that have got a game on—they talk about how they’re going to get their vote done and then get to the game, or get to the game and then, when mum and dad have got all the kids at the netball and the footy, organise themselves so they can be there for the Saturday morning netball, be there for the Saturday morning football if it’s on that particular day, and then still get their vote done. They talk about it. They plan it. Postal voting doesn’t give that opportunity—in fact, it provides a negative.

The next thing is the wad and the size of that booklet that comes in the mail, and God forbid I should ever have the misfortune to live in Auckland and have to handle one of those books that comes in my mailbox. Because you’re not only dealing with the mayor or the council, you’re dealing with the hospital boards and you’re dealing with the liquor licensing board and you’re dealing with the cat control board and the love-the-bird board and every other little board and every little community group that’s going—and Maureen Pugh is looking at me and smiling. We know what those books look like and most people look at them, open them, and say, “Who the hell are these people? I have no idea who these people are.” And they put it on the “too hard” place, which is the mantelpiece or in their little box where they keep all their incoming mail, and they say, “I’ll do it later.”, and they don’t. They don’t get around to it.

Some of us would argue that if territorial authorities elections day were held on one day and we physically had to get up and go and vote, and it was just about the council and just about the mayor, those stats would change enormously. Some would say that electronic voting is going to cure it all and fix it all. Well, I guess that’s what select committee process is all about. So I’d simply say to the select committee, good luck with your deliberations. Please listen to the submissions. Please analyse. Please apply some real common sense and think about the day that you go and vote in the general election and compare that to what we are confronted with in the territorial authority elections, and come back with an answer for us all. Because everybody across the entire House, I know, is keen to improve those unacceptable figures of 40 percent turnouts, but nobody that I’ve spoken to believes, including myself, that they have the full answer themselves. I say to the select committee—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): I apologise to the member; your time has expired.

DENISE LEE (National—Maungakiekie): Thank you, Madam Assistant Speaker. I rise in support of this bill, and I do agree with the principles of this bill and the discussion that it seeks to encourage, but that’s not entirely the foundation of my support, and indeed my party’s support. Instead, the support of this bill, as my colleagues before me have explained so well, is because the changes proposed in this bill are so minute, so unnecessary, and so uncontroversial that there’s no principled way that we couldn’t support this bill. The most significant changes proposed in this bill are in Part 1 of the bill, which seeks to better enable trials of internet voting, and in this context the word “significant” has a very loose meaning. It’s the 21st century and electoral systems around the world are having to adapt to the changing times, changing technology, and discussion around that are already happening, are they not?

Now if this bill was introducing a new system that allowed local bodies to trial online voting, it would be quite a significant change—but, no. The systems are already in place to let local government trial online alternative methods. The major change that this bill is proposing is to allow these changes to take place in a local ward rather than a whole district. Is that it? Six months into this new Government and all they offer in terms of change to local government is changing from a whole district to a ward. Like so many other bills that have been introduced by this Government, it makes such minor legislative changes that it’s a shame we’ve got to dedicate so much of Parliament’s time to not debating more pressing issues. But it is a discussion that we are having here late this afternoon, so I just want to make a few points in regards to the shift towards online voting and what this bill looks to encourage.

As I said before, it is a sign of the times that we having this discussion, and in principle we here on the side of the House are not opposed to the shift. However, there have been recent international examples of online voting that have not had great results. So we must keep in mind that the integrity of our voting system should be always to the fore and priority for us. There may be some unintended consequences or vulnerabilities that come with online voting, and we have to be very careful around that. It’s not clear that online voting will substantially increase voter turnout and engagement, so we have to have that absolute confidence that it will both increase participation and will be secure and so therefore we need to proceed with caution.

The fundamental question—and I’ll just elaborate some of the points that the previous speaker, Ron Mark, has made, actually, in regard to participation in local government. Some of the reasons for that participation rate being so low are not just around the idea or the concept that postal votes are onerous. That’s putting things far too simplistically. There are wider issues at play. The previous speaker is right, there’s a few of us sitting right here in the House—a few of us standing right here in the House—who have come from a local government background, and we’d know only too acutely the issues of complex voting systems. So when you get that ballot there are multiple voting systems at play: first past the post and single transferable vote all in the one spot. Ron Mark is also correct in regards to that very big fat election booklet. You do need several pairs of eyeglasses to get through that. As much as everyone’s bio notes are fantastic and very personalised, they’re also very long. That very thick booklet is immediately a turnoff.

We also have trust levels in terms of apathy towards local government and voting. I come from an Auckland Council background. By Auckland Council’s own admission and own polling, ways in which governance has been undertaken have undermined the trust levels of the public. It’s not just about onerous postal voting; there are other wider issues at play. So what we’re doing here on this side of the House is supporting this through to select committee so that we can further, and in a more detailed way, scrutinise the concept of—well, actually, we’ll only be scrutinising the concept of it opening up to wards, not just whole districts. But online voting itself needs a lot of scrutiny so that we get things right, the integrity of the system remains, and we can be secure in adapting changes going forward. Thank you, Madam Assistant Speaker. We look forward to this going to scrutiny at the select committee process.

GARETH HUGHES (Green): Kia ora, Madam Assistant Speaker. Ngā mihi nui ki a koutou. Kia ora. I feel like I might be the only one in this debate who hasn’t been in local government, but it sounds like a pretty great place and a great way to make a difference for your community. Given we’ve got a school group, I believe, or a sports group in the House, I think it is important to note the importance of local government to our community. This is where rates are paid, but what we as citizens get in return, of course, are roads and parks and plumbing and water. When it comes to our regional councils, they deal with where a factory can be built or what happens with the state of our environment or pollution in our rivers. So it’s a really important part of our community and our country. It’s different, of course, from where we are today, which is central government in Parliament, where laws are made, and central government deals with tax and police and education. So I hope you’re having a great time here at Parliament.

Now, it’s really important that we see more people participate in Government, and I mean both central, here in Parliament, but also local. At the last election, what we saw nationally was around 80 percent participation of enrolled voters cast a vote on election day. Compare that, though, with local government, which was 43 percent in 2016. That’s down from 57 percent in 1989. So what we’ve seen is a steady decline in the amount of people voting for those key, important issues, from roads to parks to forests to rivers.

Online voting has been presented as a potential solution. Now, I don’t think anyone in this House has suggested, or is suggesting, that it’s a silver bullet, but what we have seen overseas is that trials have been successful in increasing participation. Now, what people know is, of course, we trialled postal voting—instead of voting on election day like we do for Parliament, voting over a period through the postal system. That was effective as a short-term bump up, but it hasn’t been effective in the long term, obviously, with those declining participation rates.

This bill establishes a regime which allows trials of online voting for local government to occur. It also helps make it possible, through allowing date of birth information to be provided and, also, analysis of that information in age bands or age cohorts. So we welcome the bill. We think it’s an important thing to trial. I think it’s incredibly rich of the last speaker, Denise Lee, to be criticising this bill as too modest when, in fact, it was her Government and her colleague the Hon Louise Upston who stopped the trial back in 2016, which was a great opportunity to see if it could work across the country for those councils who chose it—terrible shame that it didn’t go ahead. So it’s incredibly unfair and deeply rich to be criticised by that member for a more modest bill when their Government actually stopped it.

So, look, I’ve been a big supporter of online voting in my career in Parliament. I’ve seen it work overseas. I’ve always noted the concerns, though. Now, I know Hillary Clinton’s been in the country recently, and she’d be quite a prominent advocate of the ability of Governments to influence elections being a critical issue that democracies and Parliaments and Governments need to face. What we must have is the integrity of our voting system. We can’t have certain individuals or certain foreign Governments influence elections through unfair means by, essentially, hacking the system. Other members such as Ron Mark have talked about the ability currently, through using a postal system, to have serious integrity questions raised.

So we support the trial. We want to make sure that it is secure. It appears that age or date of birth information is a critical requirement. We’re not like many European countries, which have a unique citizen identifier. I don’t think that’s something which is in line with New Zealand’s values or that many Governments would ever want to see here, so the security requirements are more difficult. We see potential solutions—for example, RealMe being adopted by the Government—so I’m really interested in hearing further from the Privacy Commissioner, who I note has raised serious concerns with this legislation, in the select committee. What we want is something that works but also, most importantly, is something which is safe and secure so all New Zealanders have confidence in their voting system.

Now, when we talk about online voting, no member has raised it as a silver bullet. It’s something which, hopefully, will encourage it. It isn’t a panacea for the problems. Now, what I would suggest and agree with some of the debate on is there probably are, potentially, more significant issues we as politicians, we as a country and as a democracy, could be raising to encourage democratic engagement. The engagement of you as New Zealanders in our country making those critical decisions—not you, Madam Assistant Speaker.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): Thank you.

GARETH HUGHES: I meant the future generations of New Zealanders. What we heard, in fact, in my select committee this morning was from the Children’s Commissioner, who was talking about the role of children’s advocacy in policy development in New Zealand. He told us what he had heard from New Zealand kids: that if it’s just consultation, it’s in fact not a true representation of children’s voices in the policy development. He said, “If it’s something about us that’s not with us, it’s done to us.” That was a strong message we heard. “If it’s just consulting, it’s insulting.” was a phrase we heard from some of the kids.

What we need to make sure of, I think, within local government and central government, is that when we are consulting, there is a genuine development process. I’ve, sadly, seen it in this Parliament, where literally 99 percent of submissions, including thousands of submissions, have been ignored by the majority on select committees. I’ve seen submitters disrespectfully treated in committee. What this House and what local government should be encouraging is genuine participation; respecting those voices. We want more people engaged in the political system, not just on election day or during the election week; across the whole system. We want to make sure that we’re taking advantage of new technology. In this case, it’s online voting, but in this House of Parliament we could be taking advantage of new technology to stream our select committees, for example, which is some work that the Office of the Clerk has been leading on, and I support that going further. We want more people being able to participate and see the work of this Parliament.

A constant criticism I hear from the public and many young people in New Zealand is that when they come to Parliament or when they watch it on telly, they see politicians fighting, butting heads, and trying to score petty political points rather than talking about the substantive issues. Now, what I often say is that it’s sad that people only see this side of the parliamentary or the legislative process. They don’t see us working around the select committee table—where MPs actually agree, where MPs try to find consensus, and where MPs collaborate. That’s why I’m a big supporter of live streaming—or one reason why: because people actually see us working together, coming up with the solutions, which is what I think they expect from their lawmakers; not just scoring points and acting the theatre of Parliament.

I guess one serious point I’d like to raise to all MPs is a challenge to us to also take responsibility for declining participation in New Zealand. It’s our behaviour, the way that we interact with the media, and the way that politics and our democracy is covered. We have a responsibility. We can’t just blame youth, for example, which I’ve heard often in this House, for being somewhat apathetic and for not being involved in their civic duty. We have a responsibility to act with integrity, to encourage those voices and people to participate.

Likewise with the way Government runs. I note that this Government has a goal of being the most open and transparent Government in our country’s history. I believe we could aim to reimagine the way that Governments, Parliaments, and lawmaking works. I was proud, many years ago, to be the first member to crowdsource a member’s bill, which related to internet rights and freedoms. This is a tool I think Governments could be taking more advantage of, actively involving a wide diversity of voices earlier on, and I think, actually, what we will get is better laws as a result.

So I look forward to hearing from the Privacy Commissioner, local government officials and representatives, and all New Zealanders in the select committee. It’s a really important debate to have: how we can achieve a trial of online voting while ensuring its integrity and the security of our democratic voice. It’s a step forward in our democracy that this bill is going through, I believe, unanimously tonight. I look forward to more Kiwis playing a role in their local government so that we get more playgrounds in our towns and cities—eh? Kia ora, kids.

Dr JIAN YANG (National): This bill addresses, basically, the new voting methods for local elections and addresses the design, the trial, and also the analysis of new voting methods. It makes changes—minor changes—to both the Local Electoral Act and the main Electoral Act. This is not a huge bill. It’s focused on some small changes. It attempts to make it easier to trial new voting methods, mainly electronic voting.

Now, electronic voting, of course, is getting increasingly popular or important, simply because we are living in an increasingly digitised world. Just like people do online shopping, so people now go online to do many other things. I understand, now, half of the New Zealand population are doing online shopping, so people would believe that online voting will become increasingly popular or increasingly important. For that reason, the National Party will support the bill to select committee, to see more details.

However, on the other hand, we need to be a bit more cautious with regard to online voting, because in some countries, the Governments tried online voting, but then reverted back to traditional voting like postal voting. So online voting may not be almighty and may not be the best practice in some cases. As I mentioned, there are examples there in other countries, like in Norway, but also because we believe this bill could enable—enable—the trial of various voting methods. Now, there is a concern there because when you have various kinds of voting methods, people may get confused. It will then reduce turnout, instead of helping or increasing turnout, in local elections.

Turnout for local elections has been low, and we all know that, but is the traditional postal voting the main reason for the low turnout? I think that is an issue we can debate on, but, generally speaking, we believe that there are many reasons why people do not go to vote in the local elections. For example, some other speakers have mentioned that people do not know these candidates and, therefore, they do not feel connected. I think that’s perhaps one of the key reasons why people do not really go to vote in their local elections.

There are some other reasons. For example, people may not know the functions of local governments or local organisations. They may not feel that it’s important for them to participate—so that can be another reason—and some other people may feel that there is so much information that they can’t simply digest it and, therefore, they simply give up, like many other previous speakers have mentioned. And you may say that to new immigrants, it can be a challenge, because they are not used to the political situation and the political environment in New Zealand and, therefore, they may need more time to adjust and may need more help or assistance in getting them to better know the situation or the political system in New Zealand. Language can be another barrier, for example, because the information is largely in English and is in such a hefty booklet, people feel that it’s very hard for those who do not have a good mastery of English to understand the information.

So there are various reasons why people do not participate in local elections. Having said that, we believe it is important for us to enable people to vote and to make it easier for people to vote. For that reason, we support the bill to the select committee. Thank you.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): I understand this is a split call—five minutes.

Hon CLARE CURRAN (Minister of Broadcasting, Communications and Digital Media): Kia ora. Thank you, Madam Assistant Speaker. I think this has been a really interesting and really useful debate—the debate on this bill, which does a few things but has mainly focused on the merits of online voting. I want to make a couple of comments with a couple of different hats on, because this is, on the face of it, a logical, important modernising step in how our electoral system operates. You know, people have touched on the importance of civic engagement, breaking down the barriers to voting, the modernisation and use of new technologies in giving people options in how they cast their vote. What this bill does is it is not the introduction. I just want people out there listening to this to be clear.

This bill isn’t actually the introduction of an online voting scheme for New Zealand. It provides that opportunity to design, trial, and do analysis of new voting methods, and any next steps would require regulations and possibly other legislation. So this is an important step. I think the reason why I’ve stressed that is because in 2016 when there was a proposed trial of online voting in a number of local authorities throughout New Zealand, which seemed to be going to go ahead, that fell over and there were a number of reasons for that. I’m not as across as some members are of all of the detailed reasons for that, but security issues basically resulted in a pulling back from that. I think that’s an important point, and that’s where I want to spend a couple of minutes talking about that.

Participation in our electoral system is a key issue and a key reason for us to go down this track and to look at it. As Gareth Hughes pointed out, you know, New Zealand does have a reputation as being an open democracy, as being at the forefront of some participatory democracy—measures this Government is absolutely committed to—and with 21 percent of the population not participating in voting, people not participating in census and other democratic processes, it’s absolutely critical that we are looking really closely at this. We’ve also got the digital divides as well, where people have low participation or no digital engagement, so this is not something that’s going to work necessarily for them.

So there are some really good reasons to do it, but there are also some really good reasons to take care. For all of those techie people out there who are listening and saying “Don’t do it. Don’t do it.” because of the security issues that they’ve raised before, again and again—and this goes to the “what happens” between when you cast your vote and when it gets counted and the potential for interruption in that process. We have to do it well. Blockchain technology may provide the opportunity for that.

I also want to stress to those people listening that no voting system is perfect—no voting system. Whether it’s postal, whether it’s casting your vote in a ballot box, whatever your system is of voting, it’s not perfect. But this is a logical step and I think it’s incumbent on us as a Parliament to be going down this track. I really value the contributions from across the House on this. I know there’s been a lot of thinking and I really value the contributions already at local government level in thinking about this, because it’s local government where there is a lot of the issue around participation and how we can get more people to engage with that.

To all you young people up there [Addresses the public gallery], listening to this debate, this is about your future. This is about how you can participate and make change happen in New Zealand, and your vote is so precious and so important. So we have to make sure that we’re doing it for you, that we’re doing all of the thinking for you. I urge there to be really well-thought-out contributions on this in the select committee process. It’s absolutely vital that we get all sides of this debate and that we really nut this out once and for all.

LAWRENCE YULE (National—Tukituki): I’m thrilled, actually, to stand and talk on the Local Electoral Matters Bill. The National Party will be supporting it, as you’ve heard, going to the next stage of select committee.

I put it to members of this House that, really, what we’re dealing with is an evolution in the voting process to the next stage. We started off with polling booths, and we actually still have those for general elections—they’re still there—then we migrated to postal voting, and now we are looking at online in the mix. Now in the middle of that, we’re not saying that it’s one or the other; we’re providing a series of options for people to participate in democracy.

I want to acknowledge the Hon Louise Upston and the Hon Jacqui Dean for the work they did in the previous Government to look at this, and if it was simple and if it was easy, it would have been advanced further than it has been to date. As a former president of Local Government New Zealand, I had many discussions with those Ministers, and a fundamental part of that was actually around the integrity and security of the voting system.

If we get it wrong and if there is widespread corruption or fraud in the voting system, people actually lose confidence in that very same voting system. I agree with the member from New Zealand First the Hon Ron Mark that this is not a panacea, and nor is it likely to dramatically change the level of voter turnout, but what it is is giving—particularly, young people—an option to participate in democracy in a way that they may be more familiar with.

There is a risk of electoral fraud, currently, in terms of people taking postal voting papers. There was an amazing fraud, or electoral breach, really, in terms of the Australian census. The Australian census was completely corrupted by online hacking, right in the middle of when these two Ministers—the previous Ministers—were considering this. So as part of that, it is wise to be cautious, and we need to be very much focused on security. I also note that if you project out, in 20 years’ time, the postal service—if it even exists—will be very different to what it is now, so the electronic mechanism of transacting business will be very different to what it is now.

This is a trial. It allows partitioning of districts. It allows wards. It allows age-related data to be collected.

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

LAWRENCE YULE: As I was saying before the dinner break, for those that weren’t here, this is actually an evolutionary process of change to go from polling booth - type voting to postal voting, and now to include electronic voting in the mix. As I previously said, international evidence would suggest it won’t dramatically change voter turnout, but what it will do is allow—particularly, young people—an access system that’s available to help them vote. Also, I expect there will be further significant changes to the postal system, so in 20 years, I imagine that postal voting will be dramatically different to what it is now.

That being said, there are some future issues that I would encourage members of the Government parties to look at. One of them is the mixed-type arrangement of voting systems at local government elections. So there can be a different type of voting system for a hospital ward, a different type of voting system for a council, and a different type of voting system for a local board or a community board—often, alcohol licensing authorities or trusts—and, actually, when people get their voting packs, it is so confusing for most people that they don’t even know half the people or what to vote for.

So I would encourage the Government to look at that as a future work programme aligned to this bill, because, in my view, there is way too much information, there are actually too many choices to be made, and people are either disengaged by that or simply don’t vote appropriately with the power they’ve been given. For me, that often means that either people don’t vote or those that have a high profile get chosen because people can’t be bothered reading all the material, and when you get a pack in your voting thing that’s this thick, it is completely off-putting.

So to the members of the Government and for members of the select committee, while it might be outside the brief, it is my view that if we want to encourage participation in local government elections, we actually need to make it as easy as possible and the least complicated it possibly can be, and I encourage the Government to look at those changes through the select committee stage. Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker.

RAYMOND HUO (Labour): Having listened to the contributions of members who spoke before me, I think it is fitting for me to say that a certain level of consensus has been reached that this bill is a very important first step. This bill is about how to modernise our elections. It’s about e-enabled elections. So this bill is about moving e-democracy from a hypothetical vision to a possible established mechanism for online voting.

The bill seeks to achieve two main things. The first thing is, it will enable regulations to be made so that a voting method can be developed, and, secondly, it enables a certain kind of data analysis of voter participation involving age groups and other specific data in local elections. Changes under this bill provide flexibility while designing a trial of a certain kind of new method of voting to avoid the risk of designing a trial over a larger population.

Although this bill does not propose a certain kind of particular new voting method, online voting is obviously topical and we do have high-level expectations from the general public and, conversely, we do have escalating challenges for postal voting.

Advances in technologies such as social media, e-commerce, and the digital economy have changed our lives. The rise of the internet and e-commerce, the digital economy, and social media platforms have changed and transformed business and Governments’ and, certainly, individuals’ behaviour. New technologies such as a social media platform and cloud storage have changed the way data is to be collected, stored, used, and distributed. This has created many benefits but, at the same time, many challenges as well. We have covered these kinds of issues while debating another bill, the Privacy Bill, before this sitting block.

This bill is about how to modernise our elections and how to introduce possible e-enabled elections. For its proponents, online voting is a way for us to modernise elections. I can list at least three more reasons to support such a claim. Firstly, if we go to, say, the South Island, to the Hon Damien O’Connor’s electorate, we will appreciate that New Zealand is geographically extensive. We don’t necessarily have many metropolitan cities and it is not easy for voters to travel, and that’s certainly the case for Kiwis working or living overseas when coming to each election cycle. Secondly, it helps to facilitate access to the ballot box for those with difficulties accessing the station. Thirdly, as many members touched upon previously, online voting as a new method will definitely help engage more with young voters, although it is a big ask for us to say that online voting will be the silver bullet and it will be the solution to sort out all the problems or to help reverse the declining turnout in legislative elections worldwide.

It is important for us to have this bill to be introduced as the first step. Through the progress of this bill, and particularly through select committee progress where we will be able to look into the submissions, we would be better placed to understand the impact of online voting on young voters or generally on voting behaviour, especially among young voters. We would be better placed to understand the relationship between online voting, e-democracy, actual participation, and socio-economic factors such as age, gender, income, and education, etc. At the moment, we don’t have the necessary data to help guide us in that direction.

Previously, data sourced internationally would offer some further grim reading. For example, turnout for European Parliament elections has decreased each cycle, from a high of 61 percent in 1979 to close to 42 percent in 2014. However, increased turnout was observed following the introduction of online voting in the 2000 Arizona Democratic primary elections in the United States, in the 2012 Budget referendum in Brazil, and in Estonian local elections for the period of 2005 and 2009. In the Republic of Estonia, an online voting method known as i-voting provides a unique solution that simply and conveniently helps to engage with younger voters. In 2005, Estonia became the first country in the world to hold nationwide elections using online voting, and in 2007—

Simon O’Connor: Which country?

RAYMOND HUO: Estonia. It made headlines as the first country to use the i-voting system in parliamentary elections. I-voting is a kind of system that enables voters to cast their votes from any internet-connected computer anywhere in the world. During the designated pre-voting period, the voter logs on using an ID card and casts a ballot. The system allows voters to vote as many times as they want, and since each vote cancels the last, the voter always has the option of updating his or her preference. The voter’s identity is removed from the ballot before it reaches the national electoral commission for counting, thereby ensuring anonymity, and that leads us to the second major issue under this bill, involving data analysis in terms of age groups and other factors such as voter participation.

While on this particular point, there are some ideas floated that it probably is about time for us to consider some ideas involving a unified national identification document. Now we have all sorts of identity documents, ranging from driver licences to passports. Arguments for identity documents are that it helps to avoid mismatching people and to fight against fraud, and arguments against such a kind of mechanism are, understandably, data privacy and associated costs.

New Zealand, together with Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom, does not have such kinds of unified national identity documents. In Singapore, every citizen and permanent resident aged over 15 is required to register for such a kind of ID card. The card is necessary not only for procedures of State but also for day-to-day transactions. In Singapore, they use the ID cards at schools, for instance, to identify students, both online and in exams.

So this is a very important step. I look forward to the progress of this bill, and especially the submissions to the extraordinarily busy Justice Committee. Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker.

MAUREEN PUGH (National): Thank you very much, Mr Assistant Speaker. I’m very pleased to be standing here tonight to speak to the Local Electoral Matters Bill as part of its first reading. I have a history in local government, having spent 15 years on the Westland District Council, down in the great part of this country in the South Island, but I’m sure we’re all in agreement here in this House that our democracy is really only as effective as those who chose to participate make it. So it’s beholden on us to ensure that the system that it operates in is accessible and that people do participate in our democracy.

The figures from the Department of Internal Affairs show that voter turnout does continue to be higher for district councils than for city or regional councils, but all councils have seen a decline since 1989, which was when the local government reforms happened. One encouraging statistic in this year, when we celebrate 125 years of women’s suffrage here in New Zealand, is that the proportion of women who participate in the election process in local authorities is rising, and has been rising since 1989. So in 2016, in the last local government elections, the results show that it was the highest percentage of women candidates, which was 35 percent, and women elected, which was 38 percent, in the last 28 years, and I think that’s something to be quite proud of—that we are still managing to encourage women to participate in local democracy.

But what was also clear when I was researching some of the statistics was that rural councils tend to be much more engaged in the local democratic process than their metropolitan counterparts or their provincial counterparts. When I thought about it, I thought it’s probably more to do with those high-impact local issues that encourage people to get out and take part in their local democracy. I also found that in the years where there was a mayoral election, rather than when a mayor had been elected unopposed, it tended to bring out more participation in that local democratic process. So there were other factors that influenced whether people participated in their local body elections.

But whether or not people do engage, we should still be looking to the future and making it more accessible and evolving the process, as people in communities and technology evolve with us. But it does seem a bit ironic that the postal voting, which was brought in, seems to be the most passive way of casting your vote in local authorities. The information is delivered to you, you get to scrutinise the candidates in the candidate profiles that come out, and you cast your vote on your ballot paper and put it in an envelope, all at your leisure. So you have quite a time period in which to do that and to make your assessment and to do any research that you want. So it’s not an onerous process as we already have it, but I think, as I said, we still need to evolve with our electoral system as technology evolves.

There are some other stats that I thought I would show off about in the House tonight. In the great electorate of West Coast - Tasman, since—

Hon Members: Fine electorate.

MAUREEN PUGH: It would be inappropriate of me not to sing the praises of such a wonderful place. In the great West Coast - Tasman electorate, since the 2010 elections, we’ve gone from 62 percent voter turnout down to 50.9 percent—

Greg O’Connor: In the mighty Buller?

MAUREEN PUGH: —in the Buller—and in Grey, it has gone from 47.8 percent to 49.1 percent. That flies in the face of what I’ve just said about a mayoral election, because that mayor has been elected unopposed five times, but it still manages to get close to 50 percent voter turnout. And in Westland, it’s gone from 62.4 percent to 59 percent, and they’re great stats compared to some of our metropolitan and provincial councils.

But if there is a champion of local government elections turnout, that prize clearly goes to a small council in the electorate of my good friend and colleague the Hon Chris Finlayson, who is the list MP in Rongotai, and he looks after the Chathams. So the Chathams win the prize for the best local government turnout, where, in 2016—

Tamati Coffey: No, Paul does. He’s the MP.

MAUREEN PUGH: —I said “the list MP”—71.9 percent of voters in the Chathams sent in their votes.

Now I take the point that my former mayoral colleague Ron Mark made earlier in the night about the complication of electoral voting that you get in some of those bigger councils like Auckland—and I have been blessed with never having to have to deal with it. But I can imagine the size of the book that comes, the number of people that you have to review and assess. In the Chathams, it’s not such an onerous process. So I imagine that because it’s so simple and because there is less choice because they know everybody over there intimately, they vote. So 71.9 percent is a fantastic turnout in any democracy.

But we do need to keep evolving, and this bill does provide some ideas about how we bring about those changes. I’ve just attended the science forum in the Grand Hall tonight, and they were talking about some of the processes around transport and the transport infrastructure and planning. You know, we can plan so far, but we simply don’t know what we don’t know about where technology is going to take us. But this small step in the electoral process is going to be fairly painless. It is only a trial that will break down to a small component of a ward inside a local body area, so that we can test an online system. This bill is an omnibus bill, and it will amend the Local Electoral Act of 2001 so that the trial of online voting can go ahead. That is actually allowed under the existing Act, but it can’t be broken down to the size of a ward—rather, it’s allowed across a whole district. The omnibus bill also amends the Electoral Act of 1993, where it will enable the date of birth information to be used when designing future voting systems and the analysis of the participation by age group to be used.

The other clear stat that I’d like to share is around the level of engagement by people aged 18 to 35 years old. They are woefully under-represented, and we do need to find ways of encouraging them to vote. It is a little ironic that two weeks ago today, I believe, we were all celebrating with reverence Anzac Day and the sacrifice that our returned servicemen and women made to this country in defence of democracy. The participation by our young people over the years in Anzac Day services has been increasingly amazing to me, and the reverence with which they treat that day, but the very thing that our soldiers went off to defend for us—to enable us to have our democracy—is a little bit lost on them, I believe.

Some of us on this side of the House are a little cautious about the use of the internet for voting, and I certainly do, with my colleagues, share that caution, but I look forward to the debate going further into select committee about how we will preserve the privacy of the information that is used and the security of that information that is used. I know that the Justice and Electoral Committee, after the 2014 general election, did discuss online voting, and it was disregarded at that time, but it’s clearly here for us to debate tonight, and I have pleasure in commending the bill to the House. Thank you, sir.

PAUL EAGLE (Labour—Rongotai): Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker. It is certainly a pleasure to have the final speaking slot for the Local Electoral Matters Bill this evening, and can I just start by acknowledging the Minister of Local Government, the Hon Nanaia Mahuta, for her passion in the sector, but also for the start of, I guess, a suite of reforms, minor or otherwise, that are focused on assisting local government. It’s certainly a pleasure to know that this is the second piece of work, after the four well-beings that have been amended. However small, I believe this will have far-reaching positive outcomes.

I want to thank members of the Opposition—first and foremost those who have been a part of developing this, but also for their speeches, even though right at the beginning I was bit nervous. I’ve seen all of the speeches, and I was bit nervous that the member for Nelson was getting a little hysterical around what this bill was about, so it was a pleasure to see those who were in local government speaking this afternoon and this evening on the bill, saying, “Yes, we’re going to support it.” We’re going to acknowledge them and some of the work they did, and this Government will certainly finish off.

I want to acknowledge, also, Local Government New Zealand and SOLGM, the Society of Local Government Managers, who really are the interface between central and local government. It’s always hard hauling together local government into a room and saying, “Hey, what do you think?”, because that view isn’t a unified voice at all times.

I just want to start by reflecting on the legislation itself. When you look carefully, it certainly does talk about postal voting, and for those who have—look, we’ve heard it this evening, when several members have talked about their personal experiences about that: everything from not having, I guess, a postbox in your local street or neighbourhood any more to be able to post the form, to others who reflected on possible fraud, about people being able to take the voting papers out of the letterbox, sign them away for the candidate they’d like to see in, and find the post office or postbox to be able to post the form off. One of the improvements that I thought was great at the last local government elections was the ability to do some advance voting. Sometimes the practice defies the legislation and produces something that’s decent and practical.

The legislation also talks about polling booth voting, and this is where others have talked about the experiences that they have had when they’re in the local government elections and piling through that handbook of biographies—the best-written biographies you’ll ever read, because I know that candidates take a long, long time to put them together. But when it comes to central government, you’re back to the advance voting, yes, but you’re looking for the orange person to find your polling booth, and away you go. Many still treasure the experience of being able to really practise their democratic right to be able to vote, and they save up their big moment and still physically walk into the polling booth and make their vote. They did reduce. I know when I stood I was not struggling to find them, but I certainly noticed a reduction in polling booths around too.

So I think, really, the legislation envisaged and made provision for other methods, so it’s really only natural that methods such as electronic or online voting were always going to arrive for people to consider. I think it really picks up on those councils—there are several—who put their hand up to trial it, and that didn’t go ahead. I actually put my hand up to say no to the trial that the Wellington City Council put before elected members, because I was not confident that the trial would be robust enough, and several of you have talked about the great thing with what’s being proposed being that this trial will be able to develop regulations from that. We will be able to address the security issues, but also we will be able to ensure that those local bodies who choose to implement it can bring that work back and say, “Hey, this is what worked, and this is what didn’t work.”

I was saying to the Hon Ron Mark that one of my nervousnesses about the trial, and the reason I voted no then, was that if it went wrong, I was very nervous that the capital city of this country would be known, and googled away, and that, despite the great things in this city and region, it would be known for one thing only, and that was the corrupt or failed local council election of 2016. So, look, it didn’t go ahead. I won’t say the techies were right, but they certainly had their voice heard to say, “Hey, not right now.” The time is right now, because the process for doing this has changed, and therefore I think we will see the learnings implemented.

I love hearing stats, and we heard the previous speaker, Maureen Pugh, talk them through. Those are reality, because it is 41 percent here in the capital city. You would have thought that the political arousal that this place gives its residents and visitors would mean that more people would vote, but actually, no, it’s no better. But can I say I admire that little pocket of the Rongotai electorate which stands tall, and thanks to the member who said it’s got the highest voting population. There are only 600 people on that little wee island, but none the less those voters are important. I’d just like them to swing a little more to me next time, but there are still a few more years and a few more votes—

Hon Member: They will.

PAUL EAGLE: —thank you—that I will be able to woo from them in my several trips down, and I will bring back not only fish and other seafood but votes as well, hopefully. [Looks at clock] I’m still ticking here—there we are.

One of the things that I do pick up from the trial is a real enthusiasm, because it’s tinged with that comment that lots of people have made too—that there’s no silver bullet. Part of this is not only about modernising the voting system; it’s also about improving civic participation and that democratic right. Minister Mahuta made that clear in her opening speech right at the start. That’s what underpins this piece of work and is driving the outcome from this bill going through the House.

I think it’s really key to note, actually, that this may spark a suite of initiatives through our education system that I think is needed, and that should complement the actual experience of voting. Once we see that, and the successes, I think we’ll see this become the norm. I’m certainly looking forward to my local council maybe even using the ward that I live in. It is full of controversy and residents that love speaking out about everything from, I don’t know, cycleways and anything else that they can get their teeth into.

Hon Member: Don’t mention the war.

PAUL EAGLE: Don’t mention the “c” word. But look, it certainly would be a tool, and in fact they have used that tool now in other projects—such as cycleways—to get a steer on where to go.

This will be a piece of work that, when implemented at the next local government elections, will really define the future of how I think Kiwis will vote. It’s a pleasure to commend the bill. Kia ora.

Bill read a first time.

Bill referred to the Justice Committee.

Bills

Brokering (Weapons and Related Items) Controls Bill

In Committee

Debate resumed from 8 May.

Part 2 Brokering activity, registration, and permits (continued)

TAMATI COFFEY (Labour—Waiariki): I’m very happy, again, to speak on Part 2 of this particular piece of legislation. This area in the bill is all about the brokering activity, the registration process, and, obviously, the permits that are required if you are a person that has decided that you would like to broker in weapons. It is something that you don’t talk very often about, but these are things that need regulation, and I’m sure that the good New Zealand public would like to know that we, as parliamentarians looking after their best interests, have actually got their back on this front.

So, putting in some regulations: let’s talk, first of all, about the registration process. One thing that I would like to just get some clarification on is about who exactly needs to register and how would they know that. I heard a little bit last night about the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (MFAT) and how they would do some work in that space to be able to guide those people that are looking to participate in this area. I’m just seeking a bit more clarification about what exactly that entails.

The second part that I’d like a bit of clarification on is about how the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade intends to assess the applications. This is an area that conversations have been had in select committee, I understand. The process would be, as I understand it, that MFAT would look at the applicant and decide whether or not that person was fit and proper to be registered as a broker and in accordance with the bill’s criteria. There are a few things, I understand, which would make them a very undesirable—[Bell rung]—unfit, and improper—Mr Chair? Sorry, can I carry on?

CHAIRPERSON (Adrian Rurawhe): Tamati Coffey.

TAMATI COFFEY: Thank you. Sorry, I was looking at that time—the things that would make them less desirable to actually be a person that brokers in weapons on behalf of New Zealand: that being, as I understand it, the breaking of any kind of United Nations Security Council resolutions, including arms embargoes, and also contravening some of our international obligations.

I would like some clarification from the Minister, from the Table up the top, about whether or not something like that has already happened. Have there already been contraventions in this space that mean that we’re having to stand here and have these conversations?

I did ask some questions last night about some of the international export control regimes. I wanted to know a little bit about how we’re going to comply and how we participate in them. At the time, I didn’t know; since then I’ve done a wee bit of homework. So if I could just get some confirmation from the Table about the Wassenaar Arrangement on Export Controls for Conventional Arms and Dual-Use Goods and Technologies. That’s just one of the four that we participate with, on an international stage. The other ones—the Nuclear Suppliers Group, the Australia Group, and the Missile Technology Control Regime—they all sound very big and very heavy groups to be a part of. But I’d just like to know a little bit more about that.

Taking a little bit of a step back from the detail in here, I’m also just wondering—because this part is actually about brokering activity, I just wanted to know, for the sake of the people that are listening out there, how much of an issue brokering really is in New Zealand. I understand that there are 10 entities registered with MFAT under the voluntary registration scheme, but there are fewer than 11 that are actually fully engaged in the actual brokering of weapons in New Zealand. So any kind of enlightenment on that front would be welcome.

Just to further supplement the point that I made earlier about New Zealand meeting its obligations under the Arms Trade Treaty—I’m just wondering how we’re sitting on that and if the reason that we’re standing here having this conversation is because there has been a contravention in that space. It would also be really good to understand. I was just talking about how brokers—those few people that are actually looking to engage in that space—how exactly they will be engaged by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade. I understand there is that website—just a little bit of information about that for prospective brokers would actually be really good.

This is a very good piece of legislation. As I say, it’s a bill that’s going to help New Zealanders to sleep well at night, especially in this political turmoil of a state that we find ourselves in around the world at the moment.

There is the part that I would like to talk about—

Hon Member: Hang in there.

TAMATI COFFEY: —that being Subpart 3—yes, that’s right; the member opposite also wanted to know about Subpart 3. So for that reason, let’s talk about the criteria around permits—the application for permits—and what, exactly, determines the refusal for giving a permit. I also want to know how long the duration of a permit would go for. I was unsure, as I was reading the document—it might be in there—but just a little bit of clarification around that.

Now, I understand the Secretary of Foreign Affairs and Trade is the person that will receive the applications, and I just wanted some clarification around that, and also around the potential cancellation of a permit. What is it that actually enables the secretary to cancel a permit once an application has been made?

All of this—these points may or may not have been addressed in the select committee process, but I just wanted to take the opportunity, while we’re here in the committee of the whole House stage, just to get some clarification around those points. You can see that a lot of work has been done on this, and I would absolutely commend this to the House.

SIMON O’CONNOR (National—Tāmaki): Thank you very much, Mr Chair. Can I acknowledge the Minister in the chair, Ron Mark, and, in particular, the officials who are doing all the hard work, yet again, in the background. This is the first call I am making on Part 2, and, as the previous speakers indicated, its primary purpose is around brokering activity, the registration of activity, and the permits associated with it. Those on the committee and those who are reading through the bill will understand this is, sort of, the real meat of the bill, and, in that light, there are a few elements that I want to go through.

There are four subparts, and all of those are quite critical in and of themselves. I actually want to start with Subpart 2—

Dr Deborah Russell: Oh, start with 1—go on.

SIMON O’CONNOR: —if I might. I might jump back to Subpart 1 within Part 2, but Subpart 2 is to do with the registration of brokers, and in clause 14 it’s very clear that that application’s done to the secretary. We can completely understand the reasons the Minister has, effectively, delegated that power to the Secretary of Foreign Affairs and Trade to take care of it.

Where some of the questions arise—and there are quite a number for me in this section. The first is around clause 15(1), where “the Secretary is [to be] satisfied that the person is … fit and proper”. Look, I’m no lawyer, as I always keep saying in this House, but it would be useful to understand if there is, I suppose, a legal or common law precedent around this. Intuitively, I and the House would understand what is “fit and proper”, but does that have a legal aspect to it? Some surety around that would be fantastic.

I notice in clause 15(2) that the secretary is directed to make certain considerations in terms of whether a person is fit and proper. That partly begins to answer my question. However, as I read through clause 15(2), I don’t think that’s a complete set of definitions to make sure someone is fit and proper. In other words, if someone was to pass through all the criteria of registration in 15(2) onwards, does that therefore ipso facto make them fit and proper, or are there wider considerations? If I could, again, perhaps phrase it in a slightly different way, is there discretion available to the secretary to intervene?

Perhaps on top of that—and I don’t think it is later in the bill—is there any mechanism, ultimately, for the responsible Minister to step in and to, effectively, override? If that’s the case, what is the mechanism there? I can imagine situations where the secretary, in complete good faith and with excellent judgment, allows someone to have a registration as a broker, but it may become known, perhaps because of the Minister’s level of knowledge and information, that it’s not proper—can they overturn that?

In clause 15(2)(a), as it begins to define what is “fit and proper”, one of the first elements to be taken into account is whether this person applying has had a conviction for an offence punishable by imprisonment for 12 months or longer. Having chaired the committee, we did look at all of this, but a question in my mind is: is 12 months sufficient, or is it a little too low? Again, I suspect there’s legal precedent of what certain crimes and activities are within a 12-month imprisonment or not. But, I suppose, if you wanted to play a really straight bat and play this very strongly, we are talking about people here who are involved in a business selling weapons, be they dual or single use. They are involved in a fairly dangerous—some, at times, might find it even unsavoury—form of work. Is having any conviction acceptable? Is any conviction acceptable at all? Should they really come in with an absolute clean slate? Are we being a little bit too soft on this?

But, I suppose, the corollary to it, to the Minister in the chair, is: are we being a little bit too tight here? I suppose the flip side is that a lot of people have committed little crimes in the past, particularly when they were younger. Should this now stop them continuing their legitimate business?

The next part—and I’m afraid I never quite know how to properly describe it, but it’s clause 15, part (2), section (a), subpart (i)—I’m looking forward to some of the lawyers getting up afterwards and giving me a bit of counsel on this.

Hon Member: Careful what you wish for.

SIMON O’CONNOR: It’s a bit of a—yes, I better be careful. That’s all right; I’ve had three lawyers on the committee with me. It’s talking about “the conviction was in a New Zealand court”, and this is a concern—[Interruption] It states that “the conviction was in a New Zealand court”—makes perfect sense. I can think of instances, though—because we, obviously, are a country of migrants; what happens if that person has been convicted in a court outside of New Zealand? It will be a relief, I’m sure, to Dr Russell that I’m not going to go through all 168 known countries to work—

Hon Tim Macindoe: Oh, go on—go on.

SIMON O’CONNOR: That would be wasting—

Hon Tim Macindoe: She was hoping you would.

SIMON O’CONNOR: I’m sure she was. But it is actually a serious question: if it is known to the Secretary of Foreign Affairs and Trade that someone has a conviction over 12 months, according to this proposed legislation—if the conviction was in a court other than in New Zealand, are we allowed to act on that? So, really, at this current time, a New Zealander who’s had an offence over 12 months may well not get a registration as a broker, but we can probably think of examples—and I won’t name names—of people who have convictions from overseas, be it in fraud, dishonest behaviour, or other tautologies. Can that be taken into account?

I know this is getting quite forensic, Minister, and there’s quite a bit more to go, but, in effect, should we have here a further line that convictions from jurisdictions other than the Realm of New Zealand should be taken into account? I assume, by talking about New Zealand courts and speaking of the Realm, that those from Tokelau, Cook Islands, and stuff are already included, but should we have people from overseas?

I think it’s absolutely prudent that having that point about the offence committed before the commencement of the Act—I think that’s very prudent. The other elements in 15(2)(c) and (b), again, make perfect sense—whether they’ve been registered before. I do have a small question, though, around why we still have 15(2)(d), which is around the financial position of the person. You’d have to ask the question: why is that particularly relevant to the brokering of weapons? I suppose, if it is a business, you want to know that they can do a business well and that the secretary doesn’t want to be giving permits to business people who are going to fall over or have a proven ability to fall over again. So I suppose it’s a question of asking: why is that particularly relevant?

The last two points that I would like to raise around the criteria for registration—and, again, always asking: are those criteria for registration the only reasons a person can be deemed fit and proper—is that I don’t see anything here to do with a police check. Will we be doing police checks? Is that, again, just sort of already a given? Does it not need to be in the legislation? I know, in this House, I think, pretty much both sides have always moved to put police checks on just about everything these days. We’re almost at the paradox of needing to get a police check to get a police check. So why is that not part of Subpart 2 of Part 2, the “Registration of brokers”?

Finally, I would want to know, around this particular clause, whether other permits the person may hold become relevant. In my contribution yesterday, I was at pains to stress to the House that there is quite a difference between the brokering activity and then the manufacturing and selling of military grade or military quality supplies. Why that remains vitally important is, if someone is manufacturing and selling weapons—to use a rather colloquial term, but if they’re selling weapons we have separate legislation for that which makes perfect sense compared to this brokering one. I think it would be good for us to know, when we’re dealing with the registration of brokers over here, will the secretary be moving to check what other permits have been issued; will they come into effect?

I suppose the wider question, when I actually think about it here, is: does the secretary of the ministry look at all its information on that person. So if I’m someone who’s had multiple interactions with the ministry over time—be it as a diplomat, be it as a civil servant, be it as someone who has been manufacturing weapons; whatever it is—are those factors coming in?

So, look, I’ll round off this contribution on this very small part of Subpart 2 of Part 2 and I’ll return to some others. But it’s really just coming back to that core notion of what is deemed to be a “fit and proper person”. Why is it that it’s only convictions in New Zealand and not overseas? Why is it that the imprisonment is sitting at 12 months—and I put forward, I suppose, the two reasons why it could be less and why it could be more. The question around the financial position: why—particularly relevant, then, of course—the elements that are the police check and so forth.

Dr DEBORAH RUSSELL (Labour—New Lynn): Thank you, Mr Chair. I do just want to clarify one minor point that my colleague across the House raised. I am not a lawyer either, so I approach this as someone who is not a lawyer and is not reading it as a lawyer but rather looking at some of the power relationships in this. There’s a particular issue that I want to raise that I did raise in respect of Part 1, and it was satisfactorily answered there to my knowledge last night, but I want to raise it again here. That is to do with the secretary and the powers that the Secretary of Foreign Affairs and Trade has in respect of this bill.

Last night, when we were debating Part 1, I raised an issue in respect of—they’re called—equivalent overseas regimes: why was the secretary judging them, not the Minister. I got a very good answer: it’s to do with the technical nature of an equivalent overseas regime and how that’s assessed. So when I came to Part 2 of the bill and I found that again the secretary is involved in making various decisions and in signing off on them, I actually thought that the same issue raised its head—the same worry as to why it was the secretary who was vested with this power.

It seems to me that when we’re looking at someone who is going to be registered as a broker, this is not so much a technical matter of assessing an equivalent regime or assessing the nature of particular goods; we’re actually looking at the character of a person. Now, that’s a different sort of thought, and, ordinarily, I would have thought that if we were making assessments of someone’s character, we might expect that responsibility to rest with the Minister. The reason for having it rest with the Minister is because the Minister, of course, is subject to review every three years through the power of our triennual elections and the Minister, of course, is much more subject to public scrutiny in her or his actions than the Secretary of Foreign Affairs and Trade, who acts as one removed, as it were, from the Minister.

Now, I would expect that the Minister, when she or he is making those decisions, would be making them based on the advice of the secretary, but nevertheless the responsibility would rest with the Minister. But in the Act we’ve got that the person who registers someone as a broker is, in fact, the secretary. I’m sure there is a good reason for that. I’m sure there’s a particular reason why it rests with the secretary, but I would very much like to understand exactly what that reason is, and I am sure that it is something that other people would like to understand as well.

So that’s all in clause 15, but if we go on to clause 16 there’s another power that the secretary has. As the corollary of registering a broker, she or he can also refuse to register someone as a broker. Now, they’ve got to give written notice of that refusal, but I would like to know if that written notice is going to include the reasons for the refusal. It just strikes me that as a matter of natural justice it, in fact, would be good to have those reasons as well—that someone might like to understand why they were not able to carry on in their chosen trade. So it would be good to have those reasons set out for them.

Again, carrying on with the secretary, who does have all these powers—I just notice in clause 18A that brokers must provide an annual report. Now, that’s well and good. I think that’s great, to have that kind of scrutiny. But the annual report must be provided in the prescribed form and manner and contain these prescribed particulars. I did have a hunt through the bill to see what that prescribed form and manner and prescribed particulars might be, but they’re not actually specified in the bill, as far as I can tell. So I’d like to know what the secretary thinks a broker might be required to report on—now, obviously, there’ll be a particular form, but just the sorts of things that a broker might need to report to the secretary, in this case, so that the secretary understands what the broker has been doing—and in exactly what sorts of details. Again, we are supervising someone’s business—someone’s livelihood—and I think we should be entitled to know a little bit about exactly what details that person must provide to the secretary.

As I said, I feel as though the secretary does have a lot of powers under this Act. I’m sure it’s entirely appropriate. I would like to know why they rest with the secretary in some cases rather than with the Minister, and I’d like to know a little more detail around some of those powers that the secretary has.

Hon TIM MACINDOE (National—Hamilton West): Kia ora, Mr Chair, and tēnā tātou katoa e Te Whare. This Part 2 of the Brokering (Weapons and Related Items) Controls Bill is clearly a very detailed, specific, and substantial part of the bill, and so I think it’s absolutely right that members on both sides of the House are showing the inclination to adopt what my very good friend and colleague the member for Tāmaki, Simon O’Connor, described as a forensic approach to it.

I would like to pay a compliment to the Hon Tracey Martin, who was in the chair last night when we were considering Part 1 of this bill. I was impressed, given that she’s not the Minister in charge of the bill, that when we put a number of questions to her, she did her level best to answer those, and I thank the officials who clearly assisted her to provide those answers. And I very much hope that the Minister who is in the chair tonight, Ron Mark—and I acknowledge the fact that it’s not his bill either, but nevertheless, given his current role as Minister of Defence, I’m sure he has a very strong interest in it—will be prepared to take note of the questions that have already been indicated from both sides of the House, and I’m about to put a few as well, and ensure that we do receive some answers to them, because New Zealanders will, even if they’re not aware of it at this stage, have a very strong interest in ensuring that we get this bill right.

I have to say I am a little bit struck by the irony of the fact that the Minister in the chair, as has been noted—and I won’t go over it in great detail—just nine months ago, when he was not a member of the Government, was saying that this is a bill that isn’t necessary. Tonight he finds himself, perhaps ironically, in the chair having to promote it. It’s good to see him smiling. I hope that therefore this shows that he has had a genuine road to Damascus moment and that he will be sharing with us—

Rt Hon David Carter: He’s been told to—he’s been told.

Hon TIM MACINDOE: I wouldn’t dream of coming to that conclusion, Mr Carter. You may think that; I couldn’t possibly comment. But I hope that he has, nevertheless, as Minister of Defence, genuinely come to see that this is not only something of significance for New Zealanders but for all of our international partners.

Chris Bishop: He’s had a “road to Carterton” experience.

Hon TIM MACINDOE: Ha, ha! A “road to Carterton” experience, Mr Bishop, indeed. But I didn’t believe he used the roads; I thought he used alternative modes of transport!

But it’s important—this is a serious matter. So could I please concentrate, at least initially, in this call, on Subpart 1. Now, as I’ve mentioned, this is an international treaty, and clause 9, “Registration and permit required for brokering activity”, in subclause (1) lays out this provision: “A person must not carry out a brokering activity unless the person—(a) is registered as a broker; and (b) has a permit for the activity.” So what I want to ask first up—because I do think it’s an important question—is whether this requirement is mirrored in the legislation that may already be in train or that has been contemplated in comparable jurisdictions. Because, if it’s not, I question just how effective it could possibly be, and we do need, in New Zealand, to have an assurance that it will be.

Can we in New Zealand be confident that the regulatory framework in countries with a greater history of insecurity, terrorism, and so on will be able to guarantee the safeguards that this subpart seeks to guarantee to us here in New Zealand? I think we have to have an answer to that question. What are we doing to monitor this? Or what will we do, given that we’re probably looking at something that is still ahead of us? Will there be an international agency to oversee this requirement to achieve consistency and the highest safeguards? Because, without them, this bill probably falls into a description of being something of good intentions but not likely to achieve its purpose.

In clause 9A, “Exceptions to requirements for registration and permit”, we’re told that “Section 9 does not apply to a person—(a) who carries out a brokering activity in relation to a weapon or related item that is dual-use goods; and (b) who, before the person carries out the brokering activity, has taken reasonable steps to ensure that the dual-use goods will not be used for a prohibited use.” Well, those who are interested in legislative interpretation will probably be looking at that very closely, wanting to have a clearer understanding than I confess I have at the moment. These questions are particularly important when read in conjunction with clause 9A because we need to know what is the meaning of “dual-use goods”. Why is it considered to justify an exception to such an important requirement? Because it is an important requirement. Clause 9 does not apply to a person.

Hon RON MARK (Minister of Defence): Thank you, Mr Assistant Chair. Firstly, I want to start this, being my first call in the committee stage—just to acknowledge and congratulate all of the honourable members who sat on the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee, who heard the submissions on this bill and, clearly, no doubt, put many of the questions that they are discussing here this evening to those submitters and to the officials at the time. I just want to acknowledge them for the work that they did.

I just also want to acknowledge that I am told that all of the recommendations that that committee put forward to the Government were accepted, so, given that scrutiny by the select committee and their very thorough questioning, I will take these questions as being meaningful and purposeful. I’ll attempt to answer them, given that, clearly, these questions weren’t discussed at select committee, but we’ll have a conversation about that some other time.

There’re a couple that stand out. There’ve been a lot of questions in the last few speeches, and I’ll try to address a few of them. The first one I want to address is around the question of “fit and proper”. I have no doubt that the very learned members of the select committee—as very experienced as many of them are, including the Hon Gerry Brownlee, who’s been a Minister of Defence and a Minister of Foreign Affairs—would be very familiar with the term “fit and proper” as pertains to licensed firearms owners, which is a well-accepted definition that is used in the Arms Act and which is used by the police to calculate, determine, and ascertain as to whether a specific individual who’s applying for a firearms licence should be entitled and trusted to have such a licence and buy and sell and use firearms. So the advice that I have—“fit and proper” is a common term used throughout New Zealand, as I’ve already explained. It’s currently described in existing legislation. It’s appropriately flexible for the secretary to make a judgment on a particular case. I want to acknowledge my Labour speaker Dr Deborah Russell off to my right who, I think, hit the nail squarely on the head. It is a test of character, as far as I can determine from the bill. It’s a test upon which the secretary will make a judgment of that particular individual in that particular case.

It’s not possible to set an exhaustive criteria to account for every possible variation, but what it does give—and the members of the committee, I know, from their experience are very aware—the assessing authority is the ability to look further into the nature and the character of that individual. It certainly does; there’re a number of benchmarks and tests, the 12-month threshold being one such threshold which is set, and that’s a very clear threshold. That is set to exclude minor regulatory crimes that do not reflect on their fitness or properness to be a registered broker. So, I think, in the terminology and the description within the clause, it gives scope for the secretary to seek information as the secretary sees fit.

It probably explains why this has been done by the secretary, as opposed to the Minister. Those members of the committee who have been Ministers know that this is an operational matter. This is an assessment that is done lower down the tier, and the last thing the Minister wants to be involved in is analysing each and every application that is tabled. As the committee knows, they were right not to seek any amendment to that clause. They were right not to propose any changes in their report back on the bill. So I think, all in all, the House has clearly indicated to the Government that it’s comfortable with those clauses.

Overseas convictions has been another question that’s been raised in the House. The bill provides that the secretary may, when considering whether a person is a fit and proper, take into account any conviction, whether or not the conviction was in New Zealand. That’s covered under clause 15(2)(a)(i). I have no doubt that that was probably canvassed by the committee at some stage, but the committee of the whole House is clearly asking for some clarification, and I give it that clarification. This will be ascertained by police checks. Twelve months is a pretty standard definition of a serious crime, and I think some might argue that it’s a very low threshold, but I’d ask you to consider the nature of the bill and the importance and the significance and the consequences of a permit being given inappropriately.

Applications for a permit will be assessed against the export controls criteria. That is currently published on the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (MFAT) website. For the questioner around that, can I just suggest they have a look at the MFAT website.

Yes, the secretary will take into account all relevant information indicating whether the broker has been a New Zealand exporter of controlled goods. There are other questions around why the secretary and not the Minister—I think I’ve covered that off already.

What will be included in the annual report? The broker will have provided significant detail in their application. The annual report will not require the broker to duplicate that information, rather it will seek to confirm what activity has taken place under the permit.

Further advice. Do other countries have brokering laws? Another question. The bill is modelled on similar laws in Australia. Other countries including the United Kingdom, the United States, and the European Union all have brokering laws. This bill also draws on best practising guidelines in brokering.

There were a number of other questions. In the time I have available, let’s deal with another one. How would MFAT assess the applications? MFAT firstly needs to assess whether an applicant is a fit and proper person. We’ve discussed that. To be a registered broker, in accordance with the bill’s criteria—in assessing the individual brokering permit applications, MFAT intends to apply the criteria currently used to assess applications to export strategic goods. That’s already been covered off. This means MFAT would refuse an application for a permit to broker goods if the brokering transaction would breach New Zealand’s obligations under the United Nations Security Council resolutions, including arms embargoes; the brokering transaction would contravene New Zealand’s other international obligations; or MFAT has knowledge at the time of considering the application that the goods are to be used in the commission of genocide, crimes against humanity, or war crimes—sounds all sensible stuff to us. And if a permit is not declined on these grounds, a risk assessment would then be undertaken against the criteria.

There was another question about the level of trading activity, and I’ve got a sneaking suspicion that was discussed at select committee, but let’s go back through that ground again. The four export control regimes that New Zealand participates in, as you know, are the Wassenaar Arrangement; the Missile Technology Control Regime; the Australia Group, which controls chemical, biological weapons - related materials; and the Nuclear Suppliers Group, which controls nuclear material, equipment, and technology. There are approximately 45 members there. They produce lists of goods to be controlled. The secretariat’s had expert groups decide on the control lists. They share the information on proliferation and establish best counter-proliferation practices.

The area that I really wanted to cover off was on the scale of brokering. It pretty much reflects what I said in my first reading speech. The scale of brokering activities taking place in New Zealand is limited. There are currently 11 entities registered with MFAT under the voluntary registration scheme, so let’s see where that ticks up once it becomes mandatory. It could well be different. However, of those 11, less than five were potentially interested in actual brokering. I think let’s just take a pinch of salt and see. While some of us may have thought that the level of trading and the level of traders in New Zealand was very small, that was under a voluntary regime. So once this is enacted, let’s see how those numbers shift.

Hon TIM MACINDOE (National—Hamilton West): I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. I noticed when the Minister commenced his second call then that the digital clocks appear to be malfunctioning. I just wonder if it’s possible to ensure that they do count down accurately from five minutes, because it’s quite disconcerting if you’re taking a call and you think, “OK, I’ve got to try to get to it within a certain time.”, to find that the timing is not being accurately displayed.

CHAIRPERSON (Adrian Rurawhe): I can assure the member that the clock that I’m watching here is showing the correct one. [Interruption] Let me finish. The clocks there are indicative only. The clock that matters is here. It does have some funny peculiarity from time to time, which I haven’t figured out myself.

Hon Tim Macindoe: Mr Chair?

Chris Penk: Mr Chair?

CHAIRPERSON (Adrian Rurawhe): I call Chris Penk.

CHRIS PENK (National—Helensville): Apologies, Mac. Thank you, Mr Chair. Thank you very much indeed. I’ll try and live up to the speech that I know that my colleague the Hon Tim Macindoe would’ve given had he had the opportunity.

Hon Tim Macindoe: Still will.

CHRIS PENK: And still will, no doubt. As to Part 2 of this bill, it seems to me that Subpart 1, being at the very beginning, would be a very good place to start, as Maria von Trapp would no doubt have said if she were speaking and had been able to take the call on this.

Chris Bishop: What did Maria von Trapp say?

CHRIS PENK: Ha, ha! She said, Mr Bishop, that the beginning was a very good place to start. So, within Part 2, the first place that I would like to start is clause 9, namely, “Registration and permit required for brokering activity”. This is very much the heart of the bill, it seems to me, because it states very definitively in subclause (1) that a person must not carry out a brokering activity unless one of two things applies: the first being, of course, that they are registered as a broker, and that he or she, or indeed it—if we’re talking about a person that’s not an actual person—has a permit for that activity. So much is straightforward, and therefore I shan’t belabour that point any further nor call upon the Minister in the chair, Ron Mark, to provide any further explanation or clarification in relation to that. But perhaps in relation to clause 9A—the exceptions—some further guidance would in fact be useful.

The four subclauses to this clause, naturally enough, start with the words “ ‘Section 9’ does not apply”, and so forth—being exceptions, of course, to what would otherwise be the requirements for registration and permitting. The first such exception is that for a person who carries out a brokering activity, as defined, if they’re doing so in relation to dual-use goods—again, as defined—and take reasonable steps to ensure that they won’t be used for a prohibited use, then that’s a sufficient exception to avoid prosecution under the Act—as it will become in due course, no doubt. So my question to the Minister in the chair—whom I acknowledge is the Minister of Defence, which is not technically the sponsor of the bill, therefore, but in an area that is related—is what meaning does he think might be accorded to the phrase “reasonable steps” within clause 9A(1)(b)?

If I were to hazard a guess, subject to such confirmation, I would say that reasonable steps indicate that an objective standard is implied there. So the determination about whether reasonable steps have been taken to ensure that the dual-use goods won’t be used for a prohibited use would be in the mind of the decision maker, in the shoes of a reasonable person, as he or she would no doubt be considered to be. So whether there are any criteria that might guide such determination is something that I think would be useful to canvass. I acknowledge the new Minister in the chair, Carmel Sepuloni, and hope that I will be able to have an answer from her, perhaps, in due course.

The next subclause, being subclause (2) of clause 9A, again, starts with the phrase “Section 9 does not apply”, but this time the exception relates to brokering activity from a place outside New Zealand. I think the meaning of that’s probably clear enough, and it talks also about compliance with an equivalent overseas regime, and, of course, the structure of that subclause is that both elements must be satisfied for this exception to apply because of the word “and” rather than “or”, for example, having being used.

More interesting, I think, perhaps, is clause 9A(3), yet another exception, which talks about reasonable grounds again. In this case, it’s where a person has carried out a brokering activity but on behalf of their employer. So the reasonableness and the objective standards in this case apply to whether there were reasonable grounds for the person carrying out the activity to believe that the employer had complied with an equivalent overseas regime.

Dr DUNCAN WEBB (Labour—Christchurch Central): I move, That the question be now put.

SIMON O’CONNOR (National—Tāmaki): Thank you very much, Madam Chair. We’re still on Part 2, and I think I do just need to remind the committee that we have four subparts here. I’ve just been able to spend 10 minutes prior talking about Subpart 2, and, being slightly Irish, I have gone to Subpart 2 and now I want to go to Subpart 1.

I also wouldn’t mind reminding the House that this is the substance of the bill. We’ve also had, actually, I thought a very good contribution by one of the Labour members who was looking—granted—at clause 18A around of what the nature of annual reports are. I suspect she was interested in the grams per square metre paper quality, and so forth.

But, look, Part 2, Subpart 1, is looking around the whole notion of the registration and the permit required for a brokering activity. The questions that are about to follow are actually very similar to what I raised in Part 1, around the purpose about why we split things. My colleague Chris Penk noted that a person must not carry out a brokering activity unless they’re registered as a broker and have a permit for the activity. I suppose the question to the Minister in the chair, Ron Mark, is why that has been split out. What is happening there?

Obviously, to be registered as a broker, one might assume that your activity is therefore permitted. So what is the distinction that is being sought in clause 9(1)(a) and (b)? I suppose, to the layman, once you’re registered as a broker would it not follow that you are therefore doing an activity which is permitted?

I suppose that I theorise out loud in the committee of the whole House that the registration is in the nature of you being a broker; the activities become a whole lot of separate activities that while you may have a registration to be a broker, you may be undertaking a whole series of other activities that may need to be regulated. Perhaps, it’s a little bit similar to when we did some legislation in the Health Committee a couple years back around the use of radiation; that, actually, there are permits for the people, but then the activities need to be prescribed. But I wouldn’t mind just a little bit of clarity around that.

As I mentioned earlier, I sought some clarity on Part 1, clause 3, around a distinction. I found the Minister’s response last night very useful. I would find it helpful here to just understand that a little bit further. I know the Minister, in his reply earlier, noted that the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee had probably asked a number of these questions. I would just note, as a committee of the whole House, that sometimes as select committee chair I may be asking questions, perhaps, for the interest of other members, but in this particular case, it’s one that’s, I suppose, approached my mind as I came in here today. So why has that been separated out?

Look, the removal, as promoted, of what’s now crossed out as subclauses (2), (3), and (4) of clause 9 makes perfect sense, and if I could, I thank the Parliamentary Counsel Office and the officials for clarifying this point—this is around, particularly, exceptions. In the new clause 9A(1)(b), it’s saying that the exemptions do not apply to a person “who, before the person carries out the brokering activity, has taken reasonable steps to ensure that the dual-use goods will not be used for a prohibited use.” So, fundamentally, and really importantly, we err on the dual-use goods; not the single use.

But the question becomes: who is checking? Now, I assume it’s the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade itself. As the Minister himself indicated earlier, he or she is too busy to be doing the operational side. But if someone is not having to seek registration on the basis that they, the person—the potential broker—has taken the reasonable steps to ensure that their goods, their dual-use goods, are not going to be used for prohibited use, who’s checking up on that? I mean, the obvious thing, through to the Minister, is that someone who is intending to use dual-use goods for a military purpose just continues to be under the radar. They say, “Oh, well, you know, I’m not going to register. It’s not going to apply to me. I did some steps to ensure that, you know, it’s all OK.” Who’s checking up on that? How is that going to be found out?

In new clause 9A(2), we’re in a negative space here. It’s that “Section 9 does not apply to a person—(a) who carries out a brokering activity from a place outside New Zealand”. Now, I know this was of very particular interest to a Labour member on the select committee and very much, for quite a period of time, to Green Party members around why we’re only including New Zealand. I think it would be helpful—and I certainly would find it helpful—if the Minister will be able to articulate the reason why we are only including brokering activity inside New Zealand. Why does it not apply to someone who is outside of New Zealand? Now, obviously, it’s not that our law is going to apply to someone in the United States or in Tonga. However, the really fundamental question becomes—

Hon TIM MACINDOE (National—Hamilton West): Thank you, Madam Chair. I’m very pleased to be able to resume my call, which was interrupted when the Minister in the chair, Ron Mark, took the first of his two calls a short time ago. I do want to thank him for doing so—I mean, I was upset to be knocked off my stride in mid-flight, but I want to acknowledge the fact that the Minister did attempt to answer some questions and, I think, in a very helpful way.

We are looking at clause 9, and as my colleague, the member for Tāmaki, has pointed out, this is the substantial part of the bill. So I was concerned when the member for Christchurch Central attempted to move a closure motion a short time ago. There’s a lot in this part of the bill that we do need to look at.

If I could just resume—we’re, obviously looking at the provisions outlining the registration and permit required for brokering activity—in new clause 9A(1)(b), we read that it specifies that “Section 9 does not apply to a person—who, before the person carries out the brokering activity, has taken reasonable steps to ensure that the dual-use goods will not be used for a prohibited use.” Well, others of my colleagues have asked for an explanation of what those reasonable steps are. I’d like to go beyond that and ask, again, in the international context, how is international consistency being achieved in this regard? In particular, how can New Zealanders be confident that what are deemed to be reasonable steps in New Zealand will apply equally in Guatemala, Malaysia, Malta, Mali, Malawi—wherever we might be looking at?

Now, I was very pleased to hear the Minister give an assurance that this bill is modelled on international best practice and, in particular, reflects similar measures being adopted in Australia and other countries. I know that will be comforting to those who are listening, but the Minister in the chair made the point that some of these questions had been answered in select committee. I would just point out to him that this is the committee of the whole House. Members of the public who may be tuning in to this debate tonight didn’t have the opportunity to sit in on the select committee, and most members of this Parliament were not part of that select committee, so this is our opportunity to have very detailed, clause by clause analysis of the bill in the committee of the whole House and to ensure that a much wider audience gets to hear those answers.

New clause 9A(2) goes on to indicate that “Section 9 does not apply to a person—(a) who carries out a brokering activity from a place outside New Zealand”. I’d like to ask, again, what assurances can New Zealanders have that other New Zealanders—because, obviously, they’re the ones who are being referred to when we look at legislation that we are passing—who may be of less than honest and possibly even of evil intent won’t cultivate connections in countries, and, sadly, this is a feature of international terrorism, that are less committed to the rule of law and the suppression and prevention of terrorism and, frankly, our high standards of human rights in order to engage in inappropriate and/or criminal brokering? We do need to know, and we do need to be able to assure the public, that this particular bill will be able to answer those very serious concerns.

In clause 10, which deals with the fact that it’s an offence to carry out brokering activity without registration or a permit, new subclause (1) indicates that “A person commits an offence if—(c) at the time that the person carries out the activity, the person knows or ought to know that (except in some circumstances) a person must not carry out a brokering activity unless the person—(i) is registered as a broker; and (2) has a permit for the activity.” I have to confess, I had to read that particular subclause several times and I’m still confused by it. In particular, I’d like to ask the Minister what is contemplated by the proviso “except in some circumstances”? What examples can the Minister give us of what those circumstances might be? I appreciate the fact that from a legal drafting point of view, it can be fiendishly difficult to cover all possible eventualities, but, nevertheless, this is such a significant question of international security that we have to ensure that we’re not just legislating for the sake of saying, “OK, well, we can tick the box. We’ve met our international obligations.” We have to ensure that these provisions are watertight.

So, again, we’re still just talking about clause 9 and the following clause here. There’s a lot still to be covered from Part 2. I appreciate the fact that I’ve raised a number of questions, so perhaps if the Minister would be good enough to take a call to answer those, and then we might be able to move further on in to Part 2 of this bill.

Hon RON MARK (Minister of Defence): Thank you, Madam Chair. Look, I’ll start with the last question first. Acknowledging that the Hon Tim Macindoe was on the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee and assisted in the compilation of the report, could I draw his attention to page 3 of the select committee’s own report. Now, I do accept the explanation this evening from the honourable members of the Opposition that they’re going through this exercise of questioning for the benefit of the mums and dads that are tuned in right now and all the school kids who are doing their homework around this particular topic and are looking for some guidance as to what the legislation really intends, but I would draw the member back to their own report and the particular paragraph on page 3 that deals specifically with clause 10(1)(c).

If I might indulge the House just for a moment and read out the select committee’s own report on that particular clause, it says, in particular, “The elements of the offence—We recommend amending clause 10(1) to set out more clearly the elements of the offence.”—something which I understand from officials was accepted—“In particular, clause 10(1)(c) [which] would provide that a person commits an offence if, when carrying out the brokering, they know or ought to know that (except in some circumstances) they must not do so unless they are registered or have a permit. The ‘circumstances’ referred to are the exceptions in [the] new clause 9A.” Now, members might not have caught up with the amendment, but it is covered off already in the legislation, very much on the recommendations of the committee. So I thank the committee for the constructive approach to the bill, but I wouldn’t have expected anything else, because, you know, the majority of the committee are National Party people who proposed the bill in the very first place and who have deep understanding of these very issues that they’re canvassing here tonight.

I’ll just come back to one other question from the honourable Simon O’Connor—my travelling companion from Iraq and Afghanistan—who, clearly, in his position as chair of the committee, has a very genuine and serious interest in these matters. The question is around what amounts to a person taking reasonable steps to ensure that the dual-use goods will not be used for a prohibited use under the bill. It really does, from my reading of the advice, put the onus back on to the person applying. The bill only applies to dual-use goods that are listed in the New Zealand Strategic Goods List, so that puts the onus on the applicant to go and read what’s listed there in New Zealand Strategic Goods List. Dual-use goods listed in the New Zealand Strategic Goods List are already subject to strict export controls in New Zealand and elsewhere under the four international export control regimes, so they should know that, if they’re professionals in the field. As dealing with dual-use goods is already a controlled activity, it is not unreasonable—and this advice was given to the committee, I know—to expect individuals, given that this is their trade, this is their business, this is their craft, to have knowledge of their status as listed dual-use goods and to themselves, as good business practitioners, undertake due diligence as to whether they may be subject to controls and their intended end use or end user.

Reasonable steps to ensure that dual-use goods will not be used for a prohibited use under the bill include making appropriate inquiries to ascertain the intended end use or end user to see if they would be used only for a civilian purpose, and an assessment of the reliability of that information. I guess that’s where we come right back to the first point, and that is ascertaining the secretary’s responsibility to ascertain whether or not the applicant is a fit and proper person. Of course, a fit and proper, legitimate person who does not wish to breach international laws or contravene the treaties we have signed into would, of course, do that due diligence themselves, would they not?

CHRIS PENK (National—Helensville): Thank you, Madam Chair. The fourth exception to the regime, in clause 9A, I can touch on pretty quickly, you may be relieved to know. This is where the bill states that the main provision prohibiting essentially brokering activity “does not apply in relation to anything done by or on behalf of a department.” Now, the term “department” is, of course, defined within the bill, essentially by pointing to that equivalent definition within the Public Finance Act. That is pretty helpful, but we’re still left with the implication that the bill or the activity prohibited under the bill does not apply, effectively, to the Government. So a department of the State of New Zealand can’t be prosecuted under this bill because an exception is provided by the operation of clause 9A(4). So this gives rise to a couple of questions in my mind on which I would appreciate some clarification on behalf of the many New Zealanders who are no doubt following along with great interest.

The first is whether such activity undertaken by a New Zealand department or an employee or an individual acting on its behalf is covered elsewhere on our statute book. In other words, is there somewhere else in our legislative framework that says that such brokering activity can’t be carried out by a Government department or that perhaps the Government department could be made vicariously liable for the actions of a civil servant doing the things that are prohibited by this bill? Perhaps, more of interest, more on the basis of interest than practical effects, I wonder what the justification for separating out the actions of a department are, in this way. Perhaps it relates to the historical notion of sovereign immunity such that a nation State will not be held accountable for actions that are traditionally an exercise of prerogative, but that may or may not be the case. That’s simply my speculation, and I’d certainly be interested to know if there is some answer that can be provided through the Minister, but perhaps by the officials on that one as well.

In relation to the following clause, clause 10, “Offence to carry out brokering activity without registration or permit”, it’s stated at new subclause (1A) that “It may be presumed, in the absence of any evidence to the contrary, that an exception described in section 9A does not apply.” So this seems on principle a valid thing for the law to set out—that an exception won’t apply on a presumed basis—but the evidence to the contrary that’s referred to in that provision isn’t defined any further. So we don’t know if the evidence to the contrary need only be prima facie evidence, or perhaps merely on the balance of probability, which would be a civil standard, or would it be expected that if a matter were prosecuted in the courts, the traditional criminal standard of “beyond reasonable doubt” would apply? That much is not clear from the wording of new subclause (1A)—

Kieran McAnulty: Oh, we’ve been over this. Say something new.

CHRIS PENK: —and, it seems to me that for the sake of clarifying the record, and for the edification of Mr McAnulty and any others who perhaps may be struggling with that particular section, that would be a useful matter on which to have some guidance.

Then my next question or discussion on which some guidance might be helpful is to do with the maximum amount of the fine in that same clause. There is an additional fine calculation to be made where the offence, in the opinion of the court, occurs in the course of producing a commercial gain. So my question then is: if a commercial gain is not in fact “produced” but is merely sought, then will the additional penalty of “3 times the value of that [commercial] gain” apply? In other words, will we be rewarding an individual or a person for committing an offence that does not satisfactorily or successfully result—[Time expired]

KIERAN McANULTY (Junior Whip—Labour): I move, That the question be now put.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the question be now put.

Ayes 63

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

Noes 56

New Zealand National 55; ACT New Zealand 1.

Motion agreed to.

The question was put that the amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 24 in the name of the Rt Hon Winston Peters to Part 2 be agreed to.

Amendments agreed to.

Part 2 as amended agreed to.

Part 3 Miscellaneous provisions

SIMON O’CONNOR (National—Tāmaki): Madam Chair, we got to Part 3 a little bit quicker than I was hoping, and I’m slightly disappointed I didn’t get to address Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) 24. I know that’s now Part 2, but the additions of and the reasons for it in clauses 16 and 25 would have been useful to have discussed, I have to say, before we, effectively, voted on a SOP which we didn’t get to raise.

Look, Part 3 is “Miscellaneous provisions” but is actually dealing with a whole range of, effectively, consequential elements. The first is around the extraterritorial application. It was one of the elements—and the Minister Ron Mark will probably appreciate this—of an ongoing discussion in the committee which, yes, did conclude in terms of the report back, but is an ongoing discussion around how this bill and this Act, by the sound of where the voting’s going, applies to those outside New Zealand.

So much of this comes down to someone having to be a New Zealander, or, importantly, ordinarily resident in New Zealand, so we’re dealing here with Part 3, clause 33(1)(a). Subparagraph (iii) has been removed here and it’d be interesting to understand more fully why. Why is it that that person who “has been found in New Zealand and has not been extradited;” has been removed? So we can certainly understand the situation which is the intent of the bill and is developed in Part 3, that if someone is not of New Zealand—so they’re not a citizen, they’re not a permanent resident, so let’s say they are Iranian; that seems popular at the moment—if they are found to be in this country brokering weapons why would they not have been extradited? I’m sure we must have a variety of extradition treaties. Is that going to be therefore part of the arms treaty, which is being discussed? Is that part of the inter-collegiality between our countries?

So I mean fundamentally it’s coming down to how we are in this country going to be dealing with people who are not New Zealanders who have been found to be brokering weapons and, in their case, have not been extradited. That’s been removed. I would have thought there could be occasions where someone cannot be extradited, probably because it’s sub judice and so we won’t go there, but we can think of a few cases in general where people are arguing that they should be able to stay in New Zealand and have not been extradited. So some clarity would be useful. So again that’s clause 33(1)(a)(iii).

I think the clarity is sufficient around clause 33(1)(b) and I do want to thank the officials for this, for getting very specific—that if these acts or omissions have occurred aboard ships that are registered, ships of the New Zealand Defence Force obviously, aircraft, and so forth. A little bit of clarity would be useful though, because it comes up from time to time that it could be a New Zealand ship but it can be flagged to another country, or of course the flipside to that, and we’re very familiar with a whole lot of other jurisdictions. We were actually doing the briefing recently on the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources down in the Antarctic where a ship may be under the flag of another country. What happens then? So it’s highly, highly unlikely—in fact, I would be completely stunned—that the situation would be that someone is brokering weapons from a ship with the North Korean flag. What are our options then? I’m sure the Minister in the chair will take this very seriously, seeing that could jeopardise the current peace process, but it would be good to understand that a little bit more fully.

Subclauses (2) and (3), I think, for me make a lot more sense. Look, in terms of the Attorney-General’s consent being required, clause 33—why this, I think, becomes relevant and clarity would be useful we’ve partly discussed in Part 2. I’m still hurting a little bit, but we partly discussed in Part 2 that the secretary is going to have all the powers required. It becomes a question then of why the Attorney-General’s consent is required. I do get the feeling it’s probably around if action is taken against a person. It’s probably, I’m guessing, that the secretary will require the Attorney-General’s consent to move forward on a prosecution, but that’s not at this point abundantly clear to me. So look, some clarity around that would be useful.

But the fundamental question is the status of someone who is to be or is not being extradited. Then I suppose the second question is just that clarity, that if brokering is to have happened by a New Zealand citizen on a vessel flagged to another country, or in fact a non - New Zealand citizen flagged to a New Zealand ship, what exactly is going to happen there. If, for good measure, the Minister wants to address the New Zealand Defence Force assets as well, if brokering was to happen on one of Her Majesty’s vessels, that would be useful too.

CHRIS PENK (National—Helensville): Thank you, Madam Chair. I’m as grateful as Mr McAnulty for the opportunity to address the committee further on this excellent piece of legislation, specifically Part 3 now.

It seems to me that clause 33, entitled “Offences committed outside New Zealand”, is a really important one. The extraterritorial application, as we say, is a key feature of the bill, for reasons discussed already under the heading of Part 2, which I need not rehearse now. But some of the technical nature of that provision, I think, needs to be unpacked a bit further and stated clearly for the record, notwithstanding that some of it may have been discussed in the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee. But for the purpose of providing direction to the courts if they are to interpret this clause in the future, the issues and indeed concerns that I will raise now, I think, do deserve a response and some clarification from the Minister in the chair, if indeed he is able to provide it.

So at clause 33(1)(a)(ii), it says that a person is to be charged if they are, and I quote, “ordinarily resident in New Zealand;”—then an act or omission that they have committed will be eligible for being prosecuted under this bill. Now, the meaning of “ordinarily resident” is not, in fact, defined in the legislation, so in order to understand its meaning, we either have to rely on an ordinary natural meaning of the word, or perhaps consider where else we might find some guidance. So in the New Zealand statute book, I know that in the Companies Act—excuse me, I believe it’s in the Companies Act, certainly the application of this piece of legislation in relation to directors who are required to be New Zealand residents—the standard practice is to consider “ordinarily resident” to mean something of the nature of dwelling in New Zealand for more than half of the days in the past 12 months. So if there’s any guidance that can be provided by the Minister on that point either to confirm or deny—surely he can do one or tother—that would be most helpful indeed.

In relation to clause 33, remaining with offences committed outside New Zealand, we read in clause 33(3)(a) that we are talking about “acts or omissions that occur wholly in New Zealand;”—specifically, that the clause doesn’t limit the application of other sections in relation to such acts or omissions. Now, it might seem an obvious point what is considered to be New Zealand for the purposes of the Act, but it’s worth noting that as a matter of international law, traditionally ships of Her Majesty’s navy—or indeed other nations, however they might be described, outside the Commonwealth—are considered the territory of that nation. So, for example, a Royal New Zealand Navy ship abroad is considered to be New Zealand territory for the purpose of international law. And so it seems that if we’re talking about acts that occur wholly in New Zealand, there’s a valid question to be asked there, although I do note that there is some guidance perhaps to be gained in subclause (1)(b), which does specifically talk about ships of the New Zealand Defence Force, or as I would say, perhaps in slightly parochial fashion, the Royal New Zealand Navy.

The other occasion in international law in which we might have a different view of what constitutes New Zealand is in relation to diplomatic missions. So an embassy or a high commission of New Zealand, for example, physically situated on overseas soil, is considered to be New Zealand territory. So I don’t suppose there’s a lot of weapons brokering that takes place in such embassies—perhaps in between courses of cucumber sandwiches—but if it does occur, then we’ll need to know. We’ll need to know how that would be regarded by the courts if a prosecution were to be brought under the Act.

So for those reasons—in fact, I’ve got a couple of other questions, you won’t be surprised to hear, Madam Chair, but I sense my time approaching the end of its natural life, perhaps in the hope of addressing that again immediately.

Hon TIM MACINDOE (National—Hamilton West): Thank you, Madam Chair. I appreciate that. And could I just point out to my good colleague the member for Helensville that he does have the opportunity to seek another call. He doesn’t have to take the full five minutes. In fact, I don’t anticipate that I’ll be taking the full five minutes for this particular call because, I have to say, I share the pain of the chair of the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee that we were not able to continue asking the questions that we wished to ask on the more substantive Part 2 of the bill. But, OK, we’ll get over that. We’re now into Part 3, and I would just like to focus on two specific clauses of Part 3, which deals with the applications for registration and permits—obviously a very important provision in any measure of this type.

In clause 36, there are provisions for those who might choose to give false or misleading information in their applications for registration or for a permit. Specifically, clause 36(1) says, “A person must not, in relation to an application for registration or a permit under this Act, supply any information that the person knows or ought to know is materially false or misleading.” I don’t think anyone would argue with that. It would be quite bizarre not to have a provision of that sort. But in subclause (2), we read that “A person who breaches subsection (1) commits an offence and is liable on conviction,—(a) in the case of an individual, to a term of imprisonment not exceeding 6 months or a fine not exceeding $10,000, or both: (b) in any other case, to a fine not exceeding $20,000.” Now, the reason I want to highlight this clause is those penalties strike me as being extraordinarily light. In the context of this particularly important matter, I would have thought that that really didn’t amount to much of a deterrent at all.

The Minister in the chair commented that I and others who are speaking tonight had a part in producing the report, and that’s true. But I’d point out to the Minister, I was not actually a member of the committee when it dealt with the submissions on this bill, so I have not had the opportunity—

Chris Bishop: That’s a shame.

Hon TIM MACINDOE: Well, that’s nice of you to say that, Mr Bishop. It’s one of your more helpful interjections this evening, I have to say, but that is actually not saying very much at all. But the point I want to make is I didn’t have the opportunity during the course of the hearings on the bill—that were so ably chaired by Mr Simon O’Connor—to ask this particular question, and I would like to hear from the Minister, if I may, please, why what seems to be such a light level of penalties was decided upon, because I’m not sure that it does amount to much of a deterrent at all.

In particular—and I feel sure that the answer will be yes, but I hope it will be—do those penalties mirror the penalties that are being provided for or legislated in comparable jurisdictions? We’ve heard tonight that the bill mirrors best practice internationally, and that’s very good. It reflects what’s happening in Australia. But, in particular, do the provisions of clause 36 and the penalties outlined therein represent best international practice and mirror what is happening elsewhere?

Now, the other question that I’d like to ask, if I may, relates to clause 40, in the provision for the registration of brokers. Clause 40(2) provides that “The Secretary must ensure that the register is available to the public on an Internet site maintained by or on behalf of the Secretary.” Now, again, I’m the first to concede that that’s perfectly understandable—in most respects, you have to have some reputable way of ensuring that that information is available—but I just wonder what safeguards are there for the possibly adverse consequences in providing brokers’ details so publicly.

Now, I recognise it’s not an easy question to answer, because they have to be made available to those who have a legitimate reason to access them, but I’m just wondering what protections the brokers themselves enjoy from those who might have very negative and illegal intent if they are able to access those details so publicly. In particular, what—

Kieran McAnulty: Repetition.

Hon TIM MACINDOE: I don’t think there’s any repetition on this point at all, Mr McAnulty. I haven’t heard anyone raise this point whatsoever, and I would like to think that you, given the position you’re occupying for the Government tonight, would also want to have an assurance that there will be appropriate monitoring of potentially illegal and inappropriate activity. I’m sure your good colleague the member for Ōhāriu, given his previous role in the police, would also want to have that assurance, because the police may well be the people who are having to monitor this provision.

So I’ll just make those two quick questions. I very much look forward to hearing the answers.

SIMON O’CONNOR (National—Tāmaki): Marvellous—thank you very much. Good to be back. Part 3—I might start, if I can, with Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) 24, because, again, we haven’t touched on parts of it. It really is a question around clause 33. The Minister of Foreign Affairs is suggesting that we delete clause 33(4)—I suspect they’re just inconsequential, but, as I’m often heard to be said, as a non-lawyer I’m not necessarily up to speed. So at the moment, it’s removing out of the clause about offences committed outside of New Zealand that “For the purposes of this section, ‘ordinarily resident in New Zealand’ has the same meaning as in section 4 of the Crimes Act 1961.” So, as I understand it, the Minister is seeking to remove that from the bill as part of the SOP. It would be good to get a little bit of clarity on that.

Where I want to draw my, I think, last thoughts at this point on Part 3 is around the regulation-making power—so that’s clause 38 onwards. I think, very prudently, we’ve allowed this to be done by the Governor-General through Order in Council—

Hon Andrew Little: That’s the usual way you do it.

SIMON O’CONNOR: I think it’s the usual way, except we’ll come back to that on some other bills which the Government’s up do. But, actually, it’s quite prudent.

Clause 38(1)(a) talks about “prescribing fees or charges for applications”. So that’s, obviously, when someone seeks to become a broker. To go through the prescribed form, Mr McAnulty, it’s quite a process. A fee is going to be prescribed. I suppose it’s just wanting some assurance from Minister Ron Mark that there’s going to be some form of limit around this. We don’t want to see brokering stifled completely in New Zealand by sort of absurd fees. It’s one of those sort of, I don’t know, gambles or elements of trust which this House does—enabling regulatory powers to be given, so that they’ll be prescribed prudently.

Hon Andrew Little: Fortunately, you’ve got the Regulations Review Committee to provide oversight.

SIMON O’CONNOR: Yes, the Hon Andrew Little does point out we have the Regulations Review Committee—a fine job that they do, the bane of every select committee chair. But, yeah, just some assurance that in clause 38(1)(a) the prescribing of fees will be limited and not too onerous.

In clause 38(1)(b), it says the “prescribing particulars of brokers that must be entered on the public register”. Two elements on that, Minister—clarity, again, that it won’t be too onerous. I suppose it’s easy for us to be captured by the fact that this is often a weapons-based piece of legislation, but, actually, they are business people, too. I’d like to have your assurance that it will be not too onerous and also that the necessary privacies are kept in mind—you don’t want someone having to publish too much of their particular selves or their businesses.

Similarly, around clause 38(1)(ba)—I keep coming back to the notion of onerous. I’m always just nervous when regulations are put in place that when we say we’re going to prescribe the form of the annual report, that doesn’t become, again, too burdensome. We actually heard it from a Government MP earlier—I think in relation to that now emotional Part 2—that they were very concerned about the nature of the report and said, you know, that we don’t want to see that we’re prescribing paper of 180 grams per square metre, double-sided, in colour, and in A4 or imperial format—so just some surety around that. I think the prescribing of the records and so forth is very prudent.

The last point that I would make in this clause 38 is around subclause (2)(b)(i), which provides that the Governor-General, through an Order in Council, may “prescribe any of the following: (i) the method by which the fees or charges are to be assessed:” and made—so just some clarity on what those particulars are going to be. I assume one could do it by a credit card or ATM. I suppose what I’m really angling for is, in the nature of weapons brokering and good behaviour, that cash is not going to be accepted. You know, it might be imprudent of me to imply that brokers could be up to some mischief—but just making it very clear that, you know, cash is not going to be one of those methods which will be prescribed there.

So look, finally, that’s—well, actually, I’ve misled somewhat. Clause 39—this is to do with the disclosure of information to overseas authority. We gave this a little bit of thought. It’s obvious that we do have allies around the world—Canada, Australia, and, obviously, those within the UK, and I’d better not forget the United States. Just around clause 39—just some surety around the mechanisms of how that information is going to be shared.

I want to be really clear, Minister, that I personally believe, and I think that, by and large, the select committee understands that the information that we may garner through the Secretary of Foreign Affairs and Trade will be of use and of interest to our allies. I suppose it’s just some clarity that it will be to our allies that we will be handing out that information. What that nature might be—I think this clause gives relative context, but it’s probably just some verbal assurance to the committee, around clause 39, about how we will be interacting with our allies, whether or not we will be proactive or whether we will be reacting to their particular requests, and to give some surety around privacy to the committee, because this is something which often comes up.

And, again, I suppose I return to what’s been my fundamental element throughout this particular contribution: we’re dealing with New Zealand businesses and business people here. So, really, it comes back to the regulatory powers of the Governor-General. Does Minister Ron Mark have any sense around limits around the fees or the onus that’s going to be put around the nature of these registers, around these annual reports? I think some verbal assurance—if we can have it on the record that it’s not going to put too much pressure on these people. We’ve heard from other contributions that there’s 10 or 11, but, you know, these are legitimate business people.

Some surety that the methods of payment will be wide and prudent—but I suspect probably not cash—and some clarity on that would be welcome. And, finally, as I say, clause 39—how are we dealing with the disclosure of information to overseas authorities? I assume it is our allies, but, as I’ve asked, Minister, is that something we will be doing proactively, or you would imagine proactively; is it something that we will do upon request; and just some surety to the committee that our privacy provisions are where they’re at. With that I think I’ll, probably to the great relief of—[Interruption] No—did you want to stand up and say something? No? Good.

Hon RON MARK (Minister of Defence): Thank you, Madam Chair. I just want to try to take a quick call just to cover off some of those questions, and, again, it’s useful that the committee of the whole House is canvassing areas that the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee report didn’t canvass. I assume that the members on the select committee did not see—bearing in mind that they were part of the Government who actually drafted up the original bill—any great need to canvass into these areas in Part 3 as deeply. It did make recommendations to amend clause 33(1)(a)(iii), recommendations which were accepted in the final draft.

But one of the questions was “Why military ships or aircraft?” A Royal New Zealand Navy ship or Royal New Zealand Air Force aircraft is under New Zealand sovereign jurisdiction. Therefore, conducting and brokering from these would constitute an offence. I would have thought that’s pretty clear. The questions around embassies and why they’re not included—embassies are not sovereign New Zealand soil, and there are issues around immunities there.

Penalties—there are penalties for providing false and misleading information. The penalties prescribed in the bill are comparable with other New Zealand legislation, so it’s a consistency argument in that space. In terms of section 4 of the Crimes Act, one of the things that I will just cover off is there are some questions around the appropriateness of the penalties, which I think the Hon Tim Macindoe raised and felt that they were not sufficiently high. I’m surprised, because the select committee report has not said that. The select committee report, clearly, is silent; therefore, I assumed it agreed with the bill. But to explain and try to be helpful, the bill contains criminal penalties and civil enforcement mechanisms for offences.

The key offences of conducting brokering without being registered and/or without a permit or in breach of the conditions of the registration or permit—the maximum penalty for that is five years’ imprisonment or a fine of up to $100,000. So I think if you look in the legislation at the low end of the offences, it provides an escalatory regime which is in compliance and conformance with existing similar New Zealand legislation. If you take that first step, which Mr Macindoe felt was a little bit low—“A term of imprisonment not exceeding 6 months or a fine … [of] $10,000”—and then you bounce that up against the top end, then an escalatory regime is in place which is applied according to the level of the offence and how it occurred. I think five years’ imprisonment or a fine of up to $100,000 probably fits in the top-end zone that Mr Macindoe was thinking of, and is probably why the select committee is silent in its report on those particular clauses of Part 3.

KIERAN McANULTY (Junior Whip—Labour): I move, That the question be now put.

CHRIS PENK (National—Helensville): Thank you, Madam Chair. Remaining in Part 3 of the proposed legislation, under the heading of “Attorney-General’s consents” at clause 34 it’s made pretty clear that the consent of the Attorney-General is required to overturn the presumption in clause 34(1) that “No charging document may be filed against any person”, etc. But the form of the Attorney-General consent isn’t actually specified, so it’s not clear to me, although I would hope that I would know the answer instinctively, that such consent must be in writing. But I think, none the less, it’s worth canvassing for the purpose of recording for posterity that such written consent would, in fact, be required, if that’s to be relied upon.

The reason I think that that’s important is that for evidential purposes, if consent, on which so much hinges under this section, is to be given, then we need to have some sort of evidence of that fact, but also as to timing, because the timing of such consent becomes relevant under clause 34(2), where we talk about whether or not the consent of the Attorney-General has yet been obtained under subclause (1). So the timing, as well as the fact of such consent, is important, and without that we would be left, perhaps, dealing with someone accused of committing an offence under this legislation saying that they had a belief that the Attorney-General had consented, perhaps on the basis of an in-person discussion or correspondence, and then we’d be left with the thorny question of whether honest opinion was sufficient to prove the belief of such consent, or whether that person would have to be acting reasonably in holding such belief. So that was one point on which I think some clarification might be helpful. I can sense that others agree with me on that.

As for clause 34, I think there’s a little anomaly. I anticipate a rebuke from the Minister that this was not picked up by me, among others, as a member of the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee, but there’s a slight logical anomaly in that clause 35(3)—“The Secretary may approve a form for the purposes of section 14 or 23.” Yet, under clause 35(1), “An application under section 14 or 23 must—(a) be in the form approved by the Secretary”. So we’ve, perhaps inadvertently, ended up with a regime where the person must make an application in accordance with a form approved by the Secretary, and yet the Secretary himself or herself may have not decided to approve such a form because of the words of subclause (3), which used the word “may”, which is not obligatory, of course. So if that point could be addressed, that would be a weight off all of our minds, I’m sure.

Now, as for clause 37—I’d like to preface my remarks on this with an apology in advance to the stenographers. It simply relates to the fact that there are appeals that can be made to the District Court if certain conditions are met. They are important in themselves so I’ll state for the record that these are, under subclause (1), “(a) to refuse to register the person as a broker: (b) to impose a condition on the person’s registration: (c) to cancel the person’s registration.”

The syntax of that subclause actually has a succession of colons rather than semicolons, and there are no words to indicate whether all those conditions must be met or one of them alone. I think the answer is probably that one ground alone would be sufficient basis for an appeal, but the legislation does not say that. So logically the options are “and” or “or”, or “and” and “or”, which would be rendered as “and/or”. If either the Minister or Sir Bernard Woolley would be able to give some help with that, that would perhaps be very helpful.

Later on in that same clause we hear about the District Court having the ability to allow a further period of time for an appeal, but a set of criteria or circumstances under which such further period may be granted is not specified. So there’s a bit of a lack of clarity there that would perhaps be dangerous to the changes of someone who was prosecuted under this legislation. [Bell rung]

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Anne Tolley): Chris Penk.

CHRIS PENK: Under clause 39 now—[Interruption] I’m grateful for the opportunity to continue to talk about this bill. With relation to “Disclosure of information to overseas authority”, members will of course realise that the secretary may disclose any information held by the secretary to an overseas authority for the purpose of assisting the authority to carry out its functions, etc. Again, the same potential objection might be raised in relation to the fact that it doesn’t specify whether the regulation or monitoring of brokering activity can independently exist from the prevention, detection, investigation, prosecution, or punishment, etc.

But I think the more important point, in terms of how this might actually practically be applied, is that the secretary has the discretion to disclose that information, and that’s a lot of power to be held by one person, acting at his or her discretion. There are, it’s true to note, a number of different circumstances in which it may be disclosed. But I wonder if, given the importance of the legislation, which at its heart is to provide information to another, overseas sovereign power, is such that we should require the secretary to do so if certain conditions are met, or to say that they may accept that in certain situations they should not be required to.

So I think the importance of this really relates to the fact that the definition of “overseas authority” is so broad. Within clause 39 itself it’s said to be “an overseas agency, body, or person.” “Person”, of course, has a very broad meaning within the law generally, and within this legislation no less so, because it can mean either, of course, a natural person or a legal person—that might be a sovereign State or a body corporate, whether a company or perhaps a trust or some other mechanism as that.

So perhaps it might be said that there is some room for clarification or tightening of those criteria there. I think with those comments I, perhaps, look forward to any comments that the Minister in the chair, the Hon Ron Mark, might make on those.

Hon RON MARK (Minister of Defence): I really do want to compliment that first-term member, Chris Penk, on his ability to see his arguments through and frame them in such an entertaining way. In answer to that very deliberate and in-depth question—yes. The one question I do think needs addressing—well, there’s a couple I’ll attempt to address, but one specifically on information sharing: I think this is an important matter. I know that it was discussed within the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee. Whilst it wasn’t reported on, I do know it was discussed in some depth. So, for the record and for those people who are watching this evening, the question “will information be shared with overseas authorities?”—well, that’s pretty fundamental and basic, given the intent and the seriousness of the matter contained within the bill.

Disclosure of information could be proactive and reactive, or it can take place under a range of conditions: (1) mutual legal assistance to other signatories—that’s mutual legal assistance mechanisms; (2) through Interpol channels—there may be a need to share that information with other nations who themselves are prosecuting a case or are concerned; (3) under bilateral arrangements and agreements already struck between our nation and other signatories, between the governments—these arrangements being such that they govern the sharing of information in pursuance or in accordance with any treaties that New Zealand is party to, which we have signed up to. It should not be assumed that disclosure will only be to friends or allies. The Arms Trade Treaty provides that any party can request information, and thereby New Zealand is duty-bound to assist, and participate, and comply. The disclosure provisions are based on similar provisions in other existing New Zealand legislation. So I think that was an important question; it deserved an answer.

Why is the Attorney-General’s consent required? Legislation with extraterritorial jurisdiction generally requires the Attorney-General’s consent. There we are—that’s pretty standard. By nature, brokering transactions will always occur outside of New Zealand. Investigations and/or—or/and and and/or; did I get that right?—prosecutions under the bill are likely to require assistance and cooperation from overseas authorities and considerations of a number of sensitive, complex factors.

There was another question around the meaning of “ordinary resident”. For the purpose of this bill, a person shall be deemed to be an ordinary resident in New Zealand if his or her home is in New Zealand; or he or she is residing in New Zealand with the intention of residing therein indefinitely; or, having resided in New Zealand with the intention of establishing his or her home therein or with the intention of residing in New Zealand indefinitely, he or she is outside New Zealand but has an intention to return to establish his or her home therein or reside. I think that’s pretty consistent with existing legislation.

A public register of registered brokers—what are the protections for brokers? Limited details of brokers will be published on the register—that’s clause 17(b)(i), (ii), and (iii)—the broker’s full name and trading name, the date of registration, and the date of expiry, and any other particulars that may be prescribed in the regulations. So I think that’s pretty basic, and pretty much what one would expect where people are being registered, and permitted, and licensed to trade in international arms and weapons of that type.

PRIYANCA RADHAKRISHNAN (Labour): I move, That the question be now put.

Motion agreed to.

The question was put that the amendment set out on Supplementary Order Paper 24 in the name of the Rt Hon Winston Peters to Part 3 be agreed to.

Amendment agreed to.

Part 3 as amended agreed to.

The question was put that the amendment set out on Supplementary Order Paper 24 in the name of the Rt Hon Winston Peters to Schedule 1 be agreed to.

Amendment agreed to.

Schedule 1 as amended agreed to.

Schedule 2 agreed to.

Clauses 1 and 2

SIMON O’CONNOR (National—Tāmaki): Thank you very much, Madam Chair. I’m not sure how long I’ll take on this particular debate. Clauses 1 and 2, as we also know in this, are around title and commencement, but I want to break it into two areas. The first, really, is just some queries around why in Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) 24 we’ve had some date changes.

So the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee reported back on clause 2 that they expected that the provisions of the law would come into force on the day after the date on which the Act receives the Royal assent. The Minister of Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade, Winston Peters, for reasons I’m sure are excellent, well-thought-out, and judged, has decided that it should be on 1 February 2019. Now, I assume that’s for the purposes of trying to get everything in place. I certainly understand that passing legislation doesn’t in itself become efficacious and therefore everything it wants just is brought into reality—but some clarity from the Minister as to why we’ve moved away from the date of Royal assent to 1 February. And the second part of that is why it was 1 February. I assume it’s probably post the summer break, and so forth, but some clarity around that would be most welcome.

Madam Chair, and the Minister Ron Mark too, will also understand, of course, that we have split the commencement into various parts. So that 1 February is to apply to Part 1, which, of course, at the moment, contains preliminary provisions; Subparts 2 and 3 of Part 2—so, again, I suppose one of the elements we were getting into in Part 2 was that it was a part with four subparts—and, importantly, Parts 2 and 3. So that’s around the registration of brokers and the permits for brokering. So they are to come into effect from 1 February. A little explanation, if possible, allowing for time, of course, would be greatly appreciated to understand exactly what’s going on there.

We also have, then, in clause 2(2) that the rest of the Act’s going to come into effect from 1 June 2019 according to SOP 24, whereas the select committee have come back suggesting that should be 120 days, so some clarity would be welcome there.

Look, my final thoughts are really just around the title. Sometimes it can always be seen as frivolous, but, you know, words are important. I think by and large we probably have the right idea here. There is a small question of whether or not we could have called this, simply, the “Arms Trade Treaty Enactment Bill”, seeing as that’s what it’s doing. If you wanted to sort of go more generally, Minister, and sort of make a statement rather than an explanation, we could have called this the “Good International Citizenship Bill”. If we wanted to get a bit more particular, and perhaps to get away from the arguments between dual and single purpose, we could have called it the “Transacting of Militarised Equipment Bill”.

But personally my favourite, really, is the “Intercessory Military Mercantile Facilitation and Interdiction Matters Bill”.

Hon Member: That’s a good idea.

SIMON O’CONNOR: Yeah—the “Intercessory Military Mercantile Facilitation and Interdiction Matters Bill”. The reason for that is bibliophiles will love it—bibliophiles will love it. Look, I can tell you now, Minister, bibliophiles will be more excited—more excited—than an esurient thaumaturgist in an apothecary, if we go to that. So, look, “Intercessory Military Mercantile Facilitation and Interdiction Matters Bill”—bibliophiles across the country will be excited. I tell you now. Look at the excitement, Minister. It’s right here.

So, look, that’s really my two points again: some suggested changes in title, but I wouldn’t mind a little bit of explanation around the date changes. The committee was pretty clear about what it intended to do there. I suspect these are good reasons, but it would be good to understand those more.

Hon RON MARK (Minister of Defence): Just a brief explanation around the date changes. So I am advised that, yes, the bill’s commencement clause, as amended in Supplementary Order Paper 24, specifies certain provisions of the bill relating to definitions used in the bill and the requirement to register as a broker and obtain a permit for brokering activity come into force on 1 February 2019. Most of the provisions of the bill come into force on 1 June 2019, as the honourable member Simon O’Connor has just discussed.

This is to enable the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, as the new regulator, to put in place the necessary regulatory and enforcement frameworks before 1 February 2019. The staggered commencement also enables persons whose activities will be regulated under the bill to become registered and to obtain permits for brokering activity before the rest of the bill comes into force on 1 June 2019, something that I think is quite clearly very reasonable and aimed at facilitating and assisting those people who intend registering.

Clause 1 agreed to.

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 2 be agreed to.

Amendment agreed to.

Clause 2 as amended agreed to.

House resumed.

The Chairperson reported the Brokering (Weapons and Related Items) Controls Bill with amendment, no progress on the Families Commission Act Repeal Bill and no progress on the Social Security Legislation Rewrite Bill.

Report adopted.

The House adjourned at 9.57 p.m.