Tuesday, 31 July 2018

TUESDAY, 31 JULY 2018

TUESDAY, 31 JULY 2018

The Speaker took the Chair at 2 p.m.

Prayers

Prayers

SPEAKER: Members, in order to celebrate Cook Islands Language Week, I asked the Hon Alfred Ngaro to recite a prayer today.

Hon ALFRED NGARO (National): Te Atua Mana, te akameitaki atu nei matou iakoe no toou takinga meitaki taau i riringi mai ki runga ia matou. Te akaruke nei matou i to matou tu tangata, te akamaara nei matou i te ariki vaine, e te pure nei matou kia arataki koe i ta matou uriuri anga manako, kia rave matou I ta matou angaanga i roto i teia ngutuare na roto i te pakari, te tuatua tika e te akaaka no te meitaki e te au o to matou basileia Nu Tireni, na roto i te ingoa o Iesu Mesia, Amene.

SPEAKER: Meitaki—thank you.

Visitors

United Kingdom—Secretary of State for Scotland

SPEAKER: I’m sure that members would wish to welcome the Rt Hon David Mundell, Secretary of State for Scotland, Parliament of the United Kingdom, and his delegation, who are present in the gallery.

Oral Questions

Questions to Ministers

Economy—Business Confidence and Trans-Tasman Migration

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

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS (Acting Prime Minister): The answer to that question is most definitely.

Hon Simon Bridges: Is he aware that New Zealand has fallen from the second-highest level of business confidence in all of the OECD in 2016 to having the second-lowest under his Government?

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: What I am aware of, and so are my colleagues, is that there are half a million enterprises in this country—490,000 were not asked their opinion; 1,000 were. That’s the quality of that survey.

Hon Simon Bridges: Has he seen the latest ANZ business confidence numbers released today, which show that business confidence has declined by a further five points?

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: It is not surprising that the ANZ, despite having record profits at the moment, has a chairman who’s been talking down the economy nevertheless.

Hon Simon Bridges: Does he accept that at the moment we have the worst business confidence in our country since the global financial crisis a decade ago, and, if so, what will he do to revise his Government’s disastrous policies?

SPEAKER: Order! [Interruption] Order! Before the member answers, I am going—

Hon Simon Bridges: I’m allowed to have an “if so”.

SPEAKER: Sorry, I will stand up to deal with it if the Leader of the Opposition is going to interject when I’m ruling. I’m going to let the question go but warn the Leader of the Opposition, and I think he knows exactly what for.

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: As they say in one of the home countries, those comments are balderdash. And, more importantly, the IMF has refuted them in their very confident prediction as to where this Government is taking the growth of our economy.

Hon Simon Bridges: Isn’t the only credible explanation for the worst business confidence numbers since the global financial crisis directly the Government’s policies and actions?

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: As much as that member would like to predicate his future on turning down and arguing down the economy, that is most definitely not going to happen—either the economy going down or him having a future.

Hon Simon Bridges: Why, then, is it the case that business confidence in New Zealand is at a 10-year low and business confidence in Australia is at a 30-year high?

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: The record of these confidence surveys has this to reflect upon: when the economy was running at 3.2 percent over a period of nine years, the confidence indicators were all down from those elite business people, and when the economy was running, under National, at an average of 1.9 percent over nine years, the confidence rate was up. In short, you’ve got 1,000 of half a million enterprises being surveyed, and that is not the kind of elitism we promote in this country.

Hon Simon Bridges: Is it the best the Prime Minister can do to explain away the variety of business confidence surveys and give no real answers to this House or New Zealanders about what is happening at the moment in New Zealand?

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: I have to be frank to that member and say no, I can do much better, but I don’t have to get out of first gear facing him.

Hon Simon Bridges: Is he aware that GDP growth per capita has fallen behind Australia for the first time in several years, and what are the Government’s policies and actions in relation to turning that around?

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: The Government has a tranche of explosive policies that we intend to put into place, or are already having in place, and we can see a rapid turn-around in our country’s economy because we’re based, in terms of this Government’s plan, on production and exports and real wealth, not mass immigration and consumption.

Hon Simon Bridges: Is he aware that net migration to Australia has gone from a net 32,000 leaving for Australia in 2008 to a net inflow to New Zealand in 2017, and, if so, will he consider it a failure if net migration to Australia does not continue in this positive direction under his Government’s watch?

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: Again, those stats are false. The net—[Interruption] Well, they can all laugh, and maybe fly a white flag later, but the reality is the net trend began in mid-2015 and that party over there is responsible for it. We’re going to turn it around.

Hon Simon Bridges: What is his Government doing to keep ambitious young New Zealanders in New Zealand given that yesterday in Australia, a new job in the mining sector was advertised every six minutes, while here in New Zealand his Government has banned oil and gas exploration as well as mining on conservation land?

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: This Government has not banned oil and gas exploration, and whatever that industry called “moining” is—I’m having difficulty trying to understand it—we’ve not banned that either.

Hon Simon Bridges: Is the reality that when New Zealand has the worst business confidence—which has a flow-on effect to investment and jobs—in a decade since the global financial crisis, all he can do is come down to the House and make jokes about it?

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: Look, I can’t win the jokes stakes; I’m looking at one, in terms of his ambition. But I want to tell that member that they can be as mealy-mouthed and as doomsday as they like, but they are not going to succeed in getting up the polls or getting back at the next election. If they want to help, we’d be grateful for whatever help they might give, but given their last nine years of abysmal performance, I don’t think so.

Hon Gerry Brownlee: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. If it’s parliamentary to refer to a member as being a joke, would it not equally be parliamentary to refer to a member as being drunk?

SPEAKER: My view is that one is a matter of fact and the other is a matter of opinion. If the member is seriously suggesting the latter in the House and he is inaccurate, he is making a gross breach of privilege.

Hon Gerry Brownlee: Speaking to the point of order—

SPEAKER: No, there is no point of order. The member will resume his seat.

Hon Gerry Brownlee: Well, I’m entitled to an explanation, surely.

SPEAKER: The member will resume his seat.

International Economy—Impact on the New Zealand Economy and Outlook

2. KIRITAPU ALLAN (Labour) to the Minister of Finance: What impact is global economic conditions having on the New Zealand economy, and what changes, if any, are required to respond to these conditions?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister of Finance): The IMF recently reported that it projects global growth to reach 3.9 percent in 2018 and 2019, which represents a solid continuation of growth forecast. However, the outlook is not without risk, in the form of financial and trade tensions and political uncertainty. While no one is suggesting that there is an imminent risk to the international economy, I would note the comments from the chair of the ANZ bank, Sir John Key, who highlighted the significant impact of the global outlook on the New Zealand economy and that a correction would eventually occur. As a relatively small, open economy that is reliant on international trade, New Zealand is always vulnerable to changes in the international outlook. Therefore, in order to ensure our economy is resilient to such threats, we need to remain fiscally careful but also make the changes to diversify our export markets and shift the drivers of our economic growth.

Kiritapu Allan: What further action does he intend to address student exploitation?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: That’s not the question.

Kiritapu Allan: What does the changing global outlook mean for fiscal management?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: I would like to comment on immigration one day, but not today. We’re demonstrating our commitment to fiscal responsibility through our adherence to the Budget responsibility rules. We’ve always said that if there were a major shock to the global economy, we would adjust the rules accordingly. However, that is not the situation that we are facing today. Under these rules, we are reducing net debt to 20 percent of GDP within five years of taking office, delivering sustainable surpluses across the economic cycle, restarting contributions to the New Zealand Superannuation Fund, and making sure that unemployment continues its downward track to 4 percent. By sticking to these commitments, we will do the investment in critical public services and make sure that New Zealand is positioned to respond to any shock or downturn.

Economy—Business Confidence and Government Policies

3. Hon AMY ADAMS (National—Selwyn) to the Minister of Finance: Does he have confidence in the Government’s management of the New Zealand economy?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister of Finance): Yes, I do.

Hon Amy Adams: Does he take it as a signal of confidence in the Government’s economic management that New Zealand has fallen from having the second-highest level of business confidence in the OECD in 2016 to having the second-lowest under this Government?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: The OECD report the member refers to shows that New Zealand’s business confidence is 0.46 of 1 percent below the long-run average, at a score of 99.54 percent. So the Opposition is now bemoaning the fact that 0.46 of 1 percent off the long-run average is somehow a major disaster. I would point the member to consumer confidence, which is strong; employee confidence, which is strong; and unemployment, which is going down.

Hon Amy Adams: Well, does he take it as a signal of confidence in the Government’s economic management that today’s ANZ business confidence survey showed business confidence has today fallen even further, to negative 45 percent and own activity—which he quotes so often—has fallen again, to its lowest level since 2009?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: There is a range of factors that affect business confidence, including international conditions, which a commentator I heard in the weekend opining at great length about the importance—

Hon Dr Megan Woods: Who was that?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: The chair of the ANZ Bank, the person who got the most publicity out of the National Party conference. He said international conditions were the issue.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Who was this resident expert from the ANZ Bank, and what is his past political record?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: The person was Sir John Key, and I note that he also made the comment when he spoke that the previous, unsustainable drivers of growth—namely, housing speculation and immigration—were waning, and that it was a question of what replaces those factors. It’s a pity he didn’t ask that question over the last nine years, but this Government is getting on with making the changes to be more productive and more sustainable in our economic growth.

Hon Amy Adams: Well, does he take it as a signal of confidence in the Government’s economic management that the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment’s national construction pipeline released yesterday showed infrastructure investment projections are dramatically down on last year?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: The infrastructure pipeline methodology has changed, as the report authors noted themselves. This Government has a pipeline of infrastructure projects—$28 billion worth of transport projects—coming down the line. Building consents today are 8 percent up on the same month last year. There is plenty of good activity going on. Of course there are some concerns among the business community about access to skilled staff and international conditions. We’ll keep working with them. But on this side of the House, we have a big job to do to shift away from an economy that was based on housing speculation and population growth. The member should listen to John Key.

Hon Amy Adams: Does he take it as a signal of confidence in the Government’s economic management that the level of capital raised from initial public offerings on the New Zealand stock exchange has fallen from $480 million in the previous period to just $20 million in the first half of this year?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: I don’t have those numbers in front of me, but I do note that the New Zealand stock exchange has been at record highs in recent times. So while the member can stand on the sidelines trying to talk the economy down, the message that businesses around New Zealand are giving me is that they have a lot of activity. They’re looking for more skilled staff, and we’re getting on with making sure that we provide those skilled staff to them, unlike in the last nine years of under-investment.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: If any of those stats being quoted at the Minister were correct, how come New Zealand has the lowest recent record unemployment?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: Well, that’s an interesting question. What I do note is that the priority that this Government is giving to investing in the regions of New Zealand through the Provincial Growth Fund, through R & D, and through lifting the skills of New Zealanders is going to make a big difference as we get down to our goal of 4 percent unemployment.

Hon Amy Adams: Well, in light of all the evidence showing that even with our current strong trade conditions, the domestic economy has begun to stall under this Government, what is he actually going to do to promote economic growth?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: Well, what we’re doing is transitioning away from an economy that was based on population growth and housing speculation. That member might think that that’s a sustainable growth path; it’s not. We have to actually invest in the future of our regions through the Provincial Growth Fund, through our research and development tax incentive, through the Green Investment Fund, and through lifting the skills of New Zealanders. On this side of the House, we’re getting on with the job of making that transition.

Education—Partnership Schools and Māori Achievement

4. Hon PAULA BENNETT (Deputy Leader—National) to the Associate Minister of Education (Māori Education): Does he stand by all his statements and actions in regard to Māori education?

Hon KELVIN DAVIS (Associate Minister of Education (Māori Education)): Yes, in the context that they were made and taken.

Hon Paula Bennett: What is his response to Sir Toby Curtis, who said in relation to Chris Hipkins, “The Minister’s carrot-and-stick approach may work on his Māori MP colleagues who remain curiously silent.” and “I am here waiting patiently, for our Māori Labour MP, to whisper just one kind word of support.”?

Hon KELVIN DAVIS: The issue here is making sure that all Māori students across the whole system have access to quality education, not just half of 1 percent of the Māori students who attend compulsory education.

Hon Paula Bennett: They don’t count.

Hon KELVIN DAVIS: Well, as I said, if the member listened, the emphasis is on all Māori students, and what the Hon Chris Hipkins has done has invited Māoridom, through the education summits, to actually help co-design the whole system, not just a fraction of the system.

Hon Paula Bennett: So when does he intend to stand up for the achievement of Māori students who don’t want their partnership schools forced back into the State school system?

Hon KELVIN DAVIS: Those schools who are now partnership schools next year will have their doors open. The same people who are running those schools will be running them. The same curriculum that was being taught will be taught. The children will wear the same uniforms. Very little is going to change except for a few administration issues. Now, let me tell you this: in 2006 and 2007, I was part of a group with the ASB Community Trust to help to establish the A Company academy that’s now part of Te Kāpehu Whetū, in Whangarei. That school ran for three or four years highly successfully, and they weren’t a partnership school. They will still be able to run highly successfully when they transition to the State system.

Hon Paula Bennett: Does he accept that the very school he has just mentioned will, by having to go back into the State sector, now have a higher teacher-student ratio and will lose mentors who they can currently employ because they are a partnership school and have some more freedom of funding, and those students have been achieving better because of it?

Hon KELVIN DAVIS: No. And what the member has just illustrated is the fact that the charter schools were over-resourced in comparison to State schools, which is exactly what the State system was saying about charter schools.

Hon Paula Bennett: What is his response then to the school who have today made it clear that entering the State system will cause them to lose key staff, and that “mentoring of senior students by non-teaching staff had been a crucial element in the students’ academic achievements.”?

Hon KELVIN DAVIS: As I have said, we want all schools—all Māori students—to be successful, not just a handful of schools. And, as I’ve said, the changes that the Hon Chris Hipkins is making to the education system in unwinding the nine years of neglect from the last Government are going to make a massive difference for all Māori students.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: If Māori schools was a political preoccupation, how come Hato Petera College got wound down?

Hon KELVIN DAVIS: Yes, it’s very sad what happened to Hato Petera College under the previous Government, and now it’s got to the stage—

SPEAKER: Order!

Hon Gerry Brownlee: Point of order.

SPEAKER: No, I think I can deal with it. I was hoping that the member might answer in an area for which he has some responsibility, but he doesn’t for that.

Education—Teacher to Pupil Ratios

5. Hon NIKKI KAYE (National—Auckland Central) to the Minister of Education: What plans, if any, does he have to ensure more students have more time with teachers, and students with more complex needs get access to the support they need?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister of Education): Can I thank the member for the question. My first plan is to address the serious teacher shortage that we inherited from the previous Government due to the 40 percent reduction in the number of people training to be teachers during the tenure of the last Government. In December, I announced an initial teacher supply package. This was significantly boosted again in this year’s Budget. Teachers have been freed up to spend more time with students through the scrapping of national standards, and our work to reduce red tape and compliance is ongoing. Students with more complex needs have benefited from the biggest increase in learning support funding in over a decade, while those in early childhood education have benefited from the first across-the-board funding increase in over a decade.

Hon Nikki Kaye: Does he agree that children will get better educational outcomes through more teacher time if the student to teacher ratio is reduced?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: I seem to recall making that argument when the previous Government was trying to make class sizes bigger. The biggest challenge we have with regard to teacher-student ratios at the moment is having enough teachers to fill the existing vacancies that we have in our schools because of the 40 percent reduction in the number training to be teachers.

Hon Nikki Kaye: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I asked a very simple, yes or no question: does he believe educational outcomes—

SPEAKER: The member will resume her seat. She knows—she’s been here a number of years—members cannot require a yes or no answer. The member got an answer, and if she listened, she would’ve heard it.

Hon Nikki Kaye: Why has he prioritised spending $2.8 billion on his fees-free and tertiary policy over smaller class sizes?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: I reject the assertion in the member’s question. The Government has committed to reducing and eliminating financial barriers to participation in education at all levels. The moves that we are taking in early childhood education will help to ease the pressure on parents. The Government is committed to dealing with the chronic underfunding that has afflicted our school system, and the increase in funding for tertiary education will of course benefit, amongst others, the future teaching workforce.

Hon Nikki Kaye: In light of his comments regarding teacher shortages, have actual primary class sizes, on average, increased or decreased in the last eight months?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: The current Government has made no changes to the funding formula for teachers, and therefore—

Hon Nikki Kaye: Actual class sizes now?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: Well, with regard to actual class sizes, the previous Government didn’t collect any data on actual class sizes, so it’s very difficult to draw a conclusion as to whether actual class sizes have changed. Of course, the decisions around how many pupils are in an individual class rest with the individual schools. The previous Government didn’t record that. We haven’t started recording that. As part of the workforce strategy work that this Government has put in place—something the previous Government didn’t do anything about—that may be one of the things we consider.

Jan Tinetti: Has the Minister seen any proposals to increase the amount of time teachers can spend with our youngest learners?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: Yes, indeed I have. I’ve seen a proposal to change the teacher-child ratios for under-two-year-olds from 1:5 to 1:4. That proposal was put forward some time ago, and a decade later these children are still waiting for the National Party to deliver on their last promise to lower student-teacher ratios.

Hon Nikki Kaye: Will he guarantee that he will deliver smaller class sizes in primary schools in the term of this Government?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: The commitments the Government’s made regarding teachers have been set out in the Speech from the Throne and the various coalition agreements that we have. We have a commitment to putting forward an education workforce strategy, and that will be considered as part of that work.

Economic Programme—Business Confidence and Government Policies

6. Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH (National) to the Minister for Economic Development: Does he stand by the Government’s economic development strategy?

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

Hon Paul Goldsmith: What is the strategy?

Hon DAVID PARKER: Well, last time I outlined the strategy, the Speaker told me that I listed too many important aspects.

SPEAKER: That’s right.

Hon DAVID PARKER: But, in summary, we aim to diversify our export base, turning our economy from volume to value; we’re changing the investment signals so that more capital goes to the productive export economy rather than unproductive speculation; and we want equality of opportunity and more equal opportunities and outcomes, no matter where you live in New Zealand—that’s called regional development. This is in stark contrast to the Opposition’s growth model of weak per capita growth, housing speculation, poorly targeted immigration—

SPEAKER: Order! Order! The member is finished.

Hon Paul Goldsmith: So, if by “changing the investment signals” he means introducing a capital gains tax, how does he think taxing small-business owners more by taxing capital gains in building up their business as well as profits every year will promote economic development?

Hon DAVID PARKER: That’s not what I mean. But it is absolutely, patently clear that New Zealand has to do something different from the last Government, given that the last Government had an ambition of increasing exports from 30 to 40 percent of GDP and, in nine years, trashed the economy and took exports back to 27 percent of GDP.

Hon Paul Goldsmith: Does he still think that the ANZ survey of business confidence is junk?

Hon DAVID PARKER: Yes.

Hon Paul Goldsmith: That’s not what he said last time. When he says that business confidence surveys are down because business leaders and employers don’t like the Labour Party, can he blame them?

Hon DAVID PARKER: That’s not quite what I said. Although I haven’t read the latest ANZ survey, I’m sure it’s no different from the earlier ones. It’s a survey of the emotion of CEOs, and it’s about their sentiment. It’s not about rising jobs, increasing incomes, and increasing surpluses. In respect of the other survey that was noted by the Opposition today, which is the OECD one, I note that that’s based on 2017 hard data, and that their company report notes New Zealand’s high-level costs, neglect of the regions, undeveloped capital markets, wealth inequality, and significant infrastructure problems. There are some challenges that we need to overcome after nine years of neglect by the last Government.

Schools—Teacher Supply

7. JAMIE STRANGE (Labour) to the Minister of Education: What action, if any, is the Government taking to increase the supply of teachers?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister of Education): This year’s Budget provided $370 million to fund 1,500 more teaching places by 2021, to meet population growth. This is on top of a $9.5 million teacher supply package that I announced in December and an additional $20 million set aside in this Budget to continue that package over the next four years. Every teacher supply initiative that this Government is committed to has been fully detailed and fully costed.

Jamie Strange: What progress to date has the Government made to increase the number of teachers since it came into power nine months ago?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: This Government has funded nearly 900 teacher education refresher places, removing the cost barriers for refresher training so that teachers can continue teaching or return to teaching faster. We expanded the Auckland Beginning Teacher Project to 60 places in 2018, with another 60 in 2019. We expanded the Voluntary Bonding Scheme to encourage new teachers to work in decile 1, 2, and 3 Auckland schools and nationwide in identified subjects, such as Māori medium. More than 300 teachers who started their roles in 2018 will be eligible for a payment after completing three consecutive years of employment.

Jamie Strange: What steps is he taking to lift the status of the teaching profession?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: Our Government is very proud to be progressing legislation to give teachers back the right to elect their representatives to their own professional body. I look forward to the increased support I anticipate for this bill following National’s newfound sudden respect for teachers.

Immigration—Exploitation of Students and Fraudulent Visas

8. Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (National) to the Minister of Immigration: Does he stand by all his statements, policies, and actions?

Hon IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY (Minister of Immigration): Yes, in the context in which they were given, made, and taken.

Hon Michael Woodhouse: When he was advised by officials of organised fraud by Sri Lankan student visa applicants, why did he take no action to establish how widespread the fraud was?

Hon IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY: Well, because Immigration New Zealand was already in the process of taking that action.

Hon Michael Woodhouse: What was that action?

Hon IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY: That action was to manually review the 895 applications that were received through the Mumbai office for visas from Sri Lankan nationals during 2017 and see which ones of those involved the finance company in question.

Greg O’Connor: What action has he taken to address issues of international student exploitation?

Hon IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY: The best remedy is to ensure that Immigration New Zealand has the resources it needs to address these issues. When I became Minister, I discovered that the Immigration New Zealand memorandum account was $50 million in deficit. What we are doing as a Government is consulting on immigration fees and levies to ensure that the system is properly funded and resourced.

Greg O’Connor: What further action does he intend to take to address student exploitation?

Hon IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY: We have recently consulted on post-study work rights proposals. These changes are intended to maintain the quality of New Zealand’s education industry and reduce the exploitation of migrant students. The results of this consultation will be announced shortly.

Hon Michael Woodhouse: What action will be taken against students found to have committed fraud on their applications?

Hon IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY: Well, the challenge, of course, is to verify whether students used the finance company’s services fraudulently. The challenge here is that going back and retrospectively reviewing those applications requires a source to verify that financial information. The one and only source is the fraudulent finance company. So what Immigration New Zealand is doing is identifying which students may be involved, and should those students seek to extend their visa in New Zealand, those visas will be scrutinised carefully and it will be made absolutely certain that they have the source of funds they need to support themselves in New Zealand.

Hon Michael Woodhouse: What signal does that answer send to future applicants who might be tempted to lie on their applications and suffer not one single negative consequence?

Hon IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY: Well, the future for Immigration New Zealand is that the applications that involve that finance company will no longer be accepted and that the patterns of behaviour that were detected when this fraud was identified are being looked for across the immigration system to find other opportunities to detect fraud early. What we need to make sure of is that this immigration system has integrity. I am focused on the future, not on cleaning up the mess that occurred under that member’s watch.

Electoral (Integrity) Amendment Bill—Commentary

9. Hon Dr NICK SMITH (National—Nelson) to the Minister of Justice: Does he agree with the statement on the Electoral (Integrity) Amendment Bill made by Greens co-leader Marama Davidson on Friday that, “it is a bill which is undemocratic”, and that this bill threatens democracy?

Hon ANDREW LITTLE (Minister of Justice): Kia orana e Te Vaa Tuatua. Marama Davidson is free to express her view, but this Government has agreed on one thing about this bill, and that is that the fundamental democratic principle is that the electorate decides the make-up of Parliament, not individual MPs.

Hon Dr Nick Smith: Does he accept that a majority of this Parliament oppose his bill?

Hon ANDREW LITTLE: No.

Hon Dr Nick Smith: Does he agree with the statement by founding Green co-leader, the late Rod Donald, on a previous electoral integrity bill, that it was “the most draconian, obnoxious, anti-democratic, insulting piece of legislation ever”—

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

SPEAKER: I think I know where the member’s going. I want to hear the end of the question first to see if it does get into order.

Hon Dr Nick Smith: Does he agree with the statement by founding Green co-leader, the late Rod Donald, on a previous electoral integrity bill, that is was—and I quote from Hansard—“the most draconian, obnoxious, anti-democratic, insulting piece of legislation ever inflicted on Parliament”, which is now to become law, only with the votes of the Green Party?

Rt Hon Winston Peters: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. The member is asking a question—for which the Minister cannot be responsible—about a previous bill that came into this House something like 17 years ago and then seeks to get it within the Standing Orders by mentioning the current legislation, and he can’t do that.

Hon Gerry Brownlee: Speaking to the point of order—

SPEAKER: No, I am prepared to deal with it. The question is about a matter of policy rather than the detail of a particular bill, and the Minister is responsible for the policy. He will answer the question.

Hon ANDREW LITTLE: Apart from not understanding what “abnoxious” means, the answer to the question is no.

Hon Dr Nick Smith: Does his bill address the situation where MPs state one thing but vote for the exact opposite, and does that fit within the definition of integrity in his bill?

Hon ANDREW LITTLE: The circumstance that that member has just described applied to National Party MPs in the Greens’ medicinal cannabis member’s bill earlier this year, but—

Hon Dr Nick Smith: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. My question is not about the medicinal cannabis bill. It is about the electoral integrity bill for which he has responsibility.

SPEAKER: And if the member made that clear, rather than asking a general question, then I would have—

Hon Dr Nick Smith: I’d be happy to restate the question.

SPEAKER: No, I’m not going to ask the member to ask it again. Andrew Little, start your answer again.

Hon ANDREW LITTLE: The circumstance that that member just referred to was precisely the circumstance that applied to a number of National MPs in the debate over the Green Party’s member’s bill on medicinal cannabis earlier this year. Notwithstanding that, I don’t agree with the proposition that that member has just put.

Social Development, Ministry—Industry Partnerships

10. PRIYANCA RADHAKRISHNAN (Labour) to the Minister for Social Development: What recent announcements has she made that highlight this Government’s industry partnership-focused approach to employment?

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI (Minister for Social Development): Kia orana e Te Vaa Tuatua. Last Thursday, I announced the launch of the online interactive tool Restaurant Tycoon that allows small and medium business owners to learn about the services offered by the Ministry of Social Development (MSD), BNZ, and Xero. This tool is the result of hard work from MSD’s industry partnership team, in conjunction with BNZ and Xero, to provide new and innovative employment opportunities for MSD clients. Restaurant Tycoon is one of a series developed by Joy Business Academy and will be sent to almost 500,000 small to medium business customers of BNZ and Xero. Through this tool, these customers will learn how they can work with MSD for free to recruit staff, access relevant products and services, and utilise mentoring and support when hiring an MSD client.

Priyanca Radhakrishnan: Why is the industry partnership between MSD, BNZ, and Xero important?

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: The online interactive tool developed out of this industry partnership not only provides small and medium businesses with a better way to engage with MSD; it also provides MSD clients with the opportunity to explore self-employment and business ownership. This tool can be used by clients who are interested in starting up their own business so they can see how this can be done and learn important tricks of the trade. This tool is also just one of a series being developed. Interactive tools are also being developed for building and construction, as well as tourism. As we know, these are areas currently in need of more workers. This initiative reflects how industry partnerships with Government can respond.

SPEAKER: Order! Order! The answers are getting longer, and they’re already long.

Priyanca Radhakrishnan: What other recent accomplishments have there been as a result of the Ministry of Social Development’s industry partnerships?

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: Earlier in July, I attended the signing of a memorandum of understanding between MSD and XLam in Nelson. XLam is an innovative building manufacturing and construction company that is creating entry-level manufacturing and construction opportunities. In the same week, another one of our successful industry partners, the Downer Group, celebrated hiring 1,000 MSD clients over its time. MSD and Downer have had a relationship since 2007, and we are continuing to grow this—

SPEAKER: Order! OK, OK. I’m recommending a press statement.

Question No. 9 to Minister

Hon Dr NICK SMITH (National—Nelson): I seek leave of the House to table the draft report of the Justice Committee with respect to the Electoral (Integrity) Amendment Bill and the factual matters that National wanted included in the report that meant the committee was unable to provide a commentary to the House.

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Leader of the House): My understanding is that when a bill is reported back to the House, all of the information that the committee had relating to that bill is then publicly released.

SPEAKER: It’s certainly publicly available.

Hon Dr NICK SMITH (National—Nelson): I’m advised by the Clerk of the House that the draft report that was unable to be agreed to is not one of the documents that becomes public, and the only way for it to become public was for me to seek leave of the House for it to be tabled.

SPEAKER: Right. The member is correct. The Hon Dr Nick Smith is correct. This, as I remember, was a point of debate at the last Standing Orders review. I think it was the view of myself and some of my colleagues that they should be available, but the view of members—some other members—was that they should not be automatically available. So in that case, they are not automatically available. The Hon Dr Nick Smith is correct, and I will put the leave. Is there any objection? There is objection. [Interruption] Order! That cross-House interjection will cease. I just want to place on my record my concern at the members who did object and their lack of commitment to transparency.

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Leader of the House): I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. The issue here, which was well canvassed, is that a draft report has been prepared by the clerk. It does not necessarily reflect the views of the members. Unless the committee agrees a report, it has no standing and in no way reflects the view of the meeting or the members who attended the meeting.

SPEAKER: The member is absolutely right, and, if he remembers, his colleagues also argued at the same Standing Orders Committee that draft reports to Ministers are available under the Official Information Act. Ministers can differentiate themselves from those draft reports if they wish, and it was the view of the minority of the Standing Orders Committee that members of Parliament were big enough and able enough to differentiate themselves in that way.

Hon Dr NICK SMITH (National—Nelson): I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker.

SPEAKER: I hope the member’s not going to extend this, because it’s—

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: No, I was simply going to say, having had your further advice, I wonder whether the Government members might allow me to seek leave again.

SPEAKER: Well, I’m certainly not going to put that. If it can be negotiated with the Government that that approval will be given, then the member might want to try and do it tomorrow.

Police—Deputy Commissioner of Police, Inquiry into the Appointment Process

11. CHRIS BISHOP (National—Hutt South) to the Minister of Internal Affairs: Does she have confidence in the process that led to the appointment of Dr Pauline Kingi as chair of the Government inquiry into the appointment of Wally Haumaha as the Deputy Commissioner of Police?

Hon TRACEY MARTIN (Minister of Internal Affairs): Firstly, the premise of the question is incorrect—there is no inquiry into Mr Haumaha. There is, however, a Government inquiry into the appointment process for a Deputy Commissioner of Police. Having said that, I can confirm that the process used to establish the independent Government inquiry into the appointment process for a Deputy Commissioner of Police is the same as that used for the chair of any other inquiry. It is a process run by the Department of Internal Affairs and supported by other agencies. It is the same process established by the previous National Government in November 2009, and was updated by the National Government in 2013 and used by that Government to establish the whey protein concentrate contamination incident in 2013, the royal commission of inquiry on the Pike River coalmine tragedy in 2012, and the Government inquiry into the Havelock North drinking water.

Chris Bishop: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. That was an interesting traverse through the last few years of Government inquiries, but it didn’t really go to the question of whether or not the Minister has confidence in the process.

SPEAKER: I think it did. Does the member have a supplementary?

Chris Bishop: How can she have confidence in the process that appointed Dr Pauline Kingi when she has publicly endorsed Mr Wally Haumaha 23 times for a range of attributes, including for leadership, governance, public safety, crime prevention, and stakeholder management?

Hon TRACEY MARTIN: Dr Kingi has declared that she knew Mr Haumaha in a professional capacity when she was a highly respected public servant. She has also declared that she attended a tangi either in 2015 or 2016—[Interruption]

SPEAKER: Order! The member will resume her seat. This is a very important answer that goes to the integrity of at least two people, and will be heard in silence.

Hon TRACEY MARTIN: Dr Kingi has declared that she knew of Mr Haumaha in a professional capacity when she was a highly respected public servant. She has also declared that she attended a tangi in either 2015 or 2016 that Mr Haumaha also attended. Dr Kingi has signed, as is standard procedure, a declaration confirming that she has no conflict of interest in relation to the appointment—which, I remind the member, is into the process by the State Services Commission around appointment processes. If the member if asking if LinkedIn is a usual port of call for Government departments to ascertain the suitability of an inquiry chair, then I would have to say no. Rather than resort to social media, this Government looks to the substantial CVs of candidates and the fullness of their service to their communities and their country, and Dr Kingi is a New Zealander that has given great service to her country. I would suggest this is why the 1999 Shipley-led National Government awarded Dr Kingi the Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit.

Chris Bishop: When Dr Pauline Kingi was appointed to lead the independent inquiry into the appointment process around Mr Wally Haumaha, was she aware that Dr Kingi had publicly endorsed Mr Haumaha 23 times on LinkedIn for every skill Mr Haumaha has listed on that website—and, in some cases, being the only person to endorse him—and that Mr Haumaha has endorsed Dr Kingi on at least three occasions for her skills listed on the LinkedIn website?

Hon TRACEY MARTIN: I was unaware of the LinkedIn endorsements until my office was contacted by media this morning. I requested that the chief executive contact Dr Kingi to clarify the suggested conflict. While Dr Kingi could not remember making these endorsements, she did confirm—

Hon Members: Ha, ha!

Hon TRACEY MARTIN: This is important. Would you like to listen? The integrity of a highly respected public servant is being questioned; it’s important that her answers be placed on the record. She did confirm that she had, like many New Zealanders, set up a LinkedIn account when it was first launched, and that at time it was—

Hon Simon Bridges: Are you that useless?

Hon TRACEY MARTIN: —common practice for Māori professionals to—

SPEAKER: Order! The member will resume her seat. The Leader of the Opposition will stand, withdraw, and apologise.

Hon Simon Bridges: I withdraw and apologise.

Hon TRACEY MARTIN: It was common practice at that time—16 years ago—for Māori professionals to support each other on this new medium through endorsement.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Is it a fact that not only did Dr Pauline Kingi get a substantial honour from the National Party but so did Wallace Haumaha—not once but twice?

SPEAKER: Order! This member has no responsibility for that.

Chris Bishop: Further to that answer, is the member aware that the endorsement function on LinkedIn was only invented and established in 2012, so references to LinkedIn profiles 15 years ago are an utter irrelevance?

Hon TRACEY MARTIN: My understanding is that LinkedIn was developed in 2002—16 years ago. It may be that the member is more au fait with social media than I am because I spend most of my time working on things important to New Zealand, not on Twitter.

Chris Bishop: Can the Minister give a categorical assurance that Dr Pauline Kingi was not involved in recommending promotions or appointments of Mr Haumaha in her role as a member of the Auckland District advisory taumata and her role assisting the Auckland District police with police recruitment?

Hon TRACEY MARTIN: I can give an assurance of the complete and proper process around the appointment of Dr Kingi as the chair of an independent inquiry into the process by which the State Services Commission provides information to Ministers for appointment. I can also direct the member to the Office of the Auditor-General’s Managing conflicts of interest: Guidance for public entities if he would like to avail himself of that information with regard to how conflict of interest is managed in this country.

Health Services—Nurse Staffing Levels

12. Dr LIZ CRAIG (Labour) to the Minister of Health: What recent progress has been made, if any, to address safe staffing for nurses working in our hospitals?

Hon Dr DAVID CLARK (Minister of Health): Mr Speaker, kia orana. Yesterday the Ministry of Health, district health boards (DHBs), and the Nurses Organisation signed an accord, and agreed to jointly tackle longstanding concerns about nurses’ workloads and safe staffing. Safe staffing is not optional; it is fundamental and must be a priority. This accord sets a clear path forward to ensure that we get the right number of nurses in the right place at the right time.

Dr Liz Craig: So how will safe staffing levels be determined?

Hon Dr DAVID CLARK: The accord commits DHBs and the Ministry of Health to work with the Nurses Organisation to implement the agreed safe staffing tool, Care Capacity Demand Management. I accept that nurses don’t feel that DHBs have always delivered on previous commitments. As Minister of Health, I will be requiring them to make good on all staffing commitments, and clear accountability mechanisms will be in place.

Dr Liz Craig: What measures will be taken to ensure there are sufficient nurses available?

Hon Dr DAVID CLARK: The accord also includes a commitment to develop a strategy to help keep existing nurses and midwives in the public health service and attract others back to work in our hospitals, and we will look at what more we can do to support our graduate nurses into employment and training. These are realistic steps we can take right now to start addressing the issues of safe staffing and workloads that have developed over many years of underfunding.

Estimates Debate

In Committee

Debate resumed from 24 July on the Appropriation (2018/19 Estimates) Bill.

Health Sector (continued)

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Anne Tolley): Kia orana, colleagues. The House is in committee for further consideration of the Appropriation (2018/19 Estimates) Bill. When we were last considering the bill, the committee was debating the health sector. The question is that Vote Health stand part of the schedules. Dr Liz Craig had the call and has four minutes and 25 seconds remaining if she so wishes.

Dr LIZ CRAIG (Labour): Thank you, Madam Chairperson. So when I was interrupted I was talking about targets and about how the fact is that in the health sector they’re useful for focusing action in important areas but they can also be used to divert attention from things that we’d rather people didn’t see. And I was also talking about how this Budget starts to address some of those real underlying drivers about what’s really happening in our health system.

So I want to talk a little bit about one of the targets: emergency department waiting times. Because what we’re seeing is—you know, with the previous Government’s targets a lot of emergency departments (EDs) are working really hard to get patients through the system so they can meet the target of 95 percent admitted, discharged, and transferred within about six hours, but the problem that these targets completely miss is why our EDs are bursting at the seams in the first place. This is something that the district health boards (DHBs) were talking about in their annual reviews, with DHBs talking about this ongoing, increasing, relentless demand for acute services.

The problem we’ve got is a lot of those conditions that people are coming in with are called ambulatory sensitive. What that means is that the hospitalisation could potentially be prevented if they had early access to primary care. What the New Zealand Health Survey is saying is that about 14 percent of people in the last year put off going to the doctor because of the cost, but if you look at people living in the poorest areas, that went up to about 20 percent. So what this Government wants to do is make sure that people can afford to go to the doctor when they need one. What Budget 2018 does is invest an extra $360 million over four years to extend access to Very Low Cost Access (VLCA) GP services to community services card holders. What that means is that for those who are not on a VLCA practice already, their doctors visits will be about, on average, $20 to $30 cheaper.

We’re also going to be extending community service cards to all those on accommodation supplement or income-related rent, so even more people can access affordable primary care, and that’s really important for ensuring that people can get to the doctor rather than having to turn up at A & E and end up in hospital.

The area I was working in before coming to Parliament, though, was child health, and again, looking at targets, there was this huge focus on immunisation rates. Indeed, as we focused on that, immunisation rates did improve because DHBs got together with public health organisations and GPs and worked out how we could improve timeliness and access to immunisation. But the problem is that that’s only sort of a few hundred vaccine-preventable hospital admissions—maybe a couple of thousand. What it misses is that our whole hospital system is full of sick kids: on average, there are about over 40,000 hospital admissions every year for infectious and respiratory diseases, a lot of them related to the economic conditions that the kids are living in. The problem we’ve got is that most of those conditions aren’t actually vaccine-preventable. So when you’ve got to reduce this, what you need to be doing is looking at housing, looking at family income, reducing child poverty, and also making sure families can get to the GP when they need one.

This Budget addresses all of those areas. With the Families Package, we’re looking at family income. We’re also looking at housing, with 6,400 new houses—State or social houses—over the next four years. In the primary-care space, what we’re looking at is extending free GP services to all 13-year-olds and also extending the nurses in schools programme to all decile 4 secondary schools that are publicly funded. So what we’ve got is many more young people being able to access GP services.

The problem we’ve also got with some targets—while a lot of the ones I’ve been talking about are tangentially related to targets, there’s others where the targets have completely missed what’s going on the health sector, and that’s the state of our infrastructure, our buildings. What we’ve seen is under-investment in our hospitals, so we’ve got mouldy, leaking buildings. We’ve got buildings that are completely out of date and need repair. A lot of this stems from the fact that we haven’t got an asset management plan nationally, so that was masking the fact that a lot of DHBs, in the face of chronic underfunding, may have been delaying their asset infrastructure. So what this Budget does is it adds 750 million—

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Anne Tolley): The member’s time—I’m sorry—has finished. We turned off the clocks so that the member didn’t get confused.

Hon NICKY WAGNER (National): Thank you very much, Madam Chair. The Director-General of Health, in his annual report 2017-18, acknowledges that New Zealand has achieved important health gains over recent years. We are living longer, and we’re living longer in good health, but, of course, there’s always challenges in health, and they remain. After going through the Budget process and after looking at the Estimates, I’m not sure that this Government is up to managing those health challenges.

Now, of course, Vote Health is one of any Government’s really large expenses—or, as National believes, a social investment. Under National, the Government increased Vote Health substantially in every Budget, but during this election, Labour made the case that there was a huge deficit in health spending, that they would invest $8 billion more in health if they became the Government. I actually wonder how many people voted because of that promise, because, of course, they didn’t put an extra $8 billion in health, and at the Health Committee, the Minister of Health had to admit that in percentage terms, Labour’s increase this year was less than National’s last year—so much for election promises.

There are other issues that really bother me about this Government’s approach to health. Doing away with the health targets is a travesty, and it was interesting to hear the member Liz Craig talking about health targets and the importance of health targets, because there’s absolutely no doubt that they have driven the health gains that the director-general has noted were achieved since 2007. The key thing about targets is that they focus on the things that are important to New Zealanders, and on their health outcomes. The targets mean that everyone in the sector—everyone that works in the sector, everyone that supports the sector—knows where to put the emphasis, knows where to put their expertise, and knows where to put their energy. The targets make health organisations, health workers, and district health boards (DHBs) accountable. That’s the key issue—it makes them accountable. The regular publishing of DHB outcomes in the newspapers meant that every New Zealander knew how well the health system was working across the country but, more importantly, how their local DHB was performing. I think everyone in this House knows that monitoring and transparency of any system drives better results, and that, of course, is what we want in health.

There’s other failures in the funding that bother me as well, and again I note that the member Liz Craig was talking about cheaper GP visits—well, weren’t we promised $10-cheaper GP visits across the board? Yes? Again, another election promise that’s very easy to make—we know the reason for it—but has proved very difficult to deliver.

And what about mental health? Just as with the $8 billion promise, Labour campaigned that there was urgent need for more mental health funding and initiatives, and we agreed, but what happened? Since they’ve been in Government, the $100 million that National put up, ring-fenced for mental health and the 17 mental health initiatives that were on the table and committed to, has disappeared, and we’ve now got a mental health talkfest. Now, I’m not necessarily against having an inquiry. This is an important area, but don’t make urgent mental health programmes wait while they talk.

Then, what about the $100 million for medicines for rare diseases? Up in a puff of smoke.

Finally, as if disabled people don’t have life tough enough, this Government has just cancelled $6.5 million worth of funding for cochlear implants. Now, cochlear implants are brilliant devices that help deaf people hear, and National—[Time expired]

Hon Dr DAVID CLARK (Minister of Health): Thank you, Madam Chair. I want to put a few comments on record, as there have been a number of speeches made by members of the Opposition, some of them on a previous day that the committee sat, and correct a few things for the record.

The Hon Michael Woodhouse, in his opening contribution—I appreciate he hasn’t been the Opposition health spokesperson for a long time—made the claim that Labour, in Opposition, had said the health budget was $8 billion short. That’s not quite accurate. We had some research done in Opposition that suggested the health budget was $2.3 billion short just to achieve the existing level of services in the health system, that it had been short-funded, and that with a growing ageing population with more complex needs and increasing demand, the funding had not kept up with the pace. So it was actually now harder to get access to services than it used to be.

What we saw under the previous Government was a health system that was drifting and that was in decline. With the underfunding, it struggled to keep up, and New Zealanders saw that. They saw that they couldn’t get the services they used to be able to get because the funding simply wasn’t there to deliver them.

So that’s why this Government campaigned, as the previous member said, on putting $8 billion more into the health system. This Government is committed over the forecast period to putting $8 billion into the health system, which, over time, contributes that $2.3 billion that they cut out back in, and it adds new funding in as well, recognising that growing ageing population. That’s the pledge we have made, and we’ll be held to account on that over the forecast period.

But, of course, we can’t fix everything in one Budget. The levels of neglect and the nine years of neglect can’t be addressed in one Budget. Nobody pretends that it can be. Nobody pretends you can magic up a workforce when it’s been run down under the previous Government’s watch while they had just let it drift and decline.

But this Government is committed to the public delivery of health services. We have determined that we will take measures straight away. We will do things like invest in mental health in a way that the previous Government never did. They seemed content, again, to let that drift and get worse and worse, and to let the wait times get longer for mental health services. They did not take action, despite—

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Anne Tolley): I’m sorry to interrupt the Minister, but we are on the Estimates, which is about what the Government is going to do, and not necessarily—we’ve had half your five minutes now on the previous Government, so can you focus on what you’re doing.

Hon Dr DAVID CLARK: I will come back to the reason why we’re responding. What we have committed to in the Budget, therefore, is to already put in some integrated therapies: a pilot programme for 18- to 25-year-olds—more than $10 million over the next three years—which makes counselling and therapy available for young people. We’ve invested $28 million over the next three years to better support Canterbury kids to mean that every primary school - age child in Canterbury will have access to a mental health worker, and we’ve put $17 million over the next four years into expanding school-based health services, which is the next step in rolling out the nurses in schools programme. Quite aside from that, of course, we’ve launched the mental health and addiction inquiry, which reports back in just a couple of months and will project the way forward for future Budgets and commitments that will be made to make sure that we spend the money well.

One of the other significant things that was done in the Budget which will benefit those with mental health issues is the reduction in fees for community services card holders—540,000 more New Zealanders will have access to doctors visits under $20. For many of them, that will mean a saving of $20 or $30 per visit, and, for some of them, a saving of up to $50 per visit. So they will actually be able to access a GP and, for many, that is the way into mental health services. They get the initial consultation that puts them in a position to get access to mental health services. So that’s a really important initiative on mental health.

A number of speakers have mentioned the $100 million contingency the previous Government had put forward, so I do want to address that and say that that money was never appropriated. No money was ever appropriated for programmes. They were in the realm of nice ideas. That Government had nine years to act and did not.

Dr SHANE RETI (National—Whangarei): Thank you, Madam Chair. It’s a pleasure to speak to the Estimates for health, and I’d like to thank the Minister of Health for turning out to that session. We raised a lot of questions in the health portfolio, and I have a particular interest in the National Oracle Solution, which we raised extensively with the Minister, and there are some points I want to talk to here.

Just to set the background, the National Oracle Solution is a $90 million IT project which started in 2011. It was given a different name then—Finance, Procurement and Supply Chain—and in 2013, it became the National Oracle Solution. We asked the Minister and we probed further on conflicts of interest, which, quite clearly, we’ve been concerned about. We’ve been concerned that the Minister and his team have turned away some of the questions, saying that the National Oracle Solution didn’t exist in 2011. Well, we know that to be incorrect. We pointed that out. We have the work schedule from Deloitte—and it’s not an issue of Deloitte; it’s an issue of the appointment that we’re working with—that shows us that they were working on this in 2011. In fact, they were working quite deeply, which I’ll come to in a moment. So I think that, as an argument, just doesn’t stand.

It’s quite clear. Again, we know from released documents that at one point, Deloitte didn’t want their conflict of interest brought into the public domain—when they said, “It is our preference for this not to be made public.”, once we’d raised questions in the House—and then, later in the day, they came back and said, “Oh, OK. If you have to, you can.” That’s not a good look, and, of course, the conflict of interest document they’re talking about details all the work that they’d done on the National Oracle Solution.

It actually goes a little bit further than that, because what Deloitte does in their conflict of interest statement—the one they wanted to keep from the public—is they actually highlight where they’re materially involved. So it’s not just a passing comment but where they’re materially involved, and I would note that in a majority of their work in 2013 right through to 2017, they have been materially involved. They have had a conflict of interest.

Now, the Minister tried to distance himself from this debacle—and, again, another sort of riposte that’s been made is, “Well, I didn’t commission the review.” Well, you know, if we look to the statement in the House, the Minister said this—and we raised this in Estimates, as well—“There is no way that the public would not be interested in the reason why we commissioned an independent report”. That’s an inclusive pronoun—it was a “we”. Yes, Minister, you were involved in that appointment.

Then we talked about the quality of the review that’s been commissioned, and this is really important: $150,000 is what the taxpayer has paid Deloitte and/or its full subsidiary Asparona—and the Minister confirmed that—to complete this supposedly independent review. It’s important that I read from the transcript so you can grasp how these few sentences were exchanged with the Minister. Reti to the Minister: “[The Deloitte] review was $150,000, Minister. Can the taxpayer expect the review to assess if the solution is fit for purpose?” Clark: “Sorry, can you say that again?” Reti: “Can we expect, for $150,000, the review will assess if the solution is fit for purpose? Is that something that will be looked at?” Clark: “Whether the solution is fit for purpose?” Reti: “Correct.” Clark: “[Yes].” Now, we know that’s not possible, because, again, Official Information Act (OIA) documents have shown us Deloitte writing to us specifically saying, “We will not be assessing if the solution is fit for purpose.”

What have New Zealand taxpayers paid for? They have paid for $150,000 that the Minister, quite correctly, thinks is going to assess if the solution is fit for purpose. It’s a very reasonable expectation that the Minister should have for $150,000, and I think he answered as best as he understood his expectation. Fair enough; I agree with him. However, we have, on OIA documents, Deloitte writing back saying, “Oh, by the way, we will not be assessing if the solution is fit for purpose.” That’s unbelievable. We can’t really expect to pay $150,000 of taxpayer money for a review that’s really important, that will inform the next stages—it will inform Cabinet as to whether they put more money into the National Oracle Solution. The Minister expects it to assess if it’s fit for purpose. I expect it. I’m sure the House expects it. I’m sure taxpayers expect it, and yet in writing, Deloitte said, “Oh, by the way, our review will not assess if it’s fit for purpose.” That really needs a lot of scrutiny.

We gave it some time in committee. We received a response from the new director-general—clearly new in his portfolio. I’m sure he would give a different response today, but I think that still stands outstanding for the Minister to explain why all of our expectations, including his own, were that we would get a quality review for $150,000, and yet the reviewers are saying, “Ah, nah, we’re not going to do ‘fit for purpose’.” So I challenge the Minister to offer some further comment to that. Thank you, Madam Chair.

ANGIE WARREN-CLARK (Labour): Kia orana, Madam Chair. I’m delighted to take a stand today and talk about the health appropriation debate, because health is genuinely the biggest spend across all of Government. We can be really proud as a Government, across the benches here, of the money that we have actually put into health. We have inherited some—well, I could start with the dad jokes, but I’m not going to do the dad jokes, but we have inherited an ailing system. We have had some massive problems, and there’s been some wishy-washy action from National in the last nine years. We’ve got critical—

Hon Kris Faafoi: Stop being kind!

ANGIE WARREN-CLARK: —I’ll stop being kind—facilities in disrepair, unaffordable primary healthcare, the average cost for seeing a GP went up 30 percent. The demand for mental health support has increased by 70 percent in the last decade—70 percent. There wasn’t a 70 percent increase in funding to support that—oh no—and we have a crisis. Funding didn’t increase by half of that, and 606—606—Kiwis took their lives last year. We have the highest suicide rate in the OECD. Our workforce has been under strain over the last nine years, and I completely support the Minister when he says that those workers deserve fair pay and safe and decent working conditions. We have all used the health system over—

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Anne Tolley): Order! Look, this is quite a focused debate. I’m looking at the report from Vote Health, and some of the points the member makes are in here, but she must reference them in her conversation.

ANGIE WARREN-CLARK: Absolutely, Madam. Me hana, Madam Chair. So I am delighted today because we believe in adding value into our health system. So we have added $3.2 billion extra into the health services, and an extra $750 million into the capital for hospitals—$750 million to fix our ailing, leaking system that we have. No doubt, most of you have heard the saying “If we don’t have our health, what do we have?” Well, this coalition Government believes that if we don’t have a health system, what do we have?

We believe in free, universal healthcare for all and, as a consequence, we have done our very best—our very best—to direct funding to support those who are least able to pay doctors’ fees. So there will be 540,000 Kiwis on low incomes able to access cheaper GP visits. Plus, we have 56,000 more children funded who are 14 and below. So that’s 56,000 more children who are going to be able to access free doctors in the system. And if we need to go to the hospital, $750 million—or a new hospital in Dunedin—is going to be invested in. We’re adding $80 million to the air ambulances, so that we can get to our emergencies faster, with more fit-for-purpose, safer helicopters, with bigger capacity and with more crew. That’s really important in such a rurally diverse community out there. We’re also increasing funding for elective surgery, so that people won’t be on the waiting list in pain waiting for their knee replacements, etc.

I think the Minister of Health is the pain relief that we all need for our health system. I think the Minister of Health has provided a great budget—one that is going to support all of us out there, all of us Kiwis who use this system. We have a plan, we’re working on it, and, in fact, it’s going to take a while, but we’re going to get there. Thank you.

Hon MAGGIE BARRY (National—North Shore): Thank you, Madam Chair. I rise to look at the health situation. I’m tempted to start with a remark about some doctors making you sick and some making you better, but, really, there is much more interesting stuff to get on with here with the Estimates.

It was very interesting for the Health Committee to confirm that Vote Health 2018 had the widest gap between the reality and the rhetoric—and it certainly did. The Minister David Clark talked about the challenges of facing a growing and ageing population with more complex needs. He was right about that one thing, but what did he actually do to deliver in this health budget for that ageing population’s needs? What did he do, for example, to look out and plan for the next 20 years, when there will be 1.3 million New Zealanders over the age of 65?

There is a very real need to front-load more money into healthcare, particularly for our older and more vulnerable New Zealanders. Minister Clark said that there are challenges. Yes, older New Zealanders are known to consume something like three to four times the amount of healthcare services, and that rises dramatically from the age of about 50. Those are the international trends. We don’t need to think too hard about it—there is certainly a need for a greater investment in that level of services. So what is he doing about it? Is he managing increased demand for elective surgery? No, he is not. What provision is he making for providing greater access for primary care? As far as many senior New Zealanders are concerned, nothing very much at all.

We have palliative care, which is, incidentally, expected to increase by about 51 percent over the next 20 years or so. Under a National Government, we delivered an extra $150 million to hospices and into funding end-of-life care, but what has this Minister done in this Budget to allow for it? Absolutely nothing. Palliative and end-of-life care is something that needs to be invested in at a more meaningful level. I think that the amount of money that is put into it at an earlier stage, given that everybody has to die, whether they’re older, younger, whatever—sometimes, unfortunately, people are taken before their time. But there needs to be more consideration given to ensuring that end-of-life care is available to people wherever and whenever they need it—so whether it comes to boosting hospice funding, for example.

Thirty-four hospices do a remarkable job in New Zealand. Last year, they made something like 145,000 calls to people’s homes. People being able to stay in their own homes is, I would suggest to the Minister, a very worthwhile investment. If that’s where people who are dying want to stay, and if that is where people who have dementia would like to stay—in their homes—for as long as possible, again, it requires a level of funding and a level of increase in that funding that will allow for caregivers, the people who are responsible for really making the homes safer.

I would urge the Minister to look at the ACC funding that the last Government put into falls prevention. More than $30 million was put in. When I search through the Estimates in Vote Health, there is nothing that is going to be able to advance a safer and more preventative measure, which has shown to be very worthwhile and saves a really difficult situation for older people, particularly, who have a fall and are then very high-needs.

We also see people in that older age group who find that they don’t have the level of resources that they need to stay in their own homes in terms of the budgets, in terms of the increasing costs of rent. These are not necessarily within the health budget, but, again, I would urge the Minister to be more of an advocate for health for older people. We’re not seeing it from the current Minister for Seniors, but perhaps the Minister of Health would like to pick up on that, because it is something that requires a decent amount of money at an early stage.

I think, when I talk to seniors—particularly those with onset dementia—they are seeing no realistic funding or any kind of support through the health dollar for the wonderful work that is done by dementia and Alzheimer’s groups around New Zealand. They need some leadership and guidance. If it isn’t coming from the Minister for Seniors, Tracey Martin, then perhaps the Minister of Health could look again at making up the shortfall, because there are vulnerable New Zealanders who need a leadership initiative from this Government. They are waiting to see it. They’ve been waiting nine months and they have received nothing, not even an indication that it’s really being taken seriously as a health concern. Dementia is, arguably, with our ageing population, one of the more significant areas of need that this country needs to make a profound investment in. Therefore, Vote Health is woefully lacking in 2018. Thank you.

ANAHILA KANONGATA’A-SUISUIKI (Labour): Kia orana e Maine Vaa Tuatua. It is an absolute privilege to stand here and speak on this very important topic: health. It would be rude of me not to acknowledge some of the words that have been echoed from across the Chamber, in terms of the talkfest by the Hon Nicky Wagner and what Dr Shane Reti has just gone through. Again, for me, it’s a rundown of the transcript on the day, which is another talkfest, and “Some doctors make you sick”, I think, is a bit of a compliment to some of the doctors across the other side.

Anyway, let me get back to Vote Health. We’ve heard people in the committee talk about numbers, talk about underfunding and neglect for nine years, but last night I took my out-of-Parliament staff member to the accident and emergency in Wellington Hospital. There is where we see what we are talking about. The hospital was full. People were coming in. My staff member needed to go to A & E to get a blood transfusion, because she wasn’t aware how ill she was. We went into A & E and the hospital was full. Every seat was taken. When we were met, we went into a room where we were met by the nurse, followed by the doctor. They put the drip in her arm, but they then had to put her in reception because there was no room—there was no room at A & E for her to be in. The nurses, despite reception being full, were upbeat and they were really engaging with everybody.

I want to acknowledge all the staff that were at accident and emergency in Wellington Hospital last night. We walked in at 8 o’clock in the evening, and we then went up to Ward 4, North Pod A, where the nurses—Kerry junior and Kerry senior—had talked to us. And we hear about messages that were shared by the Minister on his visit to the select committee. He talked about hard-working health professionals that have been under the pump for the past nine years, providing invaluable service. The senior nurse and the junior nurse had not had their dinner—had not had their dinner—and it was 11 o’clock. Their priority was to ensure that the blood transfusion had started before they took their break. Not only that; their role also was to teach the junior, the student nurse—to take them along the journey of teaching them what to do when they’re in hospital.

So, as a person who took in someone—as a support person—I saw everything that we are talking about in this place. I saw the hard-working nurses who were not taking their breaks because the priority of the health of the patients was No. 1. I saw a young woman with a bloodied face and everything, because of family violence. They were at reception—full.

So I want to acknowledge the Minister of Health on the leadership that he has with this Budget, because this Budget is truly about leadership. It is about the leadership to fix what New Zealand has inherited after the last nine years.

I want to make a special mention. I live in South Auckland, so I want to make a special mention to acknowledge the Minister in terms of the leadership this Government has addressed with the severe buildings of high concern in Middlemore Hospital. Can I take this opportunity to acknowledge the appointment of lau afioga Fepulea’i Margie Apa by the Counties Manukau District Health Board as the Chief Executive for Counties Manukau district health. That is about leadership and insight, bringing in experienced insight to serve the public, to serve—definitely for me—Counties Manukau. I want to acknowledge the Minister on his leadership in the appointment of the Hon Vui Mark Gosche, and now the appointment of afioga Fepulea’i Margie Apa in Counties Manukau. I’m happy that that has happened.

I want to talk about—I know I’m running out of time. I want to, again, commend the efforts of the people at Wellington Hospital accident and emergency last night. They definitely earned the appreciation of New Zealand and everyone’s appreciation for the effort they had put in. Not only do they have to look after the patients but they have the responsibility to teach the future nurses, and with that sentence, meitaki maata.

MATT DOOCEY (National—Waimakariri): Thank you very much, Madam Chair. I’d like to begin by just addressing one issue. I think the Minister of Health has tried to claim his narrative of the 17 mental health initiatives of the $100 million amount not being appropriated as if it was his argument. In fact, if he remembers quite rightly, it was my mistake when I wrongly put the word “appropriated” in my primary question at question time one day about the 17 mental health initiatives and the $100 million. So I just don’t want the Minister taking the kudos that he had come up with that defence himself, when in fact it was actually my mistake.

But it actually poses the question: if it hasn’t been appropriated, why not appropriate it? And then he tried to say, “Well, it hasn’t been to Cabinet.” By definition, if it’s in a contingency fund, it means it hasn’t been appropriated and it has been through Cabinet, but it gets put in a contingency fund that’s been approved by Cabinet, and when the details are worked up more into a business case then the funding is released. That’s the real question here, because, as we know, we’ve got a huge pipeline coming down at us through the demand of mental health services. We know that mental health demand in New Zealand has increased from 2.3 percent to 3.6 percent of the population, an increase from about 98,000 to 168,000. So, actually, there’s an agreement that there needs to be a change. If you go out and talk to the mental health sector, what’s the biggest thing they tell you?

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Anne Tolley): Not me.

MATT DOOCEY: It’s that there’s no point—sorry, not you, Madam Chair. The biggest thing they tell us, as politicians, is that there’s no point in continuing to pour money into the district health boards (DHBs). In fact, there have been reports out in the last few weeks where DHBs allegedly weren’t even spending their ring-fenced funding of mental health per year. What I’m saying is it’s the actual NGO sector—it’s the community sector—that’s saying they’re primed and ready to go. They can deliver high-quality services at the same cost and higher productivity. That’s why those 17 mental health initiatives were developed with the Chief Science Advisor and the mental health sector themselves, to break out of the box and think about how can we do things differently.

So the Minister can argue that, yes, it was never appropriated, but he needs to say why he has not gone with the consensus of change, to release the community sector so they can go out and deliver services at the mild to moderate end. Rather, he’s tipping more and more money into the DHB system, and, yes, to a point, they have a role to play, but, actually, the mental health sector is agreeing that actually more needs to go into the community sector. That’s what I think needs to be asked here.

The Minister did raise a couple of things as well, and one was the GP visits and how great it was that there’s more access. He forgets to say, actually, that he announced in November as the health Minister that there would be free GP visits for mental health issues, and, unfortunately, that wasn’t honoured in Budget 2018. When you look at Budget 2018, in fact, it really was a disappointment for mental health. When you look collectively across the three parties—

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Anne Tolley): I am looking.

MATT DOOCEY: Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you for your attention. When you look at the policy announcements of the—

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Anne Tolley): I’m not looking at those.

MATT DOOCEY: —three parties in coalition—

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Anne Tolley): I’m not looking at those.

MATT DOOCEY: —it adds up to about 20, and what do they deliver in Budget 2018? About five, and that is the real disappointment.

As we’ve heard recently, we’ve had vital pilots. One was ready to go around putting mental health professionals with our emergency responders. There’s another pilot that’s been cut that was looking at suicide and our response to identification, support, and follow-up. There was another trial that was to go out as part of the 17 mental health initiatives, around people who had been in crisis. It was a step-up, step-down trial when they get discharged from acute into community and back up again—three out of 17 initiatives that would have made a real change now. Yes, there is an inquiry, but, in fact, we could have done both, and it would have returned a great thing for the mental health sector.

CHLÖE SWARBRICK (Green): E Te Māngai, tēnā koe. Tēnā koutou e Te Whare. I rise to speak today to the health Estimates debate, and I’d like to particularly address the two issues of mental health and also drug and alcohol abuse and addiction.

I’d like to note straight off the bat that this is evidently an emotive topic, as I think it’s something which touches the lives of far too many New Zealanders. I also just wanted to address, in particular, the points made by the speaker previous to me, Matt Doocey. I don’t intend for this to be a tit-for-tat sparring session, because I think that the issue of mental health and drug abuse and addiction are things which are much bigger than politics. But when we’re talking about cost and productivity in the context of this space, I get really dubious. The reason for that is that we’re not talking about economic units here; we’re talking about people’s lives and the quality of people’s lives.

Yes, absolutely, I don’t think anybody on any side of this House would argue that we shouldn’t be talking about the efficacy of treatment, but I think that we should be careful about the language that we’re using because I think that a lot of the context that has led to this spike in mental health incidents—particularly amongst young people—is absolutely a culture of competitiveness where we are all out fighting against each other as opposed to coming together as communities. We’re incredibly individualised, so I think that that’s something which we can work to fix from the get-go and doesn’t necessarily require a change in legislation or structural funding or otherwise to begin with, but so too it would provide a space and environment for people to feel more welcome to speak about their issues and their troubles.

So to turn now to the Estimates as were heard by the Health Committee and the questions that were put forward. On the point of mental health, I actually wanted to refer to the confidence and supply agreement between the Greens and Labour. I quote from No. 16 in that agreement which reads: “Ensure [everybody] has access to timely and high quality mental health services, including free counselling for those under 25 years [old].” Allocated under this Budget for the next three years is an integrated therapy pilot for 18- to 24-year-olds. I think that this is an incredibly exciting starting point, and I will note that this is just that—it is only a starting point. It is focused explicitly on those who are currently falling through the cracks and missing out, which I think is incredibly important, because I personally know far too many people who haven’t been able to access the mental health services that they need when they need them.

It’s focused on ensuring that we end up with the recommendations as to how to make mental health services in this country more affordable and more accessible. I note it’s an interesting choice of words, but it’s referred to in the outcomes and objectives of the pilot as being more acceptable and attractive to young people. I think that’s important, because it’s about not just the services being there but people actually engaging with them—those services being fit for purpose.

I so too note that there is funding in this Budget for the Mana Ake services for rangatahi in Christchurch, who have, obviously, been affected by the trauma associated with the earthquakes, and so too $17 million for the school-based health services expansion. I also—with the final bit of time that I’ve got left—refer to the issues around alcohol and drug addiction services, which are, obviously, also referenced in our confidence and supply agreement at No. 19: “Increase funding for alcohol and drug addiction services and ensure drug use is treated as a health issue,”. Critical to that point is the $16 million which is being allocated to Auckland City Mission for the use of their beds for those with drug abuse and alcohol addiction, and abuse issues as well.

I think, as I kind of alluded to at the beginning of this speech, the point around cross-party collaboration is incredibly, incredibly critical. Mental health issues do not happen in a vacuum. They are informed by culture. They’re informed by the behaviour of the leaders in our society. I think that we in this House have every opportunity to stand up and to grasp that leadership and to show some political will to solve these problems, because it is as much important that we instigate a cultural shift as a structural one.

Hon Dr DAVID CLARK (Minister of Health): I want to address some of the points raised by members during this debate and make a few comments along the way about the overall health budget. This is the biggest investment a Government has made in nearly a decade into healthcare. Overall, it’s a $3.2 billion investment—represented in the documents in the Budget that we’re examining—including $750 million in capital investment, which is the most significant, certainly, in a decade. This is a big Budget for health, and it needed to be. We have significant underfunding in the health sector, and, as my colleague Anahila Kanongata’a-Suisuiki noted, when an emergency department is visited these days, they’re pretty busy places—they are very stretched.

I want to, particularly, address the issue of health targets which has been raised, and the honourable member who raised this talked about the progress made against those targets. It’s true that some of those targets have driven good progress, and I certainly have never denied that. The quicker emergency visits target is celebrated widely. The fact that faster cancer care should happen is true, although I note that the target focuses on only 25 percent of cancers. The immunisation target was largely achieved a long time ago. But some of the other targets, clearly, are not ideal. An obesity target that simply stamps referrals—so that if I referred to a practitioner and they referred back to me, that’s two stamps on the book—doesn’t actually reduce obesity. Nor too does a target on activity around tobacco control.

So this Government is concerned to put a suite of measures in place that actually looks at how we improve the overall population health—measures that are broader and that can track the progress of district health boards (DHBs), rather than focusing on specific targets that can distort behaviour in the sector, and can mean that investment isn’t necessarily going where it produces the best value for the taxpayer dollar. Of course, the pin-up for that is in the area of electives, where we know that figures have been pumped up by Avastin injections and skin lesion removals that, in many cases, were previously done in primary care. So we want the best value for taxpayer money from the available health dollar. That’s what this Government stands for, and we’re less interested in a particular, narrow set of political targets.

In response to the issue raised by Mr Reti around the Deloitte review, I’m advised that it does catalogue the failures under the previous Government’s watch. I’m surprised he wants to keep bringing it up when that’s what it’s actually a review about, but there we are. They spent $119 million and have nothing to show with it—$119 million and nothing to show with it—and that is, indeed, recorded in the Estimates document. Why he keeps bringing that up is a mystery to many, many people.

Then Maggie Barry raised the issue of the health of older people, and I want to congratulate the Hon Tracey Martin for the work that she’s doing in that area. Health, of course, has invested in this Budget in preparation work for a SuperGold card check for all people, and also, the cheaper doctors visits initiative, that will see community services card holders able to access cheaper doctors visits, will affect hundreds of thousands of seniors in this country and will mean that they get doctors visits, in many cases, $20 to $30 cheaper. This is a good Budget for older folk.

On top of that, of course, is the biggest investment into DHB funding in nearly a decade. This Budget is really significant in that respect: $549 million per annum is going to DHB budgets, as compared to the previous Government’s record, which includes, over the last period, $439 million, $400 million, $300 million, $275 million, and $250 million—low numbers—going into the DHBs. I guess that’s why they’ve been put under such strain. I do want to congratulate the health workers that continue to work in our health sector, despite the underfunding over many years that they’ve struggled with.

Mr Doocey’s point—quickly—about the initiative and his mistake. I acknowledge that, but we’ve put another $200 million into DHBs, we estimate, over the forecast period for mental health within the ring-fence. On top of that, there is $49 million in new initiatives, and we would expect more to come out of the mental health and addiction inquiry that’s under way. This is a Government determined to deliver joined-up services, and when he talks about pilot initiatives that never happened in the nine years they were in Government and says that somehow this is this Government’s failure, I want him to have a look in the mirror.

Thank you for this opportunity. This is the best Budget for health in a decade.

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

Ayes 63

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

Noes 57

New Zealand National 56; ACT New Zealand 1.

Vote agreed to.

Justice Sector

CHAIRPERSON (Poto Williams): Members, we now come to the votes in the justice sector, B.5, Volume 7. The question is that Vote Attorney-General, Vote Corrections, Vote Courts, Vote Justice, Vote Parliamentary Counsel, Vote Police, and Vote Serious Fraud stand part of the schedules.

RAYMOND HUO (Chairperson of the Justice Committee): Thank you, Madam Chair. The Justice Committee conducted Estimates hearings for Vote Justice, Vote Courts, Vote Police, Vote Serious Fraud Office, Vote Attorney-General, Vote Parliamentary Counsel, and, finally, Vote Corrections. The total annual and permanent appropriations for Vote Justice in 2018-19 are $478.989 million, and the appropriations for Vote Corrections are $1.966 billion. This compares with the final budgeted expenditure of $1.803 billion in 2017-18, and is 10 percent more than the estimated actual expenditure of $1.794 billion.

Reforming the criminal justice system is one of the highlights of Vote Justice. Minister Andrew Little told us that the rate of criminal reoffending has remained largely constant, and prison numbers are rising rapidly and more violent offences are being committed. We heard that harsher sentencing has not reduced the rate of criminal reoffending over the last 10 to 15 years, as intended. Moreover, reoffending among youth and offending involving violent crime has increased. This has been seen as a failure in the system, because the aim of the system is to have fewer victims.

We asked how the Government intends to reduce the rate of criminal reoffending, given that in 2012, the then National Government announced the target of reducing the rate of reoffending by 25 percent by June 2016. However, in the year of 2016, the reoffending rate decreased by less than 4 percent, and therefore the National Government at that time dropped the target. The Minister said that serious criminal offences justify a custodial sentence, but when someone’s offending is related to mental health issues or addiction, the focus should be on fixing those issues.

We also heard from Minister Kelvin Davis that 90 percent of prisoners have mental health issues at some point in their lifetimes. Forty-six percent of prisoners have had some kind of mental health issue in past years, and that’s one of the reasons why the Government has chosen to dedicate resources to 100 mental health units at Waikeria.

We heard from Minister Little about his plans to reduce Māori reoffending and to have additional funding for criminal rehabilitation. The Government’s priority is to start with the criminal justice summit, which will develop reform proposals.

We heard from Minister Stuart Nash that Budget 2018 has left police very well placed to deliver the high quality of service that the general public rightly expects from them. The Government’s priority is to ensure police are adequately funded to help keep the communities safe.

The safer ethnic communities forum held in May 2018 connected ethnic communities with several Ministers and their agencies, together with the Commissioner of Police and his colleagues, to work on a long-term plan to improve safety in the ethnic communities. The feedback from the ethnic communities was very positive. We also heard from the commissioner that the forum helped to break down perception barriers about the police and to open lines of communication.

For Vote Attorney-General and Vote Parliamentary Counsel, we heard from Minister David Parker about the appointment of judgeships, the judiciary resourcing model, and access to secondary legislation project. Thank you, Madam Chair.

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Anne Tolley): I call Mark Mitchell—the Hon Mark Mitchell, I beg your pardon.

Hon MARK MITCHELL (National—Rodney): Thank you, Madam Chair. The last time I got called “Grant Robertson”, I think, so that’s a good start.

Hon Member: It’s appropriate, anyway.

Hon MARK MITCHELL: That’s right. It’s a pleasure to take a call. Look, can I start by saying that I just want to quickly go over the numbers. The other spokespeople will talk to the other areas of the justice portfolio: corrections, courts, police, and Attorney-General.

The total annual and permanent appropriations for Vote Justice in 2018-19 were $478,989 million compared with $551,123 million estimated actual expenditure in 2017-18. This was actually a decrease of $72,134 million. In all fairness, although that was a major decrease, we did have the new justice precinct that was delivered in Christchurch, and that, of course, involved some upfront capital costs that would not reoccur. However, it’s still a pretty uninspiring appropriation and I find it sad that actually the biggest new investment is for money that’s being put into an initiative around the 2020 general election. You could argue that actually that’s more about us than anyone else, so I feel that that money could have been used in much better areas like victim support services, the National Home Safety Service, or our community law centres.

I just want to very quickly touch on the reforming of our criminal justice system—and I know that we’ve got our criminal justice summit that’s fast approaching in August. I’ve had a meeting with the Minister and I made it very clear to him. I said, “If you can come up with some good criminal justice reform that we can see will have genuine benefits and gains for the country and for our communities, then we’ll support those—we’ll get behind them.” That’s what I came to Parliament for: to make the country better, not worse; to make it safer, not less safe. But I said, “If you put up proposals like we’ve seen recently around the repeal of the three-strikes legislation, then we’ll take a very firm position against that.”

Chlöe Swarbrick: How much safer has that made the country, Mark?

Hon MARK MITCHELL: I’m sorry, what was that?

Chlöe Swarbrick: How much safer does that make the country?

Hon MARK MITCHELL: I’ve just been asked by Chlöe Swarbrick how much safer that’s made the country. The three-strikes legislation has been shown to be successful as a deterrent when you look at the numbers reducing from the first strike to the second strike to the third strike.

Chlöe Swarbrick: Correlation doesn’t imply causation.

Hon MARK MITCHELL: Let me just give you one example and you can respond to this—

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Anne Tolley): Well, actually, you’re talking to the Chairperson, not to members across the House.

Hon MARK MITCHELL: I’m sorry, Madam Chair, and I realise that I don’t have much time—although I may seek a second call. So let me give you one example from when we had this debate in the House around the three-strikes legislation.

I was contacted by a second female corrections officer—not the original one that we talked about, that had her case trivialised because it was referred to as a pinch on the bottom; but a second female corrections officer—that contacted me and said that she too had been the victim of an indecent assault in the workplace and that the offender had been convicted on a second strike. Do you know what she said to me? She said to me the best message she could get from her country was to say that they took it seriously enough that that offender got a second strike. So what is your comment to that? What would you respond to that—because I’m very, very interested to hear. This is a victim. This is someone that has actually been victimised. This is real; it’s not in this House. This happened to a female corrections officer who clearly had stated and said—

Chlöe Swarbrick: Serious sex crimes went up. That’s what happened.

Hon MARK MITCHELL: —that the best message for her was that her country took that offending against her seriously enough that the offender had a second strike.

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Anne Tolley): Look, order! I’m sorry. This is a debate on the Estimates, OK. The member’s had her opportunity to make her case. I would ask that she gives this member the opportunity to make his case.

Hon MARK MITCHELL: So take a call. I’ve just laid out a very clear example for you that, for the general public, this actually makes them feel safer. It makes them feel that, actually, as a Parliament, we’re taking it seriously. So I ask you to take a call and respond to that and tell me why we should be repealing the three-strikes legislation.

Chlöe Swarbrick: Because all evidence shows the longer people—

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Anne Tolley): The member will cease interjecting, and may take a call.

Hon MARK MITCHELL: Thank you, Madam Chair.

So one part of the debate that was missing, in terms of that—and it was never highlighted, it was never talked about—is that actually you can implement or trigger the “manifestly unjust” part of the legislation. In the case of the other third-strike offender case that’s exactly what happened.

In that case, the offender, yes, was charged under the three-strikes legislation. He indecently assaulted a female corrections officer in her workplace. I can’t remember the exact words in the victim statement but it obviously left her deeply stressed. She lost a lot of confidence in the workplace and, actually, what happened was the judge triggered the “manifestly unjust” provision. So what that meant was that the offender, yes, was convicted under three strikes. It was a very clear message that we were sending as a Parliament and as a nation, telling her that we take this very seriously, that we take a sexual assault on her in the workplace very seriously. But the judge had an option and that was to trigger “manifestly unjust”, which he did. So what it means is that that offender now doesn’t just get a seven-year sentence, as was portrayed in this House, and was portrayed to the general public—

Darroch Ball: Quite a wide-ranging debate, is it?

Hon MARK MITCHELL: Take a call, Mr Ball. I welcome you to take a call and respond to this. Tell me where I’m going wrong on this. So “manifestly unjust” was triggered, which means actually now that he’s eligible for parole next year.

Darroch Ball: I’m not arguing with you.

Hon MARK MITCHELL: But we didn’t—well, what are you arguing about?

Darroch Ball: It’s quite a wide-ranging debate, isn’t it?

Hon MARK MITCHELL: What’s that?

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Anne Tolley): That is—

Darroch Ball: Start talking about the appropriations.

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Anne Tolley): Order! That is entirely up to me. There was a barrage of interjections about a particular point, which the member has now addressed, and I would ask him to come to the Estimates.

Hon MARK MITCHELL: Thank you, Madam Chair. I’ll come back to the Estimates, and the reason why I was using those examples is because I’m referring directly to the Estimates hearing where I asked the Minister about his reforms. The first reform that he tried to get through Cabinet was a repeal of the three strikes legislation—that was the first thing he tried to do. What happened? It got shot down. At the last minute, a Labour justice Minister was thrown under the bus. He was publicly humiliated because the coalition partner withdrew their support at the 11th hour, and he couldn’t take his reform to Cabinet to get approval to get it through. [Darroch Ball shakes head] You can shake your head, but that’s exactly what happened.

Darroch Ball: No it’s not.

Hon MARK MITCHELL: Well, I’ve read the Estimates transcript. Read the Estimates transcript and you’ll see what the conversation was, and you’ll see that’s exactly what he says. So then he had to go back to the Prime Minister, and then they decided, at the 11th hour, “Oh, we’ll reprioritise it, and we’ll reprioritise the justice summit, and we’ll go up to the justice summit and we’ll generate some ideas up there.”

The point that I want to make is this—and I see that Greg O’Connor is in the Chamber, and I want to acknowledge him and acknowledge that I respect his service and his background. I know that he didn’t come to this House to make New Zealand a less safe place, so my expectations are—

Hon Member: Do you believe this, Mark?

Hon MARK MITCHELL: —that he will look very, very closely at the reforms—you can be as shocked as you want; I’m telling you now, we will not be supporting reforms that will allow people out on the street that shouldn’t be out on the street. They’re in prison for a very good reason, and that is public safety. If we can come up, and if you can show that you’ve got some good reforms whereby we can continue a very strong rehabilitation programme but at the same time keep the public safe, then we’ll look at that—without a doubt, we’ll be interested in that. But right now, the only thing that’s been signalled to this House is diluting and weakening parole laws, bail laws, and sentencing laws. We will not accept that—we will not accept that on its own. Nothing else has been put up—nothing.

CHAIRPERSON (Poto Williams): Order! Can I bring the member back to the Estimates, please?

Hon MARK MITCHELL: Madam Chair, I’d argue that I’m directly addressing the transcript of the Estimates hearing. This is exactly what I spoke about: the dilution of bail laws, sentencing laws, parole laws; the three strikes legislation; the plan that they actually have; the plan that’s been brought to us so far, which is non-existent—that’s exactly what I’m referring to. That’s exactly what I’m talking about at the moment, Madam Chair, so are you happy for me to continue with that? [Madam Chair nods] Thank you very much.

So in the first nine months, we have seen nothing put up at all by this Government other than a plan to repeal the three-strikes legislation. So I’ve clearly laid out the case that was put, and I’d welcome, now, someone to take a call and address the issues that I’ve raised. Maybe the Green Party will do that right now. Thank you, Madam Chair.

VIRGINIA ANDERSEN (Labour): Thank you, Madam Chair. It’s a pleasure to stand and speak regarding the appropriations and Estimates debate for the justice sector. The Justice Committee heard from the Minister of Justice that harsher sentencing has not reduced the rate of criminal offending over the past 10 to 15 years. We also heard, on the Justice Committee, that reoffending among youth and offending involving violent crime have also increased over that period of time. The Minister of Justice himself stated that he saw this as a failure of the justice system.

In this, I’d like to directly speak to the point that was raised by the previous speaker, Mark Mitchell, that there is a clear point of difference that has emerged between this Government and the previous National Government. That point of difference is that this Government is focused on fixing the systemic issues within our justice system—those systemic issues that mean generation after generation of New Zealanders are being further exposed to being victims or offenders as a result of the very system which they are going through. I think that is the response to the member that has just spoken, that this is a Government that is focused on turning that around and making a real change, not scoring quick political points.

This Government wants a safe and effective justice system, and that was heard quite clearly through the Estimates process. Yes, it is important that those who offend are held to account—there will not be a compromise of public safety, as incorrectly inferred previously—but also something different, something on top of that, is the ability to rehabilitate people, to reintegrate people, and to provide support to victims.

In our justice system, we have 47 percent of people going through who have addiction issues, and we have 37 percent with mental health issues. Previously, those things have simply not been addressed, and those people have cycled through the system time and time again, causing damage to their lives and to their families’ lives, and wasting money that should be focused on rehabilitating and providing support where it’s needed. Again, I say: that is the point of difference and that is the fundamental plan that will be changing the way this justice system takes shape in the future. We want to see intergenerational change and to see that our children who grow up in New Zealand have all the opportunities of taking full advantage of what New Zealand offers. We should not have a system that continues to make people more likely to be offenders or victims by processing through it.

In particular, we also heard, through Vote Police—and I’d like to touch on that briefly—that there was much discussion around the 1,800 police officers that has the main target of delivering under this Government. In particular, there was discussion around the breakdown of that 1,800. So there are 1,100 sworn front-line officers; there are 700 authorised officers and 485 non-sworn, and I’d just like to quickly break that down.

So authorised officers—that 700—particularly address the area of fighting organised crime, and I think that that’s a point that’s been missed by those members opposite. In the areas of forensic accountants, who are tracing where money has come from during fraud and high-level white-collar crime, and also looking in the area of internet crime where you need expertise in those areas—that is the future, and that is where this Government is focused on investing money, not just by promising window dressing.

The 485 non-sworn—those are the people that back up the front line. Those are the people that do the work that enable police officers to get back in their cars, back on the streets, and get out doing the jobs that they need to be doing—not sitting back in front of a computer, not filling out forms, not doing work back in the office. By having more support in the back rooms, that enables police officers to work far more effectively and be better supported than they have been. Under the previous Government, we saw a cap on non-sworn, and that saw front-line officers doing back-duty work, and that’s a waste of money and a waste of our skills.

We are a Government focused on changing the system and delivering the changes that people need to be stronger and to live healthier lives. That is something that the members opposite are yet to realise. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Hon DAVID BENNETT (National—Hamilton East): Thank you, Madam Chair, and I acknowledge the Minister in the chair, the Hon Kelvin Davis. I just must admit that I feel a bit sorry for the Minister because he’s having to deal with a promise that has been landed on him by the Labour Party, and that is to reduce the prison population by 30 percent in the next 15 years. That Minister may have had the best intentions when he took on that promise as well, but he is soon coming to the very stark reality that that is a promise that he cannot deliver and will not be able to deliver.

It will mean one of two things for the Labour Party: either they have to backtrack on another promise to the Parliament and to the public of New Zealand that they went to the election with, or they have to have a significant reduction in the prison population. When you’re looking at a prison population which is over 10,000 prisoners at the moment, and a projected decrease to around 7,000 to meet the goal that that Minister and that Government set—and that prison population is projected to actually increase further, not decrease, going up to over 14,000 prisoners. That means that that Minister will have to actually, effectively, reduce the prison population by half—by half—to actually achieve their goal.

Now, when you consider that 70 percent of all prisoners are there for serious offences, how are they going to reduce that prison population by half and keep the New Zealand public safe? You just can’t do that. New Zealand First I know are shaking their heads. It’s one of those situations where New Zealand First will talk the big talk, but actually will be silent on this matter in this House over the next 2½ years, as it knows that this is part of that coalition agreement they signed up to and they have to enable this to happen. That means that the New Zealand public will face 7,000 prisoners in their communities in the next short while—otherwise you can’t achieve the promise that’s been set.

Now that is the stark reality of what will happen. Let’s see if the actions of the Labour Party support that—of course they do; they didn’t build Waikeria Prison. Instead of building a prison for 1,500 prisoners that had a projected cost of $950 million, that Minister signed off a $750 million prison for only 600 prisoners. That is a gross negligence on the behalf of the Government in regards to the safety of New Zealanders.

If there was a plan of how that prison population will be reduced, we would love to see it, but there isn’t. All we have is some summit that’s going to come up in a few months’ time, and that will be used as a mechanism to try and endorse the policies of the Government of the day. But then there is help coming, because we know that this Minister has said there will be 976 pop-up beds in our existing prison network, taking some of our bigger prisons to over 1,000 prisoners in each of those. And there will be no rehabilitation services given in addition to the current rehabilitation funding. The Minister said that at Estimates. He said there will be no extra funding, and then a couple of weeks later in the House he corrected himself around that and said there may be some. There’s none in the Budget.

In fact, rehabilitation funding in the Budget is going down. When National was there it was a 13.7 percent increase year on year; there’s only been a 6.7 percent increase under this Minister. Effectively, it has gone down from what it should be. The Minister isn’t spending on rehabilitation. Now we’ll hear about this lauded mental health programme for 100 prisoners at Waikeria. I bet you that’s what the Minister’s going to stand up and talk about and say, “This is going to make a difference.” Well, that’s 100 prisoners out of a population of 10,500 at the moment, going up to 14,000—and you’ve got to let 7,000 out. So how are we going to rehabilitate the others when we know that there are serious mental health issues within the prison population?

The Minister has been landed with a promise he cannot deliver. He knows that, and the Labour Party and the Green Party and New Zealand First will spend the next two years trying to manage the fallout from failing to deliver that promise, and all that will do will be to put our prison officers at risk for their safety, put New Zealanders at risk in their safety—[Time expired]

Hon KELVIN DAVIS (Minister of Corrections): Thank you, Madam Chair. I’d just like to express my thanks to the member who’s just taken a call, David Bennett, for his concern for my well-being, but let me just say that it’s really unnecessary. He’s saying that it’s an impossible task for a Government to reduce a prison population; well, let me say that there are jurisdictions all around the world who have successfully done that and the crime rate hasn’t risen and communities have been kept safe. So our goal in corrections is to make sure that those people who should be in prison will be in prison.

Here’s the good news: the member spoke about the forecasts and the prison population rising—we know that the previous Government took those forecasts as a target; we treat them as a warning and we’re doing something about it. He’s already said, “Well, what are you doing about it? Where’s the plan?” Let me say now, if he looks at the trend in the prison population since we became the Government—it was about 10,400—it actually went up to 10,800 and is now actually less than what it was when we became the Government. They keep saying that we’re just going to ease up on bail laws, sentencing laws, and parole laws. Well, actually, none of that’s happened, but just through good practice and helping people, the prison population has reduced.

So what have we done to help people? Well, one of the things that we’ve done is to assist people who are seeking bail. Here’s a nice little story: there are people who are arrested and then they’re asked to fill out applications for bail, and if they don’t have the application filled out, the judge has no alternative but to remand them in prison. Simply by having Department of Corrections staff help people who are illiterate to fill out a bail form, it actually gives a judge a choice on what to do with that prisoner. It’s a simple little thing that has really started to work.

In Budget 2018 we have $517.6 million extra for operational expenses. I’m not going to stand here and crow about it, because that means actually that something’s wrong if we just keep on investing in prisons. The member who just spoke also said, “So what is the Government’s plan?”—well, everything that the Government is doing, in every area really, is working to reduce the prison population. If you look at our Families Package and those sorts of initiatives, they’re helping people get the best start in their lives so that they don’t actually go on to commit crime and end up in prison in the first place.

So we’re looking to lift 384,000 families out of poverty. If only 0.1 percent of 384,000 we had an impact on, making sure that 0.1 percent of their children didn’t go into prison, that’s something like 400 children who over the next 15 years won’t actually end up in prison. So we’re talking about the long-term stuff in all of our Government’s practices, not just the short and sharp end of the stuff in corrections.

We got $57.6 million in the Budget over four years to help with housing, because we know that when an offender is released from prison and has nowhere to live, nowhere to go, then chances are that that person will reoffend. Not only are we helping them with accommodation, but we’re wrapping support around them so that they don’t go on to reoffend in the future as well. It’s all about looking after people, not just while they’re in prison but also while they’re out of prison.

One of the things I’ve asked corrections to do is start to reach further into a prisoner’s sentence to start supporting them on their transition out of prison. At present, they might get help a couple of days before they leave prison, and they might get help for a couple of weeks afterwards. I’m saying we might have to reach further into their sentence and take longer to transition them, and for some people we may need to take longer to transition them out and support them not to go on and reoffend. The previous Government, the mistake they made is they just said, “Do a course while you’re in prison, and when you go out, be a nice person and don’t reoffend.” The thing is that we need to keep supporting people long before their sentence ends and later.

GREG O’CONNOR (Labour—Ōhāriu): Kia orana, Madam Chairperson. I’ll just start by acknowledging Mr Mitchell’s comments—the Hon Mark Mitchell, who did bring me into his speech and talked about my determination, and I’m sure it will be the same as his and his colleague Matt King’s and, in fact, my colleague Ginny Andersen’s, who, while not a front-line police officer, was a very important part of police—she worked in the policy area. The really important thing is the four of us, along with everyone here, want to achieve the same thing. We actually want the best. The best is less people in prison, less victims, and a safer New Zealand.

Going on to the comments of the speaker from Waikato, the Hon David Bennett—he spoke to the Minister in the chair at the time, the Hon Kelvin Davis, and said, “He will not achieve this.” He left a vital word out, which is the key to this debate. As Minister of Corrections he will not achieve it “alone”, and that’s the incredibly important part of where we’re at now. I have come to this House from a 40-year career in and around the justice sector. What actually has happened—for the first time, as I’ve seen the Ministers, particularly the Minister of Police, the Minister of Corrections, and the Minister of Justice, come through on the appropriations. For the first time, I understand that we are not going to achieve this by the narrow approach taken, which is basically a soft-on-crime claim, which, I have to admit, we’re hearing from the Opposition now, and we’ve heard it from Oppositions for time immemorial. What that does is focuses down to a tiny part of the criminal justice system that simply means we are so focused, so down—we’d have heard it today across the floor—it means we can’t see the bigger picture, and that prevents us from making sure we do what it is that is absolutely necessary.

I look, particularly—the previous Minister in the chair spoke about the need for cooperation between departments. There is nothing so basic as people not being able to leave correction facilities currently because they don’t have housing. So what do you do? You cooperate between the housing. That is a very minor example of the sort of cooperation we are going to need, because, again, we get focused down on the reed but what we need to do is step back and actually look at what the real problem with crime in New Zealand is now—why serious crime is increasing. It is because of the rise of gangs and organised crime. Prisons not used smartly, not used in conjunction with sentencing, not used in conjunction with policing, and not used in conjunction with the Ministry of Justice and other departments just simply means that prisons become actually a part of aggravating the problem instead of helping it out.

Let me just give you a little example. There’s one group of offenders who are the lowest reoffenders, right across the board, when they come out of prison. They’re very serious offenders: it’s sex offenders. Now, interestingly enough, that is a group that, funnily enough, when they go into prison, unlike most prisoners going in there, are not forced to join a gang. No one wants to know them. What it actually means is, while it’s not a particularly comfortable stay there, they aren’t forced to join a gang for survival—in fact, nobody wants them.

It means that when they then go out in the system they’re unlike much of the jailbait which goes into prison because they’re doing the work for gang members, are recruited, are forced to get tattoos while they’re in there, and therefore, when they come out, it doesn’t matter what other programmes they do in there, it doesn’t matter what Māori initiatives or what any other initiatives we have to help them, the gang culture is stronger than any of those initiatives. So looking back at the very unlikely group of people who don’t reoffend, it is those sex offenders. So what we’ve got to do is—whatever we do it’s got to be about controlling the gangs, and we’re only going to that by a multi-departmental approach.

So while the Opposition—can I make a plea? You’ll want to out-compassion us—you really want to be part of a joined-up sector here. Please do not allow this to be focused on sentencing, because if you do, it means—

CHAIRPERSON (Poto Williams): Order!

GREG O’CONNOR: —nothing will be done if eventually you do—sorry. If the Opposition does get back in, they’ll face the same issue. So the joined-up approach means looking at what the real issue is that is facing us today. It is gangs, it is organised crime. If we only in this House talk about sentencing, talk about that narrow focus, we will fail.

Hon Dr NICK SMITH (National—Nelson): Madam Chairperson, I wish to take a call about the muddled and duplicitous approach of the Government in respect of the issue of public-private partnerships (PPPs) in the justice sector, an issue that I raised at the select committee.

Now, in Opposition, Labour rallied against PPPs. I could read quotes, and I’ll read one specifically for members opposite: “The difference between National and Labour is that we believe in the public sector and we won’t be having the private sector running or owning our prisons.” Then right before the election even the Prime Minister said this: “Labour does not agree with PPPs when it comes to building core infrastructure, like prisons.” And then, even after the change of Government and Mr Davis got his ministerial warrant and there was discussion about Waikeria Prison, Mr Davis said, “We are yet to make decisions but we will not”—not—“be agreeing to a public-private partnership.” So when the Estimates came along and we have a $750 million public-private partnership I choked on my Kornies. I said to myself, “Well, what possibly could have led a political party that’s rallied against PPPs to suddenly do one for three-quarters of a billion dollars?”

But it gets worse than that. When the Government announced the PPP, they said they were doing it because they had to, because the previous Government had signed a contract. At the select committee we asked the Minister what date the contract for the Waikeria Prison was signed. And do you know what the answer was from the Minister and officials? “It hasn’t been signed yet.” And so we have this incredible situation where not only has the Labour Party gone back on its word to New Zealanders on PPPs in the prison sector; it’s then had the audacity to dishonestly blame National.

Now I don’t know what words we might use for that sort of behaviour, but I think it completely lacks integrity. It completely lacks integrity, and the Minister of Corrections’ performance at the select committee was truly bizarre. The only answer he could give the select committee was, “I’m perfectly happy that Waikeria Prison will be built by a PPP.” Well, New Zealanders deserve far better in the justice sector than that sort of dishonesty. If that’s the sort of behaviour we’re getting from the Minister of Corrections, what sort of role model is he setting for the honesty that, actually, our justice system depends on?

Finally, I want to make some comment about the so-called electoral integrity law. I would love the Minister in the chair to please answer the question as to where the integrity is in members of the Green Party—

CHAIRPERSON (Poto Williams): Order! That did not come up in the Estimates.

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: Well, no, actually, the Electoral (Integrity) Amendment Bill is on the Minister’s work programme for this financial year. It is part of the Estimates, Madam Chair, and I’m perfectly entitled to raise it and I’m perfectly entitled—as much as the Government wants to shut down the debate—[Interruption] As much as the Government wants to shut down the debate, it is completely lacking integrity for a bill changing 330 years of constitutional history to pass it without a majority of support in this House—[Time expired]

Hon ANDREW LITTLE (Minister of Justice): Kia orana e Maine Vaa Tuatua. Madam Chair, it’s a great pleasure to get up and speak. The member who just spoke, the Hon Dr Nick Smith, spoke of bizarre behaviour of members of this House, and I want to acknowledge his leadership in one thing at least, and that is he is the leader of bizarre behaviour of members in this House.

Let me respond to a couple of things that he has said, because if you want a class—a lesson—in disingenuous behaviour, then that member’s speech just now is it. So he lamented this public-private partnership over Waikeria Prison, completely ignoring the fact that millions upon millions of dollars of work had been done, designing an American-style mega-prison to house 2,500 prisoners under his Government’s watch. They signed up a procurement agreement with the outfit who was doing the design, who would go on to do the build, and who it was intended would run that prison.

Hon Kris Faafoi: Ah! Now the truth comes out—the real story.

Hon ANDREW LITTLE: He missed that out. It’s funny that that member missed that stuff out. But he, not very artfully, fails to distinguish between the long-term procurement agreement that his Government signed with the builder of the prison and a contract to deal with the specific facility once there was agreement on what was going to be built. He ignores completely the exit payment that would be required from the procurement agreement if we did not proceed with that construction firm with that particular prison—missed all that out. That’s the lesson in disingenuity that that member is an absolute master of.

Well, the Electoral (Integrity) Amendment Bill—let me say that if he wants a lesson in a lack of integrity, then let’s look at those National MPs who earlier this year trumpeted to the public at large that they were going to vote for the member’s bill on medicinal cannabis and when it came to the vote, all National MPs voted exactly the same way, which was contrary to what the indications were of the particular MPs who said they would do something differently. That member’s got nothing to worry about. Nothing will change in the National Party as a result of the Electoral (Integrity) Amendment Bill—apart, perhaps, from his own seat. Perhaps he is afraid that members of his own caucus—

CHAIRPERSON (Poto Williams): Order! [Interruption] Order!

Hon ANDREW LITTLE: —will not be afraid to do what the members of the National Party will do—

CHAIRPERSON (Poto Williams): I apologise to the honourable Minister. If he could stick to the Estimates—

Hon ANDREW LITTLE: Can I just take a moment to talk about some very important things in the justice portfolio—for example, the fact that in this year’s Budget there’s extra money for youth justice facilities and for the youth justice system, because what we do there is absolutely vital to make sure that the pipeline of young people who would otherwise head off to adult prison is curtailed and we do the right thing at the right time.

Can I acknowledge, also, in this Budget, a 20 percent increase in the funding for community law centres—the front door of legal access for so many New Zealanders. It’s important that we maintain and strengthen that network of support.

Can I also refer to the $50 million in new operating funding for the court system, because it is important that we have an environment in which courts can dispense justice, in which lawyers can do their job, the judges can do their job, victims can be safe, and the offenders can be managed correctly and properly.

Can I also say that we’ve had to provide extra funding to undo the disastrous Judith Collins Family Court reforms. We’ve now got a review going under way on that, because we’ve got to fix that up because far too many New Zealanders are being harmed and damaged by the 2014 Judith Collins reforms.

Finally, and Parliament has already, under this head, talked about the criminal justice reforms—when you look at what this Government was faced with when it took office: a rapidly rising prison population, more and more people on remand, more people in prison than ever before, more and more people serving longer sentences. But here’s the thing: no plan to deal with it. No plan to deal with the underlying issues; just build another American-style mega-prison. That was the only response they had.

Yet, when you have a look at what’s happening in our prison population—more than a third of them with depression and anxiety; nearly half of them with addiction problems; so many with traumatic brain injuries, many of them undiagnosed; and many of them themselves victims of violence—it’s time we had a prison system and a justice system that dealt with the underlying problems. We fix prisoners, we stop them reoffending, then we have fewer victims of crime. That’s about community safety, that’s about a better way of running a justice system, and we’re doing it.

DARROCH BALL (NZ First): Thank you, Madam Chair. Before I go into the report from the Justice Committee, I just want to go into a couple of things that the National Party members have been saying. Mr Bennett stood up and he spoke for about half of his five minutes, rambling on about how much of an issue the huge prison population was. He was asking the Minister of Justice, “What’s the Minister going to do about it? The Minister can’t fix it.” But then he started saying things like that it was over 10,000 and in a couple of years it’s going to be over 14,000. It beggars belief that he is actually standing there while he’s making his speech, thinking that this has all been caused over the last nine months and that anything that we’ve done over this side of the Chamber has caused that horrendous corrections hand grenade to be lobbed over our way. It is demonstrable that it has taken at least the nine years that that National Party was in Government and that it caused the very issues that he’s complaining about now. He started spouting off about the mental health issues and the rehabilitation, and how we’re going to fix that. He talked about the rehabilitation rates in general and how we’re going to fix that. And then he puts it all on us.

Yeah, it is all on us because we’re in Government right now, and we’re doing something about it. All of the Ministers in the sector have put forward a plan not only for this Budget coming forward but for the rest of the term as well, and we’re going to do something about it. We’ve got an actual ambitious goal. That’s probably what’s surprising for the likes of Mr Bennett and the other backbenchers sitting over that side of the Chamber: the ambitious nature—the challenging nature—that we have when we set goals like 30 percent reduction in the prison population. But we don’t look at the mountain and say that it’s too high; we come up with a plan, and we come up with policy that backs that up as well.

What Mr Mitchell said when he spoke—and he was actually first to respond to the Minister. He said that he came into this House as an MP to make it better, more safe, and not to make it less safe for the public of New Zealand. Well, perhaps he just needs to look over the last nine years. First of all—I’ve already mentioned the increase in prison numbers—the decrease in the police numbers under that Government. It wasn’t just a decrease in the rate of police numbers being added; they actually had a decrease over the term—a decrease over the term. So when we’ve got another aspirational, ambitious, challenging target of putting 1,800 new front-line police onto the streets, all they want to do is complain—all they want to do is complain. How many police did the National Party end up adding over the last nine years? Minus 16.

Hon Andrew Little: It went down.

DARROCH BALL: Minus 16. It went down, and all we’ve been hearing is complaining about when and why and how we want to have 1,800 new police. What their excuse is when they don’t like it is that, apparently, 1,800 new police is going to cause more prisoners and it’s going to cause more crimes. Well, if you look at it one-dimensionally like that, perhaps they’ll be correct, but we look at it in multidimensional facets over this side of the Chamber. There will be a couple of hundred more beds that are needed because of the police that’ve been put on the front line, because they’re there to combat the crime that is being committed right now: but for the added front-line being put out there, that crime would go undetected. That’s what the National Party is saying. That’s what the National Party wants us to accept—that’s what the National Party wants us to accept—but it’s very important to note that, actually, the Commissioner of Police, during these hearings, told us that New Zealand’s operating model focuses on preventing harm and crime in the community.

One of the questions when Mr David Bennett stood up was, “How are you going to do it? How are you going to reduce the prison population by that much?” Well, there’s a new word—perhaps it’s new for that member, but it’s not for this side of the Chamber—it’s called prevention, and that’s one of the major roles that police officers have in this country. They don’t just go out there and arrest and be reactive like that Government thought they did and how that Government utilised our men and women in blue. They’re there to prevent, and that’s what they’re going to do.

I can’t go through all of the good things that this Government’s going to be doing with this appropriation in these sections in five minutes, but we will deliver.

CHRIS BISHOP (National—Hutt South): Thank you very much, Madam Chair. I’m surprised that member, Darroch Ball, managed to get to five minutes, to be honest, with all the Government’s doing in terms of the appropriation, because this Government is—[Interruption] They are doing some things, and what they’re doing is cutting successful and innovative programmes.

I want to get to that in my remarks on the Estimates, but I, firstly, want to start with the Vote Police appropriation about—well, it claims to be for 1,800 new police over the next three years, and that’s the big coalition commitment between New Zealand First—Darroch Ball’s party—and Labour, that will add 1,800 front-line police. Well, we had the interesting experience in the Justice Committee of the Minister of Police, Stuart Nash, turning up and actually admitting to the committee that despite his press release trumpeting $298.8 million in additional operational expenditure over the next four years, this was not enough to deliver the 1,800 police over three years.

We had this comical exchange with Mr Nash where he said, “Well, I’m going to go back to Mr Robertson and I’m going to have to ask for more money. I don’t exactly know how much more, but I’ll have to go and get some more.” So the Minister, in his own words, admits that not enough money has been appropriated. I might just add, in passing, that the $298.8 million over four years is a considerable increase on Labour’s pre-election estimates of $40 million being required for their promises around extra police—or, it was $40 million on one occasion, then it turned into $80 million, and I think there was $140 million thrown in there at some point. It’s certainly not $298.8 million. So, as with many other things, the Labour Party have proved that they can’t count.

But then we get to the point about how long it will take for these police to be delivered. Minister Stuart Nash is fond of saying “We’re striving to do it within three years.” Well, that’s all well and good, except we know that he received official advice from his officials about phasing the extra police in over five years, not three years. We had this, again, very comical exchange in the select committee, in which Stuart Nash, the Minister of Police, openly admitted to the committee that he hadn’t even read that advice. Members opposite may disagree, but on this side of the House, we just find that extraordinary. Frankly, it is treating the Parliament with contempt. It is treating the public with contempt.

Look, members opposite and members on this side of the House will disagree with official advice. Any Government is entitled to disagree with official advice put by its officials. The advice is contestable. Ministers are perfectly entitled to do different things, but at the very least, I do not think it is unreasonable for the public to expect Ministers to read advice. I’ve worked in a Minister’s office. I know there’s a lot of paperwork. I know it’s a tough job. I know that Stuart Nash is the Minister of Fisheries as well as the Minister of Police, but at the very least, I think members—on this side of the House, certainly—think it is perfectly reasonable to expect Ministers to read advice. But we had this extraordinary situation of Stuart Nash saying “I didn’t even read it. Paid it no attention. Didn’t even read it.” I just find that remarkable.

So that deals with the 1,800 new police. I also want to talk about the highly regrettable funding cuts to the mental health and police co-response pilot, which has been highlighted in the public—

Hon Shane Jones: Fake news, fake news—making it up, making it up.

CHRIS BISHOP: —over the last couple of weeks. Again, we asked—well, he’s saying, “Back it up.” Well, the backing it up—it’s in the Minister’s own written Estimates answers, Mr Jones. We asked Mr Nash, through the Estimates process, what the status of the programme was, and the answer came back: “It doesn’t exist any more.” It’s gone. The money—I think the exact phrase was “The funding has been reallocated to other priorities.” An $8 million programme instituted by the previous Government—it hadn’t quite got off the ground yet. It was due to start in a couple of months. In September, it was due to start. It was universally supported by everyone in the sector. There’s not a mental health worker out there or a police officer who wouldn’t say that this is a fantastic initiative.

In fact, we had this extraordinary situation of the Minister sitting next to the Commissioner of Police, and the police commissioner, in the Estimates hearing, said, “Oh, I’m actually very hopeful it will continue.” But no, no, this Government knows best. Stuart Nash and David Clark have decided that $8 million, which, frankly, the Government has spent in the 30 seconds I’ve just spent talking about this issue—they’ve decided that the money can be reallocated better to fees-free education for middle-class kids to go to university for free, or something like that.

So, frankly, the cutting of this programme is a disgrace. The fact that the decision to cut it has been universally panned should make the Government pause and reflect and reinstitute it.

I haven’t even covered the cutting of very important targets around 24/7 police stations, or around attending burglaries within 48 hours—98 percent of them within 48 hours. All of these programmes and all of these important targets have been cut by this disgraceful Government.

Hon STUART NASH (Minister of Police): Thank you very much, Madam Chair. Under this coalition Government, we are in the process of delivering the greatest increase in the New Zealand Police service in its history: 1,800 more front-line officers are heading to our communities, and it is not only 1,800 more front-line officers, but 485 back-office staff as well. Now, how did this come about? Well, how it came about is because in the last annual plan of the previous Government, it actually said in the appendices, “There will be no more police until at least 2020, and we expect police to do more with less.”—no more police.

This was at a stage where, in the last workplace survey, 60 percent of respondents—so these are front-line officers—said that they experienced an undue level of workplace stress, and only 40 percent of these officers said that they were meeting the promises that they were making to our community. But the surprising thing was you had over 80 percent of officers saying that they were completely committed to the New Zealand Police service and committed to the communities they served. So what we had was a group of men and women who were passionate about the job they did. They knew what needed to be done to keep our communities safe, but they just did not have the resources.

The problem is when you get 60 percent of a workforce saying they have an undue level of workplace stress, then cracks begin to appear. What happens is that partners—their husbands, their wives, their partners—say “I know you love your job, dear, but I can’t put up with this level of stress. I can’t put up with you coming home every single day absolutely stressed.” So something had to change.

Something had to change, and I’ll tell you what that change is. For the second time, Labour and New Zealand First came together and said, “We really need to drive change in this area. We need to do something differently.” We’re using technology pretty well—that’s a given—but the thing that we knew was going to make a difference was actually having more men and women on the front line, keeping our communities safe.

What I will say is everyone from the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister down buys into the police’s operating model of Prevention First. This is about having men and women on the front line, working in our communities, and engrained within our communities and knowing what is going on, to the point where they can make decisions at a very early stage, as opposed to fighting fires and locking people up. That is not the way to run a modern police service, and it’s certainly created huge problems for our whole justice sector. So 1,800 more police is what we said we’d deliver, and we’ll do it.

Now the interesting thing is I have said that I have only two key performance indicators (KPIs) for the Commissioner of Police. One is 80 percent trust and confidence—i.e., 80 percent of our communities have trust and confidence in the New Zealand Police force. That is also one of the commissioner’s KPIs. The only other KPI that I said I want from a governance perspective is that 90 percent of the New Zealand Police officers say that they have the resources they need to deliver on the promises they make to their Government. That is up from the 40 percent that it was under that Government, and it was only going to get worse because there were going to be no more police for at least three more years—three more years.

Now I understand my role. I understand my role. My role as the Minister of Police is to ensure that our men and women on the front line have the resources they need to keep our communities safe. That is my role. The role of the Commissioner of Police is to determine how to best allocate those resources. The Commissioner of Police has been in the New Zealand Police service for 40 years—for 40 years. Imagine me coming to the commissioner and saying, “You must do this. You must allocate your men and women here. You’ve got to keep that station open 24/7.”

Well, I suspect that the commissioner knows more about policing than I do. I suspect that the men and women who are in charge of our policing districts know more about how to best allocate their resources to keep our communities safe. So I am not going to tell our police officers how to run operationally.

Let’s get down to this mental health pilot. If that member Chris Bishop really wants to know about this, in the last Budget, there was $100 million of unappropriated money—$100 million unappropriated. So when they talk about a scheme, they hadn’t even allocated any money to it. There was no money in the Budget for it. There was no money in the Budget for it.

PRIYANCA RADHAKRISHNAN (Labour): Kia orana e Maine Vaa Tuatua. It is indeed a pleasure to rise and take a call to speak to the Appropriation (2018/19 Estimates) Bill in its committee stage, looking at the votes that sit within the ambit of the justice sector. Now we just heard from the Minister of Police, who said that we need to do something different, and that was actually a running theme that we heard from Ministers who spoke to the Justice Committee, as well. In fact, there’s a quote that’s been attributed to, I think, Albert Einstein that, basically, says that “Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result is the definition of madness”,

And that’s what we have seen. For too long, we have seen a previous Government that has pursued justice policies and shaped public discourse around the idea that we should just be locking up more and more people and giving them tougher, longer sentences.

We have heard, from previous speakers on this side of the House this evening, that that doesn’t work. That has resulted in what our Ministers of this coalition Government have inherited—so, basically, increasing violent criminal offending, the fact that our reoffending rate has pretty much stayed at about 60 percent, and the fact that our prison population is ballooning. So, basically, we’ve got a criminal justice system that has failed, and we need to do something different. And that’s what this coalition Government is committed to, and that’s what we heard from successive Ministers who spoke at the select committee: that we want meaningful, sustainable change within the criminal justice system. We want to reduce reoffending, reduce offending, and also ensure that we have fewer victims of crime. We need a criminal justice system that holds offenders accountable but that also looks at how we can provide better rehabilitation and reintegration so that, when these people are outside of the prison system, they’re actually able to reintegrate better into our communities. We also need to support victims better, and that’s what we’ve seen in terms of Budget 2018 allocations, as well.

We’ve heard from the justice Minister that there will be a package of reforms that will be shaped by the criminal justice summit. This will, basically, be a much better public discourse. It’ll be a national conversation that will bring together victims of crime, victim advocates, those who have worked at the front lines, from different backgrounds, people who have experience in the criminal justice sector, and experts in the field, to then come up with reform proposals—what are we going to do, what are some of the possible solutions, informed by evidence rather than led by some arbitrary targets that the previous Government set, half of which weren’t even met.

We’ve also heard from the Minister that there was a Safer Ethnic Communities Ministerial Forum that aimed to also better that conversation and ensure that various aspects of our diverse communities understand what the priorities are that this Government has, and also have the opportunity to feed into some of those possible solutions and put forth their experiences of the criminal justice sector as well.

So what did we hear from Ministers in terms of holding offenders to account? We’ve actually just heard from the police Minister about the commitment to increase the number of new police officers in New Zealand. We’ve also heard from the member Darroch Ball that, actually, the previous Government cut the number of police officers that we’ve had. So this goal of increasing police numbers by 1,800 is ambitious. The Minister acknowledged that at the select committee process, as well. He explained that it would enable the deployment of 1,100 police on the streets, 700 to combat organised crime, and would be supported by 485 non-sworn staff as well. Budget 2018 takes the first step towards that. All our Ministers who spoke at the select committee acknowledged that one Budget will not fix the mess that’s been inherited—the mess that was created, largely, over the last decade. But this Budget takes the first step towards that, and that’s important to note.

We also heard an assurance from the Minister that the quality of police—[Time expired]

CHRIS PENK (National—Helensville): Thank you, Madam Chair, for the opportunity to speak in relation, particularly, to the subject of courts within the justice portfolio. I refer, of course, to the Estimates process and, particularly, the discussion that I had, along with other members of the Justice Committee—myself not being a permanent member thereof, but attending for the purpose of that hearing—with the Minister of Justice, Andrew Little. I’d like to touch on a couple of key points in particular. One is the relationship between the Parliament and the courts. I’ll be using the three-strikes rule and its application as an example within that, and some thoughts that the Minister has around “mechanistic sentencing”, as he describes it. So that’s the first area that I will be discussing. The second is the discussion about having a plan for reform, or a lack thereof, in relation to targets being set, or rather not being set, in the justice sector.

Before I get on to that, I’d like to mention, at least in passing, the fact that what’s not being said throughout this process is really in relation to courts reform that will improve the timeliness of decision making. That would be the first place that this Government should start if it is serious about its stated goal of reducing the population of the prisons by 30 percent. That would be a relatively easy win, at least on the remand side, and so I encourage the Government and the relevant Minister, in particular, to give some thought to that.

Also, as a footnote but very relevant to the discussion in the justice sector, and, particularly, again, on the subject of courts, I’d like to recommend to the Government that they continue—and, indeed, extend—the alcohol and other drug treatment courts. I think it’s widely acknowledged around this House and, indeed, by those in the sector, that these have been very successful on the trial basis where they’re currently implemented. I acknowledge the work of the previous Government but also Judge Lisa Tremewan for her leadership in that regard, getting those under way. I’ve seen them in operation myself. I’ve gone to visit them. I do commend to the Government—indeed, implore them—to roll out what is needed by way of funding and resources to extend those throughout the country.

So, speaking, as I say, on the subject of the relationship between the Parliament and the courts, it’s probably more in sorrow than in anger that I note some of the comments of the Minister for Courts at that hearing—in particular, the false choice that was made between having people in prison who have offended as against completing rehabilitation. Of course, it’s a false choice, because it’s the very opportunity that we have, through placing people who should be in prison for the sake of the wider community, and also for their sake, in the sense that they can receive the rehabilitation while they are detained at Her Majesty’s pleasure. So I would challenge the Government not to be ideological on the subject of imprisonment and actually view it as a genuine opportunity to reform lives for their good and indeed for the good of the whole community.

Speaking to the subject of the relationship between Parliament and the courts, I was seeking to make the point through a series of questions to the Minister for Courts that, while he is of course correct in saying that Parliament speaks to the courts through legislation, that doesn’t mean that we should not set strict boundaries in terms of what the community’s expectations are—that is, the community whom we represent here in the House of Representatives. Indeed, it is precisely because of our democratic mandate to make laws and not apply them that we must be mindful of our role in directing the courts to appropriate sentencing and, indeed, criminal procedure in general.

The three-strikes law, it is well accepted, has been applied in a way that, I would say, is unexpected, to use perhaps a euphemistic phrase for the situation that has arisen, whereby manifestly unjust exceptions have, in fact, become the rule. Statistically, that is the case; certainly in the case of subsequent-strike murders, every single one has seen that exception invoked. So I would challenge the Minister of Justice to think about how law reform could be made—far from scrapping that programme, as he has indicated that he would like to do, notwithstanding that he was stopped by a coalition partner, but actually to give serious thought to how that law could actually be applied as Parliament intended and what he could say to the courts, again through legislation, to achieve that.

Finally, in my brief remaining time, I would encourage the Minister to get serious about setting targets and not simply set up a process of review to inform the fact that there are targets.

GOLRIZ GHAHRAMAN (Green): Kia orana, Madam Chair. It’s a pleasure to rise to speak on the justice sector. It’s a sector that’s close to my heart, having worked for most of my working life, before sitting in this Chamber, in that sector. It is an expensive sector, both in real terms, in the cost to victims, to their whānau, to their communities, and in terms of broad social harm, as we’re forced to remove more and more people and lock them up. And it is expensive in terms of the bottom line. So to know all the failures that came through this sector as the previous administration refused to change tack as the evidence mounted against its tough-on-crime approach to imprisonment, in particular, is heartbreaking.

In fact, all that approach did was make politicians look tough. It did nothing to keep our communities safer. It blew up our prison populations, costing us billions upon billions that could’ve been spent on preventing crime, on treating addiction, mental health—all the things that we know cause people to commit crime.

While I watched our justice system be gutted, while the previous Government’s legal aid policy was declared unlawful by the Court of Appeal, while community law centres lost most of their mandate and funding—the stats speak pretty loudly against all of that. In the annual reviews earlier this year, we found that serious crime went up in almost every category: serious sexual assault and violent crime, including homicide, went up; illicit drug offending went up. In fact, methamphetamine offending—in terms of supply, manufacture, and importation—is about to overtake cannabis offending in our courts. Imagine if we’d taken an addiction healthcare approach to drug offending and treated the source of the problem, which is addiction. But we didn’t. Robbery and theft went up, and offences involving offensive weapons went up by a whopping 20 percent.

Our communities were being made less and less safe as we were locking people up, and that’s callous policy. Recidivism was at about 50 percent. So we know that we weren’t taking the opportunity, while we had people in custody, to help them overcome the issues that had led them down that path. So we locked them up, in Serco-run prisons often—in Auckland, at least, where I’m from—and I know that rehabilitation programmes weren’t really there. I know that people were, essentially, being unlawfully held, because they weren’t able to become eligible for parole because they weren’t able to complete the courses they needed to complete. That’s courses as simple as literacy courses but also in terms of drug and alcohol treatment, in terms of anger management treatment. What a lost opportunity.

So now we are changing that. I am delighted to see that instead of building the American-style mega-prison at Waikeria, we’re actually building a smaller prison that includes a mental health unit. So we are investing in what we know will make our communities safer once we release people, instead of holding them for longer and longer and longer, and then releasing them as more hardened criminals—again, callous policy-making. Ignoring the evidence is dangerous.

We’re investing in probation officers, in service managers, and in psychologists to make sure that people on bail and on parole are supported into a crime-free life. We’re putting 20 percent extra money into community law centres, reviewing their mandate, and consulting with the actual sector, because we know that access to justice is important at that level. We’re also investing in youth justice, and this is a subject that’s close to my heart, because it is actually one of our biggest violations in both the justice and the child rights sector. We’re investing in finally—finally—facilitating a move of 17-year-olds—children—out of the adult criminal justice system, out of adult prisons, and I welcome that. Thank you.

Hon CHRISTOPHER FINLAYSON (National): I want to speak to one particular aspect of the Estimates, and that concerns the Attorney-General’s appearance before the Justice Committee. I must confess, it’s my misfortune to have to follow on from the Green MP Golriz Ghahraman, whose speech was nothing more than melodramatic and formulaic drivel. There is a lot that I could talk about in her third-grade effort, but I would rather concentrate on what could be, potentially, an important issue. It’s one I’ve raised with the Attorney-General offline, but I do need to get it on the record so that if it all blows up, at least I can say, “I told you so.”—not you, Mr Chair, but I mean that in a general sense. It concerns temporary judges.

The previous administration decided that temporary judges were constitutionally improper, and so when the courts legislation was reformed a couple of years ago, the new District Court Act provided that one could no longer appoint temporary judges. The former Attorney-General Dr Cullen had appointed quite a number of temporary judges, and at one stage I think there were 22 temporary judges who were appointed for fixed terms. What normally happened would be that District Court judges on a temporary warrant would be made permanent after a period of time. Toward the end of the National Party’s term in office, we decided that one could no longer simply increase the number of judges every couple of years—although the cap had gone up from 156 to 160 when the new District Courts legislation was passed—and that one needed to have a sensible assessment of just what the population projections were, so that there could be a proper discussion about the cap. That work, I understand, is almost completed now.

At the present time, we have nine temporary judges whose terms are going to expire between the end of this year and about June next year. My concern is that their terms may expire before this Parliament has had a chance to look at the question of the judicial cap, or whether indeed there should be a judicial cap, because what we’re seeing is that District Court judges continue to be appointed but they are being appointed as permanent judges, and that the temporary judges stay in that limbo state of temporary judges. So there is, at least, a possibility that those persons’ terms could come to an end and then they cease to be judges, and that could cause problems for the administration of justice. So I think the Government is going to need to get on with this matter pretty urgently, to complete the piece of work that has been done, as between Mr Little’s ministry and the Chief District Court Judge, on a judicial resourcing model, and then make some decisions about what the cap is to be, so that if Parliament needs to move to increase that cap to protect the position of those temporary judges, it can do so, and those judges will not necessarily cease to be holding judicial warrants.

So it’s a rather arcane but very important point that this Parliament may need to address at relatively short notice. I’ve been given to understand that there’s no problem, but I think there could be a problem, and that at least a number of temporary judges’ warrants will come to an end. Of course, we did not approve of temporary judges, because it’s unconstitutional for the executive to be appointing people to the judiciary for, say, a term of two years, because the implication—or, at least, the fear—is that people will say, “Well, if that person’s appointed a judge, in order to get a permanent warrant he or she has to please the executive.” The important thing is that as soon as judges are appointed, they should be able, as a separate branch of government, to get on with the role of judging, without fear or favour in terms of what the executive wants. But it’s very important that they not be appointed for fixed terms.

So that was the rationale about why temporary judges, as a category, were disestablished, but there is this small remaining group. We need to make sure that if the cap is to be increased, it can be increased in such time that these people do not lose their warrants.

A party vote was called for on the question, That Vote Attorney-General, Vote Corrections, Vote Courts, Vote Justice, Vote Parliamentary Counsel, Vote Police, and Vote Serious Fraud be agreed to.

Ayes 63

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

Noes 56

New Zealand National 56.

Votes agreed to.

Māori Affairs Sector

CHAIRPERSON (Adrian Rurawhe): Members, we come now to votes in the Māori affairs sector, B.5, Volume 8. The question is that Vote Māori Development and Vote Treaty Negotiations stand part of the schedules.

RINO TIRIKATENE (Chairperson of the Māori Affairs Committee): Tēnā koe, Mr Chair. Kia ora. Kia orana. I am pleased to lead off this part of the Estimates debate where we are covering Māori Affairs, and in particular two votes: Vote Māori Development and Vote Treaty Negotiations. I do want to acknowledge the Ministers that made themselves available to the Māori Affairs Committee—in particular, the Hon Nanaia Mahuta, the Minister for Māori Development, who is ably assisted by Minister Peeni Henare, who is responsible for the Whānau Ora appropriation. Also, I want to acknowledge Minister Little, the Minister for Treaty of Waitangi Negotiations, and we also extended our hearings to include Minister Davis, who gave us a very helpful briefing on the new Crown/Māori Relations portfolio.

One thing that is very clear, which the Ministers conveyed to our committee, is that this is about a coalition joined-up approach to ensure that we lift up Māori in all areas—in particular, socially and economically; and, likewise, the well-being of all New Zealanders. So what we have seen is that through the Māori Development vote the business of Government continues. We have legislation, and we have existing strategies in votes that are in place that have continued under the stewardship of Minister Mahuta. We have seen that in the Te Reo Māori area, whereby the votes for those appropriations are roughly on a par with the previous year—$98 million to Te Reo, including Māori Television broadcast. In the Whānau Ora space there has been a consistency of funding, with $80 million for Whānau Ora.

But, likewise, we have seen new priorities that have been identified by the Minister, and that has come through in the areas of papakāinga housing development, again continuing on the existence of the Māori Housing Network that has been established under the previous Government, but with a focus on papakāinga housing, assisting Māori land owners, and that work ties alongside the broader housing work, which we are doing under Minister Twyford with increases to social housing and likewise our KiwiBuild. So a lot of the initiatives that are a priority to the Minister are working alongside the broader objectives of this coalition Government.

If we look again, the Minister has also identified, through $37 million of those new priorities, work in the whenua Māori space whereby we will be seeing further amendments and support for Māori land owners to achieve their aspirations, and these are all tied in with the overall activities which are working across that sector—gosh, time goes quick. Ha!

I would like to also acknowledge Minister Little, who’s doing some outstanding work in the Treaty negotiations area. I would say that he is continuing along the momentum that was laid down by the Hon Chris Finlayson in that area, and I value the work that he is doing—in particular, dealing with some very complex issues, but making good progress with Ngāpuhi and also the work in the marine and coastal area space, which is another big area.

So there is sustained effort being applied to increase Māori well-being socially and economically across the vote sectors. It ties in with the wider and the broader work programme that we have as a Government. As the Ministers pointed out during our Estimates hearings, a lot of this work ties in with the regional economic development work of Minister Jones and Minister Whaitiri, likewise the rangatahi work that is going on and is also tied along with Minister Jackson and Minister Mahuta working closely together there. So there is support from the committee to the votes across both these areas, and I commend their work.

NUK KORAKO (National): Kia orana e Te Kaiwhakahaere. He mihi atu ki a koe, huri noa i Te Whare nei, he mihi atu.

[Greetings, Mr Chair. I greet you and all those in the House.]

Can I, first of all, acknowledge the Minister for Māori Development in the chair, the Hon Nanaia Mahuta, and also the Hon Andrew Little, the Minister for Treaty of Waitangi Negotiations. I’m going to concentrate more on the Māori development part, because my learned colleague, the former Minister for Treaty of Waitangi Negotiations, I am sure will actually have an input into the Treaty negotiations part of it.

The previous speaker, my whanauka, but also our chair of the Māori Affairs Committee, Rino Tirikatene—I’m glad that you and I can actually agree to disagree, because of the fact that we on this side of the House, particularly where Māori development is concerned, to us, this particular Budget, these Estimate appropriations, are actually a travesty. When we look at the fact that when we were in Government, the narrative at that time was, “What is good for Māori is actually good for all New Zealand.” So when we look at the Labour-led coalition that we have here at present, what we have as a narrative is, “What’s good for New Zealand is actually good for Māori.” So the whole narrative has been turned around. So when I look at the appropriations for the Budget 2018 and the Estimates for Vote Māori Development, the main thing that strikes me most about that is there is a lack of a real and apparent plan. There is no real clear initiative, either, for our Māori voters. So that is why our Māori voters, when we’ve looked at this—

Hon Willie Jackson: That’s why they voted for us.

NUK KORAKO: No, because basically what they’ve actually done is—they actually feel betrayed. They really feel betrayed. Because what they were promised pre - 2017 election was that there was going to be transparency and there was actually going to be a lot more money put into Māori development, and what they got, when you look at this Budget, is zilch. Actually, it’s decreased, but I’ll come to that.

But the other part, too, is that when you all went to Rātana and when you went to Waitangi you said, “Hold us to account.”—that’s what your leader said. So look out when you go back there next year and even when you get there in November, because you will definitely be held up and told that this is the situation now.

So coming back to the Estimates, when the former Labour Government Minister John Tamihere publicly states in his column that no amount of spin by Labour’s 13-strong Māori caucus—five of whom are Ministers and in Cabinet—can hide the fact that Budget 2018 for Māori has been cut by this Labour Government. You’ve got to get worried when that actually happens. Māori are aware that this Government are treating them as though they’re really ignorant and that they actually can’t count, and I’ll tell you why. When you look at the Minister for Māori Development, I mean, she has actually stated in the House that the appropriations for the 2018 Budget have not decreased—they have not decreased. So this is why our people get upset. It is because the fact is, when you look at it now, in our Māori Affairs Committee report that these are all based on, the situation is that it has actually been cut by 4 percent. There’s a 4 percent decrease.

So when we look at the 2018-19 total—$316.421 million. And then when we look at the 2017-18 Estimates—$328.727 million, that’s a 4 percent cut. So that, there, is what this is about. And when we look at it, that’s only in the first year—the 4 percent—the second year, and third year, and fourth year is going to be another 6 percent. So let’s highlight this, too. The fact is that the budget for Māori development over the next four years has actually been cut by 10 percent.

Hon WILLIE JACKSON (Associate Minister for Māori Development): That’s a shocking speech from a very good man, Nuk Koroko—one of the best people in the National Party, but, sadly, a very shocking and sad speech.

Look, I need to say this slowly. First of all, can I mihi to our Minister for Māori Development, doing a great job, and our chair, Rino Tirikatene. I need to say this slowly for the Opposition. I’ll do it really slowly for the Opposition: Māori people aren’t all part of Māori Development. Māori people: most don’t speak Māori. Most Māori people are not affiliated with Māori organisations. Minister Finlayson knows this. Most Māori people just—

Hon Christopher Finlayson: I’m not a Minister.

Hon WILLIE JACKSON: Well, the former Minister. Thank God for that too. But, in terms of where Māori are, they’re not part of Māori organisations. We want them all speaking Te Reo. We want them all part of Whānau Ora. We want them to all watch Māori Television. We want them to all listen to Māori radio. But they don’t—but they don’t. So Nuk Koroko needs to get it through his head that we have to legislate for the majority of people. We don’t live our world around a measly Māori-targeted budget.

The Opposition has to understand that most Māori want good housing and they want jobs. This is what we campaigned on, not the measly Māori-targeted budget. It’s a measly amount. So don’t hang your hat on a Māori budget while the whole world is falling down, because that’s what the Māori Party did. They said, “We got $100 million.” Meanwhile, they sold of State house rentals. Meanwhile, they had the dirty, rotten, filthy Te Ture Whenua Māori Bill. Meanwhile they had kōhanga reo and never paid equity funding there. The whole world’s falling down and Nuk and his Māori Party friends hang their hat on a measly Māori budget.

Māori are everywhere. Māori are in Porirua and they’re in Wellington. They don’t know about that targeted budget, Nuk; they just know about their bills day to day. And so, therefore, you have to legislate for the majority of Māori. The majority of Māori, sadly, are not into taha Māori things. And so what did we do? We gave our people funding in the Families Package—a family package of $1.2 billion. The Budget targets 181,000 Māori children. What don’t you understand about that? What does the Opposition not understand? Does the Opposition not understand that Māori are New Zealanders?

Nuk Korako: So get rid of Te Puni Kōkiri (TPK) then. Get rid of TPK. What do you need TPK for?

Hon WILLIE JACKSON: Māori are New Zealanders too, Nuk. Māori are New Zealanders too: 180,000 children are going to benefit from a universal package. Accommodation supplement: $265 million to Māori whānau—$265 million to—

Nuk Korako: Not to Māori whānau. It’s not targeted.

Hon WILLIE JACKSON: Do those whānau not count, or do you just want to give funding in your measly targeted funding area? How stupid is the Opposition? That’s the question today.

Simeon Brown: I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson.

CHAIRPERSON (Adrian Rurawhe): Before you say, when I call a point of order, the members sit down immediately.

Simeon Brown: The member opposite was bringing you into the debate.

CHAIRPERSON (Adrian Rurawhe): Now, I’m going to rule on this. From the rest of this session up to 6 p.m., while I’m in the chair, let’s reduce that right down on both sides of the Chamber please. While I’m on my feet, the Hon Willie Jackson needs to speak to this part of the debate about what is in the Estimates report.

Nicola Willis: Have you read them?

Hon WILLIE JACKSON: Oh, I’ve absolutely read them. And I’m talking about all the funding that’s gone towards Māori in a universal sense. So what we’ve done is have a two-pronged attack here through universal funding, where we’ve got family supplements going to our people—that the Opposition don’t understand because they’re far too slow—and we’ve, of course, got special funding that’s going out in terms of Te Reo Māori. I know this is very hard for the Opposition to understand, but Māori people are New Zealanders too, and we deserve to be supported and funded and resourced in the different areas. There is huge funding going to Māori. There is more funding to Māori than ever in the history of the New Zealand Parliament. It’s amazing, really.

In terms of the young people, rangatahi: $14 million—$14 million. Read that book: $14 million going to young people in terms of finding work. And that’s under He Poutama Rangatahi. That’s a fund that the former Government refused to manage and refused to get out to the regions. We’re putting that money out amongst the regions now through He Poutama Rangatahi, and our rangatahi $14 million fund going out through Te Puni Kōkiri is going to hit our people in the city. We are so pleased with how things are going, Māori members. I know the Hon Chris Finlayson agrees with me. He knows that we’re targeting Māori in a universal sense and in a targeted sense, and well done, Māori caucus.

Hon CHRISTOPHER FINLAYSON (National): I’m very happy to take a call on this issue. I’d agree with the Hon member Willie Jackson if I could understand what he said half the time.

I want to begin by acknowledging Rino Tirikatene, the MP for Te Tai Tonga and excellent chair of the Māori Affairs Committee, as I said in the House the other week. I do feel sorry for him, because after the contribution from Mr Jackson, he must be sitting there saying, “How did he get to be a Minister and I’m not one?” But, look, that’s the nature of politics and one has to live with these things.

I don’t intend to speak at length about Treaty negotiations. I’m a very bipartisan sort of a chap, and I think it’s an area where there should be bipartisanship. I have to say, when I was the Minister, I had good support from the Labour Party and I think I’d like to continue that support for this Minister, and in that regard, congratulate him for biting the bullet and being prepared to sign the Pare Hauraki deed, and also for moving to a stage of initialling the Marutūāhu deed. And, of course, standing behind those collective deeds are a lot of individual deeds as well. So congratulations on that and all the very best when dealing with Ngāpuhi. It’s interesting for Mr Tirikatene to say there’s movement there, and I look forward to the evidence of that movement in due course. All I can say to you is best of British, old boy.

The second thing I want to talk about is the vote that involves Mr Kelvin Davis. Look, I’m totally supportive of the portfolio of Crown/Māori Relations. I got the ball rolling in that area when I was Attorney-General, and one of the things I’d be interested to hear from the Minister is: how is the register of Crown obligations going? I think that’s a very important first step. There’ll be a lot of—from time to time—issues that arise, dealing with the post-Treaty settlement relationship, but there’s a broader Crown-Māori relationship that does deserve very careful consideration by Government in the years ahead.

A key aspect of that issue is the registry of interests where some good work was done, but it hadn’t been completed when we left office. But I do think it’s very important for the Crown—not Government departments; for the Crown—to know that there are ongoing obligations. When I left office, I think there were about 7,000 ongoing obligations—quite a number of them the Crown had actually completed its responsibilities. So that’s the second major issue, and I’d be interested to hear from the Minister on that one.

Then we move on from praise and from nice-guy stuff into Māori development, because I endorse everything Mr Korako said. Mr Jackson tried to enlist me into his side of the argument—I think, to the extent I understood it—but, basically, it was totally wrong. But the issue in Māori development that really concerns me—and Mr Jackson, I think, referred to it as that “dirty, stinking, rotten Te Ture Whenua Māori Bill” or something like that. It was a sort of argument by epithet as opposed to argument by analysis. What we had with the work done on reform of Te Ture Whenua Maori Act was a once-in-a-generation opportunity to work out how Māori could develop their land.

I have said in this House before that there have been reports done showing the potential for Māori land, not only for economic development but for papakāinga housing and so on—tremendous opportunities. People kept saying to me, “We can’t develop this land because of the legal structures.”—even people like Shane Jones, who is very interested in seeing land developed for forestry, recognises the limitations on using land under Te Ture Whenua Maori Act for forestry development because of problems in getting consent.

So it’s a huge issue. Such a huge amount of work was done and it’s just been tossed to one side with the promises that there will be some work done on landlocked land, and there will be some work done on this and that, but the reality of the matter is nothing is going to happen, even though the Labour Party in Opposition put in their manifesto that reform of te ture whenua was a priority. And all that good work that was done to develop the Māori Land Service, which would serve to be a disputes resolver, to provide expert advice on registration of land, and also provide advice on how land could be developed—that’s all been washed away and that is a very serious error, and that is why this Minister has let the side down.

WILLOW-JEAN PRIME (Labour): Tēnā koe e te heamana o tēnei wahanga. He hōnore tēnei mōku te tū ki te kōrero e pā ana ki tēnei kaupapa i te ahiahi nei. Ehara ahau i te mema o tēnei Kōmiti Māori engari e hiahia ana ahau ki te whakaputa ētahi o ngā whakaaro, ētahi o ngā kōrero e pā ana ki te Tahua Pūtea mō te Pōti Whanaketanga Māori.

Āe, kua kite i ngā kōrero, i ngā amuamu o tērā taha o Te Whare ki waho hoki o tēnei Whare, e pā ana ki tēnei Tahua Pūtea. E pātai mai ana kei hea te pūtea mō Ngāi Tātou te iwi Māori. Māku e kī atu i roto i te whare, te hauora, te mātauranga anō hoki. Ō mātou whānau, he whānau noho kore whare, e noho ana i runga i te rārangi tatari mō ngā whare kāwanatanga, e noho māuiui ana, kāhore anō kia whiwhi i te mātauranga, e noho kore mahi ana, e noho hoki i roto i ngā whare herehere. Ko tēnei Tahua Pūtea e tuku ana te moni ki wērā o ngā kaupapa hei painga mō tātou katoa, hei painga mō te iwi Māori anō hoki. Kaua e wareware ki tērā kōrero. Kei reira te moni. Kei roto hoki i te pōti whanaketanga Māori.

E hiahia ana ahau ki te kōrero e pā ana ki ētahi o ngā kaupapa e tautoko ana mātou e tohatoha ana i te pūtea, ā, e hiahia ana au ki te tuku mihi ki te Minita, arā ki a Nanaia ki te Minita a Willie anō hoki, nā te mea e rua ngā kaupapa nui kei roto i tēnei Tahua Pūtea.

Tuatahi, ko te whare—e tautoko ana i ngā papakāinga Māori, e tautoko hoki ngā kāinga ki roto i ngā hapori Māori pērā i tōku hau kāinga i Moerewa. E tautoko ana te whakatikatika i ngā whare kei tērā o ngā tāone. E tino harikoa ana te ngākau ia taima ka hoki au ki te kāinga, ka taraiwa atu au ki Moerewa, ka kite ahau i ngā whare e whakapaipai ake ana, e whakatikatika ake ana. Nā te mea ko wērā ngā whare he mākū, he makariri, he nui kē atu ngā tāngata e noho ana ki roto i ērā whare, ko tēnei e tautoko ana i wēra whānau ki te whakatikatika, ki te whakamahana, ā, wērā o ngā whare.

He kaupapa tino pai tērā. E hiahia ana ahau ki te tuku mihi ki a Te Iwi Kotahi Tātou Trust, ki a Ngāhau, a Debbie anō hoki mō tō rātou kaha hei whakatikatika, hei whakapai ake ngā kāinga i roto i Moerewa. Tino harikoa taku ngākau ki te rongo i ngā kōrero e mea ana ngā Minita ko tēnei ko te Moerewa model. Tēnā pea ka whakawhānui ake tēnei kaupapa ki roto i ētahi atu o ngā tāone i roto i a Aotearoa nei.

Nā, ko tētahi atu kaupapa kua kite ahau, kua tohatoha ētahi moni ki te tautoko i tēnei mahi, he mahi mō te rangatahi. Kia ako i ngā pūkenga, kia whai i te mātauranga, kia whiwhi i te mahi. Kua haere mai a Willie, te Minita mō te mahi, ki Kaikohe ki te whakarewa i tētahi kaupapa, arā He Poutama Rangatahi. E mōhio ana tātou katoa te nuinga o ngā taitamariki e noho kore mahi ana i roto i Te Tai Tokerau. Ko tēnei he ara anga mua mō rātou a wērā ngā whakatupuranga. E tino harikoa ana te ngākau ki te tū ki te taha o Willie—

[Greetings to the Chair of this session. It is an honour for me to speak about this topic this afternoon. I am not a member of the Māori Affairs Committee, but I would like to express some of the thoughts, some of the information pertaining to the Budget for Vote Māori Development.

Yes, I have seen the discussion, the complaints of the other side of the House, and outside this House, regarding this Budget, asking where the funding for us, the Māori people is. I would respond: in housing, in health, and also in education. Our families are families who are homeless, sitting on the waiting list for State housing, impacted by poor health, uneducated, unemployed, and also held in prison. This Budget delivers money to those initiatives for the good of all, for the good of Māori people, as well. Don’t forget that point. The money is there. It is also in Vote Māori Development.

I would like to speak about an initiative we are supporting which distributes funding, and I would like to congratulate the Minister for Māori Development, that is Nanaia, and also the Minister of Employment, Willie, because there are two significant initiatives within this Budget.

Firstly, housing—supporting Māori communal housing developments and supporting houses within Māori communities, such as my home-place Moerewa. We are supporting the repair of houses in that town. My heart is happy each time I return home, drive into Moerewa, and see the houses being improved and repaired. Because it is those houses that are damp, cold, and many people are living in such houses, this supports those families to repair and heat those houses. That is a great initiative. I would like to acknowledge Te Iwi Kotahi Tātou Trust, Ngāhau, and also Debbie for their steadfastness in repairing and improving homes in Moerewa. My heart is happy to hear what the Ministers said about the Moerewa model. Perhaps this initiative will be expanded to some other New Zealand towns.

Now, another initiative I have seen is the distribution of money to support this work—work for youth, to learn skills, to pursue education, and to gain employment. Willie, the Minister for this programme, has gone to Kaikohe to launch an initiative, He Poutama Rangatahi. We know that most youth are unemployed in Northland. This is a way forward for those generations. I am pleased to stand beside Willie—]

CHAIRPERSON (Adrian Rurawhe): Ōtirā kia whakahua te katoa o tōna ingoa, Te Hon Willie Jackson.

[Please express his full name, the Hon Willie Jackson.]

WILLOW-JEAN PRIME: —oh, te honourable Te Minita Willie Jackson—i roto i Kaikohe i te whakatūtanga o tēnei o ngā kaupapa. Nō reira e kaha tautoko ana ahau i tēnei Tahua Pūtea nā te mea e kite ana ahau ngā painga o te mahi kua tīmata kē ki roto i Moerewa, i roto i Kaikohe anō hoki.

Arā noa atu te moni kua hoatu ki ngā wātene Māori, mō te whenua Māori, me te whakawhanake i ngā rohe, me Te Reo Māori anō hoki. Āpōpō tērā e whakanui ana tātou te noho motuhake tō tātou reo Māori. Nō reira e tau ana.

[—oh, the honourable Minister Willie Jackson—in Kaikohe at the start of this initiative. Therefore, I strongly support this Budget, because I see the benefits of the work which has already begun in Moerewa and Kaikohe.

Money has also been given to the Māori wardens, to Māori land, and to regional development, and also for the Māori language. Tomorrow we will commemorate the independence of our Māori language. So I conclude.]

JO HAYES (National): Kia orana e Te Vaa Tuatua. I stand to take a contribution in this debate, and I want to bring out the area in the Māori development portfolio around—you can almost guess it—Whānau Ora because I have been disappointed on so many levels around the way that this portfolio is going. I’m disappointed in the lack of funding that came from this Budget. I feel the aroha for those that work in the Whānau Ora sector. I feel aroha for them because the Labour Party manifesto had in it a promise of $20 million for Whānau Ora over a four-year period, and that was washed away, and all of the hopes there and the anticipation that came from the Whānau Ora providers around that particular piece of pūtea was washed away and dashed, and their hopes were dashed. I felt that the $5 million to the agency Te Puni Kōkiri—I believe it’s been ill-allocated. I don’t know why they get to have an increase in funding and the Whānau Ora commissioning agencies and the providers get absolutely nothing.

Now, I know that when I questioned the Minister in the select committee, he talked about the Whānau Ora review and that a lot of the decisions around Whānau Ora funding would hinge on this review. But in my tours around speaking with Whānau Ora providers, looking at the amount of money that has gone into this review—just under a million dollars for review panel members to hear the stories that many of us have already heard around how Whānau Ora is a successful project and how it is helping so many whānau—I think that’s a waste of money, to be honest. I think that very little will come from this review, and I think that a lot of the people that are being interviewed—providers, and so forth—there are a number of them that have been missed out of the opportunity. Yes, there’s a submission process; I get that. But we are Māori and we like kanohi ki te kanohi [face to face], just like we’ve always done throughout our being as Māori, and yet there are a number of providers that have talked to me about their dissatisfaction that they have not had that opportunity for kanohi ki te kanohi with the Minister for Whānau Ora.

Also, there is disappointment from some of those providers that when the Minister for Whānau Ora was invited to present at some of their respective hui, he declined. And, really, at the end of the day, if you’re trying to sell something, you need to be able to connect with those—all of those people; not just the ones that show up to the conferences but all the others that cannot make the journey to conferences.

And so when there is an opportunity to be able to speak to the people, speak to the whānau, then it disappoints me that the Minister for Whānau Ora cannot make the time for these people. It really sends me the signal that this Government doesn’t really care about the little people—the people at the grass roots—and that really concerns me.

There is nervousness out there from one of the commissioning agencies to its providers, saying that, you know, this could be the end to the providerships as they know it through this particular process. I was quite alarmed when I was told this, and I thought, well, this is a very strong message, and I wanted to send that message to the members of the Labour-led Government to let them know that there are whānau, there are providers, and there are hapū and iwi out there that are not impressed with your performance or your support of whānau Māori, of Māori tamariki, rangatahi and of the work that they continue to do with those whānau that actually face the various challenges.

Before I finish my contribution, I too want to just give my thanks to the chair of the Māori Affairs Committee. I think you’re doing a good job, Rino, and thank you very much. You have a very good way about you, looking after us. And thanks also, to the Minister for Treaty of Waitangi Negotiations, the Hon Andrew Little, kia ora.

Hon NANAIA MAHUTA (Minister for Māori Development): Tēnā koe, kia orana. Tuatahi e tāpiri atu āku whakaaro ki ērā i waihotia te mema a Willow-Jean Prime, arā ko te hanga o tēnei Whare he wāhanga mō te iti me te rahi, ngā pouaru, ngā pani, me ngā rawakore. Koinei te tāhūhū o te whare e akiaki nei, e tiaki nei e mātou tēnei kāwanatanga, ki ngā kaupapa matua kei mua i te aroaro o te hunga pōhara, nō reira tautoko ōna kōrero.

[Greetings. Firstly, I would like to add my thoughts to those expressed by the member Willow-Jean Prime, namely the structure of this House which includes parts for all, the widows, the orphans, and the poor. This is the theme that we of this Government are exhorting and looking after, the main issues facing the poor, therefore I support her speech.]

I just wanted to respond to some of the things that have been raised in the committee in relation to the Māori development portfolio, and we do have a good story to tell. But it’s more than that: we want to see action on the ground, and we have a plan, because we know that for far too long, too many people, without opportunity, have not been benefiting under the previous administration. The points that were made by the chairperson of the Māori Affairs Committee that much has been gained across the whole Budget for Māori, and, in particular, our having a focus in the Māori development space to grow further opportunity is exactly the plan that Māori have been calling for. In fact, they voted with their feet because they knew that this plan would work.

The member Willow-Jean Prime actually pointed to all the different parts of the new funding that would channel support to where we think it could make a critical difference, in line with the rest of what the Government is doing. Take papakāinga housing—we know that it’s not just about building houses; it’s about whānau enterprise and it’s about developing land opportunities and sustainable housing opportunities. We will see more of that under this Budget.

Also in the area of rangatahi, we have the Minister of Employment, who has a plan which actually builds on the proposition that our young people want to work, they deserve work, and they deserve sustainable employment. That must be done in partnership not only with business, not only with Māori collectives and Māori enterprise, but also with local and central government. We need a joined-up solution for our rangatahi because for far too long, far too many have been dropping off the radar with nowhere to go.

Also, I want to pick up on the point raised by the previous Minister for Treaty Settlements around Te Ture Whenua. See, this is the difficult thing: the previous administration was prepared to throw money at a Māori Land Service without knowing whether or not they could get the legislation over the line to actually support that direction of travel. People voted with their feet in the Māori electorates because they knew that that approach was not actually going to deliver real gains for Māori whānau, Māori trusts, and Māori collectives, who really wanted the solutions to come back to them in real ways. That was politics gone wrong, and, certainly, National paid for it.

There was another point that was raised in relation to the Budget, and this was something I spoke on at length at the select committee. Actually, if you look at the total budget and the difference, in the last year of the previous administration, the total budget was around about $328 million. For the 2018 Budget, the total vote was $342 million. Now, that’s an increase, and I explained to the select committee that the difference in the numbers was that we had around about $37 million that was put aside in the projects that I’ve identified in the contingency funds.

So the next question falling off that is: why was it contingency? In the papakāinga space, we knew that in order to develop the types of projects that had multiple benefits, rather than just building a house—multiple benefits like whānau enterprise, community development—ensuring that that dollar was a part of a circular economy to deliver far greater gains, we could continue to develop the model that we knew worked in this approach. It’s much the same in terms of the rangatahi space.

Also, I wanted to just, lastly, come to the point about Whānau Ora. Now, why would the Minister throw more money at Whānau Ora before the review outcome had been found? He wouldn’t. The point of the matter there is that we had campaigned on the approach to reviewing Whānau Ora to see what worked, to ensure that a commissioning approach across three different agencies, done three different ways, could identify where the real opportunity of doing things differently might be. Now, I don’t know what the outcome of that review will deliver; neither does the Minister. But it would be prudent of him to ensure that the review took its natural course before he made a final determination about where to next, because that is the question.

We’re committed to outcomes for Māori. We’re committed to gains that will see real opportunities, real jobs, sustainable incomes, and breaking the cycle of inequality and poverty that’s been around far too long.

HARETE HIPANGO (National—Whanganui): E Te Tiamana, kia orana. I rise to take this last call for the Opposition and, in doing so, acknowledge the Minister for Māori Development, the Hon Nanaia Mahuta. I listened to your words keenly and intently, and the Minister has addressed the committee talking about growth and gain for Māori development. Well, the purpose of the Estimates debate is to hold the Minister accountable for the decisions around allocation of funding to areas.

When I go through the Estimates for Māori development, these are the key words that strike one as one reads them from page 230 of the booklet: “decrease”, “no new policy initiatives”, “reduce”, “moved to other Government priorities”, “funding is spread across the Budget”, “integrating”—not only for Māori, but “integrating”—“a reduction”, “tagged”, “not included”, “disestablished”. These are the key words that strike one when reading through Vote Māori Development, and this is the emphasis of my kōrero to the committee this afternoon. It’s about scrutinising the Government’s performance and delivery—or rather, more to the point, its underperformance and under-delivery; its undervaluing of Māori development.

In my service in the House as a member of the Opposition on these benches, I’ve repeatedly heard the coalition Government decrying, bemoaning, and lamenting its long years in Opposition, which obviously weren’t long enough, because, regrettably, in this allocation of funding for Vote Māori Development, it has decreased, reduced, lessened priority, diminished, and mainstreamed funding, doing nothing more than assimilating the interests of Māori and suppressing, not growing, Māori development—nothing more and a whole lot less. In short, this Government has short-changed Māori in Vote Māori Development. Let’s look at the rhetoric again, as I have outlined from pages 230 onwards—this Government has short-changed Vote Māori Development.

So let me step you through some of the rhetoric, some of the promises. Whānau Ora was what the Labour Party campaigned on during the election campaign—promises of $20 million to grow that. There was no talk about a review. We now have 123-plus reviews; Whānau Ora is one of them that has suffered. It’s this particular approach of under-delivery and under-deliverables—funding all slipstreamed into mainstream funding; assimilated policies and assimilated ideas.

Let’s look at the overview in Vote Māori Development. As I said, those key words—it’s about less, which is not about more for Māori development.

Assimilation and immersion is what this is all about. Vote Māori Development is all negatively geared and deconstructed. This is indicative of the regard for the largest representation Māori MPs have ever had in a Government. Regrettably, my colleagues across the Chamber—all 13 of you—have been focused on targeting, assimilation, and immersion into the mainstream. It’s disappointing and ashamedly the voice of the largest representation of Māori ever in Government. The silence is deafening, when we need to hear you speak up, when we need to hear the members across the Chamber speak up the strongest and the most at the times most important for Māori.

The Speech from the Throne referenced, “This government is proud to have the most Māori and Pacific Island cabinet ministers of any New Zealand government; with eight Māori and four Pacific Island ministers.” I put it to my colleagues across the Chamber that you are needed to speak up in the Māori interests, in the Māori voice, not immerse and assimilate, as is evident in this Budget round for Vote Māori Development. As the spokesperson for Māori tourism, I’ve looked through the Estimates here and, again, I see that there has been the immersion and assimilation of Māori funding from the Minister of Tourism over to the Minister for Māori Development. I see that the funding—there’s been no increase; again, immersed and assimilated.

Hearing from the representatives from Māori broadcasting, from Māori Television, their concern and view is that there’s been no increase. In the last four years—[Bell rung]—particularly, for our Māori public broadcasters—

CHAIRPERSON (Adrian Rurawhe): Order! Is the member seeking a further call?

HARETE HIPANGO: May I please, Mr Chair?

CHAIRPERSON (Adrian Rurawhe): I call Harete Hipango.

HARETE HIPANGO: Kia ora, thank you.

In briefly summing up, the Māori Affairs Committee heard from the public broadcasters, in relation to the funding that is here, that there’s been no increase, and questioned why it is that Māori are treated differently from our mainstream broadcaster. There’s nothing clear about the currency in recognising the importance of Māori broadcasting.

So, in conclusion, it’s highlighted very clearly that the coalition Government regrettably, with our Māori representation, has not lifted the voice of the Māori interest. Kia ora.

A party vote was called for on the question, That Vote Māori Development and Vote Treaty Negotiations be agreed to.

Ayes 63

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

Noes 57

New Zealand National 56; ACT New Zealand 1.

Votes agreed to.

Primary Sector

CHAIRPERSON (Adrian Rurawhe): Members, we come now to the votes in the primary sector, B.5, Volume 9. The question is that Vote Agriculture, Biosecurity, Fisheries and Food Safety, Vote Forestry, and Vote Lands stand part of the schedules.

Hon DAVID BENNETT (Chairperson of the Primary Production Committee): Thank you, Mr Chair. It’s great to be able to take a call on Vote Agriculture, Biosecurity, Fisheries and Food Safety, because it is primary industry that leads the New Zealand economy. I’d just like to acknowledge the members of the Primary Production Committee that were on there from other parties as well. It’s a very bipartisan committee, actually, that works together on many issues because there are many people that have an interest in agriculture on that committee and it is part of the fabric of the New Zealand identity and community.

Mark Patterson: Where did this diplomatic David Bennett come from?

Hon DAVID BENNETT: It is, it’s very good.

Of course, the main issue that was a focus was the Mycoplasma bovis outbreak that has been something that has been, through New Zealand over the last six to nine months, a very important part of the Ministry for Primary Industries’ (MPI’s) work. I’d just like to, first of all, acknowledge the good people from MPI that have given so much of their time and effort to try and control and eradicate that cattle disease. I’d just like to also acknowledge the Minister that’s here, Damien O’Connor. I think the Minister made the right call earlier this year. That was a good call that was welcomed by the farming sector, and the question will now be whether there is the ability for the Government to carry that through and to make sure that that wasn’t just a false call that was made.

Kieran McAnulty: I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. It’s my understanding that the chair of the select committee has a very specific role in presenting the report of the select committee, not to wonder aloud about personal opinions.

CHAIRPERSON (Adrian Rurawhe): Are you kidding?

Kieran McAnulty: No.

CHAIRPERSON (Adrian Rurawhe): There’s nothing to rule on there.

Hon DAVID BENNETT: The report focused heavily on Mycoplasma bovis, and one of the big issues there is how that actually works out, because what we’ve seen from the Government is an estimation of their expenditure going forward. That is in a number of years, and it will depend on whether that actually happens in each particular year. I was raising the point, for that member, that there is the difficulty that if the Government moves away from the commitment it’s already made, there would be ill feeling within the rural community as to whether that actually has been a commitment that was followed through in earnest in the first sense. That’s an $886 million commitment over 10 years, which was a huge part of the investment by this Government in biosecurity, and to take that away would be a major issue.

It is not something that’s set in stone, because there are a lot of issues around the eradication—namely, whether any diseases were found outside of the initial area of contact, and requirements around what MPI actually can do in managing the outbreak. So it is not something that we necessarily know will be carried through, and it is something where there needs to be that security given to farmers, should there be any breach outside the conditions that were laid out for the Government’s investment in dealing with the disease. If those conditions are not met, then farmers would also need to see some security from the Government, especially when Estimates are done, because you’ve just had the movement of cattle—1 June has been a very important part of the agricultural sector—and so there would be some issues around the future movement of cattle, as well, going through the year from calf clubs to cattle sales and on to next year’s farm movement on 1 June.

There’s also some talk around the National Animal Identification and Tracing system, the NAIT system. I understand that the Minister’s got some plans in that area as well, and we’d welcome a call from the Minister to identify where he thinks that should transition in the future, because that’s part of actually being able to provide that safety and security to the primary sector, especially in regard to something like the M. bovis issue.

Another issue that was raised was around the brown marmorated stink bug. This is another issue where there is a real risk to the New Zealand horticulture sector. We know that there have been some bugs found in New Zealand. The numbers are significant, with 52 of them found alive, and that presents a real risk to our primary sector as well. So it would be good to hear what the Minister is intending to do in the near future to deal with that issue as well.

Some other issues that were raised included protecting kauri trees, and around fisheries and OVERSEER, but the main issue was M. bovis. Thank you.

KIERAN McANULTY (Labour): Thank you very much, Mr Chair. It is a great pleasure to take a call on this, the discussion on the agriculture appropriations. Of course, as I do not hold the position of chair of this committee, I have a much broader approach to this speech. I can talk much more broadly around agriculture appropriations.

I want to begin by acknowledging the chair of the Primary Production Committee, David Bennett. He is not as bad as we expected. Where we find that this committee stands out amongst the rest is its willingness to work together. I think the point there is that it demonstrates how important the primary sector is to this country. I, along with many other of my colleagues on this side of the Chamber, and indeed over there on that side of the Chamber, live in an area where agriculture in particular—

CHAIRPERSON (Adrian Rurawhe): I’m afraid I have to interrupt the member. The time has come for me to leave the Chair for the dinner break.

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

KIERAN McANULTY: Kia orana e Maine Vaa Tuatua.

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Anne Tolley): Oh, well done.

KIERAN McANULTY: Thank you. Thank you, Madam Deputy Chair. It’s been a marvellous break actually. I enjoyed my dinner; I hope you did as well. I had some lovely New Zealand lamb for my tea, and how appropriate, given the topic of conversation today. It did make me think about the challenges that are facing the sector. My friend next to me, the next member for Clutha-Southland—we take a different view on one particular matter. [Interruption] That, of course, is the—I’ve never known so many National MPs to demonstrate support for a New Zealand First candidate as we’ve just demonstrated there: the screams of joy at the concept of Mark Patterson being elected in Clutha-Southland.

Look, my friend and I share a passion for primary industries but there is one thing that we have disagreed on recently, and that, of course, is the issue of synthetic protein. Mark Patterson here was very apt in registering concern around the presence of that synthetic protein and the challenge that it presents to our industry. But I do take a different approach, in the sense that it is also an opportunity. It’s an opportunity for ourselves as a country and the primary sector to actually tell our story, to tell the story as to why our meat is the better option, to target those consumers overseas that are more discerning, that do want to see environmentally sustainable and healthy products, and, of course, New Zealand - produced beef and lamb is that particular product. But it’s up to us as a country, and it is up to the sector to market that product and tell that story so that people know why they should—

Mark Patterson: And the national carrier.

KIERAN McANULTY: —I’m getting heckled by my own side here—buy our stuff, our products. The fact is that New Zealand needs to work together.

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Anne Tolley): Has this got anything to do with the Estimates at all?

KIERAN McANULTY: It does, actually. It does. Here we go.

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Anne Tolley): It would be nice to sort of link it to the Estimates.

KIERAN McANULTY: The Minister has indicated a visionary approach in establishing the Primary Sector Council. Now, the Primary Sector Council is made up of 18 members, and within that sector they are tasked with producing a sector-wide vision. There have been appropriations allocated to that sector. It is entirely appropriate.

Hon Member: A working group. Another working group.

KIERAN McANULTY: I say to the new member for Northcote, welcome. But if you’re going to heckle, make it good. You’re not sitting next to a very good example, but the member next to you Tim van de Molen knows how to heckle.

I live in Wairarapa. Now, for the benefit of Alastair Scott, Wairarapa is the area on the east coast just north of Wellington. The point there is this is an area that is dependent on the success of the primary sector, not just for those who work directly within it but for the communities that surround it as well. The future for that sector is one where the Government works alongside industry. The Primary Sector Council, led by the Minister here in the chair, is the body that will set the vision for the future of the industry.

We can no longer leave things purely to the market. We all know the theory of trickle-down, but we’ve also seen the effect the Labour coalition Government—[Bell rung]

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Anne Tolley): No. That’s it. That’s it.

Hon NATHAN GUY (National—Ōtaki): It’s great to be able to take a call on the Estimates for 2018/19. I want to cover some of the topical issues and look back since the coalition Government has formed at some of the decisions that the Minister has made that, indeed, reflect either positively or negatively on the primary sector.

Of course, we remember back to the campaign when Labour went out and said that they wanted to create all of these stand-alone entities. Remember it? There was food safety and biosecurity and fisheries and forestry. Well, when the Minister got his feet under the chair in the first week, he received some very chilling advice from the Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) which said, basically, you can’t smash apart MPI because of the competent authority, which means you would lose the status in international markets, particularly for biosecurity and for food safety. So he had his first big loss early on.

Then he had to go through a face-saving exercise of, effectively, rebranding MPI, which was really costly, about $17 million from the primary growth fund. That’s what it will cost to rebrand, to do the signage, and put stickers on doors.

Simon O’Connor: How much?

Hon NATHAN GUY: About $17 million, raided from the research and development Primary Growth Partnership (PGP) fund that’s been really successful.

So that was the first cross that the Minister has against his name, when he set up these four branded units within MPI. I could never see the need for setting up four separate entities for MPI because, indeed, people work across the different entities and, indeed, now the different units.

What was also really topical when we look back was a very dry summer, remember it? We had six regions declared in drought. And then the Crown Irrigation Investments officials were writing to the Minister saying “We need to come and see you.” Because they had read the Speech from the Throne, and they had seen the confidence and supply agreements with New Zealand First and the Greens—as a result of that, the Minister was confused. Remember that I was asking him questions in the House here—whether he’d met them, whether they’d asked or not—and he had to come down and correct his answers on two occasions. Indeed, he hadn’t bothered to pick up the phone, or his officials hadn’t, and welcome these Crown Irrigation officials into his office. As it turned out, pretty much all of that money has been raided from Crown Irrigation and gone into other things—other things outside the primary sector, I must say too. Isn’t it ironic that we had such areas, six regions in drought, and the Government decided to ditch water storage?

Hon Members: No way.

Hon NATHAN GUY: Yes. And then, wait for it—wait for it. The Minister turned up to open an irrigation scheme the day after he’d canned the fund and he said “We’re not against water storage; in fact, we love it.” But wait for it, read the fine print—“We’re just not going to help fund it.” And we know that water storage is hugely important for food security. In fact, when we think about climate change, it’s about climate mitigation as well.

Then, of course, we’re waiting for the Primary Growth Partnership review. The Minister, any time soon, will be receiving a report on the review of PGP. He spent most of his time in Opposition going around and bagging it, bagging this fund; quotes like “Oh, this is just confetti. They’re spraying around money like confetti. It’s a slush fund for National’s mates.” Well, I reckon what’s going to happen is the PGP report is actually going to be very positive. And we got a little sense of this last night when the Minister spoke at the red meat sector dinner in Napier.

Mark Patterson’s just sort of smiling over there. He doesn’t know quite where to look, because he’s a bit of a fan of PGP, and he was there in the audience last night. He heard the Minister say, “By the way, to all you processors and farmers in the room, I’m going to have to swallow a small mouse.” It’s not a big dirty old smelly dead rat, even though it’s a big part of the engine room of the primary sector. He stands up and says, “Ah, yeah, well, I’m going to have to swallow this little mouse.” What he was meaning was he’s received the report and it’s pretty good on Primary Growth Partnership, he’s been and talked to some key players in the Red Meat Profit Partnership—remember that these are all the key players in the engine room of the primary sector who come together to unite, to work on a strategy and innovation, and all of those really important things, reaching right into markets and adding value. Then he said, “Yeah, well, I’ve had a second thought. Park up all the bagging I’ve done for the last six years or seven years about PGP. Now I’m probably going to have to support it.”

What I will commend the Minister on is M. bovis and reaching a decision with industry on that, and thank goodness for the Prime Minister coming in and supporting that.

I still feel for those farmers that are going through and having their herds culled; it’s a terrible time for them. The focus needs to be working constructively, as I believe the Government is, with rural support trusts, who are providing that mental wellness support, and the key people in each community, ensuring that farming families that are having their herds culled know who to turn to.

The other one that’s fascinating in the biosecurity space is this brown marmorated stink bug. That is going to be really big when it turns up in New Zealand—but, wait, it’s already turned up. It’s already here. Remember, we had all those cars coming in from Japan, and the Minister for Biosecurity was out there saying, “I’m turning the boats around. I’m doing the right thing.” Well, the reality is that over that period of time, or since they’ve been in Government—the coalition has formed—there’s been 324 stink bugs that have arrived in New Zealand; 52 of those were alive.

So I’ll tell you what’s going to happen. These stink bugs are already travelling all over New Zealand in these Japanese-imported vehicles. The stink bug season is coming in 30 days’ time. On 1 September is when the stink bug is most prolific. It takes daylight and sunshine and a warming temperature for these bugs to come out. The reason I raise this: when MPI finds one out there—and they’ve already found them post-border, several of them, and, remember, about 12 of them went on a road trip. They were inspected in Auckland; they turned up in Christchurch alive. So they’re already here, they’re waiting. When they have to stand up a response, there’s no lure, they’re training a dog; they were talking to the Agcarm conference in confidence last week, making sure there’s chemical to stand up. There isn’t enough chemical in New Zealand currently. So this is going to be a massive thing.

Hort produced a report—that rhymes, doesn’t it?—that said when stink bugs get going in New Zealand, it’ll cost the horticulture industry about $3 billion, and the thing about these terrible stink bugs is that they don’t just impact on horticulture crops; they get into households, and they—

Simeon Brown: Stink.

Hon NATHAN GUY: Yeah, they literally stink. One person described it to me like your pair of tramping socks that you’ve had on on a week’s expedition that you haven’t taken off—that’s what they stink like. They get in the nooks and crevices of your house and then they breed and populate, and these things are terrible. So we’ll be interested in the Minister’s comments on what he’s going to do in the next couple of months when they turn up.

The other one that’s really topical is this Primary Sector Council. Now, I’ve been trying to get the minutes from MPI and the Minister, and we’re getting sort of a bit of a rush-around as to who’s holding the minutes. You would think that the Government, who wants to be open and transparent—they would just release the minutes the day after the council has met, but we’re having to do an Official Information Act request and get the minutes and find out what was discussed. Well, we heard from the chairman yesterday at the Red Meat Sector Conference, Lain Jager, who I have a lot of respect for—I’m just not quite sure what the sector is really going to achieve. I think in the first couple of meetings they were getting to know one another and talking about the primary sector. The second meeting, I think, was putting some of these Post-it notes on a chart and working out what the primary sector means and exports and things. They’ve got some good people in there, but I’m just not sure that they’re going to achieve anything. It’s all about advising the Minister. Well, what’s their advice going to be on red meat sector reform? I don’t hear anyone in the red meat sector saying they need to be reformed, but the Minister was speaking to a couple of hundred people last night at the dinner saying, “Oh, I’m all set to reform you.”

Then we move into the Dairy Industry Restructuring Act. That’s going to be really topical soon, in a couple of months, because a report’s going to come out, and then, of course, there’ll be a bill. We’ll wait and see. I express my gratitude to John Wilson, the outgoing chair of Fonterra, who I have a huge amount of respect for and who’s standing down because of health reasons. I wish John Monaghan, the incoming chair, extremely well—the Minister did that, as well. But the reality is that Damien O’Connor doesn’t like Fonterra. He likes co-ops but he doesn’t like Fonterra. So he and his mates over there—Mark Patterson’s mates—want to deal to Fonterra. They want to smash the place apart. I heard the Minister talking at a Federated Farmers thing about a month ago where he said, “Oh, yeah, I’ll be probably meddling in their constitution as well.” So the gloves are going to come off. It’s going to be fascinating to watch.

Anyway, I think it’s been a mixed eight or nine months from this Government, focusing in on the primary sector.

Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR (Minister of Agriculture): Thank you, Madam Chair. I’m happy to follow that bit of fiction with a few facts. I acknowledge the Hon Nathan Guy as the former Minister, and I acknowledge the challenges that I’ve had coming into this role, taking over from him and his Government. It’s not been easy, and he points to a few things that we have done. We certainly have made some changes at the Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI), and set up four business units. The previous Government’s approach to this area was that we put everything together and big is better and it’s more efficient, but the multiple responsibilities that are within MPI as an organisation were so vast and so important that we thought, actually, no, it’s better for biosecurity, food safety, fisheries, and forestry—really important areas for the future of New Zealand; farmers, foresters, fishers, and the New Zealand economy—to have officials with a passion, with knowledge, in a business unit, not distracted by other responsibilities in MPI. We made those changes, and I’m proud of them and happy that we’ve made the kind of progress in terms of focus that we were expecting.

Yes, some of the money from the Primary Growth Partnership (PGP) was used for this restructure, but, in fact, when I went back and looked at the books, the previous National Government had been promising an amount of money for PGP but taking an amount of money for other uses across the primary sector. So the amount of money spoken of and promised was never ever delivered across the PGP, and the former Minister criticises me for daring to challenge the PGP and what it attempted to do. I said that for the most part it was business-as-usual operations, but in spending $700 million, you can’t help but have some positive outcomes—you can’t. I mean, no matter how inappropriately or irresponsibly the previous Government spent that $700 million, you have to have some. So I did admit last night that having met, effectively, a discussion group of farmers in Napier and talking through some of the issues of M. bovis, it was good to see them come together and discuss these issues, and they were funded through a Primary Growth Partnership fund. They should have been coming together like this for years, if they’d seen the wisdom in it.

But I acknowledged, and I did swallow a small mouse to say that the Red Meat Profit Partnership, if it brings together farmers across the drystock sector, is indeed creating some benefit. Whether it’s value for money is not up to me; I think the review will be testing that. And of course there will be some benefit from the PGP, but the question for any responsible Government is, is that the best spend of $700 million?

Hon Nathan Guy: What does the report say?

Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR: So the member will wait for the report. I hope he holds his breath. It won’t be immediate in coming.

I’d just like to say, in moving through a couple of the other issues, we do believe that we need water for the future of New Zealand agriculture—indeed, for all communities. But, again, in the largesse and promise of support for their constituents, the National Government didn’t sit down and look at the outcomes from its funding of large-scale irrigation schemes. In some areas, there have been environmental impacts that haven’t always been positive, but the one thing that was being undermined was the social licence to continue with that programme and the expansion of dairy.

So we have wound that back, taken that money and, yes, put it into other, better uses across the primary sector, but what we’ve also done is said that we will work through smaller projects that are focused on catchments, that will deliver clearly identifiable benefits but within a social licence to operate and environmental limits that are sound. That’s our approach to immigration, not just simply throwing money at big schemes, some of which haven’t actually got the uptake and utilisation of the water that they’d been promised. We’re saying we’ll be really careful and we will intervene when necessary, not sit back and rely on the market to deliver the outcomes.

Can I say, on M. bovis—and it has been raised, in fact, by all speakers—that it is one of our biggest challenges. I acknowledge that. It was first identified in July, this time 12 months ago. We weren’t in Government at the time. I made some comments at the time, and I still stand by those comments. But none the less, when we came into Government we had to firstly assess the situation and then apply our best focus and the money necessary, utilising the best advice that we could.

We had an international technical advisory group of experts, who came back and said—after two reports, in fact—that we could eradicate this. It wasn’t unanimous. But, as we have been with industry, we sat down in an open way and laid on the table all the evidence—the reports from the experts—and said, “Well, we believe we’d like to give this a shot. Do you agree?” They went away, they considered it, and they came back, and we unanimously agreed that we should attempt to eradicate M. bovis, because I think it would be fair to say that a number of the sectors across the primary areas underestimated the potential impact of this, and, indeed, we’re just seeing this flow through now.

I would like to acknowledge the support of my colleagues through Cabinet and caucus. The $886 million that we have committed to this programme—32 percent of which will come from the industry; I acknowledge that—is a huge commitment to, I guess, underpin the farming sector but, ultimately, reduce over time the potential costs of managing a farming system with M. bovis. So thank you to colleagues, thanks to the taxpayers—they are contributing to this.

As long as the farmers and the people in the sector appreciate that and do what is necessary from their side of the equation, such as better traceability, better tracking of animal movements and notification of those movements, adhering to the regulations around tagging—these are all things that haven’t been implemented properly. Indeed, I could say that the previous Government’s softly softly approach in this area has contributed to the spread of the disease. But that’s spilt milk—pardon the pun—and we’re now trying to move ahead and make the changes necessary to ensure that farmers do adhere to their part of the equation, because the taxpayers are doing their bit and they’re funding this. So it’s really important to remind them.

Can I say that the brown marmorated stink bug is almost as devastating to New Zealand as M. bovis. Can I say that the systems that we had in place were those put there by the previous National Government, and the transitional facilities approach—which Nathan Guy, the previous speaker, referred to—that allowed a machine to be brought off a boat and on to a truck in Auckland and taken back down to Christchurch to be parked up and then, finally, checked is being changed by us.

That was a totally inappropriate system that allowed those brown marmorated stink bugs—they were hidden away—to get to Christchurch. We can’t have that any more. We turned around ships. We will turn them around again. We’ve gone offshore and told the people who are bringing, or are planning to bring, imported equipment into this country, “Do the spraying and do the checking properly, or they’ll be turned around and they’ll be sent away.”, because we’re not going to muck around and consider the possible impacts on equipment importers or on used-car importers. In our view, biosecurity is so important that their interests are secondary to protecting our country from these bugs. So the softly softly approach implemented by the previous Government is no longer in place under this Government, and I’m very happy to say that.

If I could just very briefly mention the Dairy Industry Restructuring Act review. The previous speaker said that I don’t like Fonterra. I was the chair of the select committee that passed through the legislation that set Fonterra up. I have a passion for it. I know it wasn’t perfect. But it’s the biggest and best company we have in this country, not the best performing, and it needs to be the best performing because otherwise farmers are going to leave it and undermine the cooperative, with the possible failure of what has been our biggest company.

I want them to succeed, but criticising them and encouraging them to do better is something that we will do as a Government. That’s not the softly softly, patsy approach that the National Government took to them—it refused to encourage them to do better and to move along. What we’ve seen now is that, actually, foreign companies and other participants in the dairy industry are outperforming Fonterra, when it should be Fonterra outperforming them. That’s the risk to the dairy industry. That’s the risk to our country. This Government will not stand by, and I will not stand by, and allow that to happen.

IAN McKELVIE (National—Rangitīkei): Kia orana. Madam Chair, thank you. I want to change the topic slightly from brown marmorated stink bugs to the greatest animal in the world—the horse—just briefly, and, of course, you’ve got an ex - Minister of Racing sitting next to you. I just briefly want to talk about the only tax relief that came about in the course of the Budget. I think it’s hugely positive for the industry, and I’ll explain why. The tax relief given to the racing industry is exactly the same as tax relief available to all other livestock sectors in New Zealand, and I think it’s a very good bit of tax relief for the industry. The thing that I find extremely unfortunate was the description put around it, and that’s certainly undermined, I think, the credibility of the industry.

I want to talk about a couple of other things in that sector before I move on to fishing. I want to talk about the synthetic track and the potential for that to happen, because I think that also is exciting for the racing industry in New Zealand. Interestingly, it looks as though that will be funded from the Provincial Growth Fund, and I hope the fact that that happens doesn’t then preclude those tracks from going in places they should go, because, clearly, the Provincial Growth Fund has been designated as a provincial growth fund, not a city growth fund. I think it would be a shame if, as a result of that, the tracks that are proposed by the Minister don’t end up in a place that it’s most important that they should. So I’m not going to pick those spots, but, no doubt, that will happen. I think it’s critical that they do end up where they should.

Very briefly, on the last couple of topics, I wanted to very briefly speak, in relation to the racing industry—and that’s the Messara report, which has been awaited with interest. The contents will be critical for the industry, and I hope it covers all three codes.

I now want to move on to the fishing industry, an industry that’s absolutely critical to all New Zealanders. The reason I want to talk about one or two things in this sector, because I guess the most notable decision that’s been taken by this Government is to delay or stop—and I’m not sure which—the implementation of cameras and even, to some extent, the monitoring that takes place on fishing boats.

I just wanted to briefly talk about the industry because this industry is critical to New Zealand in many ways. It’s a very big commercial industry in New Zealand and it employs thousands of people. But, more than that, there’s an estimated 700,000 of us that want to go out there and catch a fish on Saturday afternoon. Interestingly, the biggest reason for those people wanting to go out and catch fish is not to catch it for food. It is to go out for an afternoon or a day, or whatever, of recreational fishing. The big challenge we’ve got in this industry—and the big challenge the Minister’s got around the implementation of cameras or whatever other compliance measures are chosen to deal with the challenges the industry has—is that this has got to be sustainable from a New Zealand perspective. It’s hugely important for so many New Zealanders that the fishing industry is sustainable and that it’s managed in a manner that we can all participate in and yet can still guarantee New Zealand those huge commercial returns that come to the country as a result of that fishing industry.

I just wanted to speak briefly about the foreign charter vessel legislation that was put through a year or two ago. It has proved to be pretty successful. I had the opportunity just some weeks ago to visit one of those boats in Lyttelton, and you can’t help but be impressed with the way they are operating. That’s a piece of legislation that was put through the last Parliament, and it certainly has proved to be hugely successful. So it just shows that with a bit of cooperation in an industry and in a sector, we can make a lot of progress with the things that are most important for us as a country and most important for the fishing industry. The last Government commenced an independent review into the fishing industry, and it will be very interesting to see the eventual result of that. That’s pretty critical to us all, as well.

The other really interesting thing that’s going on in the fishing industry is related to aquaculture, and I think it’s most important that we get the Marlborough Sounds salmon issue sorted out very quickly and allow those farms to move on and get on with what they do. Aquaculture is absolutely the key to New Zealand’s future with respect to not so much the fishing industry but the production of food—protein—and it’s a huge opportunity for this country if we can get the settings around aquaculture right. I urge the Minister to get on with that and make those decisions around the Marlborough Sounds as quickly as possible. Thank you, Madam Chair.

RINO TIRIKATENE (Labour—Te Tai Tonga): Thank you, Madam Chair. I am pleased to speak in this Estimates debate on the primary industries, and I must acknowledge the previous speaker, Mr McKelvie, a sheep and beef farmer of note from the Rangitīkei, speaking so passionately about the fishing industry and the aquaculture industry. That just goes to show the passion which members, and former members, of the Primary Production Committee have across all of our primary industries. Whether it is viticulture, sheep and beef, dairy, forestry, we’re all represented in that committee, and we gave quite a thorough examination of the primary industries.

I want to give a bouquet to the Minister for the Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI), the Hon Damien O’Connor, for the outstanding job that he has been doing in leading our primary sectors in what are challenging times, and in particular how he has responded to the threat of Mycoplasma bovis and the investments which this Government are now putting into the eradication of that nasty organism. And that has been testament to the leadership of Mr O’Connor and, of course, our coalition Government. It not only spans the MPI sector but I must acknowledge the great team that we have within our coalition Government, because our primary industries are so important that we have dedicated Ministers now who are specialists and who are focusing right across the primary sectors—if we look at Te Uru Rākau, with the Hon Shane Jones and the great work that he’s doing in the forestry sector. He’s literally rejuvenated that forestry sector right across Aotearoa, right from opening headquarters in regional New Zealand. So he has absolutely been the first citizen for the regions with the work that he’s doing in championing our forestry sector. So I commend him for that.

I must also go on to commend Minister Nash for his great work that he’s doing across the fisheries sector, and I must also include Minister Sage for her work, because a lot of what they are doing in the fisheries sector involves spanning and looking at complicated, complex issues around marine protected areas, sustainability, right through the supply chain into our export markets. So that just demonstrates the cohesiveness that we have with our outstanding Ministers that are leading in these portfolio areas. And, I guess, what further, better proof do we have that we’re doing a great job in these sectors than one only needs to look at the increase in the export revenues that we are generating across these sectors. If you look at the seafood sector, in particular, there are record export revenues, record export growth—$2.1 billion. We’re into the two-billion figure now for fisheries. Likewise, in the forestry sector, a 16 percent increase—$6.4 billion. So the numbers are going up across the board. Of course, we are aware of the challenges that we face. We don’t take it for granted, whether it’s a brown stinkbug or other nasties or organisms. We know how important our industries are, and Mr O’Connor and our wider team are right on top of all of these threats that we face, and are also looking to grow our sectors into the future.

That’s what we want to see: thriving primary industries which are sustaining our families and our regions up and down the country—the sweat and toil that goes on on the land or on the sea—which is done in a sustainable way, which is earning outstanding export revenues and wealth back to our country. So I do stand in support of the Estimates across our primary industries. Our Ministers are doing an outstanding job, and I’m looking forward to supporting their additional measures that they will be putting through as we continue through the course of this Parliament. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Hon EUGENIE SAGE (Minister of Conservation): Kia orana, Madam Chair. Thank you. And I thank the two previous speakers and note their comments about aquaculture. I was pleased, last week, to be visiting some of the salmon farms in the Marlborough Sounds, and I recognise too the commitment of this Government to tackling climate change, because, of course, with rising sea temperatures as a result of a changing climate, it makes it incredibly difficult for aquaculture, particularly salmon, which are very sensitive to water temperatures, and it can cause quite significant mortality.

What I’d like to speak briefly on tonight is Vote Lands, which I am responsible for. And it’s been a real pleasure taking on this portfolio and the significant work that Land Information New Zealand (LINZ) does, because we have over two million properties in New Zealand—a trillion dollars’ worth of property—and Landonline and the work that LINZ does with the issuing of several hundred thousand titles each year is absolutely central to people’s security of title and to the basis of our economy, with people able to buy and sell properties with security, knowing that the title means that they actually own the land. And there’s quite a lot of work going on there.

There’s also considerable work going on across the Crown sector. LINZ, increasingly, is responsible for the disposal of surplus Crown properties, and it surprised me, as a new Minister, to learn that we did not have a register of all Crown-owned properties. So that is being developed across the State sector—whether it’s education properties, district health boards, and other properties—so that there is a comprehensive register and we actually have a bit more of an inventory and understanding of the property and the assets that the Crown owns. Some of those significant properties are, of course, the Crown pastoral leases in the South Island high country, and it is my ambition, as Minister, to ensure that we have a sustainable farming regime in the high country and one that protects the outstanding landscapes, which are the basis of our tourism industry in the South Island, and also the significant biodiversity values. So there’s a lot of work being done in that space to look at how we can improve the management of Crown pastoral lands, how we can improve decisions around discretionary consents.

There’s been a significant investment, in this Budget, in the Overseas Investment Office—an additional $7 million—to enable the office to do more work in the compliance and enforcement space. And that follows on from the major change which this Government introduced with the new ministerial directive to the Overseas Investment Office to make sure that the provisions of the Overseas Investment Act applied to all sales of rural land over five hectares rather than just to the large farms, which occurred under the previous Government, when many rural land sales were put outside the purview and the decisions of the Overseas Investment Office. We’re ensuring that there is much greater attention to the substantial and identifiable benefits that are required, because it is a privilege for an overseas person to buy land in New Zealand. If they are going to get that privilege, they need to ensure that there are substantial and identifiable benefits to the New Zealand economy.

Some of the other work that LINZ is doing is in the area of light detection and ranging surveys, to give a much better handle on the land and the proneness to things like sea-level rise, and a lot of that mapping work was very useful after both the Christchurch and the Hurunui/Kaikōura earthquakes. And so there’s a lot of work being done to ensure that we have got more up-to-date mapping data, that it’s digitised—not just the topographic data but looking at applications in the biosecurity space, with wilding control, for example, so that there can be better mapping of the spread and control of wildings; and, similarly, with the rabbit calicivirus—the effective release of that and where it has worked.

So LINZ is definitely a digital organisation. It’s investing a lot in information management. It’s investing a lot in maintaining Landonline, in our property database, ensuring that we have got a better register of Crown properties and, with the Overseas Investment Office, making sure that conditions of consent are monitored and complied with. Thank you, Madam Chair.

TIM VAN DE MOLEN (National—Waikato): Thank you, Madam Chair. When I travel the countryside talking to rural communities, the overwhelming feedback I get is uncertainty: uncertainty with this change of Government, with the direction the agriculture and primary industry sectors are taking, and that lack of clarity around how they can drive their business, going forward, without clear parameters in which to operate. There are some challenges in the industry at the moment, and we’ve heard already a bit about Mycoplasma bovis, the threat of brown marmorated stink bug, as well, and this is a time when Government needs to be stepping up, putting a clear mark in the sand, and saying that they are backing the primary sector through these difficult times, and we are not seeing that currently.

What we’re seeing instead is a raft of reviews and a lot of uncertainty around what’s coming up. Are we having another restructure of the Ministry for Primary Industries, for example? We saw that, breaking the ministry apart—but, actually, “No, we can’t quite break it apart; we’ll just do a bit of rebranding, change the labels.” Then we’ve got challenges around the Dairy Industry Restructuring Act (DIRA) review. That just encourages uncertainty with our farming communities. They need support at these times; they don’t want this hanging over their heads, not knowing what it’s looking like. We are seeing a breadth of parameters outside the scope of DIRA coming into that review as well, and that, again, encourages uncertainty and a lack of confidence within the sector. We’re seeing that up and down the country.

The Primary Sector Council is another example. That’s been set up, but, actually, where is the dairy farming representation on that council? It is strangely absent; there is not a single dairy farmer on there. Where are they? All the other industries are represented, but dairy is sorely lacking. You can have no surprise, then, that the industry takes exception and has uncertain expectations in the air around what the future is for them during these difficult times.

When you look at some of these challenges, like the biosecurity challenges in front of us, we need to be making sure that we’ve got the backs of our farmers, and part of that is around mental health. The Rural Health Alliance Aotearoa New Zealand was a key organisation that just had its funding ripped under this Government—$600,000, an absolute minuscule contribution to the rural sector within New Zealand. It’s been cut out altogether. What an example of support for the sector. It’s disappointing to see.

We’ve heard already, again, some of these challenges around the alternative protein, or plant-based protein, synthetic protein space that Mr McAnulty was talking about earlier. Well, some of his comments were all over the show. I suspect he’s been eating a bit too much of this plant-based protein himself and is, indeed, starting to resemble, perhaps, a plant-based protein—looking a little bit weak, somewhat of a scientific experiment, in that we just don’t really know if it’s good for us or not.

Moving on from that, we have seen a continued lack of support. Irrigation—we’ve already heard from the former Minister about that. The water storage projects, that present huge opportunity for the primary sector in terms of building wealth within the economy, building resilience, having environmental benefits as well, were just cut. What we’re seeing, continually, is virtue signalling—good ideas, good concepts, but a lack of detail that actually supports those on the ground doing the hard yards. It’s disappointing to see, despite the rhetoric, that we are not having a clear line of support for our primary sector. We’re seeing that flow through to market conditions. You go up and down the country, and in the Waikato—my electorate—we have seen land prices stalling in the property market over the last eight, nine months. There is uncertainty; they don’t know what’s happening in that space—there’s the DIRA review, there’s M. bovis, there’s a change in Government, unclear policies. It has a significant impact on the economy, and this Government does not seem to recognise that.

A lack of support is clearly evident in these communities, as well. When I travel around and talk to my rural constituents, they are saying they don’t know what the future holds for them at this point. They are looking for clear support and clear leadership from the Government, but it’s absent. It’s nowhere to be found. What we see again and again is rhetoric coming out of the Government, with no clear indication of the financial support that farmers might expect, how they’re going to drive their productivity and environmental sustainability and business growth—all these aspects that are critical to any industry, but we’re seeing that, in particular, in the rural sector at the moment. It’s a shame that this Government won’t step up and fill that gap as it’s needed. Thank you.

Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR (Minister of Agriculture): Thank you, Madam Chair. I guess, given the importance of the primary sector to this economy, I just thought I would take a second call and clarify a few things for the previous speaker, Tim van de Molen, in particular. I guess that’s the problem: if you ask a rural banker to do an assessment, the chances are they will come up with the wrong one, for the wrong reasons. He’s probably better off in Parliament than he is out there in the wider field. Can I say that there is a dairy farmer on the Primary Sector Council. Julian Raine, in fact, is leading the way, with Appleby Farms Ice Cream, with Aunt Jean’s Dairy fresh milk, and is actually showing the industry that there is an opportunity to get out there with high-value products from the dairy industry.

Can I just refer briefly to the Primary Sector Council, because it is a group of lateral-thinking, innovative, and disruptive people who have a passion for the industry, who have been brought together, not as a group of representatives, which has always been the kind of traditional National Party way; this is a group of people who have a passion to look into the future and deliver a vision for us, because we haven’t had one across the primary sector. “What are we doing and why are we doing it?”—that question was never asked by the previous Government, and it’s one that I can’t answer myself, but I put that to a group of very, very experienced and passionate people who are getting on with that job, under Lain Jager, under his chair.

I think he sees that this is a really interesting group of people to chair, because they are all quite strong-minded. They have a passion, as I’ve said before, and are independent thinkers, and that’s what I want from them. But they will deliver a vision, and they accept that we, as a country, are delivering food and nutrition, not just primary industry—lambs or logs or fish. In fact, we are now in the challenge of delivering the finest protein to the world’s most discerning customers and getting the best value for that, because if we don’t, we’re actually going to stumble as a food-producing nation. So that’s what they understand is the challenge for us, and they, I think, are getting on with the job.

Mid-stream, I have to say—and I’ve just written it down here—and I spoke of M. bovis before, can I acknowledge the farmers caught up in this terrible challenge that we have. There are a large number of farmers—probably 800 or thereabouts—who have been directly affected. It’s very, very challenging. They are under a whole lot of stress. We’re trying to put in place the best support systems for them. It’s not easy, but they are taking a hit for their colleagues and for the future of agriculture in this country. Can I just say thank you for their participation and their cooperation, and we will get through and succeed if we all do the same thing.

Can I just very briefly, before I sit down, talk of New Zealand Food Safety. In terms of a country producing the finest food for the people in the world, we have got a good reputation but we must ensure that whatever we produce, whatever we grow, whatever we process, whatever we package, going off is the safest and finest food, as I say, for the world’s most discerning customers. In that area, we’ve set up, firstly, New Zealand Food Safety as a business unit within the Ministry for Primary Industries, but we then got on with the job—jobs that have been sitting around for a while. Firstly, we’re consulting on an organic standard—one standard that we can be proud of and can be credible for the export of New Zealand organic products. It hasn’t been done before. The last Government ignored it; we’re getting on with it.

We’ve been talking with the hemp industry. There is potential for hemp, hemp seed, and then hemp as a fibre to get out there. It’s a new opportunity—something that’s been scoffed at by some people, but actually a real opportunity—again, for people who are really discerning customers around the world, looking for natural products. We’ve just had a wool summit—again, something to push off opportunities from the very stagnant position that they have been in for quite some time.

The other area, in terms of food safety, that we have—we grasped the nettle, and we now have in place a mānuka honey standard. For years, people have been telling us they can’t believe that the mānuka honey sold offshore isn’t, indeed, true to label. So we had to get on and put in place, after years of procrastination by the previous Government, a standard that all those honey producers have to adhere to. It hasn’t been easy for them, and some are trying to get around the rules, but if they stick to the rules, we build our integrity, and they will get even more value for that mānuka honey. We have done a lot more in the food area, and we’ll continue to do so.

HAMISH WALKER (National—Clutha-Southland): Thank you, Madam Chair. I’m delighted to stand up and take a call on agriculture in the Estimates debate. I want to start by acknowledging members of the National Party, New Zealand First, and Labour, who sit on the Primary Production Committee. If you want an example of a really good select committee—we’re all members, regardless of what side of the House you’re from—you need to come and witness, come and experience, our select committee.

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Anne Tolley): I don’t need to.

HAMISH WALKER: We have a lot of fun and—sorry, Madam Chair. And for any members in the Chamber, if you do want to get legislation put through the House, the best place to put it is the Primary Production Committee, because we do have a good time. We actually come together for the benefit of farmers.

I want to also acknowledge the Minister of Agriculture, Damien O’Connor. I know you work hard around the Cabinet table, Minister. What I hear from feedback from people that you’ve met with, you have got farmers’ interests and New Zealand’s interests at heart, but, unfortunately, you are working with an extreme-left, anti-farming Government. But I do know that you do work hard—considering you’ve got David Parker running round telling people he wants to cap cow numbers. He also wants to, basically, put farmers out of business, bringing them into the emissions trading scheme, which is going to cost farmers on average $5,000 to $10,000.

To give you more credit, Minister, you had a protest march on the West Coast over the weekend, and you turned up as the MP. You were the lone Labour MP there; you had no mates. I think the National Party’s Maureen Pugh, who’s doing a wonderful job—she turned up with a few National MPs. And Mark, how many New Zealand First MPs were there? Maybe half a dozen or so. So it’s great to see the National Party and New Zealand First supporting the coast.

I do worry for the industry. At Field Days we had a rural-proofing policy announcement from the Labour Party. If you go on to their website, it says we want to “engage with rural health professionals to ensure adequate access … and acute treatment for all rural New Zealanders”. Hmm! Very interesting. If that was the case, why is the Lumsden Maternity Centre being shut down? This is a wonderful hospital where over a hundred mothers give birth each year. And then, if you want to take the M. bovis outbreak, and I appreciate—[Interruption]. Madam Chair, I think I hear a screaming cat. Is there a cat in the Chamber? Can anyone else hear a cat?

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Anne Tolley): I think you need to focus on the Estimates.

Hon Member: Don’t tell Gareth Morgan.

HAMISH WALKER: Better not mention that. So with the M. bovis outbreak, Minister Guy did a wonderful job in 2013 with the Government industry agreement (GIA) where he got 16 primary industry sector groups together to ensure that if an outbreak or an incursion did happen, which they do from time to time—we’ve got 180,000 items crossing our border each day. So Minister Guy did a wonderful job in 2013, where industry would pay 12 percent of an outbreak to ensure that, if there is a possible outbreak, industry wants to come to the table first.

Poor old Minister O’Connor here had to go round Cabinet with his begging bowl asking for more money and he was looking at charging industry 40 percent for a GIA. So I commend the Minister for getting that down to 32 percent. Unfortunately, this is going to cost the industry an extra quarter of a billion dollars. We also saw the Minister going round saying that the National Party wasn’t doing enough in biosecurity. The Budget comes around and, hooray, they get another $9 million increase in biosecurity. If that was the case, you would have thought they needed $100 million. The National Party last year increased biosecurity by $18 million. Yes, that’s right. Twice as much as what—sorry, Madam Chair, I think there’s a cat in the House. I think there’s a cat.

Hon Tracey Martin: Love the way you diminish women. You diminish women. How lovely!

HAMISH WALKER: For farming communities to stay strong—you don’t go round as the Minister for Children and shut the Roxburgh children’s camp. Minister Tracey Martin, you campaigned on looking after the most vulnerable children, and you go and shut down the Roxburgh children’s camp—absolutely disgraceful. The Lumsden Maternity Centre—that’s about to be shut down. Te Ānau rescue helicopter base—what do you know? That’s on the chopping block.

I do want to finish on a positive. I just do want to commend the Minister for doing a wonderful job. You do have to put up with a lot with your anti-farming Government. Keep it going, Minister. I just want to say how much I have enjoyed the Primary Production Committee, and I’m looking forward to our meeting on Thursday.

MARK PATTERSON (NZ First): It’s a pleasure to rise in this appropriations debate for the primary industries, and, of course, as we all know, this is the most important of the appropriations because in this House we spend a lot of time debating how we’re going to allocate funding. This is how we earn the money.

I commend the Minister of Agriculture on the leadership he’s showing in this sector, but I also would like to just acknowledge the chair of our Primary Production Committee, David Bennett. As the previous speaker, Mr Walker, has alluded, it is quite a bipartisan committee, and I witnessed something quite extraordinary tonight. The Hon David Bennett got up and made quite a diplomatic speech in terms of his representation of what happened. It’s a side of him I hadn’t seen before. The last time I saw him attempt diplomacy was when the Welsh Minister for Communities turned up in a diplomatic mission looking at Brexit and how the Welsh farming community can come through that particular thing, and the honourable member gave her a five-minute lecture on the evils of subsidies. That was his previous effort at diplomacy, so it’s good to see that moving along. Can I say that when we are talking about the primary sector—

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Anne Tolley): Can we now come to the Estimates. Just briefly sort of mention the Estimates.

MARK PATTERSON: —yes, the Estimates—it is the M. bovis; M. bovis is hanging over this sector. It has dominated our thinking, and as the Minister said to those farmers, our thoughts are with them. I just want to articulate something that happened. What I’ve seen from the Minister actually is—in fact, I witnessed it on Saturday night. I got an email through on my phone at 9:45 p.m. at night. An M. bovis farmer had contacted him personally to express some concerns, and he was replying to it at 9:45 p.m. on a Saturday night, and I think that typifies the heart and soul that he’s putting into this.

But in terms of the appropriations, there are a few things. Of course, Minister Jones gave an outstanding presentation on the billion trees strategy. What a nation-building effort that is going to be as we seek to make our Paris Agreement commitments and take responsibility for our own emissions. Mr Walker can say it’s going to cost farmers $5,000 or $10,000—I’m not sure how he knows that. That commission has not come back. But we do need to face those responsibilities, and this Government is prepared to take those hard decisions.

As the Minister said before, Land Information New Zealand—and what a shame, I think we had 465,000 hectares of land transferred into foreign ownership in 2016, and we are taking some action on that. We have tightened those criteria and having to go down to the 5 hectares to notify and make it have identifiable benefits, and it’s about time that happened, too. We’re on the side of young New Zealanders.

The other side that we’ve talked about is the Primary Sector Council. I’ve heard a little bit about this today in disparaging tones from across the Chamber, and I will say how wrong they are. The Minister and I were at the Red Meat Sector Conference yesterday and the theme of that was disruptive technology, and I will take a bit of issue with the soon-to-be member for Wairarapa that’s sitting next to me, Kieran McAnulty—this is a challenge for our industry that we do need to meet. And there were all sorts of things: blockchain and, of course, the aforementioned Impossible burger, which seems to follow me everywhere. But we’ve got to look seriously at this stuff. We’ve got a $42 billion sector and $23 billion of that is still going out in raw commodities. There is massive scope for us to improve this, and this Primary Sector Council is a cost-effective way of bringing the best brains in our industry together to look at those challenges. As I said at the start, this is the sector that pays the bills, so I think this is an incredibly important development.

We also see within the appropriations the OVERSEER, the investment in that—and that’s very wise as we seek to meet our environmental expectations and our social licence to operate that programme, that was never designed to be a regulatory tool but has developed. And it’s great to see that we are putting some resource into that.

The Sustainable Farming Fund—this is a Government that’s looking at the big issues. We are looking to not just the next focus group but to the next 10, 20, 50, and 100 years. So I’m looking forward to continuing on with the good progress that this Government’s making under primary industries.

BARBARA KURIGER (National—Taranaki - King Country): Thank you, Madam Chair. One thing that I will agree on with the last speaker is that, yes, this is the most important of the appropriations. While I don’t sit on the Primary Production Committee, I did for three years, and I’m never far away. To put a quote in place before I get on with the appropriations, as I turned up at the Mystery Creek Field Days in my electorate, Mark Patterson said, “Oh, am I ever going to go to an industry event where I don’t see you?”—I’m not referring to you, Madam Chair—and I said, “Never.” So there you go.

I want to speak about M. bovis to start off with because that’s taking up, obviously, the lion’s share of the funding as we go forward. We’ve all got to get in and support this phased eradication—at least, our one shot at it. We’re all going to be, also, very carefully watching this spring time as we work through this most stressful of times, because one of the things that I’ve said to the Minister, and will continue to say to the Minister, is we must know where the off-ramps are. We do hope we can eradicate this disease, but if we get to a point where we realise that we have lost the game, in terms of dollars, we need to be realistic. We don’t want to be spending $900 million and then finding out that we’ve actually lost the battle. So it’s really important that we keep a very, very solid handle on that.

I also want to make mention of those farmers out there that are going through that process. I have had lots of calls, I have had lots of emails, and I’ve spoken to a lot of people, and it’s been a very, very hard time—not just with the disease, and not just having to go through the loss of their cows and the culling of their cows, but it does need to be noted that there have been delays in compensation. There have been times when the timing of the culls of those cows has actually made a difference to the farmers, and we’re noticing it right now, particularly when they’re in that calving time.

It hasn’t always been the clearest of situations. Moving forward, it has got clearer, and I thank everyone for the clarity of at least knowing where we’re heading, but I can tell you that the rural support trusts have picked up a lot of people, and I do want to put a call out to all of those people who work tirelessly in the rural support trusts. I know Neil Bateup very well, just to mention a couple of names, and Mike Green is another one who’s in our local area, and they work absolutely tirelessly.

I’d like to mention OVERSEER, because I have noted that in the last Budget there was money put forward for OVERSEER. Now, OVERSEER’s been one of those programs that’s had its glitches for quite some time. It’s actually, on a general purpose, sort of, kind of accurate when you put it all together, but by farm and per farm it’s actually not so accurate and quite difficult to use. It’s good to see funding go into that, but I think we need to think about the wider purpose of OVERSEER as well, because OVERSEER, really, if you look at the end result of what we want from OVERSEER, we actually want cleaner waterways. There is a difference in what councils are doing around the country. We’ve got some councils that are using OVERSEER to measure. We’ve got other councils who are actually looking at what the water quality is and then working backwards from the quality of the water to see what needs to be done. So I think OVERSEER is a tool and I think we can still improve it, but we shouldn’t overplay it, because it will be one tool in a tool box of things that are effective for cleaning up our waterways.

On that, I was very pleased to hear the conversation before about water storage. We’re talking about primary industries now, we’re talking about water storage, and we’re talking about the estimates around catchments. I do hope, when we continue to talk about water storage, that we actually talk about water storage in terms of communities, rather than just the old story that it’s just about farming and it’s just for farmers, because it’s for the environment and it’s for the people who live in the town, and we are not short of water in this country; we are just short of water storage.

The other thing I would like to talk about is a little bit about forestry, in the short time that I’ve got left. There are lots of conversations going on about how many trees we’re going to plant. I think we need to think a lot more about rural proofing and the roads that those trees are going to be carted out on in the future, and all the other dynamics that go around trees. We’ve seen some quite bad events in the eastern North Island recently. Thank you, Madam Chair.

KIRITAPU ALLAN (Labour): Kia orana e Maine Vaa Tuatua. It’s a delight to be able to take a brief call in the primary industries appropriations debate for the upcoming period. Things have become a little excitable over the last half-hour, and rightly so because the primary industries are blimmin’ exciting. But one thing I must say, having had the opportunity to sit in on the Primary Industry Committee here and there, is I do want to acknowledge the bipartisanship and just general approach to the primary sector from across the House. I want to acknowledge the chair, Brett Hudson—

Kieran McAnulty: Ha, ha!

KIRITAPU ALLAN: —and our colleagues from both sides of the aisle. That wasn’t funny, Mr McAnulty.

Kieran McAnulty: It’s the wrong bloke.

KIRITAPU ALLAN: Yeah, that’s right. Ha, ha! We digress. There’s a range of, I guess, particular areas where I really want to commend the Minister, Minister O’Connor, for his leadership and vision. Many of us who are based in the regions are required to engage thoroughly (1) because we love it and (2) because the primary industries are the backbone of our regional economies. Minister O’Connor, in every single environment I go to—now, I don’t know about what these guys are saying from across the aisle, but at pretty much every single primary industry event that I attend, the Minister is spoken about extremely highly by the leaders and workers within the primary industries. So, Minister, thank you for your leadership.

Look, one of the things that I find particularly necessary is that the Minister’s approach to the primary industries is that we have to work in partnership—Government side by side with our primary sector, because, at the end of the day, what’s good for our primary industries is good for our regions. What’s good for our regions is good for New Zealand. Look, I want to note a couple of the particular instances where I think that the Minister has shown real leadership. It’s been widely traversed this evening—the response to M. bovis. I too want to join with the plethora of voices from across both sides of the aisle that acknowledge those that have been caught within—I guess we could recognise it as—almost a national tragedy. So I do want to acknowledge your work and leadership alongside the primary industry leaders. I know that there’s a lot of work that went into the determination to eradicate; so thank you for your leadership there.

There’s also been a whole range of discussions this evening about the Primary Sector Council, and the Opposition seem to be slagging it left, right, and centre, but the thing is that every single primary industry environment that I’ve been in, at every single event I’ve been at over the past, well, month or so at the very least, there’s been a lot of hope, actually. There’s a lot of jubilation about what the leaders from across the primary sector, generally, may achieve when working in collaboration with each other and with us. So I want to acknowledge your work there.

Third: a tricky issue that seemed to be one of the many stumbling blocks of the previous Government was trying to reach a determination on the mānuka definition. Now, that had its challenges, but, again, very short into the Minister’s tenure, there was a determination around the scientific definition of mānuka. So, too, I want to acknowledge your work there. Look, there’s been a fair bit of discussion this evening about—I’ve mentioned M. bovis, but also a topic very dear to my heart, particularly being from the East Coast—horticulture and the biosecurity risks that threaten our primary industries, particularly from the horticultural perspective.

There was an immeasurable investment that the Minister and this Government made into biosecurity. There are challenges. As I’ve heard the Minister say, the biggest challenge for us collectively—New Zealand—is biosecurity risks when it comes to our primary industries. This isn’t an issue just for the Minister and the Government; it’s an issue for us all. So I thank you again for your leadership there. Tēnā koe.

ALASTAIR SCOTT (National—Wairarapa): Thank you, Madam Chair. It is a pleasure to be speaking on the Estimates in the primary sector part of the debate. Minister O’Connor, I’d like to correct you, I think, when I say that Julian Raine, while she’s a dairy farmer, she is not the dairy rep. There is no dairy representative. She is actually there as the chairman of Horticulture New Zealand. So I back up what Tim van de Molen said—that there is no dairy representative on the council.

The second point I’d like to make is to quote back Kiritapu Allan’s words—and I hope I get this right, Ms Allan—when she said, “What’s good for the primary sector is good for the regions, and what is good for the regions is good for New Zealand.” I could not agree with her more, and I invite her to come over and support the regions, support the primary sector, and come and sit on this side of the Chamber, because that is what we do here. That is what we do here. Unfortunately, Ms Allan, your policies on that side of the Chamber do not support the primary sector and they do not support the regions. We’ve already traversed water storage. We’ve talked about bringing agriculture into the emissions trading scheme, and I could talk about regional fuel tax, and so on. So don’t tell me that the Government supports regional New Zealand. You cannot tell me that the Government supports primary sector production.

Kieran McAnulty: Yes, we do.

ALASTAIR SCOTT: Well, you can say it all you like, but it doesn’t make it true, Mr McAnulty.

So I turn to forestry, and much can be said about the Minister of Forestry. He talks a big story but has delivered virtually nothing—nothing whatsoever. He might look good in a high-vis vest, but delivery is the problem. And I’d like to get into the select committee report if I can, when we talked about 1 billion trees in 10 years—1 billion trees. Well, half of them will already be planted through the replantation of existing forests, without any interruption or interference or support from any Government. So we’re only talking half a billion trees.

There’s some good things that planting trees will achieve: “provide climate benefits, and help the Government meet its carbon obligations.”—that was mentioned—and “increase employment in rural areas in growing rural economies”. But I ask the question: how? How is the Government going to do that? It also talks about reducing alpine and coastal erosion through soil consolidation and catchment. But how is that going to be implemented? What are the real underlying actions that are going to deliver these goals and objectives? And, of course, there is increasing the economic return on land. Well, very laudable goals and aspirations, but there’s nothing in here that tells me how the Government is going to do it.

There are three problems that the Government faces in forestry: we don’t know where the seedlings are going to come from; we don’t know what land is available—where is the land that all these trees are going to be planted on; and, most importantly, who is going to be planting these trees? I ask the Minister if he can help me out here. Are we going to loosen up immigration policy to allow trees to be planted? Are we going to loosen up immigration? And it’s not just forestry in the primary sector, as he knows; we’re short of people in the dairy sector to milk the cows. We’re short of people in the beehive industry. We’re short of truck drivers. Can you believe it? We are short of truck drivers.

I had a guy in the office the other day pleading, “Can we loosen up immigration, because we need people in the regions. We need the work to be done.” So, Minister, please advocate and talk with your colleagues—and particularly Mr Lees-Galloway—to suggest that there is work to be done in the regions and we need to support the regions by allowing people to come in to work.

I tell you what: the nephews aren’t going to do it. The nephews aren’t going to cut the mustard. The big problem in the forestry sector is the failing of drug tests.

Hon Tracey Martin: Oh, for goodness’ sake!

ALASTAIR SCOTT: It’s a fact. Go out and ask the foresters, Ms Martin. Ask what their main problem is. It is finding clean workers—clean workers. So I invite the Minister to come with me to the forestry sector and talk to the people who find it difficult to find appropriately clean workers in the sector. It is a real problem, and there should be no tolerance. There should be zero tolerance, and that is the standard that the forestry sector, I’m sure, will keep and maintain.

A party vote was called for on the question, That Vote Agriculture, Biosecurity, Fisheries and Food Safety, Vote Forestry, and Vote Lands be agreed to.

Ayes 63

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

Noes 57

New Zealand National 56; ACT New Zealand 1.

Votes agreed to.

Social Services and Community Sector

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Anne Tolley): Members, we come now to the votes in the social services and community sector, B.5, Volume 10. The question is that Vote Arts, Culture and Heritage, Vote Building and Housing, Vote Oranga Tamariki, Vote Pacific Peoples, Vote Social Development, Vote Social Housing, Vote Sport and Recreation, and Vote Women stand part of the schedules.

GARETH HUGHES (Chairperson of the Social Services and Community Committee): Kia orana, Madam Chair. I rise to speak in support of the Estimates. As the chairperson of the Social Services and Community Committee, it was a real privilege to work with three parties on the committee to review the hearings. We heard from a number of Ministers. The Estimates reviews and the reports in this debate in the committee play a key role in the financial scrutiny of our Parliament over our executive—in other words, our Government—spending. The committee had—can I put it diplomatically—some robust and vigorous questions and answers, and I had to call only one time-out during the number of hearings; so I want to acknowledge all the members and everyone who participated in a very good-natured, very constructive though robust process.

We conducted hearings and tabled reports on the Estimates for Vote Social Development, Vote Social Housing, Vote Building and Housing, Vote Oranga Tamariki, Vote Women, Vote Pacific Peoples, Vote Sport and Recreation, and Vote Arts, Culture and Heritage for appropriations with the responsibility of the Minister for the Community and Voluntary Sector, and within the State services, designing and implementing social investment. I want to quickly run through each of the votes and a bit of a highlight of the long list we reviewed and published a report on.

First up, in Vote Social Development, in 2018-19, the total funding of this vote was $24.285 billion—one of the Government’s largest single expenditures. Nearly 90 percent of this goes towards benefits and superannuation. We heard from the Minister for Social Development, Carmel Sepuloni, on the Government’s Families Package, overhauling the welfare system and ensuring people receive their full entitlements. The committee asked questions around reducing long-term welfare dependency and why there was an increase in the young parent payment. Under this vote, we also heard from the disability Minister, and Minister for Seniors, Tracey Martin, who discussed performance measures in the work of the Office for Disability Issues in advocacy for seniors, preventing loneliness among seniors, and the Government’s new winter energy payment.

In a second major area, we heard from Ministers Twyford and Salesa on Estimates for Vote Building and Housing. A major point of discussion was the Government’s KiwiBuild programme. This programme aims to build 100,000 affordable first homes over the next 10 years and Budget 2018-19 seeks $492 million towards it. Questions were asked around the financial structure and KiwiBuild Buying off the Plans.

In Vote Social Housing, we heard of the Government’s work managing the 63,000 homes, housing 180,000 Kiwis, and we heard about the work on social and other transitional housing measures. A major issue of discussion was tenancy reviews, with the Government pausing tenancy reviews while it considers specific exemptions. Another area of question was around the 8,108 people, as of April 2018, on the State house waiting list—an increase of 2,000 since September—and the Government’s policy of a net additional 6,400 public houses over the next four years.

For Vote Oranga Tamariki, we heard from the Minister for Children, Tracey Martin, who I must commend as the first Minister I have seen in my 8½ years to actually pull out a whiteboard and explain the process behind Oranga Tamariki and how the $951 million is to be spent. We heard about the work of performance measures and the child well-being strategy.

In Vote Women, we heard from the Minister for Women, Julie Anne Genter, on the work towards closing the gender pay gap, promoting women in leadership roles, and the 125th anniversary of suffrage in New Zealand, amongst other issues.

In Vote Arts, Culture and Heritage, we heard of the 7 percent funding increase and the increase in funding for New Zealand music, the Regional Culture and Heritage Fund, funding for regional museums, as well as the specific case of the Dominion Museum building and the Great War Exhibition.

In Estimates for Vote Pacific Peoples, we heard from Aupito William Sio, and the committee discussed the Pasifika Education Centre, homeownership rates amongst the Pacific population, and the Pasifika economy.

Lastly, we heard from the Minister for Sport and Recreation, a true sports fan in the Hon Grant Robertson, and we discussed the declining levels of participation in sport amongst young people, adult volunteers, drug-free sport, and the appropriateness of lotteries funding.

I’d like to end by thanking the members of the committee, the Office of the Clerk staff, and the Ministers and their teams who appeared and participated in this very important parliamentary process.

Hon LOUISE UPSTON (National—Taupō): Kia orana, Madam Chair. I’m pleased to stand in this Estimates debate and particularly focus my time on social development. This, of course, is $25 billion a year that taxpayers put into social development; so it is worthy of a lengthy debate in this Chamber. One of the things that was concerning right from the get-go was a Minister that climbed straight into a defensive position about not wishing to reduce the number of people on benefits—and, as we’ve seen in the quarter to 30 June, actually, the number in every one except one category of benefits has increased. I would have thought a Minister responsible for $25 billion worth of taxpayer spending would have had an interest, or at least a passing glance, at knowing what those numbers were. The Minister was unable to answer simple questions around, for example, the significant increase in the young parent payment.

But I want to just look at some of the figures in particular around, for example, jobseeker support. So in a situation where the Government’s inherited a very strong economy with low unemployment—we’ve seen unemployment fall even further in more recent times—to then have an increase in the number of people on the jobseeker benefit is somewhat concerning. At the same time, the Minister made lengthy observations, as reported in the Estimates report back to this House, around the effort to deliberately reduce the number of obligations that are placed on people who are seeking work. One of the examples that the Minister referred to was around sanctions, and, unfortunately, a lot of people misunderstand the whole discussion around sanctions. Sanctions are a number of obligations that are placed on those who are seeking employment through the jobseeker support—mutual obligations which, really, are a social contract. So if taxpayers are supporting you, there are a few obligations: being available for appointments, turning up for interviews, taking on work that’s available, and, where required, being drug-free.

The Minister talked at length not just about the intention to remove sanctions but not to apply them. We’ve recently had a 23 percent reduction in the number of sanctions being applied—you know, that’s more than one in five; it’s nearly one in four that the Minister has then put down to mistakes, errors by front-line staff. I have to say, I’ve not seen a Minister appear before a select committee in that way and be quite so critical of front-line staff. It was surprising and concerning to see that the Minister wasn’t supporting the many thousands of front-line staff who go to work each and every day, to what this side of the Chamber believes is to ensure that each and every New Zealander achieves their potential. And yes, they experience times of hardship, and taxpayers are more than willing to support people in their times of need.

It’s interesting to see that the Minister also spoke at length about the intention for this big welfare working group review but actually provided very little detail around the scope of that work, which was also interesting given that, having been in Opposition for nine years, there was a long opportunity, lengthy periods of time, to work out some of the policies that the Minister was then going to deliver. Of course, the Minister I’m referring to—just for those who are watching in the House—isn’t the Minister that’s currently in the chair. I’m referring, of course, to the Minister for Social Development, the Hon Carmel Sepuloni.

There were a number of areas that the discussion focused on. Part of that was ensuring people got their full entitlement, and yet half a billion dollars that’s been identified as not being claimed isn’t in the Budget. So this is a Minister who’s responsible for one of the largest areas of spending of taxpayers’ money, has accepted there’s half a billion dollars in entitlements that aren’t being claimed, and yet, hasn’t allowed for it in the Budget documents. We raised that with the Auditor-General; that’s clearly a liability for the Crown that hasn’t been included anywhere.

Speaking of liabilities, one of the areas that was deeply, deeply concerning was the acceptance that there were 10,000 people on the social housing register, and a real lack of understanding that, for some people, they are so unable to access support through Work and Income that they can’t even get on the social housing register. It was very disappointing to see a Minister not even have a simple grasp of those people that are very hard to access, and no plan for accessing them. In fact, initiatives that are showing progress, like the place-based initiatives which are social investment on the ground, really changing lives in terms of making it easier for those who need our support the most to access the services—actually, no plan for the long-term deployment of things that really make a difference.

So platitudes around intensive wrap-around support—which, of course, were initiatives that came from the previous Government—and a pure lack of understanding about those that need it most. It was echoed by the Minister of Housing and Urban Development, who actually didn’t care at all about the fact that there are large parts of this country who aren’t being supported by the $100 million that supposedly is being put in to social housing, and is quite comfortable with the fact that people in places like Tokerau, Taupō, and Tūrangi that have high needs won’t get access to it. Although he’s promised on multiple occasions that no one needs to live in a car this winter, I can give him multiple examples. We discussed it in the select committee in the Estimates hearing, and the Minister clearly was not interested in providing support, providing solutions, or coming up with dollars, even though they’re a Government that’s awash with cash.

So it was a bit conflicting, a bit disappointing, in terms of Vote Social Development, to not have a Minister that was across the detail of her portfolio, that was bagging her staff, and really doesn’t believe in the potential of New Zealanders who want to get ahead, who want to fulfil their potential, and understand that the space of obligations is about being able to ensure that people who are receiving support from other taxpayers understand that they have obligations and understand there are opportunities for them to pursue those areas.

Social investment was an area that was also in the Estimates, and I think there are some areas that the Minister realised there was clear agreement. In fact, she actually said that one of the challenges has been that a lot of people misunderstood—and I think, probably, early on, her as well—what social investment was all about. At the heart of it, social investment is about changing lives. It’s about how to ensure, through clear targeting, through clear use of data and information, the ability to absolutely focus and hone taxpayer support to those who need it most. And many of those are people who don’t access the online website, who don’t look at the website to see what their entitlements are.

We had quite a great discussion about what you have to do as a superannuitant to make sure that your information is correct and to make sure that you are getting the right amount for your superannuation. It was really interesting to note that we had a lengthy discussion around the forms. The forms have been improved in recent years to make sure that people accurately completed their form and to make sure that they were getting the right amount for their superannuation. Unfortunately, we’ve had numerous examples of people who haven’t; who’ve been overpaid. We did go through it in quite a lot of detail, just to make sure that the process was simple and that it was easy. We reviewed the form there in person.

So the Minister for Social Development has said that she’s committed to ensuring that more people get what they’re entitled to, and yet, on the books, hasn’t accounted for it, and also hasn’t accounted for how to collect from those who’ve been overpaid, and to ensure that those sorts of inaccuracies are picked up earlier, because, obviously, taxpayers are fair-minded, want to support those who have times of need, but also want to make sure they fulfil their obligations.

PRIYANCA RADHAKRISHNAN (Labour): Kia orana, Madam Chair. It is with great pleasure that I rise to talk about the Social Services and Community Committee, and there is so much to talk about. Firstly, there were a number of Government Ministers we heard from, all of whom, actually—completely contrary to what the previous speaker who resumed her seat, Louise Upston, said—were incredibly over the detail of their portfolios, were compassionate to boot, and reflected this coalition Government’s focus on bringing kindness back and, actually, this Government’s vision to ensure that everyone is able to live with dignity. That was across a number of portfolios, whether it was about improving housing, increasing public housing that’s available, or increasing affordable housing so that everyone has good-quality, warm, dry homes that they could actually afford to live in. There is the fact that Housing New Zealand houses are being redeveloped so that they’re fit for purpose, and large-scale developments across New Zealand that will include affordable housing as well.

The Minister of Housing and Urban Development acknowledged that workforce constraints do pose a bit of a barrier. It is a bit of a challenge, but there is significant work under way to determine solutions to that. At the end of the day, we know—we heard from Ministers—that we do have a housing shortage. Members opposite have just started acknowledging that there is a housing crisis—the fact that we are short of about 71,000 homes across the country.

Ministers also outlined this Government’s vision to eliminate poverty. The Child Poverty Reduction Bill will require this Government to develop and report on a strategy to promote the overall well-being of children—the child well-being strategy, which is a cross-Government approach to ensure that every child is supported.

We heard from the Minister for Women, who outlined her vision to ensure that women are supported to live free from violence, her focus on removing some of those barriers that women face to getting into leadership positions, addressing pay equity, and closing the gender pay gap.

In social development—a massive amount of change, both in terms of ensuring, as I mentioned before, that everyone is supported to live with dignity but also that the process that they go through, whether it’s through Work and Income or through Oranga Tamariki, ensures that dignity is supported as well.

The Families Package is a major policy initiative in Budget 2018, and it encompasses a variety of new initiatives aimed at increasing the incomes of low and middle income New Zealanders, including the winter energy payment, to ensure that those who are on a benefit—our superannuitants as well; many of whom can’t afford the heating that they need to get through winter—are supported. There is the Best Start tax credit to ensure that every child in New Zealand has the best start in life, changes to the accommodation supplement, Working for Families tax credits—and the list goes on. The fact that of children in poverty 40 percent are from working households is a fact that this Government does not think is acceptable, and has a plan to change it.

Treating people with dignity—unlike, again, the previous speaker, Louise Upston said, the Minister did not come in and “bag” the people working at the front lines, as was alleged. That’s absolutely untrue. What she talked about was strengthening the culture at Work and Income offices. That has actually been well-received. She was asked what feedback she’d got from Work and Income offices as well, and it was positive. It’s about supporting those at the front line to ensure that the people who are coming to Work and Income receive their full entitlement, that they have a friendlier and more positive experience, that it’s not a top-down, punitive approach that the previous Government actually championed. It’s not about blaming those at the front line; it’s about ensuring that those at the top make it OK for those at the front line to treat people well.

I would go into social investment, and the fact that the focus the previous Government had was on treating people like commodities and ensuring that they weren’t a fiscal liability to the State, not about what this Government is focusing on: social well-being.

Hon TRACEY MARTIN (Minister for Children): Kia ora, Madam Chair. Thank you very much. I rise to take a call on the Estimates in the social services area. As the Minister for Children, can I first acknowledge the chair of the Social Services and Community Committee. I want to thank the chair very much. I had to seek permission to do something that hadn’t been done before, and that was to bring in a whiteboard to the select committee. I’ve been—

Hon Phil Twyford: High tech.

Hon TRACEY MARTIN: —sitting on select committees for six years. I love whiteboards. Mr Twyford has just shouted something along those lines.

Hon Ruth Dyson: High tech.

Hon TRACEY MARTIN: High tech—there you go. But what it is is a method to communicate, and the intent was to give as much detail as I could to the select committee around the background to the Budget. So I drew what I have drawn all over the country, whether it be for social workers on the front line of Oranga Tamariki, whether it be for the NGOs, whether it be for the VOYCE - Whakarongo Mai youth panel—I drew the pictures that show why we are investing where we are investing.

I want to be clear that nothing about the direction of Oranga Tamariki has changed, actually, from the previous Government to this Government, and that is because we don’t play politics with children. That is because this House—and I want to acknowledge again the members of the select committee—doesn’t play politics with children. So this was about the children that needed us the most. I want to thank very much the members of the select committee for giving me that leeway and giving me that opportunity to draw you the diagram of why we are funding what we are—$52 million in this year of new funding; $72 million each year for the next three years—into what are the operational matters that Oranga Tamariki must put into place for the children that we all need to care about the most: children who have families that cannot look after them for a variety of reasons, without judgment. For a variety of reasons, these children and these families need us to make this investment so that we can break the cycle of what has been youth justice in this country, to break the cycle of what has been the care experience in this country for these children.

I want to particularly acknowledge the Hon Alfred Ngaro for his intelligent yet critical questioning at the select committee. That is absolutely correct—the Hon Alfred Ngaro quite rightly questioned the Estimates, and that is what the select committee is for. So I want to thank him for his respectful yet insightful and querying questions. It was disappointing that at that select committee there were questions asked by members of the select committee around visitation, for example, that may or may not have happened for a child that they were concerned about in their area. Yet after the select committee process, when my department contacted them, they would not give us the details to be able to follow up on that child. That was not the Hon Alfred Ngaro, so I want to just say that that was a disappointment, after we’d had such a collegial and appropriate interaction at the select committee. I believe that everybody in this House wants to make sure that children who are in need get the services that they need, and get the care that they need from Oranga Tamariki, and from us as a country.

The other thing I want to close with, though, is I want to acknowledge inside this Budget the, I think, $104.9 million per year that was a commitment by the previous Government that is in the Budget of this Government for the unsupported children and orphans clothing allowance parity with foster carers. Can I thank the whole of the House. It was unanimously supported as a member’s bill, I think, in my first term—so two Parliaments ago—but it takes some time to find $104.9 million. So can I just acknowledge at this opportunity, this contribution around these Estimates, the previous Government. Can I acknowledge the current Government, and the fact that it’s been delivered today for these children.

I spent Friday morning with the care-experienced young people from VOYCE – Whakarongo Mai who were talking specifically about this money. I have been in touch with, and the Hon Alfred Ngaro and the Hon Paula Bennett were also with me, at a Grandparents Raising Grandchildren Trust event. This will make a difference in the lives of children. This money is inside these Estimates. We have done well here, across this House. I thank you all for the unanimous support that you have given to these children. Kia ora.

Hon ALFRED NGARO (National): Kia orana e Maine Vaa Tuatua. And thank you very much for the opportunity to speak. Can I just acknowledge the Hon Tracey Martin for her contribution and the speech that she’s made. I hope that other members across the Chamber will do likewise.

But in all seriousness, it is an acknowledgment of the work because at the end of the day it’s that commitment collectively together that we’ve made. I want to thank you, the honourable Minister, because she didn’t need to but she did, with both the Hon Paula Bennett and myself being there and that opportunity for the Grandparents Raising Grandchildren Trust. The moment was actually the smile on Di Vivian’s face, when she, on behalf of all grandparents raising grandchildren and other kin carers, could know that actually now in perpetuity there would be this fund and this support that would allow them to have the equity of allowances round the clothing allowance. I do want to acknowledge the Hon Tracey Martin, because you actually put this through in your first term, and you persisted with it to see that through. I do remember you one day saying to me, in one Budget you said, “Alfred, I can’t see it. Go and find it.”, so we did, and eventually found it. But I just want to acknowledge the work that had been done through that as well.

I do acknowledge that it’s a tough role to take on, because it is the care and responsibility of all the children that are placed in your responsibility. We know that, because you’ve got a ministry that then is in charge of that, sometimes things don’t always go right. Part of the role that you’re taking is to try and put those things right. So we know that when we are challenging and when we are holding to account, it’s not only your leadership; but it’s making sure the system operates in a way that does make a difference.

CHAIRPERSON (Poto Williams): Order! Can I just ask the member, please—

Hon ALFRED NGARO: Apologies, Madam Chair.

CHAIRPERSON (Poto Williams): Thank you.

Hon ALFRED NGARO: So I want to acknowledge that. So in saying that, here are the things that I think that are really important to hold to account in regards to this. So I know that in the briefing to the incoming Minister (BIM)—and I know the Minister had read it—on page 8 of the BIM what it did talk about was one of the upcoming decisions that the Minister had to make, and this is in regards to residential settings. What it said was by February 2018 there’s a recommendation to ensure that the residential settings—the community-based residential options and community-based options for remand—be considered inside of that. I bring that to the Minister and to this Chamber because when we then now go to the Budget around the allocation of resource and funds—and I do want to point out that I know that, for instance, in the Estimates hearings we did talk about Stand Children’s Services, the children’s camp, both in Ōtaki and Roxburgh. I know there’s a bigger picture, because we’re talking about the operating budget of $5 million. There was a shortfall.

But I do have to say this, because they did come to us; we did not seek them and it is our responsibility to take on their advocacy. So we had Stand Children’s Services and we had mayors from the local communities come to see us to ensure that we would advocate on their behalf. Even though I know that in the Estimates hearing the Minister did say—and it was advice from the ministry, and we want to hold them to account—that, actually, the appropriate services would be there to support them; however, the communities themselves actually said that that support would not be there.

They had community meetings, they had protests, they had mayors, they even had the New Zealand Public Service Association coming out in support of them to say, “Actually, we know that won’t work.” I think one of the challenges that the Minister will find—and we will hold to account the ministry and the Minister—is that with all the good intentions, if a community at large and as a whole are saying “Actually, we know this won’t work.”, I think one of the challenges is to see actually what will become of the decision that’s been made. So the decision’s been made not to support Stand Children’s Services in Roxburgh. I do hope that those support services will be there. I know that for all of us the threshold of one child not receiving the support of trauma care—and that’s what the Stand Children’s Services children’s camp are now; they provide specialist trauma care and counselling for those that are most in need, as well.

The allocation of the Budget—the total Vote is $951 million. The part that I want to also refer to is the $260 million that’s allocated for early and intensive intervention services for children and young people who exhibit needs that require statutory intervention. In this case, I think that what actually did happen—and as the Minister said, inside the select committee room, and, again, as I’ve said to the Minister—was this was the community coming to us, saying to us that the advertising, and I know it’s been done before on TradeMe of a young Māori girl, in that case a tamariki, the issue of concern from the community was the disclosure of the iwi affiliations. And then the lack of care to make sure that there was consultation and engagement with those. So it was the concern from the community that, again, the system had not responded. In fact, the only reason they came to me was because they had approached Oranga Tamariki—Ministry for Children and their concerns were not listened to. The responses that came back, I think, were of concern because they had said, “Everything’s OK. There’s no concerns. We’ve done this before. It’s not a problem.” And yet what actually was highlighted in the Social Services Committee was actually that’s not the case. In fact, it hadn’t been done before in regards to the disclosure, the full disclosure, of iwi connections.

What also was not followed through, and yet was given as a reason, as acknowledgment, that they’d been engaging—in fact, if one reads through the Estimates report, entitled in the report in the chapter on page 304 was “Working with iwi to create better outcomes.”, and yet that’s not the case. That wasn’t the reality. Again, I would say to the Minister and to the ministry: this is where a ministry needs to be held to account. When a community comes forward and says that it actually, first of all, went to the ministry, did not have a response, and hence the reason they came to seek extra advocacy in the roles that they were asking for. So I want to again say that on this, it is a concern that in regards to the allocation of the Budget I hope that it’s allocated in the appropriate ways, because the allocation of that budget of $260 million is around intensive care support, and is around the support services that would ensure that family and whānau and ainga would have the support that was wrapped round them. I think what was really clear from the community was that was not the case. So again the reason why I highlight this in this Estimates hearing is because again it shows that the system itself did not work. If the system is not working, then I think it’s a real concern for us to ensure that that will continue as well.

I want to highlight also too on page 303 where the Minister—and yes, I’d never seen this before; the old whiteboard coming out. Facilitators like us who’ve been round for a while love whiteboards. They get out there, they draw pictures, and they give an analogy so they can be able to break down the presentation if it’s complex. I want to acknowledge the Minister for doing that.

The part, though, that I became concerned about was, and it’s highlighted here, in regards to developing performance measures. In this, where the Minister was highlighting the appropriation, where now they were talking about the early intensive intervention and the allocation of that, but what concerned me is that there were 15 measures that were talked about but only five of them actually had—and I’ll read from here: “The statutory intervention transition output did not state a numerical value or target or what should be achieved.”

I thought that was a concern for those of us, because, I suppose, like any target, the reason it’s called a target is that you’ve got to have something to aim for. It can’t be fluffy, it can’t be woolly, and it can’t just say that we’re just going to make people feel good. Actually, part of setting a target and a measure is to know whether you’ve achieved that goal.

So it was a concern to us on this side where the fact is that, again, out of the 15 measures that have been stated in regards to statutory intervention and transition, only five of the 15 actually had set targets and valuations. And I know that the Minister actually said here as part of the process that “We didn’t want just another tick-box exercise.” Well, those of us on this side will agree with that. As has been said previously in previous speeches, the social investment approach was not about a fluffy, woolly, “Let’s try and see if we can make a difference.” approach. Actually, let’s be held accountable—

Hon Member: A tick-box exercise?

Hon ALFRED NGARO: —with the system is in place to make sure—tick-box exercise. That’s right. Box-ticking exercises—gets a little bit confusing! I think we know what we’re trying to say, which is that the fact is we want to be able to have a measure that we can hold ourselves accountable to. So what I’m saying in this is that it is a concern on this side that the ministry and the Minister actually still have not put this in place. They said it’s going to happen, and, again, what did we have as a response? “Oh, there’s another inquiry that’s coming along, another advisory committee.” The Minister’s looking aghast there. We just hope on this side that we’ll get past the advisory, past their inquiry, and get to a point where we can actually measure this.

Hon Tracey Martin: There’s no inquiry into Oranga Tamariki.

Hon ALFRED NGARO: No, no, it’s actually on here. It’s on the report that the Minister was talking about how there’s an advisory committee that they’re putting together—here it is, it’s in paragraph 4: “We also heard that the ministry is working to decide on the right outcomes to measure performance … We heard that a recent expert advisory panel … had indicated that previous measures had driven activity and ‘box-ticking’ [exercises]”. I’m pretty sure I heard the Minister talking about another panel, OK? We just want to get on and do the work. I commend this speech to the House.

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI (Minister for Social Development): Can I just start by acknowledging the Social Services and Community Committee for the work that they have done and continue to do. Can I also acknowledge the public servants for the huge amount of work that we have tasked them with over the last nine months that we’ve been in Government. We have big expectations of ourselves, and we have big plans for this country, and we are reliant on the work of the public servants; so can I acknowledge the great work that they are doing.

I’ll also acknowledge Minister Tracey Martin, who spoke earlier on her portfolio as Minister for Children. She was very gracious to the previous Government, actually, and I think she will be regretting that now after the speaker who just spoke prior to me. I will, on behalf of the Minister for Children, make the point that the advisory group that was being referred to by the Hon Alfred Ngaro, and that same advisory group he was criticising the current Minister for Children for, was actually an advisory group set up under the previous Government. So I make that point on behalf of the Minister for Children.

I think it’s really important that I just briefly touch on the direction of this Government and then reflect on some of the questions or comments raised by one of the previous speakers on Vote Social Development. We were very clear in the Estimates, and we’ve been very clear since we’ve got into Government, that we are aspirational for New Zealanders, that we are about ensuring that people are supported to reach their potential. For us, it is about ensuring that, in whatever Government agency people have an interaction with, they are treated with fairness and respect and that their dignity is upheld.

I’ve been very clear about that with the Ministry for Social Development and make no apologies for that approach. I was criticised earlier for taking that approach, and the comment that was made was that I was undermining public servants who are out there on the front line. Well, in fact, I’m not doing that at all, and I have already visited, I think, 20 Work and Income New Zealand offices to make sure that we’re absolutely on the right page. The vast majority of our staff do an excellent job, but we know there are one too many incidences in the media where people have experienced something that is not a positive experience in a Work and Income New Zealand office. So I’m not going to apologise for committing to working alongside our staff to improve it so that every person who goes to Work and Income New Zealand offices has a positive experience, because they deserve that.

One of the previous speakers brought up the young parent payment and was saying that there was a marked increase in the number of people that were receiving that. The point has already been made to that member and to the select committee that that increase is due to a decision by the previous Government to increase the age range, which means that more people are captured and eligible for that particular payment. So that point of clarification is, I think, really important.

Another point that was made was that there has been a reduction in the number of people who have had cancellations or suspensions of their benefits, and criticism of me for that. Well, actually, the reason that there has been a reduction is not because we changed the general policy about why it might be applied but because we changed the process to ensure that we had our checks and balances in place, and there had to be a person authorised to sign that off. That is actually the responsible thing to do, and seeing a reduction shows that, actually, in the past, it’s probable that there were mistakes that were being made. I accept absolutely that front-line staff have a big job in front of them; so it’s important that we, as decision-makers, make that as easy as possible for them by putting responsible processes in place, which is exactly what I’ve done.

I’ve been criticised by a previous speaker also for reducing the obligations on people who are accessing a benefit. That is not at all the case. The same obligations stand. We have an expert advisory group now that’s in place to give us advice on things like excessive sanctions, income adequacy, and the way that the welfare system interacts with other Government agencies, and all of that advice will be taken on board when we receive their report in February. But I’ve been very clear: the only sanction that I can speak to that this Government has already committed to getting rid of is section 70A. As for the rest, I’m not pre-empting any changes in that space, and I’m looking forward to the advice that we get from the select committee.

I also want to make the point that we were criticised earlier—and I know the Minister of Housing and Urban Development will speak to this, but I think we were collectively criticised—on the increase of the number of people who are on the social housing register. The reality is that, when we got into Government, a lot more New Zealanders that’ve been doing it tough, struggling to make ends meet, struggling within the housing crisis that’s been left as part of the legacy of the previous Government—as soon as we got in, a large number of New Zealanders all of a sudden felt hopeful that perhaps they had a Government in place that would empathise with them and would do something about the desperate housing situations that they were in. So it’s no surprise to us that housing numbers increased on the social housing register. There wasn’t a housing crisis created when we got into Government; the housing crisis was created by the previous Government, and we have been left to respond to it. So I acknowledge the Minister of Housing and Urban Development, the Hon Phil Twyford, who is doing a fantastic job in that department, and I won’t speak anymore to housing, because I know that he will respond to that himself.

I’m very proud of some of the measures that we put in place already in these first nine months. I have to acknowledge the first 100 days and the Families Package: $5.4 billion worth of funding that went to support low and middle income New Zealand families. That money was shifted away from the planned tax cuts that the previous Government had promised. Those tax cuts were not agreed to by us, because, actually, the reality was that a large proportion of those tax cuts were actually going to the top 10 percent of income earners in New Zealand—something like $400 million—and, to us, that’s not acceptable.

I’m very proud of the fact that, as of 1 July, we had the winter energy payment put in place. As of 1 July, parents in this country, or people in this country who have a child, will now be eligible for the Best Start payment, and that, really, along with the extension of paid parental leave, demonstrates this Government’s commitment to families, to low and middle income New Zealanders, and to those first thousand days for children, which we’ve all been told about in this House. All of us have had the evidence put in front of us that shows very clearly how important the first thousand days are.

So I’m very proud of the Families Package, proud of the fact that something like an additional 29,000 families will now be eligible for Working for Families, and that that will only continue to grow. Very proud of the fact that even though it’s just a start, because we as a Government know that there’s still much more to do, because of our Families Package 64,000 children will be lifted out of poverty, and that really demonstrates the commitment that we have on this side of the House to addressing child poverty, an issue that almost all New Zealanders take seriously and, unfortunately, was largely ignored under the previous Government.

I’m very proud of the fact that, as a Government, we made the commitment to put $76 million towards family violence services, the first time that many of these services at the front line, if not all of them, have received additional funding for a decade. They have been working on the smell of an oily rag with some of the most vulnerable families in an area that has got increasingly challenging, and all of a sudden I feel very proud that we can be part of a Government that shows we’re committed to addressing it.

I think that all of the Ministers on this side of the House and all of the members on this side of the House in Government would acknowledge, though, that there is much more to do, and we are committed to doing it. That’s why we have made sure that we have Jan Logie in the parliamentary under-secretary role to be that person that pulls it together, given that that particular issue spans over so many portfolios and is incredibly complex.

I think I’ve covered off most of the main issues raised by the previous speaker, and all I want to say is that there is much more to do. This Government is committed to addressing child poverty, and we are committed to ensuring that we support New Zealanders into meaningful and sustainable employment. As the Prime Minister has said, we will support all who are able to be earning, learning, caring, or volunteering.

MELISSA LEE (National): Thank you, Madam Chair—finally. I feel like I’ve been jumping up ever since this debate began. I’d like to greet you: kia orana e Maine Vaa Tuatua. Hopefully, the pronunciation was acceptable.

I would like to take the opportunity to speak briefly on the vote for the social development and housing sector, and some members in this committee would actually wonder why I am standing up to talk, because I don’t normally belong to the Social Services and Community Committee. However, it is in the Vote Arts, Culture and Heritage appropriation where broadcasting was classified, and because I belong to the Economic Development, Science and Innovation (EDSI) Committee and considering the fact that broadcasting has had a lot of interest, we were expecting the Minister of Broadcasting, Communications and Digital Media to turn up. Indeed, she did, but she refused to discuss broadcasting because it was given to the Social Services and Community Committee.

So I was astonished that the Hon Clare Curran would not discuss it. I know that there are some members in this House who belong to the EDSI select committee who actually, previously, when Radio New Zealand turned up, the Minister—we would have an opportunity to ask the Minister about the Estimates and the delivery that she has not done properly. Anyway—

Hon Tracey Martin: But it’s the wrong estimate, so why would one turn up anyway?

MELISSA LEE: That Minister is asking if it was the wrong Estimates. Well, I was actually in the EDSI select committee when that Minister turned up and was asked the questions about the ethnic communities, and she couldn’t answer that, either.

Anyway, I digress. This is actually about the arts, culture, and heritage appropriation, which belongs to this Estimates debate. It is actually about broadcasting, and I’ll get to it. The Minister, in her shining, brand new ministerial role, actually promised so much. It was in the Labour Party election manifesto that they would deliver $152 million—that is actually $38 million a year for the next four years. And—

Hon Tracey Martin: Wrong Estimates.

MELISSA LEE: I raise a point of order, Madam Chairperson. I keep getting an interjection from that side suggesting that this is the wrong Estimates. It is actually Vote Arts, Culture and Heritage, which I can speak to in this Estimates debate.

CHAIRPERSON (Poto Williams): To answer your point of order, we are just double-checking that you are in the right Estimates—

MELISSA LEE: That is the whole point, Tracey.

Hon Tracey Martin: There’s no broadcasting.

CHAIRPERSON (Poto Williams): Order! Order! If you are speaking to arts, culture, and heritage, then you are in the right Estimates. We’re just double-checking that the Estimates regarding broadcasting come within that Vote.

MELISSA LEE: It does, and that is the whole point.

CHAIRPERSON (Poto Williams): Carry on. Carry on until otherwise notified.

MELISSA LEE: Thank you, Madam Chair. Where was I—the $152 million that this Minister promised to deliver, but failed to, because she literally only delivered less than 10 percent. It was $15 million. She actually took to Cabinet $152 million. She wanted $152 million for the broadcasting sector, but she delivered only $15 million, and she established a bureaucracy, a ministerial advisory board, to dish out, or, actually, to decide if we needed a public media funding commission—another level of bureaucracy.

The ministerial advisory board is actually costing taxpayers $1.5 million, and they have decided for the Minister where the money is going to go: $4.5 million to Radio New Zealand, $4 million to New Zealand On Air, $6 million between Radio New Zealand and New Zealand On Air, and $500,000 for the Ministry for Culture and Heritage. But the thing is that the Minister wanted RNZ+. She wanted Radio New Zealand to have a brand new TV channel—a complete TV channel—and she thought she could do it for $4.5 million.

That is just ridiculous. It just shows how completely out of touch she is with her portfolio and that she has no concept of what broadcasting is actually about. She is absolutely, ridiculously out of her depth to think that she can actually produce a brand new television channel with that kind of budget. There is no way RNZ+ will ever come to fruition.

GREG O’CONNOR (Labour—Ōhāriu): Kia orana, Madam Chair. I was tempted to stand up and talk about horse racing because I do like a punt, but I realise it’s not actually part of these appropriations. So I will come back, if I may, to just talk about how much I really enjoyed being part of the appropriations.

This is the time when we do actually get to examine and see our own Ministers and our own ideas and strategies examined, and many in the Opposition put them through their paces. The Hon Alfred Ngaro has already been praised tonight, on a day when I understand he became the first speaker to do the prayer in a foreign language, or in a non-English language. That should be congratulated. It’s a shame that that goodwill didn’t continue to his own presentation, because what I can actually say to Mr Ngaro is that he pointed out something quite important that has come out of this: the difference between counting every little bit and piece and thinking, “We’ll get to where we want to go.” versus what we saw in this appropriation, which was a fine example of what vision and aspiration actually mean. And, in that, I refer to KiwiBuild.

Now, I come from a profession where we don’t get excited about things. I used to train detectives, and we always taught them the “ABC”: accept nothing, believe no one, and corroborate everything. So, when the whole KiwiBuild concept came to reality, I sat and watched and wanted to make sure—and I heard some of the criticisms—and I nodded my head and wanted to see how it was going to work, but, after this appropriation, and after some personal experience I’ve had, for those in the Opposition who are sort of betting their future on KiwiBuild failing, I would say, “Find another target.” because I have become a firm believer that KiwiBuild not only can work, KiwiBuild will work.

I would say, for those members of the Opposition, if they, like me, spend a lot of time out in their electorates, they will no doubt be meeting people like I did last Sunday, up in the Johnsonville market. I met a couple up there earning $220,000 between them; they’re not eligible for KiwiBuild, because they are over the limit. However, with $100,000 in the bank and earning that, they can’t find a house. They’re in the market around that $700,000 to $800,000 mark and they cannot find a house. They’re realising they have to go so much further. And this is a couple that earn a lot of money, they’re comfortable; they’re not going to be eligible. Again, I look at the Opposition; you must be meeting those people. Those who are earning less, those who are earning below $180,000, have very little hope, unless they are living in an area of New Zealand where housing is cheap, of ever owning their own home.

Now, just this weekend, we heard the Leader of the Opposition talk about how they, basically, were very keen on, I think it was, out-compassioning this Government. Well, a good way, if they really want to show some compassion, is to actually look at the compassion that is going to be required, the strategy and the goodwill that is going to be required, to ensure that the next generation of New Zealanders can get on the housing tree. And this can happen. I, again, had the experience of getting the head of KiwiBuild into my electorate and putting him in front of a good old-fashioned group of cynical developers, who came in with the old arms folded and “Yeah, you tell us about this.” They’d seen the media. They’d seen the Opposition. They’d seen the negativity. And I have to say, I’m a great believer in putting people that know what they’re doing in front of people that know what they’re talking about. I felt privileged to be on the sideline watching this. And I saw the light come on. I saw them start to understand, “Yeah, this can work. Yeah, this is going to work.” And I saw them leave there—and I’ve had phone calls since—and want to be part of this.

So KiwiBuild is, again—forget about what we inherited, forget what anyone’s done in the past. The reality of it now is that, fortunately, even the Opposition have acknowledged that we do have a housing crisis. It is something that we have to fix. If we’re going to be compassionate about this generation and the next generation of young people, we have to do something about it. And KiwiBuild can do that, and I would invite the Opposition to be part of that. And if those who believe that this KiwiBuild—and I congratulate the Minister on the different options that KiwiBuild has put together around underwrite, because, I’ll just sum up by saying this, the problems that the Opposition’s developers, our developers have—those problems; whether they be problems with shortage of tradespeople, shortage of land, whether it be planning problems, whether it be RMA, these things, all of a sudden, have become all of our problems, because, unless we can fix them, unless they are fixed, we are consigning the next generation to houselessness.

Hon PHIL TWYFORD (Minister of Housing and Urban Development): I want to speak to Vote Social Housing and make some comments about housing policy. First, I want to thank the Social Services and Community Committee, under the able chairmanship of Gareth Hughes, for the excellent work that the committee did during Estimates.

Our strong sense is that the New Zealand public want the Government to fix the housing crisis. They want us to get on with it and build houses. This is our first Budget. It is the largest investment in housebuilding ever in New Zealand history. It’s a foundational Budget. It’s our first step in building our way out of the national housing crisis. We have a plan to tackle the national housing crisis right across the continuum of housing need. And I want to talk about that plan. We’re working hard to end homelessness and increase public housing. The other theme that came out of the Estimates hearings in Vote Social Housing was that this Government is finally funding programmes that the previous Government talked about but never actually put up the money to properly fund.

Now, the centrepiece of this Budget’s housing policy is that we are building a net additional 6,400 public houses over the next four years—a net additional 6,400. Now, I want you to contrast that funded commitment—a net additional 6,400 State- and community-provided homes—with the record of the former Government, who reduced the number of State houses over nine years in office—a net reduction of 6,000 houses, and if you take into account community homes, a net reduction of 1,500 public houses over nine years, in the middle of a housing crisis.

Now, we heard a lot from the members opposite about how they were going to build all these extra houses. The fourth-term National Government would have been an amazing thing to see, because they were going to do all of these things. They promised the world after nine years in office, when they reduced the amount of public housing—they reduced the amount of public housing. Apparently, in the fourth term, they were going to reverse all that and build thousands of extra houses. Well, it took a change of Government to get a Government that actually put the money up to fund these promises.

This Government is investing $4 billion—$4 billion—to increase the number of State houses by 6,400 and upgrade and improve the existing housing stock. We are also upgrading, through regulation, every rental property in this country, by passing the Healthy Homes Guarantee Act and setting decent insulation standards—not the half-baked ones that the previous Government did but proper insulation standards—plus a requirement for a fixed-model, affordable heating source, and also standards on draught-stopping, drainage, and weathertightness. These are real healthy home standards that have been passed into law, and Housing New Zealand is now spending about $100 million improving every one of its properties, including putting a heat pump in all of them. So that is the difference. That is a serious commitment to healthy homes.

The Estimates hearing also focused quite a lot on tenancy management issues for Housing New Zealand, and that’s an area where we’ve seen a whole different approach from this Government—a more compassionate and tenant-centred approach. Over the last nine years, Housing New Zealand—our public housing organisation—was stripped of its social mandate systematically by the former Government. When I became the housing Minister, I met Housing New Zealand staff that told me they were doing pastoral care work with tenants on the weekend because they had been told that it wasn’t their job to do it. Now, under our Government, it is the job of Housing New Zealand tenancy managers to do that pastoral care work. We have brought compassion and kindness back to the administration of public housing in this country.

We also pulled the plug on the hysteria around methamphetamine contamination in public housing that was actively stirred up by that Government. They allowed the lack of a decent scientific standard to mean that Housing New Zealand, over the last four years, wasted the best part of $100 million on decontamination work that never needed to happen. At the same time, private landlords were making insurance claims of, on average, $25 million a year for methamphetamine contamination, most of which never needed to be done, because of the total failure of political leadership under the former Government. It took us a few weeks in office to commission Sir Peter Gluckman to do that report and sweep away the moral hysteria that had been allowed to be whipped up under the former Government. That has all changed under this Government.

Now, we know that we need to do more. We’ve inherited the legacy of nine years of housing crisis that was allowed to spin out of control. That is why the housing register, the waiting list for public housing, is now bigger than it’s ever been before. I found it amusing to hear the member Louise Upston, earlier in this debate, blaming a Government that’s been in office for nine months for the legacy of a housing crisis that was allowed to get out of control for nine years. That shows a gall that, frankly, I find amazing—and admirable, in some ways, actually.

The register is now the highest it’s been—8,108 in April, and the figures are going up every month. We know that the hidden homeless that were reported on by the housing stocktake that we commissioned in our first few weeks in office—we know that the true scale of homelessness has been supressed for too long. We know that now there is a Government that cares, a Government that welcomes people to come forward and get the help that they need, those figures will continue to get worse before they get better.

In Budget 2018, we committed an extra $100 million over and above the baseline funding for Housing First and emergency and transitional housing—an extra $100 million.

Chris Bishop: Where is it in the Hutt?

Hon PHIL TWYFORD: We are rolling out Housing First in the Hutt, in Wellington, in Tauranga, in Hamilton, in Auckland, in Whangarei, in Napier and Hastings—the world-acclaimed approach to dealing with chronic homelessness. We have also, finally, funded the commitment that the former Government made to roll out 2,200-odd emergency and transitional housing places that they promised but never funded properly. They also didn’t fund the front-line staff needed to manage that programme. So we funded all of those things, and we’ve, in fact, rolled out several hundred extra transitional housing places. That was our commitment to seriously tackling homelessness as part of the winter 2018 package. It’s long overdue in this country that we put in place a decent safety net.

I want to take the remaining minute and a bit that I’ve got to talk about some of the wider housing and urban development issues that this Government is tackling that really come under the building and construction part of this debate, and I want to acknowledge my colleague the Hon Jenny Salesa, who, as Minister for Building and Construction, is leading a really ambitious programme of workforce and skills development, reforming the whole product certification scheme and all of the building regulatory framework that we need to put in place to ensure that our KiwiBuild policy is successful.

The other big enablers of the KiwiBuild policy are tackling the systemic problems that have caused the housing crisis and the fact that we are 71,000 houses short at the moment as a result of the negligence and drift of the last nine years. We are reforming the financing of infrastructure that will allow our towns and cities to grow. We are freeing up the planning system to allow our cities to grow up and to grow out. We are putting in place an urban development authority that will lead large-scale urban development projects that will build not just housing but whole communities. These are the system-wide fixes to the housing crisis.

CHAIRPERSON (Poto Williams): Before I call the honourable member, I just want to confirm with the member who took the point of order that the speech in the debate was within the Estimates, and for the reference of the House that is page 291 of the Estimates document. Kia orana.

DAN BIDOIS (National—Northcote): It is a pleasure to take a call this evening on the Estimates debate for the social services and community sector. I especially want to draw attention to two important Votes in this debate: Vote Building and Housing and Vote Social Development. I certainly want to thank the Ministers who have come along to the select committee to present. I wasn’t a part of that select committee at that stage—I was fighting a by-election—but my colleagues told me a lot about it, and they raised a lot of concerns within these two areas.

Firstly, we express that this Government is not set up to deliver on the housing promises that they made to the people of New Zealand with respect to affordable housing. For example, we know that the Government promised 100,000 affordable homes across the country within 10 years. But how many of these houses have been built today? How many? We know that zero KiwiBuild homes have been built to date, and time is ticking for this Minister to demonstrate that he’s more than just talk and big promises. We’ve also had an admission from the Minister that it won’t be possible to build these affordable homes without massive subsidies. So here we are taking money from one pocket of New Zealanders and, essentially, putting it in into the other pocket.

Dr Deborah Russell: It’s called a progressive taxation system.

DAN BIDOIS: Oh, it’s very inefficient, in that case. Another thing is that this Government said, in the campaign, that they were committed to training construction workers to help build these extra homes, and now the Minister in charge has admitted that they’ll actually be importing these workers, because they can’t recruit them from overseas. So here we have a Government that is happy to say one thing and do another, and I don’t think, quite frankly, that that’s what New Zealanders voted for.

Then we have the Government policy that is littered with unintended consequences: changes to the Housing New Zealand evictions policy, for example, which means that Housing New Zealand can’t evict people that have antisocial tendencies. Now, the Government hasn’t thought through the unintended consequences of this on, for example, those that wish to buy homes right next door and maybe won’t want to buy them, because they can’t evict their neighbours.

Second is around the schools and how they’re reacting negatively to the Government’s policy changes—for example, we raised concerns that there are a number of schools that have changed their zones because they want to avoid being captured by these housing developments. And those are changes—

CHAIRPERSON (Poto Williams): I apologise to the member. The time has come for me to report progress.

Debate interrupted.

House resumed.

Progress reported.

Report adopted.

The House adjourned at 9.55 p.m.