Thursday, 24 May 2018

THURSDAY, 24 MAY 2018

THURSDAY, 24 MAY 2018

The Speaker took the Chair at 2 p.m.

Karakia.

Business Statement

Business Statement

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Leader of the House): Today, the House adjourns until Tuesday, 12 June. The Budget debate will conclude on that day. Other business for the week will include the remaining stages of the Taxation (Neutralising Base Erosion and Profit Shifting) Bill, the second readings of the Land Transport Management (Regional Fuel Tax) Amendment Bill and the Exclusive Economic Zone and Continental Shelf (Environmental Effects) Amendment Bill, and the continued committee stage of the Social Security Legislation Rewrite Bill. Wednesday will be a members’ day but will also include debate on the 2018 Investment Statement instead of the general debate.

Points of Order

Speakers and Presiding Officers—Conduct

Hon GERRY BROWNLEE (National—Ilam): I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. Yesterday, we wrote to you asking you to consider some matters that were set out in the letter, the first of which was our ongoing concern about your involvement in briefing the media, alleging that a National MP made the statement about the Prime Minister calling her a “stupid little girl”. We asked that you contact us before 2 p.m. today, at the start of question time, to clear this matter up, because quite clearly a Speaker briefing the media on a matter that is critical of the Opposition, particularly when all those who could have made the statement have made it clear they did not, when many who have listened to the tapes and considered the transcript cannot find evidence of it ever being said, with the only person left who claims to have heard it being the Speaker, then we are in a position where the Speaker has taken a very strong adversarial role towards the Opposition. Given the size of the Opposition, that is a difficult position for any Speaker to be in. The question that I would ask, Mr Speaker, is: did you brief the media about the allegation that a National MP called the Prime Minister a “stupid little girl”?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Leader of the House): The matters that have been raised by the shadow Leader of the House, as Speakers’ rulings make clear, are matters that should be raised with the Speaker outside of the House and not in the House. In fact, the kinds of reflections on the Chair inherent in the point of order that Mr Brownlee just raised are themselves disorderly.

Hon GERRY BROWNLEE (National—Ilam): We sent a letter to the Speaker, making it clear, after we had read in various media places, that the Speaker had acknowledged that he had heard the statement. If he’s the only one who heard it, it raises the question about how did the statement then get into the media? I asked, on the day, in this House, “What was the statement?” and the Speaker felt that the statement calling the Prime Minister “a stupid little girl” was inappropriate for the House and did not repeat it. The question then is how did it make its way into the media? The member might like to say, “Well, raising this creates a degree of disorder.” Let me tell you, the degree of disorder has well and truly been created by the way in which that particular statement has found its way into the media.

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Leader of the House): I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker.

SPEAKER: Fairly soon, I’d like to come to a point of order.

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: Mr Speaker, if a member has raised a concern with the Speaker outside of the House, or indeed, in the House, and is dissatisfied with the response to that, the only appropriate course of action is to set down a notice of motion about that matter. There are very clear Speakers’ rulings about that. In fact, it is the first Speaker’s ruling concerning reflections on the Chair that says that if members have a concern, they can set down a notice of motion—and that is the way to raise the matter, not through further points of order.

Personal Reflections and Unparliamentary Language—Speaker’s Judgment

Hon GERRY BROWNLEE (National—Ilam): I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. Yesterday, you required the Hon Paula Bennett to withdraw and apologise for a statement that you heard her make on the way out the door when she left the House. We’ve looked at the transcript—the Hansard—we’ve considered whether a statement could have been made, by asking those relevant people nearby what it could have been, and all we’re left with is a statement by the Hon Paula Bennett that it was not worth staying and that she would leave the session. Then there was a question from you asking, “For how long?” Her reply was, “Just for today.”, at which point you thanked her. When she returned to deliver her Budget speech, you required her to withdraw and apologise for something that she had said. Mr Speaker, if we’re going to have rules in here about what can and can’t be said, what might or might not offend you, then could you tell us, please, what was the offensive word or words or construction of words, that had not been recorded by Hansard?

Hon Chris Hipkins: Speaking to the—

SPEAKER: No, no. I’ll just deal with this one. Very quickly, the member made comments when she was on her feet as she was leaving. That is disorderly.

Hon GERRY BROWNLEE (National—Ilam): I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. Last week, you, I think quite appropriately, ruled out the use of the word “bribe” as a descriptor for Government policy. But you also then went on to say that once that is ruled out, and in the case of—it was actually yesterday—yesterday, a penalty given—

SPEAKER: I’m now going to interrupt the member and say that—the member will resume his seat—time has passed for that to be brought up as a point of order. Mr Bennett, if you have more expertise, then I think you should probably advise Mr Brownlee.

Hon GERRY BROWNLEE (National—Ilam): I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker.

SPEAKER: A point of order, the Hon Gerry Brownlee—not on the same matter.

Hon GERRY BROWNLEE (National—Ilam): Well, you have leapt—again—to a conclusion and decided to rule on your own understanding of what you thought was about to come.

SPEAKER: Well, I’ll give the member a chance to promote something which is a proper point of order—

Hon GERRY BROWNLEE: Well, I’m asking you—

SPEAKER: —and the member doesn’t ask me questions; he raises points of order.

Hon GERRY BROWNLEE: Is it now your ruling that the word “bribe” cannot be used in conjunction with a description of a Government policy but can be used as rhetorical comment from a Government Minister—in this case, the Prime Minister—responding to a question that had been ruled out of order?

SPEAKER: I’m quite reluctant to get involved in something which is absolutely inappropriate to be brought up now, but that member knows that the content of questions, the contents of answers, and the contents of debates are all treated in their own context and with different standards. The member has been here a long time and he knows that.

Oral Questions

Questions to Ministers

Government Financial Position—Reports

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

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister of Finance): In addition to the positive reviews from bank economists earlier this week, yesterday Moody’s Investors Service said that Budget 2018 preserved New Zealand’s strong public finances and underscored the Government’s “very high fiscal strength”. Moody’s noted how this Government was able to boost expenditure on families, health, education, housing, and infrastructure while maintaining the fiscal capacity to buffer the economy from any future shocks.

Willow-Jean Prime: Why is it important for the Government to maintain fiscal discipline?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: It is every Government’s responsibility to look out for future generations whilst also making the essential investments needed now, to ensure that New Zealanders can access critical public services. In its report, Moody’s notes that our budgetary prudence gives us significant policy flexibility, to such an extent that we can fund higher spending while keeping the broad direction of fiscal policy unchanged. This comes from taking a responsible approach to debt repayment—more responsible than the previous Government—by the fact that we are ensuring a level tax playing field and by the fact that the Government’s policies will stimulate economic growth, rather than just relying on the housing market and population growth to drive activity.

Willow-Jean Prime: What does Moody’s say about the Government’s plan to invest a net $42 billion in capital over the next five years?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: Moody’s notes that this stronger infrastructure investment—$10 billion more than the previous Government had planned—will improve the supply capacity of the economy and bolster productivity in the long run. In terms of specific projects, Moody’s notes that a recent pick-up in new building permits points to strengthening residential construction, supported by development related to KiwiBuild. They do caution about labour constraints, which highlights why our policy of free post-secondary training and education for apprentices and those undertaking trades training is so important to making our economy more productive, more sustainable, and more inclusive.

Prime Minister—Tax Increases, Three-strikes Legislation, Prison Population, and University Funding

2. Hon PAULA BENNETT (Deputy Leader—National) to the Prime Minister: Does she stand by all of her Government’s policies and actions?

Hon Gerry Brownlee: Ah! The real Prime Minister.

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister of Finance) on behalf of the Prime Minister: Gerry; on behalf of the Prime Minister, yes.

Hon Paula Bennett: As petrol prices rise, at what price per litre will her Government reconsider their plans to hike petrol excise taxes and impose a new Auckland regional fuel tax?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: The decisions that we’ve made around funding future transport projects are very much in line with what previous Governments have done when they’ve needed to see more investment—for example, between January and June 2015, petrol prices increased by 40c a litre, and the then Minister went ahead with an excise increase in July.

Hon Paula Bennett: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker.

SPEAKER: Well, I am going to ask the Minister to answer the question.

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: It is the belief—[Interruption]

SPEAKER: Order! I don’t need the support of the backbench down there.

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: It is the belief of this Government that we need to make significant investments in our transport infrastructure. We will be funding that through the National Land Transport Fund and through the levy increases associated with that, as previous Governments have done.

Hon Paula Bennett: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I was quite clear: at what price per litre will her Government reconsider their plans, and that still wasn’t answered.

SPEAKER: I think it was certainly addressed, even if the member is not satisfied with the answer.

Hon Paula Bennett: As petrol prices rise, at what price per litre will her Government reconsider their plans to hike petrol excise taxes?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: We have a plan to invest in transport infrastructure, funded as it is normally done through the fuel excise levy. We have no plans to change that.

Hon Paula Bennett: How much will families’ cost of living go up thanks to this Government’s increases to fuel excise taxes, GST on online goods, additional tax on mum and dad rental owners, and the new regional fuel tax?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: I don’t have that information to hand, but what I do know is that under our Families Package, 384,000 families will be better off by $75 per week.

Hon Paula Bennett: Is it fair for an Auckland family to pay $700 per year more to fill up their car because of this Government’s new taxes?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: I reject the premise in the member’s question. We know from the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment’s estimates that they’re talking about maybe an extra $250 a year on a family. We know that for many of those families they will be far better off under the Labour-led Government’s Families Package. I would also say to the member that the issues that have arisen around transport in New Zealand didn’t just happen in the last seven months; they happened over the last nine years.

Hon Paula Bennett: Does she believe that prisoners who commit three serious violent offences should receive the maximum sentence without parole for their third offence?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: The three-strikes law that the member is referring to is under consideration by this Government. When it was passed, the previous Government was warned that gimmicky policies like that don’t actually help reduce the crime rate.

Hon Paula Bennett: Did her Minister of Justice take a paper to Cabinet suggesting repealing the three-strikes regime and that the whole Cabinet, including her New Zealand First Ministers, agreed to progress the work?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: I don’t have that information to hand. If the member chooses to put down a question in writing, I’ll be able to answer that.

Hon Paula Bennett: So who was right, then: her Minister of Justice, who said that New Zealand First were there when Cabinet made the decision to work on repealing three strikes, and that “it’s a Cabinet decision”, or her Deputy Prime Minister, who said they were “yet to discuss the issue”?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: As I said in my previous answer, I don’t have the specific details of that. What I do know is that on this side of the House, we’re committed to making sure that while New Zealanders stay safe, we don’t continue to fill up our prisons ever more and more. We can do better than that when it comes to justice.

Hon Gerry Brownlee: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. Mr Speaker, for consistency, why didn’t you stop the member answering once he said he had no information on the question?

SPEAKER: Thank you, Mr Brownlee. Is there a further question?

Hon Paula Bennett: So what percentage of the prison population is made up of gang members?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: That’s a matter of very specific detail. I invite the member to put the question down to the Minister of Corrections or the Minister of Justice.

Hon Paula Bennett: So does the Prime Minister expect an increase in the number of gang members imprisoned given her Government announced 700 new police, supposedly to combat gangs, and how does that reconcile with trying to lower the prison population?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: What that is about is a mixture of policing. We want to make sure that we have community policing that is preventing crime, and we want to make sure that we crack down on gangs. I’m really interested that the previous Government’s party doesn’t actually seem to have a plan to reduce the prison population. On this side of the House, we don’t think it works. And I remind the member of her former colleague Bill English, who said that prisons are a moral and fiscal failure. Perhaps she’d like to call him back in.

Hon Paula Bennett: Why did Budget 2018 not provide any funding for universities in New Zealand to even keep up with inflation for the first time in two decades?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: In this Budget, the priority for this side of the House in education was early childhood education, which got the first universal funding increase in a decade, and our priority was schools. We continue to support the tertiary sector.

Hon Paula Bennett: How many redundancies is she expecting from universities in light of them getting a zero increase in funding for the first time in over a decade?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: The balance sheets of our universities are excellent. They are all in surplus bar one, and I’m sure they’ll be able to continue to operate at a very high level.

Business Confidence—Actions and Reports

Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH (National): I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. The question that I had down has been chopped in half, and the section “how does it compare with the level of June 2017?” taken out. I just wonder what Speaker’s ruling was the basis—

SPEAKER: Order! [Interruption] Order! The question that the member has is the question that I approved, and it actually involved no change from the time that it left the Clerk’s Office. So the member can’t appeal now to have something changed back when I had not been involved in any discussion around the question. If the member doesn’t want to ask it in its current form, that’s his call.

Hon Gerry Brownlee: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. The point here is that there were three questions allowed by the Clerk’s Office, asked by Government members, that made similarly backward-looking recommendations, yet when we get something that is as simple as the question being asked by Mr Goldsmith, there is quite a kerfuffle about the way in which—in fact, requiring the people lodging the question to take that part of it out. If the Government is able to look retrospectively at things—we’ve heard plenty of that today from Mr Robertson in the last series of questions—then why can’t the Opposition?

SPEAKER: All members can ask questions which are Minister’s responsibilities which look back, where they are the Minister’s responsibilities. If this question had something about the business confidence in a period that was pre-Government, that has no responsibility. If it was a report from a department on something that was pre-change, then there would be responsibility for that report. It is a question of the source, and, as the member well knows, the ANZ bank is not an agency of the Government.

Hon Paul Goldsmith: Just speaking to that point of order, could I just—

SPEAKER: No, I have ruled on it, and it’s not going to change. The member can either ask the question or he can sit down.

3. Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH (National) to the Minister for Economic Development: What level is business confidence now, according to the latest ANZ Business Outlook survey?

Hon DAVID PARKER (Minister for Economic Development): The level of business confidence now is not shown in the latest ANZ Business Outlook survey.

Hon Paul Goldsmith: Does he accept that business confidence levels have fallen in the last eight months?

Hon DAVID PARKER: What I know is that according to—[Interruption]

SPEAKER: Order! That’s too much. This supplementary answer will be heard in silence, and it will be short.

Hon DAVID PARKER: I have two points to make. The first is from Interest.co.nz, and I quote: “the ANZ business confidence survey has only 0.2 correlation with GDP growth based on leading by three quarters (… akin to a 20% [pass] mark)”, and a comment from the ANZ’s former chief economist Cameron Bagrie, who recently said of these surveys, “Those surveys are very poor barometers; you should throw them out.”

Hon Paul Goldsmith: Does the Minister accept that investment decisions about creating new businesses, hiring new staff, and buying new equipment are affected by falling levels of business confidence?

Hon DAVID PARKER: No. I know that the member thinks it’s to his political advantage to talk the economy down, but there’s far too much good news for that. Investment intentions are more determined by factors like rising profits in the kiwifruit sector, increasing dairy payouts, significant trade negotiations with the EU, and a Budget showing lowering unemployment, increasing growth, increasing surpluses, and rising wages.

Hon Paul Goldsmith: Does he accept that businesses collectively have genuine concerns about the direction of travel indicated by the Government?

Hon DAVID PARKER: I meet regularly with businesses, and one of the points businesses have made to me is that they are delighted that there is a $1 billion effective tax cut for businesses who invest in research and development over the next four years—one of the things that they know will arrest the decline in exports that occurred under the trickle-down theory of the last Government.

Hon Paul Goldsmith: Does he think his colleague Shane Jones’ suggestion that firms struggling to find workers should simply invest in automation is the sort of thing that’s driving down business confidence?

Hon DAVID PARKER: I’m very supportive of bringing forward technologies that improve productivity, export competitiveness, and, indeed, are business centres in their own right. One of the areas that I and the Minister for Regional Economic Development agree the Provincial Growth Fund should be investing in is bringing forward on-farm and horticultural robotics to improve the profitability of this economy. I would note there would be more jobs per hectare than on a dairy farm.

Hon Paul Goldsmith: Is he aware that not every business can go down to Mitre 10 and buy in equipment to automate their production—such as kiwifruit growers?

Hon DAVID PARKER: Yes, I am, and I’m also aware that you can’t yet get a robot to ask a decent primary question.

Hon Paul Goldsmith: Does he think his colleague Iain Lees-Galloway’s suggestion that firms worried about increased labour costs are just demonstrating poor resilience is the sort of thing that’s driving down business confidence?

Hon DAVID PARKER: I beg your pardon, Mr Speaker. I didn’t hear that question. Could I ask for it to be repeated?

SPEAKER: Well, it’s sort of counting—you might as well have it.

Hon Paul Goldsmith: Does he think his colleague Iain Lees-Galloway’s suggestion that firms worried about increased labour costs are demonstrating poor resilience—is that the sort of thing that’s driving down business confidence?

Hon DAVID PARKER: I believe that increasing labour productivity, and increasing wages that follow increases in labour productivity, is one of the primary ambitions of a Labour Government, and it will make us a wealthier, more prosperous, cleaner, and fairer society.

Transport Infrastructure—Fuel Tax Increase Proposals and Fuel Price

4. JAMI-LEE ROSS (National—Botany) to the Minister of Transport: Does he remain committed to his proposals for new and increased fuel taxes in light of recent reports of petrol prices reaching record highs; if so, what consideration, if any, will he give to the increased cost of living his fuel tax proposals will have on New Zealand families?

Hon PHIL TWYFORD (Minister of Transport): I am committed to striking—[Interruption]

SPEAKER: Order! Order! Can I ask—Ms Bennett, can you just wait at least until the Minister’s started answering before you start your interjections.

Hon PHIL TWYFORD: I am committed to striking a balance between affordability and taking urgent action on the transport infrastructure deficit that we inherited. The Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment estimates that the changes to fuel taxes will see an average family in Auckland pay an extra $5 per week. By contrast, our Government’s Families Package will put $75 a week into the pockets of 384,000 low to middle income families. In terms of considering the impact of taxes on fuel prices, I intend to follow the same process as the Hon Simon Bridges did in 2015.

Jami-Lee Ross: If petrol prices continue to increase, will he revisit his proposals to increase fuel taxes, which will raise petrol prices even higher?

Hon PHIL TWYFORD: International oil price fluctuations have a far greater influence on petrol prices than the policy of the previous Government and this Government of regular, small excise increases. As successive Governments have shown, it makes no sense to make major infrastructure investment decisions based on highly volatile oil price fluctuations. [Interruption]

SPEAKER: Order! Order! I’m just going to ask Mr Hudson and Mr Stuart Smith just to turn their volume down a little bit.

Marja Lubeck: What reports has he seen of past Governments varying the amount of fuel tax levied to match variations in the global oil prices?

Hon PHIL TWYFORD: None.

Jami-Lee Ross: Is he concerned that the rising cost of petrol will increase even further if he is successful in increasing fuel taxes by up to 25c a litre?

Hon PHIL TWYFORD: Well, as I’ve tried to make abundantly clear to the member, the increase in fuel excise is a very, very small increase compared to oil price fluctuations. And I would point out to the member that instead of paying $400 million to the wealthiest 10 percent, this Government’s putting—

SPEAKER: Order! Order!

Jami-Lee Ross: Is he saying that his proposal to increase fuel taxes in Auckland by up to 25c a litre—as he’s announced—is small?

Hon PHIL TWYFORD: Well, what I would point out is that 25c is the maximum rate that was consulted on in the draft Government policy statement. It’s not necessarily the rate that we’re going to settle on. It applies only in Auckland, where the regional fuel tax is in place, not to the rest of the country. The reason that we are investing in our transport system is because we’ve inherited a legacy of an infrastructure deficit after nine years of totally unbalanced transport policies. We’re committed to doing the right thing for this country and the right thing for the economy.

Hon Paula Bennett: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. The question earlier was ruled out because we were referring to 2017, yet the Minister seems to be able to make comment about the last nine years as he wishes to, and I’m just asking for some clarification.

SPEAKER: I have a feeling the member’s trying to relitigate a ruling I made quite some time ago. I think I will ignore it.

Hon David Bennett: Oh, you can’t do that. You just ignore things.

Marja Lubeck: What lessons will the Minister take from past increases of fuel excise while international petrol prices were high?

Hon PHIL TWYFORD: In 2015, the fuel excise was increased after petrol prices increased by 40c per litre. Prices later stabilised and returned to $1.70 per litre by the end of that year, 2015. I’ve learnt from that experience that you cannot make infrastructure investment decisions based on international oil price fluctuations. They’re simply too volatile. I learnt also from the former transport Minister that those fluctuations dwarf the changes in the fuel excise.

SPEAKER: Order! David Bennett will stand, withdraw, and apologise.

Hon David Bennett: Point of order, Mr Speaker.

SPEAKER: No, the member knows absolutely that he interjected an unparliamentary remark in my direction during the asking of the supplementary question.

Hon David Bennett: And what for? Why do I withdraw and apologise?

SPEAKER: Sorry?

Hon David Bennett: Why do I withdraw and apologise, Mr Speaker?

SPEAKER: Why?

Hon David Bennett: Yes.

SPEAKER: Because the member made an unparliamentary remark and it was exacerbated by the fact that it was done during the asking of a supplementary question.

Hon David Bennett: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. What was the unparliamentary remark?

SPEAKER: I’m not going to repeat what the member said about me. Withdraw and apologise.

Hon David Bennett: Mr Speaker, I need an explanation—

SPEAKER: Order! Order! The member will withdraw and apologise now or I will take more serious action than has happened in the House for quite some time. Is the member going to withdraw and apologise?

Hon Paula Bennett: Point of order.

SPEAKER: No, I’m not having a point of order. I am waiting for Mr Bennett to decide whether he will comply with my instruction to withdraw and apologise for reflecting on the Chair while a supplementary question was being asked. Is the member going to withdraw and apologise?

Hon David Bennett: Point of order.

SPEAKER: No, I’m not having a point of order, Mr Bennett. You’re either going to withdraw and apologise or I will name you. [Interruption] Order!

Hon David Bennett: I withdraw and apologise.

SPEAKER: Thank you.

Hon Paula Bennett: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. Sorry, sir, but it is in reflection to me yesterday having to withdraw and apologise. I genuinely do not know what it was for. I did not make a comment as I left, and this is leading to this kind of disorder, when we don’t know what the actual line is as to what you find offensive and what you don’t. I’ve looked at Hansard. I know what I said as I left. I made no disparaging remarks about you last night, and this leads to my colleagues in a position now where—

SPEAKER: Order! The member will resume her seat. The member will resume her seat. If she wants an explanation for how she breached the Standing Orders yesterday, I suggest she watches the TV, either on Parliament TV or on at least one of the news channels to see herself interjecting on her feet as she left.

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

SPEAKER: Is it a new point of order, Mr Brownlee—

Hon Gerry Brownlee: Yes.

SPEAKER: —or is it a relitigation?

Hon Gerry Brownlee: No, it’s a new point of order. People might like to look at the TVNZ clip, that’s currently running, of a member challenging the Speaker on frequent occasions and ultimately being required to leave the House, and being quite messy all the way through. On none of those occasions was the member named. My question simply is: why do we go suddenly from a position where the Speaker does not want to, apparently, make people leave the House, does not explain what an offence might be, but then simply requires people to accept the arbitrary decision of the Chair or be named, which everyone knows is quite an extreme step for anyone in this House? It seems the step that—we’ve gone from a very, very simple straightforward position of how you deal with these things to one that is quite Draconian. And I think that is the problem we’ve got with the inconsistency of the way the Chair’s operating at the present time.

SPEAKER: I note the member’s comments but, as the member knows well, naming is—I think Standing Order 90—the punishment for being grossly disorderly. And refusing to withdraw and apologise for quite an extended period of time is grossly disorderly.

Hon Paula Bennett: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker.

SPEAKER: If it’s the same matter, Ms Bennett, you’re running a serious risk of losing a number of supplementary questions from your team from the first Tuesday back.

Hon Paula Bennett: So, to be clear, Mr Speaker, what I wish to be is actually not unruly in this House. So I need clarification that it was yesterday when I said “It’s a waste of time” that you took such offence to that I had to come back and—well, when I came back you insisted that I withdraw—

SPEAKER: That’s exactly right. If the member had not said that she was leaving the House, I would have required her to withdraw and apologise then. But seeing as she was self-banishing herself, I thought that that was the best way of dealing with it and we could get on with business. I did reflect to the member later on that on a previous occasion, when I had done exactly the same thing—made a comment as I was self-banishing—the Speaker sent for me and made me come back and apologise, and then booted me out again. The member was treated pretty leniently.

Hon David Bennett: Yeah, didn’t get named though.

SPEAKER: Order!

Hon Paula Bennett: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker.

SPEAKER: Order! Order! No, the member will resume her seat. Mr Bennett will withdraw and apologise again.

Hon David Bennett: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker.

SPEAKER: No. The member will withdraw and apologise.

Hon David Bennett: I just want to table a withdrawal, because I might as well be using it all the time, the way the House is going at the moment.

SPEAKER: So the member’s declining to withdraw and apologise?

Hon David Bennett: No, I’m seeking your guidance—

SPEAKER: No, you’re not seeking my guidance; you’re going to withdraw and apologise.

Hon David Bennett: Mr Speaker, what for? I just—I need to know what I did wrong.

SPEAKER: Mr Bennett, you reflected on the Chair, on my ruling—again. I mean, the member understands what he does. He is not an unintelligent member. It’s not something that happens accidentally. But the member should be able to remember sort of 30 seconds after he made a comment that he did. The member will withdraw and apologise.

Hon David Bennett: [Member pauses] I withdraw and apologise, sir.

Hon Gerry Brownlee: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. Is the Chair immune from the provisions of Standing Order 120?

SPEAKER: Sorry, can the member say that a little bit more loudly?

Hon Gerry Brownlee: Yes—is the Chair immune from the provisions of Standing Order 120?

SPEAKER: No.

Hon Gerry Brownlee: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. Then isn’t simply requiring members to withdraw and apologise, without some explanation of the reason for that, impugning improper motives against a member?

SPEAKER: For goodness’ sake! Mr Brownlee, this has got to the point of being ridiculous, the member is—[Interruption] Paula Bennett will leave the Chamber. [Interruption] The member will leave the Chamber.

Hon Paula Bennett withdrew from the Chamber.

SPEAKER: Now, I’ve lost where we were at.

Hon David Bennett: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I think I’m next up, Mr Speaker.

SPEAKER: Supplementary question—David Bennett.

Hon David Bennett: No, primary question.

Prisons—Future of Waikeria Prison and Prison Incident Measures

5. Hon DAVID BENNETT (National—Hamilton East) to the Minister of Corrections: Does he stand by all his statements, actions, and policies regarding his Corrections portfolio?

Hon ANDREW LITTLE (Minister of Justice) on behalf of the Minister of Corrections: On behalf of the Minister, yes.

Hon David Bennett: Why, when he has taken numerous papers to Cabinet regarding Waikeria Prison, has his Government not made a decision regarding Waikeria?

Hon Iain Lees-Galloway: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. On four occasions the member Louise Upston queried the absence of a member. She knows she must not do that.

SPEAKER: I didn’t pick it up. The Hon Louise Upston is—[Interruption] Order! Sorry, I should have stood up and that might have stopped Louise Upston from interjecting while I was ruling. The member is a senior member. She knows what the rules are. She must not do it, and she will not do it again.

Hon ANDREW LITTLE: Sorry, Mr Speaker. I don’t want to cause the honourable member David Bennett to have more exercise today, but I can’t quite recall the detail of the question.

Hon David Bennett: Thank you, Mr Speaker. We all have memory lapses in this House, apparently. Why, when he has taken numerous papers to Cabinet regarding Waikeria Prison, has his Government not made a decision regarding Waikeria Prison?

Hon ANDREW LITTLE: On behalf of the Minister, this Government inherited the tail end of a decision from the previous Government to invest a billion dollars into a mega-prison, and the new Government sought to review the details of that proposal so that a good decision could be made about the long-term future of the prison.

Hon David Bennett: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. There’s never been any mention of a mega-prison in any Government documents. That member is misleading the House with that comment.

SPEAKER: Sorry, has the member got a point of order?

Hon David Bennett: Yes, Mr Speaker.

SPEAKER: The member will resume his seat. He’s going to make very clear which Standing Order or Speaker’s ruling he’s referring to if he’s going to take a point of order, because at the moment he sounds like he’s trying to usurp my role where I take responsibility for making sure that the answers are in order. So far, this answer was certainly in order.

Hon David Bennett: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. Standing Order 380(1)(b). The member mentioned a mega-prison. There has never been, in any official documents—

SPEAKER: For goodness’ sake! The member will resume his seat. Does the member want to have another supplementary?

Hon David Bennett: I have got two more; yes.

SPEAKER: Well, away you go.

Hon David Bennett: Given that serious crime has increased by 4 percent in the last quarter but the prison population has risen only by 2 percent, does he expect more or fewer serious criminal offenders to be imprisoned?

Hon ANDREW LITTLE: On behalf of the Minister, I think that member trivialises the reality of criminal offending statistics in this country because—

Hon David Bennett: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker.

SPEAKER: Order! The member will let the Minister finish the question. If he has a point of order by the end of it, I will hear it.

Hon ANDREW LITTLE: What the figures show is that over an extended period of time, a number of years, serious criminal offending has gone up. We know that there is serious pressure on the prison population, and this Government, with its long-term objective of reducing the prison population, has to manage very carefully the short-term pressures on the prison system and the long-term wish to reform our criminal justice system so that it is safe and effective.

Hon David Bennett: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I took offence when the Minister said that I trivialise these matters. I would ask him to withdraw and apologise.

SPEAKER: You can, but I’m not going to require him to.

Hon Gerry Brownlee: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. That surely has to be a breach of Standing Order 120.

SPEAKER: Why?

Hon Gerry Brownlee: Saying that a person is trivialising something as important as—

SPEAKER: Oh, for goodness’ sake! I’m vaguely tempted to repeat Ron Mark’s offence yesterday. Members need to be able to take a little bit of cut and thrust at question time, and being offended by saying that—[Interruption] Being offended by saying that someone is trivialising an issue is a level of sensitivity which any member of Parliament should be able to handle. Matt King will withdraw and apologise.

Hon Gerry Brownlee: Point of order.

SPEAKER: Sorry, Matt King will withdraw and apologise.

Matt King: I’ve done nothing. I’ve said nothing. I did nothing. I said nothing. What did I say?

SPEAKER: Order! The member will resume his seat. The member interjected while I was on—[Interruption] Yes the member did; I saw him. He was loud. I heard him. He mightn’t have used words, but he certainly interrupted. Matt King.

Hon David Bennett: Supplementary question.

SPEAKER: No, Matt King is going to withdraw and apologise.

Matt King: I withdraw and apologise.

Hon Dr Nick Smith: For not saying anything.

SPEAKER: He made a very loud noise. He’s not a small man, and he made a—

Hon Gerry Brownlee: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I’d like you to please reflect on the advice you just gave the House about members being overly sensitive, because we’ve seen plenty of examples of that today.

SPEAKER: Yes, and—[Interruption] No, the member will resume his seat. What I’m saying is making noises which are not words in English but noises that might be more commonly heard in a barnyard are not appropriate.

Hon Gerry Brownlee: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. How is, effectively, accusing a member of this House of making a barnyard noise not a personal reflection?

SPEAKER: Well, I should probably have called it a loud guffaw of the type certainly not heard normally in this place.

Hon David Bennett: Why is he removing the performance measures of the number of prison escapes, the number of prisoner on prisoner assaults that are serious, and the number of prisoner on staff assaults that are serious from being made public when this trivial and incompetent Government is supposed to be an open and transparent Government?

Hon ANDREW LITTLE: On behalf of the Minister, that question requires a level of detail that is not foreshadowed in the primary question. I simply do not have that information.

Hon David Bennett: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. It was in the Budget last week. That member cannot say that it’s something that he does not know about; he signed off on that Budget. He would have read it.

SPEAKER: Order! The member will resume his seat. Question No. 6—Tamati Coffey.

Barbara Kuriger: Supplementary.

SPEAKER: Oh, sorry—Barbara Kuriger. Sorry, I didn’t realise there were further supplementaries.

Barbara Kuriger: Thank you, Mr Speaker. When will the Minister make a decision on Waikeria Prison to provide clarity for the Ōtorohanga and Waipā communities?

Hon ANDREW LITTLE: On behalf of the Minister, we expect a decision in a matter of weeks, specifically in relation to Waikeria. I make no apology for the delay in making a decision, because it has been a difficult one, and it is a long-term one. [Interruption]

SPEAKER: Order!

Hon ANDREW LITTLE: One reason for which we are not making the decision is, as the member who asked the question wanted, an economic development initiative by building another prison.

Hon Gerry Brownlee: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. When is the Hon Paula Bennett able to come back into the House?

SPEAKER: At a time I decide, and I will inform her when that is.

Budget 2018—Research and Development Funding

6. TAMATI COFFEY (Labour—Waiariki) to the Minister of Research, Science and Innovation: What initiatives in Budget 2018 will help drive more research and development and why is it important that we lift our investment into R & D?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS (Minister of Research, Science and Innovation): Budget 2018 includes the largest ever appropriation for research, science, and innovation. This Government understands that innovation is the driving force behind economic development. That’s why we invested $1.1 billion of new funding over four years to support a more innovative economy and help raise R & D spending to 2 percent of GDP over 10 years. The Government’s most significant investment is in the R & D tax incentive, $1.02 billion over four years, which will incentivise faster growth in business R & D. This package, which includes three other initiatives, lays the foundations for an inclusive, adaptive, and resilient economy underpinned by science and innovation.

Tamati Coffey: Why is R & D as a percentage of GDP important, and how does this Budget support the Government’s aim of achieving 2 percent over 10 years?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: Lifting New Zealand’s R & D expenditure to 2 percent of GDP will drive the diversification of the economy by encouraging new industries and companies, new jobs, and new ways of doing business. Based on our current modelling, Budget 2018 puts us on track to achieve 2 percent of GDP on R & D over the decade, but further public investment in the future will be needed if we are going to use research, science, and innovation to transform the economy and solve our critical social and environmental challenges.

Tamati Coffey: What are the details of the R & D tax incentive that she announced funding for?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: The details of the tax incentive are still out for consultation. The Government has proposed a rate of 12.5 percent for businesses spending over $100,000 per year. Consultation closes on Friday, 1 June, and I encourage stakeholders from across the spectrum of research institutions, businesses, and science to have their say on the design of the tax credit, including the rate; at what point it kicks in; and exactly how it is that we assist companies in the pre-profit stage. We’re aware that—

SPEAKER: Order! Order! That’s enough.

Dr Parmjeet Parmar: What growth in R & D spending as a percentage of GDP is expected to be seen through the R & D tax credit policy by 2020?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: We are on track to grow our expenditure, over a decade, to 2 percent of GDP on R & D. Currently, before the Budget, we sat at 1.3 percent expenditure. This Budget has lifted that to 1.5 percent, which puts us on track over the decade to reach the 2 percent target, something the previous Government did not do.

Dr Parmjeet Parmar: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. My question was about reaching—to 2020, not in 10 years. So what is the percentage growth of R & D spending by 2020—not in 10 years?

SPEAKER: My view is that the question was certainly addressed.

Dr Parmjeet Parmar: How can the sector have confidence in her policy if she’s unable to give any such forecast for 2020?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: The sector can have confidence because they’ve just received an over-a-billion-dollar tax incentive to further incentivise spending on R & D. I did answer the member. The forecast is a lift to 1.5 percent expenditure of GDP over that period of time, something the previous Government failed to address.

Budget 2018—Police Funding

7. CHRIS BISHOP (National—Hutt South) to the Minister of Police: Does he agree with the Prime Minister, who said, “We’ve put $300 million into Police and over 900 new police officers as a result, and we’ve got another two years to finish it off”; if so, why did his Budget press release say that the $298.8 million was over the next 4 years and there was a further $159.7 million in 2022-23?

Hon STUART NASH (Minister of Police): Yes, I agree with the Prime Minister. The press release reflects Treasury’s appropriations, which always stretch into the future.

Chris Bishop: Has he seen the comments from Treasury that budgets were usually only set out for four years but it appears that the Minister of Police’s office wanted to highlight the point that the funding will increase further over time, and isn’t that a confirmation the new police will be delivered over five years, not three?

Hon STUART NASH: No.

Chris Bishop: Why does his Budget press release explicitly not say that the 1,800 police will be delivered over three years, and why is it the only Budget press release, out of 52 issued by the executive, to explicitly mention funding over five years?

SPEAKER: No. Order! I’m going to ask Mr Bishop to rephrase the beginning of his question, because I don’t think it was quite—I don’t think you can explicitly not say something.

Chris Bishop: Sorry, Mr Speaker. Just repeat that. Sorry.

SPEAKER: Well—sorry; I am trying to help the member. I don’t think that any press statement can explicitly not say something. It can not say something, but if it’s explicit, it’s got to be there, doesn’t it?

Chris Bishop: I’ll reword it, Mr Speaker.

SPEAKER: Thank you.

Chris Bishop: Why does his Budget press release not mention that the 1,800 police will be delivered over three years, and is the only Budget press release out of 52 issued by the executive to explicitly mention funding over five years?

Hon STUART NASH: I think I’ve said about a million times that I’m going to deliver 1,800 over three years, but what I would say is when a Government increases the police service by 1,800 front-line police over three years and 485 back-office support staff, we have to plan for an increase in operational costs.

Chris Bishop: Does he stand by his statement that the extra funding in 2022-23 is to account for police pay rises, when public sector wage rounds are a specific tagged contingency separately accounted for in the Budget?

Hon STUART NASH: It’s an increase in operational cost. We’re planning for the future, Mr Bishop.

Chris Bishop: Does he realise that if his story is true and that the 2022-23 funding is for police pay rises, that works out to a pay increase of $88,000 for each of his new officers?

Hon STUART NASH: The interesting thing is that we’re going to increase police by 1,800 to around about 10,500. We’re not going to increase the pay of just those 1,800.

Energy and Resources—Fuel Prices, Electricity Costs, and Offshore Exploration

8. JONATHAN YOUNG (National—New Plymouth) to the Minister of Energy and Resources: Does she stand by all of her policies and actions in relation to the energy sector?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS (Minister of Energy and Resources): Yes.

Jonathan Young: Have the initial findings of her review of petrol prices indicated that the biggest driver of fuel price increases will be the new petrol taxes imposed by Phil Twyford and Phil Goff?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: In order to carry out the review into fuel margins, we require the Commerce Commission to have the powers to carry out market studies. We have started that piece of work by having that bill on the floor of this House. This, I note, was the same approach the previous Government was going to take; only I’m very pleased to report we were able to get that legislation on to the floor of the House within the first six months of our term. We look forward to the Commerce Commission having those market study powers.

Hon Gerry Brownlee: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I’d make the point that most of what the Government did in its first six months was from the previous Government’s efforts.

SPEAKER: Order! Order! No, no, the member knows that that’s not a point of order. The member will stand, withdraw, and apologise.

Hon Gerry Brownlee: I withdraw and apologise. I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. If Ministers are going to make outrageous claims like that—and we saw it from Grant Robertson today, effectively, saying that everything that’s good in the economy was to do with him—then surely we should be able to point out that they are just that: outrageous claims and nothing to do with them.

SPEAKER: This, again, the member knows absolutely, is not a point of order. I’m sort of slightly loath to take things much further with the member at the moment, but I would ask the member, as one of the most senior members on that side of the House and one of the most senior members in the Chamber, if he can help his team—because he has some memory of being in Opposition and the way questions, especially aggressive questions, are asked and answered from that side—if he could share that with them rather than providing an example that reminds me more of myself in the past than being positive.

Jonathan Young: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I understand what the Minister is saying in terms of the market studies and the Commerce Commission bill going through the House at the moment, but my question was regarding the initial findings of her review, and the Minister did say at the end of last year that, pending that legislation going through, she had instructed the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment to look at mechanisms by which she could address the price increases of petrol, and I believe that she has not addressed that question.

SPEAKER: Well, my view is that the member did address the question. If the member is not satisfied with the answer, he can ask further supplementaries.

Jonathan Young: I’ll go on. What is she doing to ensure electricity costs will stay down when many commentators are saying that her 100 percent renewable goal will in fact drive them up?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: The price of retail electricity is of vital concern to this Government and, in fact, was part of our confidence and supply agreement with New Zealand First—informing that the Government was to have a review into retail electricity prices. I’m pleased to report to that member that we have begun that review. The panel is in place, the terms of reference have been out, and phase one is well under way. We are determined to look at what the drivers are that are leading New Zealand to have some of the sharpest rises in retail electricity prices in the OECD over the last decade, but not only that; to look at what the coming pressures of future technologies will be.

Jonathan Young: When she described ending new offshore permits as a “planned, measured and careful transition … towards renewable energy”, did she actually tell anyone in the petroleum industry her plan to ban new offshore permits, prior to 12 April?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: This is a question that has been asked in this House and responded to in this House previously. What we have been very clear on is that both the Prime Minister and myself made very clear comments around the future of offshore drilling prior to 12 April. Indeed, two weeks before making that announcement, I went to the Petroleum Conference and gave a speech reassuring the sector that the changes coming would not affect their existing permits.

Jonathan Young: Did she actually tell anyone in the petroleum industry prior to 12 April that she was planning to ban new offshore permits?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: As I just answered in the previous question, there were very strong signals. But we made an announcement; that was the point at which we told people in the petroleum sector. As that member knows, members of the sector received phone calls from myself, several colleagues, and officials the night before the announcement was made.

Hon Shane Jones: Can the Minister confirm that production in terms of gas in Taranaki has been in decline for over eight years, with absolutely no substantial or even small new discoveries?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: Yes, I can. It has gone from a $300 million industry to a $10 million industry over the last few years. I also note that there was no summer drilling activity for the last two previous summers. But the local member will probably be very pleased to hear that even after the Government’s announcement, over the next 18 to 36 months there are over 20 wells planned to be drilled in the summer programme.

Education—Socio-economic Disadvantage

9. JAMIE STRANGE (Labour) to the Minister of Education: What is the coalition Government doing to help the education system to understand and respond to the impact of socio-economic disadvantage on student achievement?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister of Education): The coalition Government is expanding the risk index announced by the previous Government to be further developed as an equity index. The index does give valuable insights into the impact of disadvantage across early childhood education and schooling. [Interruption]

SPEAKER: Order! Can the member resume his seat. The Hon Louise Upston will not interject further during this answer. She is a long way away, but she’s drowning out the Minister.

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: The decision that the Government has taken is to expand the new equity index beyond its narrow application as a tool to inform an allocation of only 3 percent of school funding so that it can also be used to and inform improvements at a system level and other sources of school funding so that we can ensure those students who have disadvantage are properly supported through the education system.

Jamie Strange: Will the equity index be used to replace school deciles?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: The school deciles will probably go eventually, but not immediately. The decision to remove school deciles and impose the new equity index and to do so on a “no losers” basis—meaning no schools lost funding—would have, effectively, meant that both systems would have to operate together. So decile funding would have continued to operate even if we had gone ahead with the implementation of the equity index in its previous form. I’ve been advised that the cost of doing that could be up to $100 million, none of which was previously budgeted.

Budget 2018—Vote Māori Development

10. NUK KORAKO (National) to the Minister for Māori Development: Is Vote Māori Development for 2018/19 lower than in the current year (2017/18)?

Hon WILLIE JACKSON (Associate Minister for Māori Development) on behalf of the Minister for Māori Development: No. Budget 2018 Vote Māori development is not lower when things such as the one-off payment of $9 million to Parihaka is taken into account. That was a one-off expenditure, and, in fact, if you include contingency funds, Budget 2018 is higher. So well done, Minister Mahuta and the Māori Labour caucus.

SPEAKER: Order! I’m just going to remind the member that when he is answering this question, he is actually answering as Nanaia Mahuta. I’m pretty sure that while the Minister might be proud, she wouldn’t address it in that way.

Nuk Korako: Do the total annual and permanent appropriations and multi-year appropriation forecasts show a reduction from $328,112,000 in 2017/18 to $316,421,000 in 2018/19?

Hon WILLIE JACKSON: No. No. The member has got his figures wrong.

Nuk Korako: Does she agree with John Tamihere, who said, “For the first time in decades Budget 2018 took money away from Māori.”?

Hon WILLIE JACKSON: I’m not sure if she agrees with John Tamihere—

SPEAKER: Order!

Nuk Korako: Does she agree with John Tamihere, who said, “No amount of spin by Labour’s 13-strong Māori caucus, five of whom are in the Cabinet, can hide the fact that budget for Māori has been cut.”?

Hon WILLIE JACKSON: Can I say on behalf of the Minister that she does agree with John Tamihere on some things, but he’s got it sadly wrong, and, obviously, was on the whisky when he was doing some of his grafts for the New Zealand Herald.

SPEAKER: Order! No. That is a reflection on someone outside the House and an inappropriate one, and the member will stand, withdraw, and apologise.

Hon WILLIE JACKSON: I withdraw and apologise, Mr Speaker.

Hon Shane Jones: Can the Minister confirm that elements of Vote Māori Development will better prepare communities to gain access to the billion trees strategy, the $3 billion Provincial Growth Fund, focus on better land use outcomes, water storage, and the—

SPEAKER: Order! Order!

Hon Shane Jones: Was it too long, or was it too loud?

SPEAKER: The member’s had enough. Probably if it was in a—

Chris Penk: Sit down.

SPEAKER: Who said that?

Chris Penk: I did.

SPEAKER: The member will withdraw and apologise.

Chris Penk: I do withdraw and apologise.

SPEAKER: Thank you. The question’s been asked; we’ll have an answer.

Hon WILLIE JACKSON: Sorry, you’ll have an answer? Yes, thank you, Mr Speaker. I can confirm that Māori in particular will benefit greatly from the $1 billion scheme that Minister Jones is appropriating. I can also add to that that Māori have never been better off in terms of this Budget—$1.2 billion going to Māori, more than any other Government in the history of the New Zealand Parliament.

SPEAKER: Order! Order! I am going to remind the member he’s answering on behalf of Nanaia Mahuta.

Budget 2018—Research and Development Tax Credit Scheme

11. Dr PARMJEET PARMAR (National) to the Minister of Research, Science and Innovation: Does she stand by all her policies, statements, and actions in relation to Budget 2018?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS (Minister of Research, Science and Innovation): Yes.

Dr Parmjeet Parmar: Given that Australia is repeatedly reviewing their R & D tax credit scheme because of rorting; how will she ensure that her tax credit scheme will not be subject to rorting because of businesses simply reclassifying existing spending instead of actually increasing R & D?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: The design elements of the R & D tax credit are currently out for consultation and are open till 1 June. I encourage people to submit. But the issue around what penalties there are for people who do not comply with a rules-based system are something we are consulting on. I also note that I discussed this when I had a face-to-face meeting with the Australian Minister of science, and officials from the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment have worked very closely with their Australian counterparts so we can understand the learnings from the Australian review of their system. I note the Australian system is an incredibly complex system, and this has led to a lot of the problems they have had with misclassification—something we are avoiding in our own scheme.

Dr Parmjeet Parmar: Why has she then recklessly promised over $1 billion of taxpayer money to a policy she has yet to finalise the details of?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: On this side of the House, we don’t call supporting businesses to carry out more R & D reckless. We call it good economic management. We are currently consulting on some of the detailed design elements which are critical for us getting this scheme fit for purpose so we can lift our spend on R & D by businesses here in New Zealand away from languishing at the bottom of the OECD table.

Dr Parmjeet Parmar: Supplementary, Mr Speaker.

SPEAKER: No, the member’s run out of supplementaries.

Budget 2018—Community Law Centre Support

12. RAYMOND HUO (Labour) to the Minister of Justice: How does Budget 2018 support community law centres?

Hon ANDREW LITTLE (Minister of Justice): Community law centres received almost $2.2 million extra operating funding in Budget 2018 for the 2018-19 financial year. The dollar figure may be small, but the proportion of increase is huge—nearly 20 percent. This is the most amount of Government support community law centres have received since the last progressive Minister of Justice, Simon Power.

Raymond Huo: Why is it important to ensure that community law centres are resourced to provide their services?

Hon ANDREW LITTLE: Community law is important as it means that all New Zealanders have access to high-quality legal help. Community law centres across the country provide easy-to-understand information, community workshops, one-on-one legal help, represent people in court, and assist people with restorative justice programmes. Every Kiwi deserves access to justice and equality, and community law centres help to provide that.

Raymond Huo: What feedback has the Minister received regarding the funding increase?

Hon ANDREW LITTLE: I have had overwhelmingly positive feedback from a number of sources, but the chief executive of Community Law Centres o Aotearoa, Elizabeth Tennet, said, “We are so grateful for this top-up you have provided to community law. Thank you very much.” I’m also conscious of the statement they made publicly, which said that “the funding boost will enable us to provide more services to more people in need. Access to justice is so important for New Zealanders, and we thank the government for assisting more people.”

Points of Order

Standing Orders—Leave for Sessional Order

Hon GERRY BROWNLEE (National—Ilam): I seek leave for a sessional order to delete Standing Order 387(1) and replace it with “Sixty supplementary questions can be asked to the 12 primary questions on a proportional basis, as advised by the Clerk of the House.”—for that debate to be taken forthwith.

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

Budget Debate

Budget Debate

Debate resumed from 23 May.

Hon STUART NASH (Minister of Police): I just want to say what an absolute privilege and pleasure it is to be a Minister in Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s Government. The changes we are making, the innovation we are driving, as outlined in finance Minister Grant Robertson’s first Budget—the first of many that set the foundation for a future with a radical vision that is actually delivering on the issues that the people of New Zealand have told us are important to them. We’re talking about education, and we’re talking about housing, health, mental health, business innovation, jobs, and, of course, law and order.

Let me talk about law and order—more specifically, policing. I just want to say, again, it is an absolute privilege to be the Minister of Police and especially so at a time of radical change. But, first of all, I want to give credit to my good mates and colleagues in New Zealand First, because when it comes to policing, Mr Ron Mark and I worked incredibly closely together in Opposition to push really hard for funding for the New Zealand Police. Now, why did we do this—why did we do this? Because the 2017 police workplace survey showed that 60 percent of the men and women in the New Zealand police service said that they suffered from an undue level of workplace stress, and only 40 percent of those respondents said that they were delivering on the promises that they were making to their communities. But, quite interestingly, well over 80 percent of the men and women in the service said that they were passionate about the New Zealand police service and passionate and committed to the communities that they serve. So we have a fantastic organisation of men and women who are completely committed to our communities, who know what needs to be done to fight crime to keep us safe, but they just did not have the resources that they know they needed to keep us safe.

So what did Ron Mark and I do? What did New Zealand First and Labour do? We came together and said that this has got to change—this has got to change. Let me outline the extent of the problem we were facing. On 30 June 2012, there were 8,850 front-line police officers. On 30 June 2017, there were 8,778 police officers. Over those five years there were 72 less police officers—

Hon Ruth Dyson: Fewer.

Hon STUART NASH: —fewer police officers—in 2017 than there were in 2012. In the meantime, methamphetamine had become a plague. Organised crime had flourished. Less than 10 percent of burglaries were being solved. Less than 40 percent of crimes against the person were being solved, and what we saw was that serious crime had increased, police were fighting fires, and the trust and confidence in the New Zealand police service by the people of New Zealand had dropped, and this was totally unacceptable to Mr Mark, New Zealand First, and myself in Labour. So it’s no wonder that so many police said that they were suffering an undue level of workplace stress.

The interesting thing—the interesting thing—is that there was someone in the Government at the time who got this, and that was Judith Collins. Judith Collins took a proposal to Cabinet to significantly increase the police numbers. Do you know what happened to her? She got fired—she got fired. Judith Collins—when she presented something to the Minister of Finance, she got fired. It’s interesting. Judith knew it because Judith is probably the only police Minister in the past Government who understood the pressure they were under. Well, Mr Mark and I did—Mr Mark and I did—and that is why this New Zealand First - Labour coalition Government is delivering the largest increase in police numbers in the history of the New Zealand police service: 1,800 front-line service officers. That is 1,800 officers into our communities to fight organised crime, to increase trust and confidence, and not just 1,800 front-line officers but also 485 back-office staff who play just as important a role to back up those 1,800 officers.

I will be honest. In the coalition agreement, which is our Bible, it says we will strive to deliver 1,800 police over three years. Now, the reason it says “strive”, and I’ll be honest here, is because we know we have to train 1,000 police a year—1,000 police a year. One thing that Mr Mark and I have been absolutely adamant about is we are not going to drop the quality of men and women in the New Zealand police service. The commissioner tells us we can do this. I have been to every single police graduation except one since I have been the Minister of Police, and I can assure everyone in this House and those watching that the quality of the men and women who are passing through the police graduation is exceptional—exceptional. So I believe we can do this. The commissioner believes that we can deliver 1,000 a year; we’ve just got to make sure we can.

We’re trialling something innovative. We understand that for some people, coming down to police college for 16 weeks is tricky. We understand that imposes a level of commitment on family that perhaps may be a little difficult for people who would make fantastic officers. So what we have done is we have actually instigated the first training regime in Auckland—the first one since the 1970s.

Dr Duncan Webb: Revolutionary.

Hon STUART NASH: It is about time, I agree, Dr Webb. It is about time. This is what we’re doing.

Hon Member: Creative thinking.

Hon STUART NASH: It is. It’s creative thinking. So how can we get into the service these fantastic men and women who want to serve? They’re passionate about our communities and they also want a job where they can really make a difference. So we’re being innovative in the way we do this because we want to get there.

The other thing that the coalition agreement talks about is fighting organised crime and drugs. Now, I don’t think there’ll be a person in this House who doesn’t believe we do not have a problem with meth, because we absolutely do. We have a problem with meth in our big cities and we have a problem with meth in our small rural communities. We have to go hard on this. I talk about cutting the head of the snake of organised crime.

Madam Deputy Speaker, in the police region that I’m in, and I know that you are in as well—I didn’t mean to bring you into the debate, but in our electorates we have four members of the organised crime squad. This is servicing from Hicks Bay—so for Gisborne, Wairoa, Napier, Hastings, and southern Hawke’s Bay, we have four people. How are the police supposed to go hard against organised crime when there are four members in the eastern district’s organised crime squad? Now, imagine if there were 24 or 34. Imagine if there were men and women who were going hard, who just had the ability to go after organised crime—these nasty buggers who are pushing misery into our community—and we are going to after them and we’re going to resource the police in a way that allows them to use 21st century crime-fighting tools.

It’s not enough any more just to have men and women on the street. We also need to have men and women following the money. We need to have them chasing cyber-crime. We need forensic accountants. This is what 21st century policing is about. Like I said, it’s about cutting the head off the snake of organised crime, and we make no apology—we make no apology—for going after those in organised crime who are peddling this misery into our communities.

What we are delivering is a fundamental change in the way we police. Now, from the Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister down, we all buy into the police’s operational model of prevention first. It’s what we need to do. It is why well over a thousand of these new men and women entering the service are going to be in community roles. We’re going to put them out there so they can keep our communities safe—so that they’re working proactively, so they know what is going on in our communities. It is absolutely what Mr Mark and I heard on the election trail in the last three to six years. Mr Ron Mark was a mayor of a small provincial town, and no doubt, he heard it every single day. People were saying, “Well, what’s happened to our community policing? Where are they?”

Well, I can assure this House that what New Zealand is going to see over the next three years is a fundamental change in the way we police, and the reason they’re going to see that is because 1,800—1,800—new front-line officers are going to be out there, keeping us safe, and putting the really bad guys behind bars. I am very, very proud and privileged to be the Minister of Police. Thank you very much.

Hon SCOTT SIMPSON (National—Coromandel): I listened carefully to the speech from the Hon Stuart Nash and I was disappointed. I was disappointed in the speech just as much as I was disappointed in the Budget from his Government, because that was a member that used to come to this House and speak with passion and with pride and with energy, and today we saw absolutely none of that. It was an apology. It was an apology for broken promises, for an expectation that he in Opposition had set and now, in Government, has failed to deliver.

In electorates like mine in the Coromandel, police numbers are down and there’s no hope of any relief any time soon, because there’s a Minister who is talking about extending the time frame for the provision of new police officers, and he’s changed the definition of what “front line” means, as well. So “front line” now is going to be non-sworn officers, it’s going to be non-sworn police personnel, and it’s going to be people who are driving desks and doing administrative work. That’s not what his Government campaigned on, that’s not what they promised New Zealanders, that’s not what they said they would deliver, and yet that’s what he’s now apologising for in terms of this Budget 2018.

The National Government left this Government a legacy like no other before in a generation: a strong and growing economy, an economy with a full head of steam and momentum, and a Treasury bank account that means that they are awash with cash—awash with cash. It’s a legacy that they have shown already to have squandered—not to take the opportunities presented to them, not to take the opportunities to make significant change, and, worst of all, not to fulfil the promises that they campaigned on and not to achieve what they said they would do. So they inherited a strong and growing economy, and what have they delivered? A Budget of broken promises.

I’ve got sad news for the people of Coromandel. There’s very little—almost nothing—in this Budget for people in the provinces. There’s very little—

Hon Louise Upston: That’s right.

Hon SCOTT SIMPSON: —almost nothing—for the people of Coromandel. My colleague the member for Taupō acknowledges it’s exactly the same in her electorate—

Hon Tim Macindoe: And in Hamilton.

Hon SCOTT SIMPSON: —and in Hamilton, and around provincial and rural New Zealand. Nothing. The only hope, the only plan, that this Government has for rural and provincial New Zealand is Shane Jones’ slush fund. There isn’t a plan B, there’s nothing else—that’s all it is. And it’s the largesse that he and, seemingly, he alone will get to decide that most of it goes up to Northland. Not much of it’s going to come anywhere close to electorates like mine or the Hon Louise Upston’s, or, for that matter, the Hon Tim Macindoe’s. There’s nothing in it for them.

Barry Soper’s been around this Parliament for a very long period of time, a very long period of time, and he described this Budget as—and I quote—“But even by Labour’s own admission it was a boring Budget. [It] lacked pizazz,” and, indeed, he’s absolutely right. He said further—and I quote—“There has been criticism that this Budget wasn’t transformational, it didn’t do what Labour governments have done in the past, [which is to] give us something that we weren’t expecting, something that Labour could claim as their own, that they could build on and be remembered for.”, because utterly unmemorable is this Budget.

It wasn’t only Barry Soper. Most of the commentators put this Budget to bed pretty quickly. Claire Trevett, from the New Zealand Herald, in a headline article, described it as “A Budget of hand-me-down ties and slogans”, and it’s the slogans that this new Government is actually having problems with because, in Opposition, they campaigned on slogans. They were famous for campaigning on slogans. In fact, there wasn’t a matter that confronted our nation that couldn’t be solved with a slogan—a short, pithy slogan. The challenge that they now have, and have so demonstrably been unable to fulfil, is that they can’t turn their slogans into real and meaningful policy. They’re struggling with that because they weren’t ready for Government, they didn’t have a plan, and the Budget absolutely shows this.

Claire Trevett went on to say that “There was also symbolism in the colour of the Budget documents themselves.” Well, they were red. There was a lot of red and not much else. The details are sketchy. They’re not as fulsome as one would want.

What this Budget—this first Budget of Grant Robertson—has really demonstrated is that this Labour-led Government doesn’t have a plan. They haven’t got a plan for actually making the pie bigger so that dividends from a growing and strong economy can be shared amongst all. They haven’t got a coherent strategy. They haven’t got a coherent strategy to grow the New Zealand economy. In fact, most of what they have done so far has actually resulted in a diminishing of economic growth and a process by which the economy’s going to slow, the jobs will decrease, and they are going to reap the rewards of that slowdown in the economy in the months and year or so ahead that they have.

This is a tax, spend, borrow-and-hope Budget—tax, spend, borrow, and hope. My dear late father used to always say that it would take a National Government about three terms to tidy up the mess of a Labour Government, and that’s what we’re seeing now. It took John Key and Bill English about that length of time to tidy up after the Helen Clark years, and in a few short months, these guys have made fatal errors that are going to slow down the economy.

As I said, there was a lot of red on the cover of the Budget, there’s a lot of black in the writing, but one thing there isn’t is there’s no green—absolutely no green. One of the real problems for this Government is that they campaigned on a policy of doing good for the environment, and what do we find? The Greens utterly and totally humiliated—abject humiliation for the Greens in this Budget. Winston Peters and his party: billions of dollars—billions of dollars—delivered to the New Zealand First Party as a deal; as a price paid for coalition. And what did the Greens get? A hundred million dollars. The New Zealand First Party: billions. The Green Party, utterly humiliated—$100 million.

What do we find in the environmental spend in this Budget? Something that most New Zealanders didn’t expect from this Government. What we find is that, actually, spending in this Budget is lower—lower than it was in last year’s Budget. How could that be so? That surely couldn’t be so from a Government that stands on the virtual symbolism of being good for the environment. Why wouldn’t they spend as much on environmental protection as the last Government did? Well, go and have a look at the New Zealand Herald interactive website, because there it makes it very plain and clear for everybody to see, for all New Zealanders to go and see, that the environment actually suffered as a result of this Government’s Budget. Vote Environment is down a massive 13.6 percent on last year.

Hon Tim Macindoe: They didn’t campaign on that.

Hon SCOTT SIMPSON: Those are the numbers—they didn’t campaign on that, my colleague Tim Macindoe says. They didn’t campaign on that—the environment vote down 13.6 percent. It’s $132 million less than was spent by the Bill English administration last year.

So what do we find? Things like the Contaminated Sites Remediation Fund—nearly $2.7 million less being spent on the remediation of contaminated sites. Improving environmental management is down about $3.5 million, and the rest goes on. The real challenge for this Government, though, is that their actions in this Budget are going to put growth under pressure, and as a result of growth being under pressure, we’re going to see the political uncertainty that comes with business confidence tanking and businesses being uncertain and businesses being careful or simply not employing new staff, and as those business expectations fall, so too do the aspirations of New Zealand business folk and, indeed, the whole country.

Even though there’s still plenty of momentum in the economy for now, the policies and the initiatives taken in Budget 2018 by this Labour-led Government are going to put a dampener on all those things. Already we see capacity pressures that are getting aggressive, and we know what happens when that occurs in the economy. We see that our exchange rate is down and we see that commodity prices are going up, and what does that mean for our economy? Well, it means fewer jobs and less opportunity for New Zealanders.

So we see in this first Government Budget from Grant Robertson a speech that was pathetic in its totality—a disappointment, a Budget of broken promises, a Budget of low and no expectation. It’s a Budget that has let New Zealand down.

Hon MEKA WHAITIRI (Minister of Customs): Madam Assistant Speaker, tēnā koe. Ngā mema o te Whare nei, tēnā koutou katoa. E ngā tamariki mokopuna kua tae mai i runga te whare, tēnā koutou, nau mai, haramai.

[Thank you, Madam Assistant Speaker. Greetings to the members of this House. To the children and grandchildren who have arrived into this House, tēnā koutou, nau mai, haramai.]

You would have thought after Scott Simpson, the last speaker, that it was all doom and gloom for this country. I want to say that I am really proud, first and foremost, to be the member of Parliament for my beloved electorate of Ikaroa-Rāwhiti. I am very proud to belong to the coalition Government that took the concerns of every constituent throughout my electorate seriously in 2017. We walked up and down the electorate listening to the concerns of our people that I represent. And what were their concerns? Housing, health, education, and neglect in the regions. That’s what they said. Budget 2018 delivers for those people, and I am proud to stand in this House.

I want to acknowledge the Minister of Finance, the Hon Grant Robertson, and I want to also acknowledge our fierce and strong leader, the Prime Minister, the Rt Hon Jacinda Ardern, for their leadership. Yes, we are celebrating Budget 2018 in this debate, but, for me, it started back in December, in the 100-day plan. The families, the whānau, the individuals throughout Ikaroa-Rāwhiti got their first glimpse of this coalition Government when the Prime Minister announced the 100-day plan. Why was that significant? It was because we arrested the tax cuts for the rich and we reinvested into those communities and those individuals who were being neglected by the last lot.

That’s the 100-day plan. We were in office for two months—two months—and that’s how hard-working this side of the House is, and we are still doing it. It is the last day of a four-week sitting term and I know the heavy lifters on this side of the House are looking forward to a recess, and maybe that side can take two weeks’ break to learn how to be an effective Opposition.

As I said, I am proud to also be a Minister in this coalition Government, and I’m proud to say, as the Minister of Customs, that we received an extra $58.1 million of new money in this year’s Budget—

Hon Aupito William Sio: How much?

Hon MEKA WHAITIRI: —$58.1 million extra funding under this Government. As for every customs officer up and down the country, this is an acknowledgment of the contribution these hard-working customs officers give in the fight against illicit drugs. My colleague the Minister of Police, Stuart Nash, talked about the epidemic of meth in our communities. This $58.1 million going to customs will help deliver 127 more officers—127 more customs officers—at the border.

Customs has three key roles. One, we try and disrupt the movement of illicit drugs at the border; secondly, we collect revenue on behalf of the Crown; and, thirdly, we actually help exporters get their goods to market in a seamless manner. I’m proud of the work that customs does in their fight to keep the illicit drugs, particularly P, out of our community, because it is wreaking havoc, as my colleague mentioned, up and down my electorate of Ikaroa-Rāwhiti.

But, like I said, what’s in this Budget for the people I represent? I want to turn just quickly to health, because health is the biggest winner in this Budget, with $3.2 billion going into a neglected health system created by that lot—$3.2 billion. How’s it going to help people that I represent? Well, let’s look at the health budget. Everyone under the age of 14—and I’m glad that we’ve got young people up in the public gallery. For every young person in New Zealand under the age of 14, it’s now free to go to doctors. It’s free to go to doctors for under-14s under this Government.

We are also going to ensure under the investment in health that we are going to put more money into community midwives. Now some in this House may say that there might be some conflict of interest with midwives, seeing a certain individual in this House may be going off to have a baby, but community midwives do a fantastic job throughout Aotearoa New Zealand, and community midwives are going to get a boost under this investment in our health system.

We are also, obviously, going to look at boosting up $83 million into air ambulances. Now the previous speaker just said, “What’s in it for Coromandel?” I know that in rural communities, the quickest way to get help when help’s needed when it’s in the backblocks or on farms is actually through an air ambulance, and under this Government, we are putting $83 million into air ambulances, which will go a long way for the rural communities that I represent and that many in this House represent.

Also, under health, we are going to talk about extending the nurses in schools programme and the pilot programme for the mental health of our young adults, and that’s something that we should celebrate. About 600,000 low-income earners are actually going to get between $20 and $30 off their visits to doctors—$20 to $30 cheaper to go to doctors.

So this investment, like the Budget speech said, is setting the foundation for the future. It’s addressing the infrastructural under-investment that we’ve seen this country suffer from for the last nine years. But we are here, and this coalition Government is keen to take on the challenge of ensuring that no young person and no young child, wherever they are born in this country, is denied the right to basic healthcare, high-quality education services, and a roof over their head. That’s what the coalition Government stands for, and it’s one that I’m really, really proud to be involved in.

Can I quickly turn to the economic and regional economic opportunities under this Budget, and I want to talk briefly about the billion-dollar tree programme. It’s something very special to my heart because in the last two weeks, I’ve just received another delegation, which is Associate Minister of Forestry, and I am working very, very closely with the Hon Shane Jones to plant a billion trees in—

Hon Kris Faafoi: How many?

Hon MEKA WHAITIRI: —a billion trees; a billion trees, Mr Faafoi—10 years. I can tell the House that planting a billion trees over 10 years is not only going to create jobs in the regions; it’s going to actually tick our environmental commitments in terms of being zero carbon by 2050 and up on the Coast, where I come from, it’s going to actually address the erosion problems. So there are huge benefits for the country in the one billion trees, and I’m excited to be working alongside Mr Jones to achieve that.

But there’s also the Provincial Growth Fund, and we hear people over on that side calling it a slush fund. Can I tell you, as I travel around the country, there is the engagement with councils, all up and down the country, that are realising that at last we have a coalition Government that’s going to listen to their needs and that is going to work alongside the councils to grow those opportunities, which have been neglected for nine long years under that lot. I am really proud of the Provincial Growth Fund. I’m proud of the billion trees.

Of course, the other area for my electorate is working in land development, targeting underutilised Māori land. It’s a passion that I stood for in this House when I was on that side of the House—to maintain Māori land in the hands of Māori owners. Now, as the Associate Minister of Agriculture responsible for Māori agribusiness, I can say to people in this House that there is a plan coming that’s going to unlock the potential of Māori land and grow opportunity for those owners right throughout the value chain. I’m excited to work with my colleague the Minister of Agriculture, Damien O’Connor, to realise that we have potential in this country for Māori land that is untapped and that is opening for business, and this coalition Government is keen to knock on that door and enter into partnership with iwi and Māori land owners.

What’s good for the Māori land owner is good for this nation. It’s an opportunity for us to lead, and in this coalition Government on this side, that’s exactly what you’re getting. It’s a coalition Government of action. It’s a coalition Government of compassion. It’s a coalition Government that is about delivering to all New Zealanders, for now and in the future.

Nō reira e te iwi o ngā mema o te Whare nei, huri noa, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā tātou katoa.

[Finally, to the people of the members of the House, right around the House, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā tātou katoa.]

MELISSA LEE (National): Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for the opportunity to take a call in the Budget debate. But before I actually get on to the debate, I’d like to first of all send my condolences to the family of Pipi Boyd, who was a Korean War veteran, and he passed away just last week. He was a very special man. I remember him because when I visited Marlborough, he actually gave me a beautiful tiki carving. He had it for a very long time and he actually put it on me—the carving that he had, he put it on me. He’s passed away.

Hon Tim Macindoe: That was a lovely thing to do.

MELISSA LEE: That was a very lovely thing to do, Tim. I shall miss him.

So, moving on from that, the Hon Meka Whaitiri talked about how it has been nine long years, she said in her speech, and you would have thought that when members had been sitting on the Opposition benches for nine, apparently, very long years, they would actually have some plans put together for when they became the Government.

Hon Tim Macindoe: You would think that.

MELISSA LEE: You would think that. That’s right, Mr Macindoe. You would think that—sorry, Madam Deputy Speaker. I don’t mean you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I mean the members of the Government. I would like to think that they had a plan when they were on this side of the House, in Opposition, and they were not in agreement with the Government of the time, which was a fantastic Government, I would have thought. They should have had a plan, but they didn’t. This is their first Budget, and some people have actually said it was exciting, it was full of—whatever.

But let me just get on to what Meka Whaitiri said. She said they delivered for under-13-year-olds: free medical care for under-13-year-olds—as if that was a brand new thing that the Labour-led Government has delivered for New Zealand. It’s about tinkering at the edges. It was the National Government that delivered free medical care for under-12-year-olds, and they’ve literally only increased it by one. I think that’s actually good. I mean, free medical care for children under 13 is good, but it is not something that they have delivered from zero to 13. They’ve literally just tinkered.

Earlier this week, I asked a question in this House to the Minister of Broadcasting, Communications and Digital Media. As spokesperson, I do that quite regularly. She said in her answer something along these lines: that all Ministers in this Labour-led Government had to compromise—they had to compromise. What I said was that the broadcasting Minister actually promised the industry $38 million a year. She even took a Cabinet paper, which—actually, it was redacted. The bit that said “$152 million over four years” was redacted. But the Minister for open Government, in her wise choice, maybe failed to redact it properly, or maybe it was one of her staffers who actually did it. But you could literally cut and paste it, and see it.

She went to Cabinet to ask for $152 million for the broadcasting sector, and what did she get? What did she get? She got less than 10 percent.

Hon Tim Macindoe: Less than 10 percent.

MELISSA LEE: She got less than 10 percent, Mr Macindoe. That is less than 10 percent.

Rt Hon David Carter: That was too much to her.

MELISSA LEE: That was too much to her. She got $15 million, out of $152 million that she actually promised the industry. I remember the Christmas party that she attended for New Zealand On Air last year, when she was the—

Rt Hon David Carter: I remember the breakfast she attended.

MELISSA LEE: Oh, you remember the breakfast, Mr Carter? Yes, I think maybe it was a very expensive breakfast. But at the Christmas function of New Zealand On Air last year, she was so welcomed by the group. The media people loved it, because she was literally going to be delivering $152 million.

Do you know, I have to say I agree with Russell Brown. Russell Brown said that this is a broadcasting shambles. I have to agree with a number of other stakeholders who have used a couple of more choice and colourful words, but I had better not use them because I might get ejected from this Chamber. I would think that some of those words are actually unparliamentary. But I’d like to maybe use what Jo Moir of Stuff actually did. Jo Moir rated the Minister of Broadcasting, Communications and Digital Media one out of 10.

Hon Louise Upston: How much?

MELISSA LEE: One out of 10 for her ministerial performance. I guess when you consider the fact that this Minister literally delivered less than 10 percent of what she promised and what she took to Cabinet, she actually deserves that one out of 10 rating.

Hon Tim Macindoe: What a chronic disappointment.

MELISSA LEE: It is a chronic disappointment, Mr Macindoe. Apart from the broadcasting sector—actually, I remember something that the Minister of Broadcasting, Communications and Digital Media put out today. I think it was a press release, suggesting that she will ensure the digital survival of a 1970s documentary series—never mind the World War I and World War II footages, which are slowly, possibly, dissolving in their own acids. She is going to be resurrecting some documentaries. One of them is a documentary about John A Lee, to inspire us all—a documentary about an ardent socialist, for an Ardern-led Government. What quality public broadcasting options this Minister is actually putting together! I am simply astounded at some of the options that she’s actually talking about.

The thing is she’s delivered $15 million into the broadcasting sector, but it was supposed to have been for RNZ+. Radio New Zealand was supposed to deliver a brand new television channel within their means, right—in radio. Radio New Zealand was supposed to have a television channel with $15 million, not all of which is going to Radio New Zealand. It’s going to the ministerial advisory group’s decision for a potential Public Media Funding Commission decision to see whether the $15 million is going to go to RNZ+ or Radio New Zealand.

For me, as a former television producer and somebody who really loves public media, public broadcasting—I actually love it. I love the fact that she is championing it. I think that’s great. You know, I think that’s wonderful. But when the Minister promises so much and when the Minister delivers so little after promising so much, I would say that is a failed Minister, that’s a failed promise, and it is certainly something that we need to monitor.

Hon Tim Macindoe: All talk, no dosh.

MELISSA LEE: That’s exactly right—all talk, no action. There’s certainly no action, apart from the certain breakfast that she had with a certain broadcaster.

I’d like to move on to my other portfolio, in terms of the ethnic communities strategy. I know I only have a very short time left, but it is quite disappointing that the Minister for Ethnic Communities hasn’t really seen an increase—actually, she’s had a decrease—in the funding that she requires. For someone who is supposedly championing the ethnic communities, when considering the fact that the projected population of ethnic communities is set to rise—particularly the Asian community, for example, which is going to rise from 12 to 22 percent by 2038—to consider that Language Line, which has been very good at delivering services to the community, is actually getting a reduction in expectations on their performance and a reduction in funding in all of the portfolio, I think it’s a reflection.

Even the Minister of Education did not deliver for the ethnic communities when he decided to do a survey of the education sector for the next 30 years. He was consulting, apparently, with the parents, but did not include the ethnic languages of the Chinese, the Korean, the Indian. So we, in fact, reminded the Minister; now, he’s actually changed it so that those ethnic community languages are included.

But the very fact that it becomes an afterthought actually makes me wonder whether the Minister for Ethnic Communities is, in fact, doing her job of championing for the rights of all New Zealanders who are not necessarily born in New Zealand and who come from different races and different ethnic communities, speak a different language, and have a different religion to feel as if they are part of this country. I think this is another Minister who is subpar, and she is part of a Government that is definitely subpar.

LOUISA WALL (Labour—Manurewa): Tēnā koe e Te Māngai o Te Whare. Tēnā koutou katoa.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Split call—sorry, this is a split call.

LOUISA WALL: Split call—yes, with my colleague Liz Craig.

It’s my pleasure to speak to the health component of our Budget, and that health component actually comprises $18.1 billion, which is 21 percent of our overall Budget. It very much typifies the priorities that we have as a Government—Labour, New Zealand First, and the Greens. What are our priorities? Well, actually, our priorities, fundamentally, are children, young people, and also those who haven’t got the disposable income to get to a doctor. We see that fundamental to a functioning society is access to health, so I would categorise our priorities as health being a right for all. That’s typified by access to health from 1 December this year for 60,000 New Zealand children who are aged under 14 years of age. We’ve been very specific about who we want to prioritise because from our perspective, as I said earlier, our children and our young people are important and we have to make sure that they’re in the best health possible.

We’ve also prioritised nurses in schools, and so from—well, from this year, in addition to nurses being in decile 1 to 3 schools, they will also be in decile 4 schools, so that’s going to cover another 24,000 young people. Plus—and this is the big plus—those who have a community services card, those who are low and middle income New Zealanders, which is 540,000 New Zealanders, will be able to go to the doctor for free. We think that’s a big deal—600,000 Kiwis being able to go to the doctor, making sure they’re healthy, focusing on our children, and focusing on young people.

What have been our other health priorities in our Budget? Actually, we’ve had a lot of remedial work that needs to be done: assets—hospital assets—that have been left to go into disrepair, weathertightness issues, asbestos issues, sewage problem issues. So we have $850 million for capital developments over the next four years but, specifically, $750 million for those remedial works that have to be undertaken, unfortunately, in district health boards (DHBs) like mine, Counties Manukau District Health Board.

We’ve also prioritised an extra $3.2 billion in operational funding. What are we going to do with that money? Well, $2.2 billion of that money over the next four years will go to DHBs because, unfortunately, 19 of the 20 are actually in deficit because they haven’t received the funding that they’ve needed to operate. So rather than say to our DHBs “You must save money.”, we actually want DHBs to provide services to our community so New Zealanders get access to the services they need. So there will be no constraints on our hospitals being able to deliver those services because the Government’s putting pressure on them to save money.

The other area that I want to highlight in my last minute and a half really has been about the change to Pharmac—very, very important change.

Hon Gerry Brownlee: Cutting funding.

LOUISA WALL: Very, very important change, Mr Brownlee. What we have done is now say to Pharmac, “You have the full remit to purchase medicines for New Zealand.”—full remit, dispensed in the community and dispensed in DHBs. Why we had a system before, the combined pharmaceutical budget, that said to DHBs, “You buy your own medicines for hospitals, and then, Pharmac, you can buy medicines for everything else.”—ridiculous. So we’ve sorted that out, and next year alone they’re going to get an extra $114.2 million—an increase of 13 percent. That’s a budget of $985 million to buy the pharmaceuticals that we as Kiwis need.

That’s massive when you look at this list. This is a list of drugs that the Pharmacology and Therapeutics Advisory Committee, which is part of Pharmac, have said that we should fund. The efficacy’s there; we just haven’t had the money to fund them. There are five items on there that are high-priority items. They are going to—now I’m probably going to not pronounce all these but Sildenafil, which is for Fontan patients, is high. It’s been on this list for 6.75 years. Hopefully, through a process, Pharmac will determine that that drug now can be funded. There’s on here—

Hon Gerry Brownlee: Is that an announcement?

LOUISA WALL: Is it an announcement? Well I hope, actually, that there’ll be several announcements, Mr Brownlee, because we’ve got more money and we can buy more drugs to treat more New Zealanders. Kia ora.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: I call the honourable Dr—oh, I beg your pardon. I call Dr Liz Craig.

Dr LIZ CRAIG (Labour): I don’t mind.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: I’m sure.

Dr LIZ CRAIG: Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. Like my colleague Louisa Wall, I want to focus on the huge impact that Budget 2018 is going to have on our ailing health system. Slightly different approach, though—I want to talk about some of the reasons why we’re doing what we’re doing, because I think, within all the to and fro that you have in the House, it’s actually quite easy to forget that out in the real world, winter’s upon us and there’s some really, really big challenges that we need to fix.

I think, any time now, it’s likely that one of our hospitals somewhere around the country will be calling a code black. What a code black means is there’s too many patients in a hospital and there’s not enough beds to accommodate them. I remember Middlemore Hospital had to call a code black last year, and they had to put up a sign saying the hospital’s full and there’s going to be big delays and you may not be seen for eight hours in A & E. Actually, I’ve been in A & E departments where there is bed blockage happening, and it’s really, really difficult because once the wards bank up, what you’ve got is no more room because it gets gridlocked in A & E. Then what you’re trying to do is assess new patients, but you’ve got nowhere to assess them.

I was in a hospital a little while back with one of my relatives, being squashed up in a corridor right next to everybody else, with them trying to assess her and everybody also being able to overhear her medical history. I think for doctors it’s also really difficult because they’ve got to make some really, really tough calls about who they give that last bed to versus who they send home, and that’s quite clinically challenging. This is something that the Health Committee heard quite a lot about in our district health board (DHB) reviews, where DHB after DHB was saying we’ve got huge issues with overflowing A & Es, and there’s increase and surging in acute demand.

So what’s Budget 2018 going to do about this? Well, I think, after nine years of chronic underfunding, what we’re going to be doing is putting $2.2 billion over the next four years into our DHB system, and that’s going to be the largest increase in a decade. But, to be honest, I’m not sure if that’s what’s going to make the biggest impact, because I think what it is going to be is the millions of dollars that we put into our primary care system.

When you actually look at who’s coming into A & E and what they’re coming in for, what you see is that a lot of the conditions are what we call in the sector ambulatory sensitive. What that means is if you had turned up early to primary care, to your GP, you could have probably prevented that hospital admission. So like, if you get an insect bite, and you kind of think, “Oh yeah, I’m not going to do anything about it”, it gets infected, and you put off going to the GP, and then, all of a sudden, you get a big infection and your whole arm swells up, and you end up in hospital with IV antibiotics. We’ve got a lot of people coming into hospital with ambulatory sensitive conditions, but the problem is: why are people putting off going to the GP? I think the New Zealand Health Survey talks a bit about that when it says that about 14 percent of adults in the last year put off going to the doctor because they couldn’t afford to. If you look at people in the poorest areas, that goes up to about 20 percent.

So what’s Budget 2018 going to do about that? Well, what we’re going to be doing is focusing on the very low cost access to GP services scheme. This is something we actually put in place back in 2006, when people understood what this issue was. It’s a voluntary scheme, and what it means is if a practice has got more than 50 percent high-need patients, then what will happen is the Government will provide them with extra money if they agree to cap their fees. The current caps are free for kids, $12 for young people, and $18 for adults. What we’re going to be doing for those who are eligible for a community services card is we’re going to be making those Very Low Cost Access GP services available to them, even if they might not be enrolled in a Very Low Cost Access practice. What that will do, for those that aren’t enrolled in those practices, is, on average, make GP visits about $20 to $30 cheaper for those people. We’re also going to be extending the community services card to anybody on an accommodation supplement or a low income - related rent subsidy.

The other thing we’re going to be doing is extending free GP visits by one year, so that all kids under 14 can get access so that parents don’t have to worry about the cost. What Budget 2018 is going to be doing is having a huge impact, not only for our health system and for our A & E staff, who are overwhelmed, but also for families who up until now have had to really weigh up the cost before going to the GP. So here’s to Budget 2018 and the huge impact it’s going to be having on families in our health system. Thank you.

Hon GERRY BROWNLEE (National—Ilam): The last two speakers, Louisa Wall and Dr Liz Craig, have, I think, both resorted to the notes provided by the Labour research unit, putting what can only be described as a gloss on a pretty messy situation that the Government presented in the 2018 Budget. The very first point I’d make is that the current financial year doesn’t finish until July, so when you had the Hon Grant Robertson come into the House today and wax lyrical about how wonderfully the economy is going, all of that relates to the previous nine years and, in particular, to the 2017 Budget.

What is really, really interesting is the focus that we’ve just heard on health and how much money is apparently being poured into the health system and how much the health system has been neglected. The facts are that in the nine years National was in Government, there were 12 new hospitals built throughout New Zealand, at huge expense. There were increases in the capital budgets for district health boards (DHBs), and while you’ve got a number of DHBs who’ve been operating in deficit, you have to see that deficit as being a very, very tiny, tiny fraction of the total expenditure from health. The only factually correct information given to us through Louisa Wall, the speaker previous to the last one, was that 21 percent of GDP is represented in the health budget. So if you think about the whole size of the New Zealand economy, the very tiny amount that represents deficits should never be considered a problem, and in many, many cases it would be an indication that appropriate spending levels are being met and that services are being provided. Stories like the sewage in the wall at Manukau—we’ve heard a lot about that over the last few weeks. I’m told that that was an incident that occurred on one day and was fixed within an hour. That’s the sort of normal maintenance that you expect on a building—it doesn’t condemn the entire health system.

These members, interestingly, talk about how wonderful it is that there is so much going into health when, in fact, the 2018-19 Budget has less going into health than National committed in 2017-18. There is a fall in the current allocation to health from the last Budget—a National Budget—to this one, and these guys are coming into this House with the Labour Party research notes, expecting that they could present some sort of utopia arrangement that’s come about simply because they’re currently in Government.

I recall members on that side of the House, when National brought in free healthcare for under-13s, expressing their disappointment about how inadequate that was. I can remember Ron Mark standing in this House saying that it was not good enough, it should have been under-18s, and if a New Zealand First Government was formed, then that’s something that New Zealand First would demand of any new Government. They would insist on it—free healthcare for under-18s as a matter of priority. Well, Mr Mark, I don’t know whether you were in the room when the Budget was constructed—clearly not—because that’s not what’s happening. What’s happening is the extension that the National Government had previously announced and carried through as an election promise. So Labour are now delivering on election promises from National, with the support of New Zealand First.

The big problem, of course, is that the outlook for the economy has worsened. When we left office, the predictions from Treasury—maybe it was just the “kids in Treasury”, I don’t know. But they were predicting a 3.5 percent growth, which would fluctuate to an average of 4 percent over the next five to six years. And now—and now—that’s down to 3 percent, and why? Because the Government have made some spending choices that just don’t make sense.

Now, I don’t want to be hard on New Zealand First, but let’s be clear: a billion dollars for better-quality gin, better-quality cucumber, and more sandwiches for the big diplomats who are being deployed in places like Sweden will not make a single difference to the New Zealand economy. If Winston Peters had come into the House and said that we were putting all of that money over the period that it’s dedicated to into the trade agenda, I think we’d have understood that—I think we’d have understood that. But when it comes to just simply saying that New Zealand’s position in the world is going to be enhanced by having more diplomats out there, it tends to run against the whole idea of us being in a more, you’d say, electronic world and, effectively, means that this Government wants better-quality embassies around the world so that when they’re swanning about on their big trips, they’ve got nicer places to entertain those who they—

Greg O’Connor: You would know, Mr Brownlee. You would know.

Hon GERRY BROWNLEE: —drag along for the gin and the cucumber sandwiches.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): Order! Do not bring the Speaker into the debate.

Hon GERRY BROWNLEE: I want to make it very clear to the member over there—a former West Coaster who’s clearly lost his roots; he’s now very much an urbanite—that the gin and cucumber circuit was not one that I fully participated in at any point during my brief tenure.

Then, of course, there is this extraordinary decision to say, “Right, the first year of your studies at a tertiary level will be free.” Now, on the face of it, I can understand how people might say, “That’s quite good.”, but what about the second-year students, the third-year students, the fourth-year students, the second-year apprentices, the second-year people, and the third- and fourth-year people in other training who will meet all of their own costs? And then, of course, the expectation that the numbers would blossom due to this policy is completely failing, with an expectation that 900 fewer young New Zealanders will enter training in a tertiary sector during the period—

Hon Louise Upston: How many?

Hon GERRY BROWNLEE: Nine hundred million—sorry, 900 this year alone, which is a fall in the number. So they go out and give something for free and 900 fewer people turn up to take it. How does that work? It doesn’t. All it means is that there is a squandering of that money on things that might have made a difference. Perhaps New Zealand First would have got what it wanted in the health sector—who knows?

And then, of course, there is the issue of the 1,800 new police. Well, how do we count the 1,800? First, start with the 880 that National had funded—start with the 880 that the National had funded—and then let’s lower the standards, because that’s coming. Let’s lower the standards. I dare anybody in this House to go out to the Police College and ask what changes they’ve made in the arrangements for their recruits in the last 18 months. Standards dropped. So we have a strong police advocate now inside the Government and standards dropping, we have 880 of the 1,800 new police funded by the previous Government, and we have a claim by the current Government that those who are sworn are actually new policemen. Well, the reality is, they can’t arrest anybody. They won’t attend any of the Saturday night difficulties that so many of our police courageously deal with; they will simply be bean counters—you’d say “desk jockeys”—back in the stations. They’re necessary. No doubt about it—they’re necessary. But don’t try and hoodwink the public into believing that they are part of an active, front-line police force. They are not.

Then, can I save my final remarks for the extraordinary Provincial Growth Fund. No one would begrudge the regions developing in the way that they’re capable of. No one would begrudge the regions making better of the resources that they have available to them. We left office with a series of documents that were produced over a period of years in conjunction with the regions, looking at how they might develop. Those documents will be the blueprint for the giveaway that Shane Jones engages in over the next couple of years. To have suggested that somehow this is a unique thing to New Zealand First is completely wrong, and I notice that there’s already quite a backing away from what the criteria will be for people to be able to get it.

Today, we saw the greatest irony of all, where Mr Jones himself asked the Minister for Māori Development to confirm that there will be Māori development grants for Māori organisations to put together proposals to seek grants from the Provincial Growth Fund. That is the sort of ridiculous thing that we’re going to see a lot more of over the next couple of years. It indicates that Treasury views on what is likely to happen in the economy—a retraction. And just think about this: under the previous Government, 10,000 new jobs a month were created; under this Government, 4,000—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): I apologise to the member; your time has expired. This is a split call, I understand. Darroch Ball, you have five minutes.

DARROCH BALL (NZ First): Thank you, Madam Assistant Speaker. Here’s a question that I wonder if anyone could answer. What would you call it when you combine record homelessness—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): Can I just remind the member—

DARROCH BALL: —what would one call it—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): Order!

DARROCH BALL: Sorry, Madam Assistant Speaker.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): Can I just remind the member—thank you. You know better. Thank you.

DARROCH BALL: What would one call it if you combine record homelessness; increased child poverty; record debt; record immigration; underinvestment in infrastructure, like health and education; declining police numbers; increased disengaged youth, being “neets”; increased serious youth crime; increased serious crime in general; 173 biosecurity breaches; overflowing prisons; clogged up courts; underfunding of State houses, defence, the Department of Conservation, and rail; and a massive infrastructure deficit? What would one call it? [Interruption] Oh no. Oh no. Apparently, what you call it is a healthy surplus. Apparently, what you call it is their healthy surplus. What we’ve had been hearing over the last week in the Budget speeches from the National Party is all about how on earth this Government is inheriting such a healthy surplus and then have to spend it all at once—we’ve got to spend it all at once.

Well, how about if you go and look at the list that I’ve just read out—that’s why. If we go back, if we have to look at the list of all the things that I’ve just read out—the infrastructure deficit and the chronic underfunding of all of the essential services of this country—then perhaps the members on the other side of the House there would understand why their so-called healthy surplus was nothing but a surplus of spin, a surplus of spin.

The funny thing is that in every single speech that we’ve been hearing from the National Party, and in all the questions in the House, everything that they’ve been complaining about has all been on this list. They’re talking and complaining and asking questions about the health sector, about the education issues, about the police numbers, and about the biosecurity breaches or the M.bovis. All they have to do is look in the mirror and understand where those answers come from. It is because of the nine years of chronic underfunding from the National Government.

I want to quote Matt Doocey. I don’t often do that, because I don’t want to embarrass him too often. But he said, when he got up and he talked about it in his speech, that there was something strange about the Budget. There was something not quite right about the Budget—something not quite right.

Well, the first thing, Mr Doocey, is that it does feel a little bit different from over that side of the House. I think it’s got to do with the acoustics or something, perhaps. But that’s the first thing. The second thing is I think that some in the National Party have figured out—not all but some in the National Party—that this is a different Budget because this is a true MMP Budget. This is probably, if I can say, the first true MMP Budget, because what we needed to do on this side of the House were little things called collaboration, compromise, and cooperation. But that side of the House wouldn’t have a clue, because during their tenure over the last 10 or 11 years, they’ve thrown the bone to a couple of the little smaller parties in the corner and told them to chew it and keep quiet, and then the National Party could do what they want. They felt—they didn’t know this; they didn’t think about it, but they felt it because it was a subconscious thing—that it was their Budget. They felt it was a National Party Budget, and they’d probably stand up and say that as well, right now.

What they don’t understand, and what they and those other smaller parties in that coalition over the last 10 years didn’t appreciate, was that they were in a coalition, or confidence and supply agreement. They were in an MMP environment, but the National Party didn’t act like that, and they are acting the same exact way in Opposition. They still think this is an FPP Budget. That’s why they stand up and attack the Labour Party with these so-called broken promises. They don’t understand that this is an MMP Budget—an MMP Budget.

I liked the comments from a few of the members opposite that call the Government a three-headed monster. What would one call, then, a National Party, United Future, Māori Party, and ACT Government?

Hon Ruth Dyson: Four-headed monster.

DARROCH BALL: Four-headed—you see, they don’t even realise that. They’ve got no idea what they’re talking about. They’ve got no consideration about what the actual facts are whatsoever.

I just want to in my last 20 seconds just say that one of the things that I’m very pleased about this Budget, and that I thank the Minister Ron Mark for, is the increase, finally, in the Limited Service Volunteers (LSV) scheme. We will show all of those members over there in the National Party how great a scheme the LSV is. Watch this space.

JENNY MARCROFT (NZ First): Thank you, Madam Assistant Speaker. Kia ora koutou. It is a pleasure to stand and speak on Budget 2018, and I’d just like to acknowledge our finance Minister, the Hon Grant Robertson, for presenting to us a fantastic Budget. Governments have priorities, and sometimes those priorities are of the Government’s choosing and sometimes they’re thrust upon the Government due to circumstances—and sometimes because of catastrophe. Catastrophe is immediate; it’s obvious. But sometimes catastrophes are slow-moving and the implications are less obvious.

There are many worthy causes and many projects with merit to deal with, and distinguishing between them is a big part of the work of Government. Now, these distinctions represent the values of a Government. New Zealand First believes that Budget 2018 addresses many of the immediate concerns left by the previous Government’s rundown of core public services. Fiscal prudence means that we can’t do everything that we’d like to straight away, but a platform has been created by this Budget to get New Zealand on the right track again.

Urgent action is required by this Budget to rebuild critical and crumbling public services—$6.5 billion extra will be spent over the next four years to get our State institutions functioning properly again. It’s really easy to run things down, and it takes a while for people to realise just how bad things are.

We see biosecurity threats coming at us like never before, because of the size and complexity of global trading systems and a National Government—a National Government—that claimed to represent the interests of farmers, but it failed to respond to the biosecurity challenges that the giant moat around New Zealand used to protect us from. Psa, myrtle rust, and now M. bovis—they could have jumped on that latest nasty disease, but they dithered. National just didn’t rise to the occasion and snuff it out, and now look where we are today. The costs dealing with the disease have escalated and our options are now very limited. Making sure we provide the funds necessary to do this job is where the rubber hits the road, and this Government is determined to make sure that money is available where it is most needed, but, of course, it doesn’t just end there.

We can’t stop something like kauri dieback just by throwing money at it. We have to be committed way beyond just allocating funding, because to defeat kauri dieback, we need the cooperation of all New Zealanders. What we’re talking about is a mobilisation of all Kiwis. There is just a tiny fraction of our kauri forest left and it’s difficult to overestimate how important it is to save what is left. Economically, ecologically, and culturally, the loss of kauri would be a really massive loss to New Zealand and to New Zealanders. So, let’s be clear, the potential loss of these giants of the New Zealand forest now has to be considered a real possibility. We know what the disease is; we know how it spreads. Kauri, we know, are the keystone species in our forests—critical to the survival of other flora. What we have signalled in this Budget by this coalition Government is a determination to turn back the tide on kauri dieback.

Budget 2018 sets a platform—a platform we will use to rebuild New Zealand’s critical public services; protect our natural resources; take action on child poverty, on housing, on homelessness; and promote economic and regional development. These are big things, and this Budget shows that the Government is facing up to these challenges. This coalition is a coalition built on collaboration, a collaboration which is smooth and functioning, with common objectives tying us together. New Zealand First is delighted with the direction of this Budget. It starts the process of regeneration, and it includes an important and constructive input from New Zealand First.

It was easy for a Government that lacked ambition, that always took the path of least resistance—that was the previous Government. We have a new Government now. We have a leader and a group of three parties that understand why this country needs to be seen and heard overseas too. It’s a Budget that organises priorities, sets the platform for the rebuilding of New Zealand, and it will face up to our problems and recognise our opportunities.

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

The Hon Dr Nick Smith, I understand—

Hon Dr Nick Smith: Madam Assistant Speaker, the—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): Excuse me. I understand this is a five-minute call?

Hon Dr Nick Smith: Split.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): Thank you.

Hon Dr NICK SMITH (National—Nelson): The two phrases that so beautifully sum up this Budget are the “Dowry Budget” and the “Broken Promises Budget”. It’s the “Dowry Budget” because it’s the price that Labour has had to pay for power in respect of New Zealand First. Let’s not pretend that tax breaks for good-looking racehorses or an extra billion dollars for diplomats and aid or the $3 billion slush fund for Shane Jones are the top priority issues for which the taxpayer would be wanting this Budget to prioritise. What is so appalling and unprincipled about this Budget is the way in which politics has got ahead of the public interest.

Can I just give a simple area—

Greg O’Connor: Spoken like a true jilted lover.

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: —in this Budget—I’d love the interjection from Greg O’Connor to justify this for me, and that is that the racing industry is going to get a tax concession that is available to no other industry: not the beef industry, not the sheep industry, not the deer industry, nor anywhere else. Why is it—I ask members of the House—that there is this sweetheart, multimillion-dollar tax concession for the racing industry? I’ll tell you why: it’s because of the dough and the ads that New Zealand First got in the election from members of the racing industry.

Now, I’m proud of the economy that we bequested to members opposite, but I’m even more proud of the fact that New Zealand, last year, was ranked as the least corrupt and the most transparent country in the world. I’m proud of that. I do challenge members opposite and say that the sort of tawdry deals that New Zealand First has done in the racing industry strike at the heart of “where is the public interest?”

Now, this is the 27th Budget that I’ve heard read in this House, and it stands out, for I never have seen a Budget that so blatantly breaks the word of what people were promised at the election. I would love members opposite to explain to my schools, to my constituents—I’ve had people ringing my electorate office this week, upset because they were promised an end to school donations in the first Budget of this Government. This is not minor. This is about $50,000 for every single school in New Zealand, and members opposite broke their word. They told people to vote for them because they would get rid of school donations in their first Budget, and they did not deliver.

They’ve also been dishonest with 800,000 superannuitants. They told them that they would benefit by over $700 and then, in this Budget, snuck away, took away, robbed 800,000 New Zealanders of their $267 that members opposite promised. I know my colleague Chris Bishop will talk about the broken promise on police. I know Nikki Kaye will talk about the broken promise of an iPad for every single student that Labour promised. I know people will be asking, “Where is the reduction in GP costs that was promised by members opposite?”

Hon Andrew Little: Delivered—delivered.

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: Where is—no, it’s not what you said. Mr Little has the cheek to say it was delivered. Absolutely it is not what they said.

And then we come to KiwiBuild, which has sunk from 10,000 houses a year to just 1,000, and what was affordable has now become $650,000. This Budget is a Budget of broken promises that will haunt this Government all the way to the next election.

CHRIS BISHOP (National—Hutt South): Thank you very much, Madam Assistant Speaker. Never before has a Government been elected with so much high-sounding rhetoric, so many good intentions, so many promises, but with such little idea about how to implement those intentions. Let’s be clear: the Labour Party did not expect to win the last election, because they went around the country spraying promises and money around like confetti. They went around the country promising $20 million here for rare diseases—[Interruption]

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): Order! [Interruption] Order! I know it is Thursday afternoon, but can I please just have the opportunity to hear the speech being delivered. Thank you.

CHRIS BISHOP: They went around the country—$20 million for rare diseases here, we’ll get rid of school donations in the first year, we’ll do first year free for tertiary students and polytech students, and we’ll massively increase early childhood spending. And then they came to adding them all up, and we said, “Actually, your numbers don’t add up. We’ve got some experience at this. We think there’s a fiscal hole.”, and they mocked us and they laughed and they said, “Oh, you don’t understand economics. You don’t understand finances.” What do we find? We find a Labour Government in power. We find that they are borrowing more, they are spending more, and they’re taxing more.

I mean, we are in this very strange situation where the Government books are in outstanding shape, thanks to the hard work of us in Government, and the global economy’s going well, the New Zealand economy’s doing well, and the Government is going to borrow more—the debt track’s blown out—they’re going to spend more, and on top of that we’ve got five new taxes. There’s one tax cut. You’ve just got to own a good-looking racehorse, so, you know, kudos for that, I suppose, but we’ve got five new taxes.

So I want to go through the rhetoric and compare it with the actual reality, because that’s what the Government will ultimately be held to account on. Does their reality, do their policies mesh with what they’re trying to do with their high-sounding rhetoric? Well, the Prime Minister says she will put children at the heart of everything this Government does, and in their first six months, what have they done? They’ve got rid of charter schools—charter schools that are helping out some of those kids who need support the most. We’ve got rid of Aspire Scholarships—$3 million; $3 million Aspire Scholarships cost. They take kids who are successful and have ambition and potential from low-decile communities and place them into other schools. Gone—$3 million. Jenny Salesa said the money will be better spent in the education system. Do you know how much that is extra per kid in the system? It’s 14c a year—14c a child. I think we could have kept them. No money for KidsCan. They’ll shut down the children’s health camps.

And you know what the worst thing is? The worst thing is the fees-free policy, because it’s $3 billion over four years for fewer students. I mean, get that. It’s unbelievable. It’s a $3 billion policy that does not increase participation. It’s just quite remarkable. What that means is there’s no money for the Aspire Scholarships, there’s no money for the health camps, there’s no money for the cheaper GP visits, and there’s no money for early childhood education—from a Prime Minister that says that the early years are the most important and we’ve got to invest in the early years—and it’s $3 billion going to kids who would probably most likely go to university in the first place and gain that degree and the income premium that comes from that. The Prime Minister is giving them a bribe, because that’s what it is. So that’s how the rhetoric does not mesh with the reality.

Then we get to the police, which is my area—1,800 new police. This grand promise—they’re going to put them all on the beat; 1,800. By the way, just as an aside, they said the 1,800 new police would cost $40 million. That’s what the Prime Minister said—$40 million. We said, “No, that’s not right”, and again they laughed at us and said, “You don’t understand how Government accounts work.” Well, guess what the Budget said it would cost? An extra $298 million, which is not quite what we said, which was $252 million, but it’s actually more. So that’s just an aside. The 1,800 new police—except, actually, it’s not 1,800 new police; it’s 1,100 front-line police, 880 of them funded by National in Budget 2017, and it’s over five years, not three years. And Stuart Nash essentially admitted that to the House earlier, so it’s another broken promise.

School donations: I know my colleague Nicola Willis is upset about that. And early childhood spending? They want to invest in the early years. The early childhood education budget increase funded volume growth. It funded roll growth. Chris Hipkins went all around the country in the last year saying he was going to massively increase spending. This is a Budget from a Government that does not know what it is doing, and it is a Budget of broken promises.

CHLÖE SWARBRICK (Green): Tēnā koe e Te Māngai. Tēnā koutou e Te Whare. I just wanted to touch on something noted by Chris Bishop and ask: if the National Party is so adverse to us spending money on this fees-free policy, will they reverse it? I invite the next speaker to address that point.

This was my first Budget and it was indeed quite a special, exciting Budget day for me. My very friendly echo chamber of Twitter was alight with hot takes and reckons and a lot of names flying around for the Budget, as I think is often kind of custom and tradition. My unsolicited hot take, my title for this Budget, is that it is a “Budget of bread, butter, and birds”. This is a Budget of rebuilding. It is a Budget that is focused on people and the planet and, as has been critiqued—interestingly enough—by the Opposition, it’s a Budget of collaboration, because that’s what happens when you have more than one monopoly, one hive mind working on something. That’s what happens when you have to pore over the details and when you cannot take a monopoly of power for granted. You end up with something more robust and more representative.

The honourable member of the Opposition, Scott Simpson, was pulling the figure of $100 million, seemingly out of thin air, when attempting to point out what the Greens had won in this Budget. I don’t know who in the National research department is providing him with those figures, but I would like to offer a slight fact check. There is half a billion dollars in this Budget related to the mahi, past and present, of the Green Party of Aotearoa / New Zealand. That’s in the funding of the independent Climate Commission; of a Green Infrastructure Fund; of a significant increase in the funding for the Department of Conservation; of the beginning of the long overdue overhaul of the broken welfare system; towards ending energy poverty in New Zealand; of a pilot project for integrated therapies and mental health for young adults; and so much more.

Secondly, the Hon Scott Simpson was trying to pigeon-hole those Green wins into the environment. I’d refer him to the 20 diverse and, ultimately, holistic goals in the Green-Labour confidence and supply agreement, and I have a copy of it here, should he like to come and take it later and have a read. They are under the headings of “Sustainable Economy”, “Healthy Environment”, and “Fair Society”. Alternatively, he is welcome to engage in a kōrero with our party at any time about the inextricable values that underpin the Green Party: ecological wisdom, social responsibility, appropriate decision-making, and non-violence. It is, fundamentally, about people and the planet, as indeed this Budget is.

Thirdly, whilst I understand that some in this House are into this game of short-sighted, tit-for-tat politics, I think most of us, relatively fresh off the back of an election campaign, are more than aware of the fact that New Zealanders out there in the world beyond this plush carpet and wood panelling couldn’t care less about high-level rhetoric or point-scoring, because you cannot feed your kids with political rhetoric, you cannot pay our nation’s teachers with political rhetoric, and you cannot fix our rivers or build futureproofed infrastructure with political rhetoric.

If I could allude to a rather well-known quip from the previous Leader of the Opposition, this Government’s shared values set the agenda, and this Budget pays the bills. Rightfully, the New Zealand public couldn’t care less about who gets to win the political football. The only score that they are keeping track of is the quality of their lives, of the lives of their kids and their whānau, and on that scorecard, this Budget is a win.

As the Greens’ education spokesperson, I am particularly proud of what this Government has achieved in learning support and inclusive education with our very first Budget. In a Budget that covers the bases and starts to rebuild our foundations, it’s not only a strong signal of where this Government’s values and commitments lie but it’s going to have a tangible impact on the lives of thousands of kids around our country and on the lives of their whānau. So it should come as no surprise that I will use my call in this Budget debate to speak in particular to the significance of the $249.3 million of spending committed over four years to deliver on five learning support outcomes.

This is a crucial move towards delivering on the rights of kids in Aotearoa to have equitable access to education. That right is woven through so much of our legislation and, indeed, in international agreements, too. The Education Act of 1989, at section 8(1) states, “people who have special educational needs (whether because of disability or otherwise) have the same rights to enrol and receive education at State schools as people who do not.”

The 2006 United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, to which New Zealand is a signatory, in the child-friendly version of the document, at article 23, states, “You have the right to special education and care if you have a disability, as well as all the rights in this convention, so that you can live a full life.” In the 2007 release of The New Zealand Curriculum, the inclusion principle required that “The curriculum is non-sexist, non-racist, and non-discriminatory; it ensures that students’ identities, languages, abilities, and talents are recognised and affirmed and that their learning needs are addressed.” Progress has continued over that past decade, but not at the rate that is required to genuinely deliver on the need that still exists.

In 2016, at the request of my fantastic predecessor, the last Green education spokesperson, Catherine Delahunty, in the previously titled Education and Science Committee, undertook an inquiry, along with the rest of the committee, into the identification and support for students with significant challenges in dyslexia, dyspraxia, and autism spectrum disorders in primary and secondary schools. That inquiry produced 46 recommendations, a number of which are picked up on and delivered on in this Budget.

So what exactly is it that we are going to do over the next four years in inclusive education and learning support? Well, firstly, we’re injecting $133.5 million into the ongoing resourcing scheme—otherwise known as ORS—to give learning support to another thousand students as early as next year. That’s more speech language therapists, psychologists, occupational therapy and physiotherapy, additional teacher time, and teacher-aide support for school students with the highest and most complex learning needs.

Secondly, there is $30.2 million to support about 2,900 deaf and hard of hearing students and approximately 1,500 low-vision students, through the sensory schools and New Zealand Sign Language programmes.

Additionally, and thirdly, there is $59.3 million extra going into critical teacher-aide funding.

Fourthly, for the Te Kahu Toi Intensive Wraparound Service, there’s an additional $4.8 million to reach an extra 30 eligible students each year, increasing delivery to 365 students from July 2018.

Fifthly, and finally, something which I’m personally over the moon about is that early intervention services will receive an extra $21.5 million in an operating boost, plus $272,000 in capital to recruit additional early intervention staff. What that tangibly means is an additional 1,900 early childhood education children with high needs will receive support from next year.

I am incredibly proud of this Budget as a starting point for what this Government is going to do over its three-year term and indeed, potentially, into the future. I’m also incredibly proud to highlight that as of next year, the co-leader of the Greens, Minister of Statistics, and Associate Minister of Finance, James Shaw, has been actively involved in a process to produce the well-being framework, which will produce a well-being Budget from next year.

So what I have to say to the Opposition is that it’s going to get even better, folks. This is just the beginning. I would like to acknowledge the work of our partners in Government, both New Zealand First and the Labour Party. It’s just the beginning.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): I understand this is a split call. Simeon Brown, you have five minutes.

SIMEON BROWN (National—Pakuranga): Thank you very much, Madam Assistant Speaker. Chlöe Swarbrick, the previous speaker, just sat down and said that it’s going to get better. Well, let’s ask the question: is it going to get better?

I came to this House as the member of Parliament privileged to represent the electorate of Pakuranga, and the question that I have is: what is this Budget going to do for the hard-working taxpayers in my electorate? Well, firstly, I thought, how could we describe this Budget? What could we call it? The first name I came up with was the “tax hike Budget”, because this Budget fails to address the growing problem of bracket creep. Every year, as incomes go up, New Zealanders are paying more and more tax, not because they’re getting richer, but because incomes are going up and the brackets are not being changed. On this side of the House, we believe that those who work hard should be able to reap the reward for their effort, and we need to address that. This Government has failed to address bracket creep in this Budget.

The second name for this Budget could be the “coalition of chaos Budget”, because that’s what they are—a coalition of chaos. On one side, they’ve got this $1 billion for a regional development slush fund and, on the other side, only $100 million for green investment. The ideology seems to be 100 percent one way and 10 percent the other. I’d like to ask the Green Party whether their embassy in Stockholm will have plush carpet and wood panelling on its walls, because they seem to be feeling that that’s what it should be. This is a “coalition of chaos Budget”, with ideas all over the place and no clear strategy other than to buy the support of the coalition to keep it together.

We could also call it the “spray and walk away Budget”—spray and walk away. I’d like to remind New Zealanders of the fact that $2.8 billion—[Interruption]

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): Settle! Order!

SIMEON BROWN: —has been thrown at free fees for tertiary students. They don’t like hearing this, but they’ve spent $2.8 billion on free fees, and how many additional students have gone to university this year? How many—100? No, 900 fewer students have gone to university this year—$2.8 billion. What are the priorities on the other side of the House?

But there are more names you could give to this Budget. There are so many more names you could give to this Budget. I like this one: the “free electricity for millionaires Budget”. Yep, the “free electricity for millionaires Budget”, so they can go over to the Gold Coast and have a nice holiday in a warm part of the world and have free electricity at home for their house, which is not using any heating.

Hon Andrew Little: So are you going to can it?

SIMEON BROWN: That’s what this Budget—and another point, which Minister Little might like to know, is that winter apparently starts on 1 July. So I don’t know what the people down in Queenstown, where it’s snowing, are feeling today. Winter has already begun, but the winter energy payment won’t start until 1 July. Those in my electorate who qualify for this payment are wondering and questioning what on earth this Government thinks about scientific facts such as when the seasons change. This is the anti-science Budget, if you ask me. They don’t understand when seasons change.

There’s another name for this Budget. It’s the “broken promise Budget”. They’ve broken promises left, right—well, no, they don’t have right; just left, left, and left, they have broken promises. School donations, innovative learning, where all schools are to have innovative learning environments by 2030—well, where are they in the Budget? Nowhere.

They’ve cut public-private partnerships (PPPs) for school property development. Well, on one side of the ideological drift of this Government, they’re happy to have PPPs to build a road north of Auckland, but they’re not happy to have a PPP building a school. What on earth are they thinking? They’ve got no idea. They’re ideologically unintelligible.

I’d like to finish by talking about the children. They could have funded $3 million for the Stand Children’s Services down in the South Island, and they have failed to in this Budget. I stand with the children. I stand with Stand Children’s Services in my electorate of Pakuranga. I’m proud of the work they do. They need to fund the children’s services up and down this country if they really believed—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): Order! Your time has expired. I apologise.

DENISE LEE (National—Maungakiekie): For my contribution here this afternoon, I’m going to fill the stereotype of Aucklanders and talk about Auckland. Many of my colleagues would not like to admit it—they’re great rural MPs—but the importance of Auckland cannot be underscored. This is Aucklanders’ first look at a Labour-led Budget. Aucklanders have watched the campaign, they’ve heard the promises, and this is their first opportunity to witness a Budget that had so much expectation attached to it—in fact, so much they had to do a mini-Budget beforehand to, apparently, squeeze it all in.

But what’s the reality? What impact will this Budget have on Aucklanders? Well, straight off the bat, we know what sort of impact it’s going to have on Aucklanders’ bank balances. It’s quite a contrast, where under the last National Government the average household would’ve been better off $1,000 a year, but, six months into this new Government, all they’ve got is new taxes—increased nationwide petrol taxes and the new Amazon tax. This Government is asking Auckland families to cough up money to compensate for their seriously misguided priorities.

But that’s not the end of it. This Government has been in cahoots with Auckland Council, working hand in hand to burden Aucklanders with a regional fuel tax, on top of everything else. They introduced legislation before Aucklanders were consulted on it, they shortened the committee process, and they changed the legislation to suit council’s proposal. They have moved heaven and earth to make Auckland pay, this term, an extra 25c a litre. Now, what was the record high figure in petrol prices today, you might ask? Two dollars and what? Two dollars and 30c, that’s right—

Hon Member: 40.

DENISE LEE: Forty cents, is it? And what do we expect it to be very soon? Over how many dollars a litre?

Hon David Bennett: Three.

DENISE LEE: Three—$3 a litre. Great Barrier Island, you’re Auckland too. You’re already paying today over $3 a litre. Everyone, add 25c a litre on to all those prices.

Now, given the amount of new taxes and debt this Government’s passing on to Aucklanders and the talk of crisis in the education and health sectors, surely you would expect a boost in investment there. Well, not in health. What are the district health boards (DHB) getting? Auckland DHB—surely they could expect a big boost in new funds. Well, they did get an increase, but it was almost exactly the same as the boost they got from the last National Government—only a 0.7 percent difference. Waitematā DHB—their new funding was actually less than what they got last year.

Erica Stanford: No!

DENISE LEE: Yes. And Counties Manukau DHB, with the famous Middlemore Hospital, that’s apparently crumbling to the ground—like Auckland, it’s almost business as usual: a less than 1 percent difference in new funds between Budgets 2017 and 2018. Those numbers don’t match the chronic Labour underfunding crisis script that they’ve been using for nine years now.

Auckland families are also paying two, three, four, five hundred dollars in donations—well, keep your wallets handy when it comes to those school donations because—

Erica Stanford: Broken promise.

DENISE LEE: —the broken promise from the Labour Government to remove those school donations, it’s still a promise that remains just a promise. And it’s not just families; the business community in Auckland are under the pump too. It’s the business capital, of course—Auckland is—the engine room of our economy, and thousands of businesses, small and large, will be hamstrung by industrial relations changes that this Government is about to push through, taking us back to the 1970s. Family businesses in Auckland will have to pay for unions to come into business to do their union work and cost business time for union benefit.

This Government has its hand around the neck of Aucklanders and the rest of the country, and they’re milking it for everything that they can to fuel their directionless tax and spend policies. If you get down to the nitty-gritty detail, you realise that they have to do it because New Zealand First has its hand around the neck of the Labour Party. Aucklanders must wish that they were Winston Peters, Shane Jones, or a good-looking horse, because it’s clear that’s the only way that you can get some money out of this Budget.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): I understand this is a split call. Greg O’Connor, you have five minutes.

GREG O’CONNOR (Labour—Ōhāriu): Can I assist those at home and members across the House—in fact, everyone here—just to explain with some imagery as to what’s going on here. We’re all aware of that cartoon where you see a fine day, people enjoying themselves, and it’s a nice place but in the middle of it there’s this person wandering around with a cloud over their head, with those lightning strikes going down on them. They’re getting soaked, and everywhere they go there’s doom and gloom—it doesn’t matter how good it is, it’s going to be wet, cloudy, and stormy. That’s the imagery I’d like to see, because as you sit here, as you listen to what’s coming from the Opposition benches—I’m sorry Madam Assistant Speaker; not you—that’s exactly what it’s like. It’s a little bit like—[Interruption]

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): Order! [Interruption] Order! [Interruption] Order! Can we just take it down a fraction? Thank you. [Interruption] No, no, carry on please.

GREG O’CONNOR: You weren’t telling me off, Madam Assistant Speaker? Thank you for that, I’m used to being pulled up—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): No, carry on.

GREG O’CONNOR: Can I go back to—there’s this cloud that comes, and sitting here in the House for the last two days, three days, the gloom—the lights might as well be off. But on this side of the House I know that, having chosen to come over here, it is glowing.

A little bit more seriously—if I can carry on another piece of imagery, this is like a great ship, a great tanker that has been bearing towards, probably, the Astrolabe Reef in the last nine years—[Interruption]

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): Order! [Interruption] Order! Can we just have a little order in the House, please? There are some reflections that have been thrown about which are not appropriate. Can we just take the tone down—I know it’s Thursday afternoon and we’re all looking forward to the end of the day, but, please, can we just take it down a bit, and remember not to bring me into the debate.

GREG O’CONNOR: Thank you, Madam Assistant Speaker. So this ship, the direction it’s been going in—it’s been going towards, ultimately, a rich country full of poor people, because that’s what neo-liberal politics is. The people on the other side—I know they’re good people; they’ve come here for the right reason. We all come here for the right reason. But it’s the belief—a blind belief—that if we continue to actually just move towards the way we’re going, where all the wealth is concentrated in fewer and fewer hands, ultimately, we are condemning our children, our grandchildren, and the generations after us to a particularly unfair world.

Ultimately, if you’re going to take it to its natural extension, you go to your Russian and French revolutions—the unfairness that must be fixed. Whereas what you’ve seen—if I can go back to that imagery with this—is this ship now has straightened up. We’ve avoided the Astrolabe Reef, and now we’re actually—because there’s been a sea change. What we’re actually delivering here, and as you go through this Budget, it’s making sure that that direction we were going to—we were just going to end up with a lot of, as I say, more and more people who are left out, who are alienated from our society.

Another piece of imagery: like looking in the restaurant window with their noses up against it—looking but no chance of ever getting. It’s a rock star economy—never going to be able to afford a ticket to go to it; never get in there. So it’ll be a nice little exclusion. Ultimately, it’s all of our children and grandchildren who’ll suffer that.

So what this Budget represents is a change. Actually, what it’s going to mean is that many more New Zealanders—in fact, ultimately, all New Zealanders are going to feel part of this country. So you can afford to go to the doctor as a result of this. Your housing is going to be met—it won’t be met overnight, but it will be met.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): Order! [Interruption] Order! Sorry, could I encourage the member not to use the word “you”. Perhaps if you would face me and speak to me, then the speech will actually be directed to me, as opposed to including me in the debate. Please, Mr O’Connor, carry on.

GREG O’CONNOR: Thank you very much for those instructions.

But anyway, going back to what this Budget does, in the very short time left to me, I’ll just say why I’m so pleased to be here speaking about that is that this whole change that’s been now—we’re going to end up with the wealth of this country, this great country, being shared by so many more. It will ensure that we end up—that this will be a moment that people will look back on, when that ship was steered away from the Astrolabe Reef—where we actually now end up with a better country that we all, and more importantly our grandchildren, will get to enjoy. Thank you, Madam Assistant Speaker.

ANAHILA KANONGATA’A-SUISUIKI (Labour): Ko ahau a Anahila Kanongata’a-Suisuiki.

[I am Anahila Kanongata’a-Suisuiki.]

I want to congratulate the last speaker, Greg O’Connor, and wish him a happy birthday. It was his birthday this week, so happy birthday, Mr Greg O’Connor.

Health is the state of being free from illness and injury. But before I get on to my speech, I would like to congratulate Maria Meredith, who has just been declared the winner of the Maungakiekie-Tāmaki Local Board by-election. Woo hoo! It’s an indication for 9 June. Maybe on 26 June, as the list member of Parliament based in Papakura and Tāmaki, the whip can note 26 June, the swearing-in date, as something like a leave application for myself.

Anyway, this coalition Government is about helping more Kiwis get the medical care they need. But before I get on to that, it would be rude of me not to acknowledge some of the speakers on the other side. So I will take not very long to do that—

Hon Member: Not too many.

ANAHILA KANONGATA’A-SUISUIKI: Not too many; not too many. I want to speak about—English is my second language, but I want to acknowledge the speaker who said “bequested”. I think the word is “bequeathed”. They have bequeathed us long, long waiting hours in the hospitals; they have bequeathed us, in the last nine years, people sleeping in cars; they have bequeathed us many, many things. It reminds me—well, actually, they have bequeathed us the “new normal”. The “new normal”, where last year more than half a million New Zealanders didn’t go to the GP because of cost. And it’s now normal. The media has reported it, and it’s now normal. It is now normal that we were all shocked to discover some of our hospitals were literally rotting, after a decade of neglect and under-investment by the previous Government.

It reminds me of this whakataukī—a proverb, for members on the other side. When I think of that bequeathed, left, to us, that legacy—there was another word somebody else mentioned on the other side, the word “legacy”—it reminds me of this whakataukī. It says, “He mahi te āta noho e kī ana te wheke.”—it is the octopus who says sitting is working.

I think that’s what’s happened in the last nine years. But let me get to—I want to speak to what it means for people living in South Auckland. What does it mean? What do we mean when we say, for under-14s—what do we mean to say one year, free GP visits for under-14s? What do we mean by including zero-fee, after-hours care and prescription medication? It means that the parents of under-14-year-olds in South Auckland will not have to worry about the cost of the medication, of the prescription. They will not have to worry about that. They can go to the after-hours chemist and get that medication for free, because that is the difference between being well cared for at home and going to a hospital where—it has been bequeathed to us from the last Government—there are long, long waiting lists.

I also want to make a point about why this Government is committed to keeping Kiwi families happy and healthy. When Kiwis are sick, when we are sick, especially our vulnerable—and when we say “vulnerable”, it’s about the children. So when the children are sick, they are referred to hospital, and we expect a world-class quality facility. But what have we found? We’ve found that was bequeathed to us from the last nine years of the wheke sitting around, the last nine years of desperate, desperate fixing which needs to be done.

When we speak about nurses at schools, what it means for the local person in South Auckland, it means that it has been extended to schools like Alfriston College and Papatoetoe High School, which is decile 4. It has been extended so that nurses can now be available for students when they need it. Nurses can be available for students. What does that look like? That would mean that 2,641 students in South Auckland can go along to the nurse and have a chat with them. If it’s about their mental health, the nurse can refer them. When they do turn up to the hospital, guess what? It will be high, first-class quality.

I want to end with this: leadership, translated into the Tongan language, means tauhi kakai—caring for people. That’s what the foundation of this Budget is: caring for people.

ANDREW FALLOON (National—Rangitata): Thank you, Madam Assistant Speaker. I rise this afternoon to speak about honesty and to speak about trust. In August last year, the National Party released their health policy. It would have built on the previous good work of the National Government, including things like free visits for under-13-year-olds to go to the doctor. It was costed, we knew we could achieve it, and if we’d been re-elected to Government we would have delivered it. It would have further lowered the cost of GP visits for a much larger number of people, and would have capped paid costs at $18.

Just five days later—five days later—the Labour Party responded. They responded with their health policy, which one-upped ours. They promised, and I’ll read it out. Jacinda Ardern announced, “From 1 July 2018, Labour will lower the cost of GP visits by $10.” Well, it’s 2018 and July is about five weeks away. So, I ask the Government: where is it? Where is that policy? They haven’t done it. They’ve gone very quiet over there, because they know that they’ve broken that promise to New Zealanders. They’ve broken that cast-iron guarantee by Jacinda Ardern, that from 1 July this year GP visits would be $10 cheaper.

That’s not the only broken promise in this Budget. Last year, National released our last Budget. It would have paid for 1,125 more police over four years; that included 880 sworn front-line officers over four years, or 220 per year. Now, before the last election, Stuart Nash, who’s now the police Minister, travelled the length and breadth of New Zealand. He came to my electorate, he came to Ashburton, he came to Timaru. He said that those numbers weren’t anywhere near enough—anywhere near enough. Labour and New Zealand First got together after the election. They came out with their coalition agreement, and it was very explicit—very explicit: 1,800 additional front-line sworn officers over three years—1,800 over three years.

Well, since then, they’ve been put in charge of the cheque book, and haven’t they spent? Haven’t they spent? Billion-dollar regional development funds, $100 million for foreign aid, for new embassies in Sweden, and all sorts of things. So what’s happened to that promise—what’s happened to that promise? Well, they’ve broken it. They’ve scaled back on it. They’ve scaled it back. It’s now 1,800 police over five years—not three; over five years. And, actually, the worst part about it is it’s not 1,800 front-line officers. Guess how many it is.

Erica Stanford: How many?

ANDREW FALLOON: It’s 1,100. Do you know why? They’re including forensic accountants—forensic accounts. My father’s an accountant; he’ll be pleased to know he can become a cop now. Forensic accountants are now classed as front-line sworn officers, according to the police Minister. Instead, it’s going to be, in Stuart Nash’s own words, 1,100 police out on the streets as front-line sworn officers—another broken promise.

This is a Budget of broken promises. In July last year, Chris Hipkins announced Labour’s education policy. As part of that, they promised—they promised—$150 per student at every school in the country if they agreed to not ask for a school donation. Well, again, since then, they’ve opened the cheque book, and where is that policy? What’s happened to that policy?

Erica Stanford: Poof!

ANDREW FALLOON: It’s gone—poof! It’s been broken. In their first Budget, they’ve broken the one cast-iron guarantee that Chris Hipkins gave in the education portfolio. It’s gone. My old primary school of Allenton is $55,000 worse off because the Government have broken that promise.

Now, what’s interesting about that is since then, Chris Hipkins has said, “Oh, but of course, it’s not a broken promise; we just haven’t done it.” Well, I say to members opposite: good luck to them in the election in two years’ time, going round saying, “We didn’t break promises; we just didn’t do it.”

ERICA STANFORD (National—East Coast Bays): Thank you, Madam Assistant Speaker. My expectations in this Budget for water quality were sky-high, for a couple of reasons. Firstly, because of all of the rhetoric prior to the election from Jacinda Ardern. Do you remember, everybody, when she said, “Clean water is the birthright of all of us. I want future generations to be able to swim in the local river, like I did. Let’s do this.”?

Given the good work of the previous National Government around fresh water, these promises that the Labour Party came up with sent all of our expectations sky-high, because when we were in Government, we set up the Land and Water Forum. We implemented their suggestions. We monitored lakes and rivers and waterways. We set out a plan for a limit-setting process. We had the vision, we had the plan, we had the strategy, and we had the funding—$30 million a year, compared to funding under the previous Helen Clark Government of $3 million a year. For shame, that did nothing—$30 million a year.

The recent report from Land and Water Aotearoa shows that more of the 1,500 monitored sites show improvement than deterioration. Things are on the up, so we know that having a vision, a plan, and serious funding gets results. So when I read the quote from the Labour and the Greens Government that this was going to be the greenest Budget ever, I was thinking to myself, “This is gonna be good. This is gonna be amazing. This won’t be another broken promise, surely, because Vote Environment is going to be dripping with initiatives. It’s going to be dripping with projects and funding for fresh water.”

Firstly—weirdly—I did notice that there weren’t any press releases from Minister Parker around fresh water. I thought, “Huh, that’s very odd.” So I started looking through Vote Environment, line by line—“Surely it’ll be in here somewhere.”—nothing. Maybe there’s an insert in here? [Shakes Budget document] Nothing. The New Zealand Herald, in fact, noted that Vote Environment had decreased by 15 percent, and the more I looked into this, the more I realised that Vote Environment was the biggest loser in this Budget.

David Parker has done nothing in this Budget for fresh water to show that he’s across his portfolio. There’s no vision, there’s no plan, and there is no funding for fresh water. How could this be? How could this be—how could there be no plans or projects or funding for improvements in fresh water? Maybe, it’s because we were doing such a good job, they just thought, “Actually, things are going pretty well. We’ll just keep doing that.”—maybe that was one thing. Maybe—let’s be fair to Minister Parker. He’s the brains of the Labour Party caucus. The “Minister brought to you by the letters ‘C’ and ‘P’ ” is the Minister for Trade, the Minister for Economic Development, and the Attorney-General. He’s a busy guy, travelling around the world. It’s entirely understandable that he just doesn’t have time to focus on issues that matter to New Zealanders.

Or perhaps this lack of vision and funding for water quality has got more to do with that humdinger from Minister Hipkins in the House on Tuesday during question time—that “There’s a clear difference between a broken promise and one that is yet to be delivered upon.” And that moment—I was so happy to be in the House during that watershed moment, that historic moment, because this will go down in history because it’s what he will be remembered for. It will be a must-watch and must-read text for any political science student in the country, where the Labour Party renamed broken promises to “postponed promises”.

They will be the same students, by the way, who will be also enrolled in the new prerequisite paper, “How not to be a kid completely disconnected from Reality 101”, or maybe Minister Parker just didn’t have the money for swimmable rivers, because in this Budget, the winner was not the environment; it was clearly Winston Peters. Prior to the election, Winston Peters went around the country pontificating, “Had enough?” Well, I’ll tell you—I’ll tell you—Labour had enough for Winston Peters, but they didn’t have enough for the environment.

When it comes to the environment, to be fair, the Greens want what’s best for New Zealand; the Labour Party wants what’s best for New Zealand First. Therein lies the problem, because New Zealand First got 0.9 percent more of the party vote than the Greens—0.9 percent. This Budget clearly shows the exact price of 0.9 percent, and that price is $4 billion, because the Greens got a measly $100 million and Winston Peters got $4 billion. That’s $165,000 for each of the additional 24,000 votes they got.

It’s because of the massive cost of the marriage between Labour and New Zealand First. Winston Peters is the Givenchy bride. He’s teetering around in his Manolo Blahniks, while the poor Greens are shivering in the corner in their upcycled hemp suits. I’ll tell you what, Vote Environment is the casualty of the 124,000 votes that cost this country $4 billion.

Hon KRIS FAAFOI (Minister of Civil Defence): I move, That this debate be now adjourned.

Motion agreed to.

Bills

Social Security Legislation Rewrite Bill

In Committee

Debate resumed from 23 May.

Part 3 Obligations (continued)

CHAIRPERSON (Adrian Rurawhe): When we were last considering this bill, we were debating Part 3. The Hon Carmel Sepuloni had the call, and she has 1 minute, 42 seconds remaining. I call Simon O’Connor.

SIMON O’CONNOR (National—Tāmaki): I’m clearly not the Minister, but I’m delighted for this opportunity to speak to Part 3. As I’ve noted before, this is a rewrite of 10 parts. Part 3 is around obligations, and I’d like to start around Subpart 1. As might be indicated in the word “obligations”, this is setting out the social welfare framework of what’s expected of not only the Ministry of Social Development but, most importantly, those who are receiving assistance from the Crown. I want to start in Subpart 1, which is the introduction. As those of you know, as I go through a bill in the committee stage, I like to be quite ordered, so I’m wanting, really, to start around clause 91, “Failure to comply with obligation under this Part”, and I’m really questioning why a moral rather than ethical phrase is being used here, or perhaps suggesting to the Minister, if he chooses to answer, perhaps why we don’t introduce both.

Clause 91, in Subpart 1 of Part 3, says “(1) A person who is subject to an obligation under this Part and who fails to comply with that obligation without good and sufficient reason is”—and so on and so forth. I’m querying the use of the words “good and sufficient”. Good, as I say, is a moral word—“good/bad”, versus something that’s ethical, “right and wrong”. So I think it would be useful if the Minister can clarify why we’re continuing to keep—

Hon Andrew Little: You’re not at the seminary now, Simon.

SIMON O’CONNOR: Oh, I hear the dulcet tones of the Minister of Justice speaking here. It’s good to be in the House with you, Andrew—without our flak jackets.

It really is a question to the Minister: what is a good reason? Again, that’s a moral distinction—if something’s good or bad. Is that a judgment that the ministry is going to have to make—whether their obligations were good or not—or really is it a matter of something ethical? Are there reasons, are there obligations, something that should be right or something that should be wrong? So it’s a minor point in some ways, but I’m a little bit of a pedant when it comes to language and getting these things right.

Moving, then, into Subpart 2, “MSD’s obligations”, clause 92 and its paragraphs say that “MSD”—the Ministry of Social Development—“must take reasonable and appropriate steps to make a person to whom an obligation under this Part applies—(a) aware of that obligation … (b) aware of the consequences”—and so forth. I’d just like some clarity from the Minister in the chair, Peeni Henare, around how available Map is. The Minister in the chair will know exactly what this is, and I’m sure his officials do too. I’m not going to put the Minister in the chair on the spot by trying to explain what the acronym stands for, but Map is well known to those working within the Ministry of Social Development. I’m really keen to know how accessible Map will be made to the general public. I know it’s available online at the moment, but it takes quite a bit of searching, I’ve found.

If MSD is rightly to take reasonable and appropriate steps to make a person aware of their obligations, obviously that will be done verbally, in letters, in emails, and so forth, but there is, in behind, this thing called Map—manuals and procedures, or processes; I might have to stand corrected on that as well. That, effectively—particularly for members of the House—lists all the aspects of available assistance through the Ministry of Social Development. I think that’s all the rules. The question there, in Subpart 2, clause 92, is should we be having something more clearly around Map, or maybe it’s just some assurance to me—if you don’t mind, Minister—that Map will be made more available and perhaps, in time, something that can be written more in plain English.

I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. Minor thing, but the clock? Sorry, just some indication of—I do apologise. We’re there now.

CHAIRPERSON (Adrian Rurawhe): I do apologise. It was running out.

SIMON O’CONNOR: Splendid. That’s all right. I can just get a bit emotional around time.

So that’s the second point there. The first is around clause 91 and the second point is around clause 92 about making Map more available. Look, clause 93—and I do assure the committee I’m not going to go clause by clause—is around the steps to explain the overseas absence rules. Again, there’s a request here that MSD “take reasonable and appropriate steps to explain, to every person who is, or appears to MSD to”—well, in effect, to have been away from New Zealand. Again, that’s a minor point, Minister, but how is that to be done? I suppose, in the general scheme of things, if someone comes to their case manager and says they’re heading off overseas—you can think of superannuitants in particular—an explanation can be made. But I suppose I’m beginning to theorise in my head: how does “reasonable and appropriate” apply, and to what extent?

So to try and illustrate it, what are the elements—I’m trying to find the exact right words here. How do we appropriately judge what is reasonable and appropriate for MSD? If someone who is on a benefit has chosen to go off to, I don’t know, Indonesia, or to Germany, Japan, or Britain, to what extent does MSD have to try to track them down to make them aware of their obligations? What are the mechanisms? So clause 93 explains the intention, which is quite right and appropriate I would suggest, but exactly how is that going to play out? I suppose I want to avoid at least one of two things here, or perhaps two of two. The first is that MSD is going off constantly chasing down New Zealanders and those overseas, trying to reasonably explain the steps required; or the flipside, that very little is going to be done because it’s all just put in the too-hard basket. So I think that would be useful to have that explained.

Look, the fourth element—and it might be of note to the committee that I’m now jumping a few clauses ahead because I want to touch very quickly on clause 97, “Beneficiary must hold, and give MSD details of, bank account”. Again, it might seem trivial and minor, because most Kiwis have bank accounts—and rightly, if they want to access MSD or particularly Work and Income support, they need to have a bank account. In fact, the Minister might want to indulge me and let me know if we still use Social Welfare Information for Tomorrow Today and the Unified Customer View too. I’d be interested in that. I know that’s not directly part of the bill. God forbid if we are still using both—but anyway. The question is, not every Kiwi has a bank account. I know universalism is sort of de rigueur on the Government side at the moment.

Well, unfortunately, not every Kiwi has a bank account and, as the various things like anti – money-laundering laws come through—rightly and properly—it does make life a little bit harder to set up a bank account. How are we going to capture those beneficiaries, those people we’re here to serve and help? How are we going to help them if they do not have a bank account? Are there are other mechanisms in place, because, to me, clause 97 looks, well, pretty clear and pretty definitive that they absolutely must have a bank account. So there are really two elements to that: what happens, Minister, if they do not have a bank account? Secondly, if they have an account with a non-bank entity—you know there are credit agencies and the like—it probably fits, but there are those institutions which are not formally banks. So some clarity around those four things would be useful.

So the first one is, again, around clause 91: why are the reasons deemed to be “good and sufficient”, and why are they framed within a moral rather than an ethical framework? Again, why does it effectively not say “an obligation” without right and sufficient reason? So I’m not immediately suggesting that we remove the moral and replace with ethical, but perhaps it’s both.

Clause 92 is basically discussing that MSD is to rightly make people aware of their obligations, and, therefore, to follow them, which importantly follows. I think that’s one of the challenges for the Government—and not necessarily for the Minister in the chair—but if we’re going to put obligations on people, then there have to be consequences as well. I’ve heard some indications from other Ministers that, you know, “We’ll put these obligations down, but we won’t really honour them.”, which makes it a bit odd.

Clause 92: how easily and readily will people have access to Map? Clause 93—that’s the whole question of being overseas: to what reasonable levels and to what steps is MSD required to chase up people absent? And then the fourth one is around the whole bank account issue. So that’s, I suppose, my first two contributions. I do note that in this part I have two other Supplementary Order Papers—well, actually, two are tabled amendments. One is around the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, and the other is around the New Zealand Business Number. But I know that the Chamber will be excited to hear a different voice, so I’ll return to those later in the debate.

MAUREEN PUGH (National): Thank you, Mr Chair. I commend the previous speaker, Simon O’Connor your contribution is a lovely segue into my proposed amendment. I’m very happy to be standing here tonight at the committee stage of the Social Security Legislation Rewrite Bill. We’ve all noted over the last few contributions to this bill in the first and second readings what a huge piece of work this is. The Social Security Act of 1964 has very long been overdue for this overhaul. I do note that the contribution of the National-led Government in tackling this huge piece of work sees us here today.

The Social Security Legislation Rewrite Bill will repeal the Social Security Act 1964 and the Social Welfare (Reciprocity Agreements, and New Zealand Artificial Limb Service) Act 1990. So I have submitted an amendment that seeks to insert a new clause 97(1)(c). My amendment reads: “In the case of an offender being released from prison MSD must, no less than 4 weeks before release date, ensure that the offender is able to have access to entitlements upon release and assisted with bank account requirements.”

We know that it is a very vulnerable time for offenders when they are being released from prison. It is a time when there is huge vulnerability and huge changes that are being made to their lives. Those changes include changes to their routines that they have been used to—for some people—for some time. It’ll be changes to relationships, as they move out of the incarceration and possibly back with family or colleagues, and also changes in terms of the security that they have become used to and being back out into the world. It’s at this time that, if the support is not wrapped around these people, it could provide an opportunity for them to probably take up relationships with former associates. This is a temptation that can easily happen. We know that the reoffending rates tell us that this is a very vulnerable time. In order for them to stop slipping back into that life of crime, it would be remiss of us not to provide every opportunity that we can to make that transition as simple as possible. In an ideal world, they would go back to their home, to their family, and, possibly, even to a job. But not all people that are being released from prison do have those advantages.

My amendment simply provides, in a very small way, to have practical assistance given to these people so that when they are released from prison they have a bank account that is open and ready for them to use. We know that if they’re entitled to benefits, there can be a time delay in having those benefits paid to them, whereas, if a bank account was ready for them when they were released back out into the world, then it makes it so much easier for them to receive their entitlements, and, certainly, if they were to be going back into paid employment, then a bank account is absolutely necessary. It’s just a small piece of practical assistance.

The reason that I’ve put four weeks as a time limit on that is that prior to the release date, within this time, the Ministry of Social Development (MSD) can assist with the setting up of the bank accounts. We know that if they do receive this support and it is streamlined, then they are likely to be more integrated more quickly. The current wording in clause 97 puts the onus on the recipients of the benefits to provide those details to MSD. In setting up a bank account—I know; I’ve had to do this a few times, even recently, as I’ve just come back into Parliament—it can be an onerous task. We know that with the people that are incarcerated at present, around 60 percent or more of people in prison do have a literacy problem, and there are challenges—[Time expired]

Hon LOUISE UPSTON (National—Taupō): Thank you, Mr Chair. Sorry, to my colleagues; I know that there are a number of them that want to make contributions, as well.

I just want to back up the amendment that Maureen Pugh has put on the Table today, because one of the opportunities in a piece of legislation like this is to provide support to those who need it most. It is a real opportunity for the Government to make some very minor but practical changes that make a difference to the very New Zealanders we want to support. Before I move on to an amendment in my name, I want to just very strongly support Maureen Pugh. If the Ministry of Social Development (MSD) were to work with those people coming out of prison—we know when they’re going to be released—ahead of time to ensure that they had the necessary documentation—some have no ID, they have no bank account, and therefore their ability to get financial support is incredibly limited. So we see that there is an opportunity if one of the obligations on beneficiaries—which is Part 3, Subpart 3—is to have a bank account, then, equally, we’d like to see that there is a change in the legislation to enable that to happen.

The amendment that I want to talk to next—and I know that my parliamentary colleagues on this side of the Chamber will want to talk to others. I want to move on to some of the obligations in Part 3, Subpart 3. This one, in particular, is under the subheading of “Specific obligations: work-test obligations”. In clause 131 it talks about the “Meaning of suitable employment”. The amendment in my name is to clause 131 and it inserts a new section so that there are some factors that MSD must have regard to in the deeming of suitable employment. We’ve seen some very recent examples around seasonal work shortages. We’ve seen examples of severe skill shortages in some areas, both across industry sectors and around geographic areas, whether it’s building and construction, whether it is kūmara in Dargaville, whether it is picking apples in the Hawke’s Bay, or whether it is in my own neck of the woods with asparagus. This amendment to clause 131 inserting new section 131(1) would be to say that MSD must have regard to regional skill shortages, seasonal work, and the local rate of unemployment when determining if employment is suitable. This directly relates to suitable employment in clause 131.

This advantages, obviously, the person that is seeking employment. It also advantages MSD in terms of that work brokering or a matching of those seeking and available for work, as well, and I know the Government are very supportive of regional economic development initiatives. It provides a really important solution to some of those challenges that employers and industries are seeing on the ground. So I’d like to see and I’d like to hear from the Minister in the chair, Peeni Henare, about his views on including this clause, clause 131, which is in Part 3 of the Social Security Legislation Rewrite Bill—for those that have just tuned in. It’s Subpart 3, which we haven’t had any discussion on yet. I think I’m the first call on this particular subpart heading, which is “Specific obligations: work-test obligations”.

It’s very much aimed at ensuring that if there is a work test obligation—which, of course, we know is in place—how do we actually make that more workable? How do we make it work for the person that is seeking employment? Employment, obviously, is a great opportunity for an individual and a family to get ahead. So, by adding this element in, it’s a fantastic opportunity to match someone who’s looking for work, as well as local employers. I’m sure, as I look across the Chamber, there are a few regional MPs. I’m sure you’ve met with employers that have been really struggling to fill those gaps. I’m really committed, and I’m sure that we want to see Kiwis in those jobs.

Hon PEENI HENARE (Associate Minister for Social Development): Tēnā koe, Mr Chair, and thank you for this opportunity. I want to address some of the matters that were raised by members across the Chamber with regard to Part 3 of the bill. I want to start, if I can, with the contribution from Mr Simon O’Connor, who asked several questions. While relevance might be of question, my point will be to, basically, clarify some of the aspects he raised, which, for the most part, can be addressed by operational means and not necessarily through the legislation. But I’ll work through those.

First and foremost, the member spoke about clause 93, about reasonable notification with regard to those on benefit or in receipt of assistance going overseas. The member will be well aware, as will many members across the Chamber, around the information-sharing memorandums and operations between many Government institutions and Government departments. Included in that, of course, is customs. We know that the relationship between the Ministry of Social Development (MSD) and customs is one that is sound, that allows for cross-reference checking to make sure that it’s not as easy as people might suspect to simply dash off overseas or to avoid their obligations to take reasonable steps to notify the Ministry of Social Development about their departure overseas.

Also, too, to that point, I want to say that, for the most part of my experience with Work and Income, those who do come in to seek assistance are good, honest people. They take their obligations seriously and certainly more than play their part in ensuring that they give correct information to the case manager and to the service centre. Only then can they truly receive their full and correct entitlement.

To clause 92, the member spoke about Map, a well-used tool. Look, we, I believe, take reasonable steps to make sure that Map is available on the internet, off the homepage, where anyone in the public can access that. Of course, it’s available and accessible through each and every centre, and, I dare say, through each and every case manager. If the beneficiary or the client goes in to discuss with their case manager, or even through the call centre, I’m sure they will have access to both Map and also the ability or function to inquire about Map.

I’ll move now to the amendment in the name of Maureen Pugh, on clause 97, where it seeks to insert new clause 97(1)(c) ensuring that MSD must, no less than four weeks before release date, ensure that the offender is able to have access to entitlements upon release and are assisted with bank account requirements. For the benefit of the member: there are already officers within the corrections system that actually work with prisoners from the time they actually go in to—

Hon Louise Upston: No, they don’t. We wish they did.

Hon PEENI HENARE: —the system and by the time they leave. I take the point made here by the Hon Louise Upston. They were underfunded under the last Government, so they need lots more support. Here’s the point: let’s not build another prison to make sure that there are even fewer resources to provide the kind of support that we expect for prisoners.

We have a range of programmes within prisons already. But to the point of the amendment: there are support mechanisms there, and it also, I think, works on a poorly based assumption that when an offender goes into prison they don’t have a bank account already.

Secondly, it also was based on the assumption that when they come out, after already having the ability to have processed their steps to freedom, they are instantly going to walk into a Work and Income centre. Many of them are already able to access good services like the ones I mentioned in my Budget debate speech. One of those is, of course, MUMA—the Manukau Urban Māori Authority—who work with released prisoners to reintegrate them into the community. So it isn’t simply a case of saying, “Upon release, they must have these.”

I’d like to say, once again, for the benefit of Maureen Pugh, that those services, while, I’ll admit, are under-resourced—because that’s simply a reflection of the need and the failure of the last Government to address them. So what we’re going to do is make sure that we support prisoners where we can. One of those is, of course, while they’re in there, and, on the other side, we want to make sure that when they do come out there are more reintegration services that will help them.

So to the member’s amendment, we won’t be supporting it, because we believe that those mechanisms are already there. Quite simply, they’re not working because the last Government didn’t fund them. We will be looking to address the serious issues, not just with prisoners after release but, of course, the justice system as a whole.

The other part to the member—we haven’t quite got her amendment yet as it’s no doubt a hastily drawn together one and put on the Table. The other one I want to talk about is—Mr Simon O’Connor—clause 97 about having a bank account. Of course, this works on the premise, once again, or on the assumption that, once again, people don’t have a bank account. People may not have an IRD number. We know that it takes time to change that system. We know that when a child is born now, they automatically get an IRD number.

We also want to see easy access, and I want to commend the banks who actually work with a heck of a lot of communities to make sure young people do have bank accounts.

Look, I’m sure there are ways that can be worked through with case managers to ensure that when a client comes into the service centre, they’re able to work with the case manager to identify what they don’t have and identify what they do have, and for what they don’t have I’m sure the service centre will be able to give them the right advice to make sure that the information comes in so that that particular person and client that comes into Work and Income can receive their full and correct entitlement. I want to keep saying that, “full and correct entitlement”, because it’s an important thing. We also have belief in those who do come in seeking support that they will bring the right information with them, and if they don’t, of course, they’ll have the opportunity to go and get that, and we will be able to deal with their application in due course.

Soon I’ll have a chance to read the amendment by the member, the Hon Louise Upston, and I’ll be happy to take a call on those once I’ve done that.

JO HAYES (National): Thank you, Mr Chair. Thank you very much. I was rushing around thinking I might not be able to get in, in time, but I did. My contribution is looking at clause 130, which looks at “General obligation to be available for suitable employment, etc.” Whilst I agree with paragraphs (a), (b), and (c), where it says “A person to whom this section applies must—(a) be available for, and take reasonable steps to obtain, suitable employment; [and] (b) accept … offer of suitable employment… (c) attend and participate in an interview for any opportunity for suitable employment to which the beneficiary is referred to by MSD.”, what I would like to do is to insert new paragraph (d) by saying “attend and participate in work experience for any opportunity of suitable employment to which the beneficiary is referred to by MSD.”

I just want to talk about work experience. I see that it’s in the work-test obligations, but work experience is also another avenue towards full-time employment. I know of a number of beneficiaries that have gone out and done some work experience, whether it be in the horticultural area, in the agricultural area—you know, whether or not they thought that they may wish to work in that area, they’ve gone out, they’ve had a go, and it’s actually led to full-time employment and them coming off the benefit. Really, at the end of the day that’s what we’re here about, isn’t it? This is what this is all about, this particular section. It’s about supporting beneficiaries into suitable employment, something that they will also want to be in, it gives them a go at it, and that is, essentially, the bottom line of my amendment.

I would like the Minister to stand to say why it can’t be included. I think that as a Government the obligation is that we must give beneficiaries all the help that we can give them. By including work experience as paragraph (d) of clause 130, that actually broadens out the opportunity for beneficiaries to actually get into meaningful and suitable employment—employment that they can see themselves in for quite some time.

I also know that there are a number of people that have actually come and worked on our property, that have come off the benefit and that have come and worked on our property within the agricultural industry, which they thought they would never fit into. They were born and bred townies and they never thought that they would ever like working in a farming area or in agriculture. From that, they have actually moved into full-time employment, and it’s actually helped them to gain an understanding of what employment and the variety of employment and experience that they can gain within the agricultural industry.

One particular young man that we had, he had been from job to job to job, had been unsuccessful, he came out and did some work experience on our property and, you know, he ended up going and working for a roading construction organisation. Why? Because he had been part and parcel of working side by side with my husband, putting tracks and that through our property, helping to build the fences, etc. He liked it. So, therefore, he went from our place, he went into town, and he got a job in a roading construction firm. From there, he just grew. He also ended up going into the freezing works. He really liked all of that real farmy, outdoorsy-type work, and this is, basically, what the guts of my amendment is about.

So I would really, really like to see the Government pick up this particular clause that I’ve put through in my amendment. I don’t think it’s too far a stretch from where the bill is at. I think it enhances this particular part of the bill, and so I would be very disappointed if the Government did not pick up this particular clause. As I said, it doesn’t hurt the bill. It offers an expansion for beneficiaries, for the Ministry of Social Development to actually support beneficiaries into full-time employment, and therefore I will leave my contribution at that. I think it is a good general obligation for suitable employment, and it does offer beneficiaries another avenue into full-time, suitable employment. Thank you.

Dr PARMJEET PARMAR (National): Thank you, Mr Chair. I would like to take this opportunity to speak to clause 120. Clause 120 is about “Health care enrolment and compliance with core health checks”, so in this contribution I want to talk about my amendment. I move, that the following amendments be made to clause 120: insert new clause 120(3)—this is “Newborn enrolment with general Practitioners”. How pre-enrolment request is made—this is about that. So this amendment seeks to improve health and social outcomes for babies, and especially newborns, by requiring that newborns are enrolled with general practitioners before they are six weeks old.

I think it’s fitting that we accept this amendment in my name in this legislation, because this legislation already talks about enrolment and compliance with core health checks. This legislation, in clause 120, very clearly states that “(1) A person to whom this section applies must take all [responsible] steps to ensure that each dependent child is enrolled with a primary health care provider (for example, a primary health organisation, or a prescribed health practitioner who is a provider of primary health care).”

It’s important to note that when there is a newborn in the family, the family can easily lose track of time, and the first few weeks go really, really fast. So it’s important that we have a proactive system where the system actually follows up with the family to ensure that the family remembers to enrol that newborn within the initial phase of their life, because that is the most important phase of a newborn’s life, and also for the new mum’s healthcare as well.

So what happens currently is that after the newborn is sent home and discharged from the maternity care provider, the enrolment request on behalf of the newborn is sent through the National Immunisation Register to the nominated general practitioner. When the request goes through the National Immunisation Register to the nominated general practitioner, it can sometimes take days or even weeks. So what happens is that when the request appears in front of a general practitioner, they can accept it, decline it, or they can even deactivate it, and there is no real-time recording of what’s happening with these requests. The data that we have is for three months, and the data that we have is not satisfactory when you look at the percentage of newborns that are enrolled with general practitioners at three months, but my amendment is to see that newborns are enrolled with general practitioners before they are six weeks old.

As we have heard repeatedly from the Labour-led Government, they are really keen to do more for children and they are keen for the well-being of children—then this is something that should be paid attention to. It’s really important that the well-being of newborns is taken care of and that we actually provide them with all their health checks in a timely manner and connect them to various services which are available free of charge for the newborn, and also the new mum.

So what happens, and the biggest factor that needs to be addressed—and it needs a legislative framework to address it—is that general practitioners can decline the request if they don’t know the family or if there is a debt owed by the family to the practice. So if there is a family that moves into a new area—they don’t want to take their newborn into the area where they lived previously—they might want to pick another general practitioner as their new general practitioner for their newborn. So when the request goes, if the general practitioner sees that they don’t know the family, or if there is money owing, they can decline the request. I believe that these practices should be stopped. General practitioners should be able to decline the request for a pre-enrolment of a newborn only if the general practitioner is running at full capacity—

CHAIRPERSON (Adrian Rurawhe): I’m sorry to interrupt the member, but it has come time for me to report progress.

House resumed.

Progress reported.

Report adopted.

The House adjourned at 5.55 p.m.