Tuesday, 11 September 2018

TUESDAY, 11 SEPTEMBER 2018

TUESDAY, 11 SEPTEMBER 2018

The Speaker took the Chair at 2 p.m.

Karakia

Karakia

SPEAKER: I’ve asked Nuk Korako to say the prayer today.

NUK KORAKO (National): Konei rā te karakia pāremata mō tēnei rā i roto i Te Reo Māori. Kia inoi tātou. E te Atua kaha rawa, ka tuku whakamoemiti atu mātou mō ngā karakia kua waihotia mai ki runga i a mātou. Ka waiho i ō mātou hanga whaiaro katoa ki te taha, ka mihi mātou ki te Kuini me te inoi atu mō te ārahitanga i roto i ō mātou whakaaroarohanga, kia mōhio ai, kia whakaiti ai a Ihu Karaiti tā mātou whakahaere i ngā take o Te Whare nei mō te oranga, te maungārongo, me te aroha o Aotearoa. Āmine.

[This is the parliamentary prayer for today in the Māori language. Let us pray. Almighty God, we give thanks for the prayers that have been bequeathed upon us. We leave our personal constructs to the side, and acknowledge the Queen and pray for leadership in the direction of our intentions so that Jesus Christ will know and be humbled by our management of the issues before this House for well-being, peace and love in New Zealand. Amen.]

Speaker’s Rulings

New Zealand Sign Language Interpreters—Status in the House

SPEAKER: Before we begin oral questions, I would remind members about the status of the New Zealand Sign Language interpreters. The interpreters are contracted by the Clerk to interpret at question time, and at some other times. They are not participants in the proceedings of the House and should not be brought into proceedings or involved in subsequent discussion of proceedings by members.

Oral Questions

Questions to Ministers

Prime Minister—Resignation of Minister of Broadcasting, Communications and Digital Media

1. Hon SIMON BRIDGES (Leader of the Opposition) to the Prime Minister: Does she stand by all her statements and actions in relation to the resignation of the former Minister of Broadcasting, Communications and Digital Media?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN (Prime Minister): Tēnā koutou e Te Whare. Yes.

Hon Simon Bridges: When did Clare Curran resign?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Her formal resignation, as I’ve said, was tended mid-morning, around 10 a.m., on Friday.

Hon Simon Bridges: What time on Thursday evening was the Prime Minister called by Clare Curran about the resignation?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: All of this I have talked about publicly before. I had an initial conversation with the Minister on Thursday evening. As is already on the public record, her official resignation was received on Friday morning.

Hon Simon Bridges: What time was the call on Thursday evening?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Some time in the evening.

Hon Simon Bridges: When asked on Newstalk ZB on Friday morning if she had considered cutting ties with Clare Curran and she said, “No”, had Clare Curran already resigned by that point; and, if she had, is the Prime Minister satisfied with the answer she gave?

Rt Hon Jacinda Ardern: Yes. The question I was asked was “Are you considering cutting ties with her or firing her?” I said no, I was not firing her. I did not fire her; the Minister made a decision to resign from her portfolios.

Hon Simon Bridges: Will the Prime Minister accept that whilst that answer may be technically true, it’s incredibly misleading?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: If the member is suggesting I should have cancelled all interviews, I don’t think that’s possible for anyone in my office. Of course, we conduct interviews like that all the time. I was asked whether I’d fired her or was considering firing her; I had not and I did not.

Hon Simon Bridges: Isn’t the fact of the matter that in her press statement, in Clare Curran’s press statement of Friday, and indeed in her later interviews the tenor was very clear: she said, “Clare Curran contacted me last night to advise me that she’d decided and she wanted to resign from her portfolios. We talked it through. I accepted her resignation. End of story.”?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: The fact that the member has that level of detail is because we have been transparent around the process. I received a phone call on Thursday evening, indicating the member’s views. She in the morning formally resigned. I’ve been very clear about this time line, and conducted interviews in between.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Just to ensure the public does understand with clarity that words mean what they mean, if something’s—

SPEAKER: Order! I’m going to ask the Deputy Prime Minister to sit down and I’m going to ask two people to do things: (1) I’m going to ask the Deputy Prime Minister to ask a question without a preface, and (2) I’m going to require Paula Bennett to stop interjecting.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Just to get this clear, is something that is technically true false, or is it true?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: I believe that something that is technically true is indeed true.

Hon Simon Bridges: Why in the Prime Minister’s statements on Friday did she make it clear that Clare Curran resigned and she accepted that on Thursday evening and yet this morning she changed her story—for example, telling Mike Hosking that Clare Curran didn’t resign until Friday morning and that all she did on Thursday evening was talk about considering resigning, making her decision the next day?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Because that is what happened. The Minister formally resigned at the time that I received her formal resignation. And, again, I was asked if I had fired her; I had not. Before a Minister resigns from their portfolio, of course they may choose to want to inform their family, to inform their staff. It’s only right that we allow a member to undertake those things before it is publicly conveyed.

Hon Simon Bridges: Does this mean that if Clare Curran had changed her mind overnight, the Prime Minister would not have accepted her resignation?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: That’s a hypothetical. The member resigned on Friday morning formally, at the time that I received her resignation letter.

Hon Simon Bridges: Why didn’t the Prime Minister just show some leadership and sack Clare Curran?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: I removed her from Cabinet over the errors that she made. The decision to resign was hers.

Hon Simon Bridges: What did Greg O’Connor get wrong when he said, “There was a little [sort] of confusion about interviews on Friday morning—[you] can’t have that. You leave gaps. That won’t happen again, so I think everyone’s learnt from it.”, and, “It could have been done better. I don’t think anyone will disagree with that. But I’ll tell you what, it will be done better next time.”?

SPEAKER: Order! No responsibility of the Prime Minister.

Hon Simon Bridges: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I’m asking the Prime Minister whether she agrees with a statement in relation to her handling of the resignation of a Minister. It’s absolutely within the Speakers’ rulings.

SPEAKER: Can the member read exactly his preface to the quotes?

Hon Simon Bridges: “What did Greg O’Connor get wrong”?

SPEAKER: That’s not the Prime Minister’s responsibility.

Hon Simon Bridges: Well, can I have another go?

SPEAKER: Order! The answer to that is yes, but it counts.

Hon Simon Bridges: Does she agree with Greg O’Connor when he said, “There was a little [sort] of confusion about interviews on Friday morning—[you] can’t have that. You leave gaps. That won’t happen again, so I think everybody’s learnt from it.”, and, “It could have been done better. I don’t think anyone will disagree with that. But I’ll tell you what, it’ll be done better next time.”?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: In this case, all of the learnings have been done by Greg O’Connor.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Prime Minister—

Hon Member: Who’s the leak?

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Prime Minister, Clare Curran had been responsible—

Hon Gerry Brownlee: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I think it’s quite reasonable to expect that someone with the experience of the Deputy Prime Minister would begin a question with a question word.

SPEAKER: And I’m sure that the Deputy Prime Minister will have another crack at it. I’m sure he’s not helped by the second row of the Government interjecting while he’s trying to ask a question.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Mr Speaker, it seems that there was a hypothetical—it seems that you accepted a hypothetical from Mr Bridges two questions back. I’m just putting one directly with respect to Clare Curran, and it does require—being a question—for an “if” to be in front of it. That’s usually what a question—

SPEAKER: And I was letting the Deputy Prime Minister run. There is no rule against asking hypothetical questions. You just don’t have to answer them.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. If Clare Curran had been responsible for a leak damaging to the leadership, would she have fired her?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Yes.

Hon Simon Bridges: Who in her office provided the media with an inaccurate transcript of her interview with Chris Lynch?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: I think what the member might be referring to is a request that was made to my office to provide a transcript, which, I should point out, is publicly available. The interview was public. My understanding—I’m advised by my office that in providing that, they didn’t repeat one of the questions from the interviewer. That obviously would have been obvious if the individual who asked had listened to the interview that’s publicly available.

Hon Simon Bridges: So who provided it to the media?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: I’m not entirely sure who actually made the request. I’m not sure it was by the media.

Hon Simon Bridges: When did she first find out that her office had provided an inaccurate transcript of her interview?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Actually, I reject the premise of that question.

Hon Simon Bridges: What, was it not inaccurate?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: My understanding is that my statements were. [Interruption]

SPEAKER: Order!

Hon Simon Bridges: Is the Prime Minister disputing that a doctored transcript went from her office to media on Friday?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: The member is insinuating that my statements weren’t accurately transcribed. My understanding is that the transcript—as so-called—didn’t include the full questioner’s details, rather than my answers. But, again, at the core of this issue is whether or not what I said was publicly available—it was; it was a radio interview.

Economy—Reports

2. KIRITAPU ALLAN (Labour) to the Minister of Finance: What recent reports has he seen on the New Zealand economy?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister of Finance): He pai atu te kōrero—more good news. I have seen ManpowerGroup’s employment outlook survey, released this morning, of over 600 New Zealand employers, which showed a net 16 percent of employers expecting to increase staffing levels in the final quarter of this year. This result is up 6 percent on the previous quarter, and up 4 percent on a year ago. The outlook is positive across all organisation sizes, particularly medium and large businesses, whose expectations of increasing employment are at a net 26 and 27 percent respectively.

Kiritapu Allan: How do the responses of New Zealand employers compare with their international peers?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: The survey results show the continued positive outlook of businesses in New Zealand when compared with other countries. New Zealand’s net 16 percent employment outlook puts us in the top 10 countries surveyed—ahead of counterparts including Australia, Canada, Singapore, Germany, and the United Kingdom. This shows a healthy economic environment in New Zealand, where it is a good time for businesses to invest and employ more people, and for job seekers to find employment.

Kiritapu Allan: What other reports has he seen on the New Zealand economy?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: I’ve seen a number of recent reports showing the continued strength of the New Zealand economy. Statistics New Zealand’s latest data on wholesale trade for the June quarter showed a seasonally adjusted rise of 2.6 percent for the quarter. The largest rise was in machinery and equipment—

Rt Hon Winston Peters: It’s ka pai then.

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: —suggesting increased capital investment by New Zealand businesses. Yes, Mr Peters, it’s all ka pai. Today Statistics New Zealand released retail card spending data for August, showing a seasonally adjusted 1 percent rise in total spending, and ANZ released its latest Truckometer indexes today, with the heavy traffic index rising 1.1 percent in August. We all know that the economy needs to go through a transition to be more productive and more sustainable, but there are plenty of examples of it going along at a steady pace.

Prime Minister—Confidence in Minister of Customs

3. Hon SIMON BRIDGES (Leader of the Opposition) to the Prime Minister: Does she stand by all her statements and actions in relation to the standing down of the Minister of Customs?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN (Prime Minister): Aē.

Hon Simon Bridges: Has she asked Meka Whaitiri whether the allegations of assault on a staff member in her office are true?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: As I’ve previously said, the allegations are contested, which is why they’re being investigated by Ministerial Services.

Hon Simon Bridges: Has she asked Meka Whaitiri whether the allegations of assault on a staff member in her office are true?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Again, the matters that the member is raising are contested. I’ve put that on the public record. That is why Ministerial Services is investigating them. I’m not going to respond to the details of that until that investigation is complete. On this side of the House, we believe in natural justice.

Hon Simon Bridges: Did the Minister deny the allegations of assault when the Prime Minister put them to her?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: If the member is listening, for something to be contested, obviously I have to have some knowledge of it being contested. That is why it’s being investigated by Ministerial Services. I want to let them do their job.

Hon Simon Bridges: Does she believe what Meka Whaitiri told her?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: As I’ve said, I’m letting this process run its course. I believe in natural justice. I want to make sure that Ministerial Services have the space to work through this matter appropriately and in good time. I have asked that it be dealt with as quickly as possible, but I will not make decisions until I have seen their report.

Hon Simon Bridges: Does she decide who holds a ministerial warrant; and if so, then shouldn’t she be asking Meka Whaitiri exactly what happened with her staff member in judging whether she is worthy of that warrant based on her word?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Yes.

Hon Simon Bridges: So has she asked her, and does Meka Whaitiri deny that there was an assault?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: As I’ve previously said, this is contested. The Minister wanted to ensure that there was a transparent process to look into the allegations that have been made. They are allegations, and she is fully cooperating while Ministerial Services look into this issue.

Hon Simon Bridges: Is the Prime Minister aware of any other cases where Ministerial Services has been involved in a formal process around the departure of a staff member from Meka Whaitiri’s office this term?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: I am allowing this investigation to run its course, but I am advised that no personal grievances have been lodged against Meka Whaitiri since becoming a Minister.

Hon Simon Bridges: What support has been provided by the Prime Minister’s office to the alleged victim of the assault?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: My understanding is that these issues have been dealt with appropriately.

Hon Simon Bridges: Has she not checked?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Of course, there are more than a number of entities involved; primarily, that responsibility does need to sit with Ministerial Services. I have been assured that appropriate support has been put in place, because of course I seek such assurances.

Hon Simon Bridges: Has she provided the same level of support to the alleged victim as she and her colleagues have provided, quite clearly and visibly, to Meka Whaitiri?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: I have sought assurances that support is being provided on both sides, and I’ve received the assurance that it has.

Crown/Māori Relations—Scope of Portfolio

4. Hon CHRISTOPHER FINLAYSON (National) to the Minister for Crown/Māori Relations: Has the formation of the Crown-Māori Partnership Office been approved by Cabinet; if so, when?

Hon Member: Where is he?

Hon Amy Adams: What’s the combination lock to his cupboard?

Hon ANDREW LITTLE (Minister for Treaty of Waitangi Negotiations) on behalf of the Minister for Crown/Māori Relations: No; Cabinet is still to consider the final scope of the Crown/Māori relations portfolio, and a number of other minor details as well.

Hon Grant Robertson: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. It is a longstanding convention of this House not to reference the absence of members. Although that was happening in their interjection during that question, I think members across the House may be very well aware where Mr Davis is today.

Hon Christopher Finlayson: Could he please explain what is meant by the statement that was made yesterday, in relation to the office, that one of his and the new agency’s roles will be to “Develop engagement, co-design and partnership principles that ensure agencies generate the best solutions;”?

Hon ANDREW LITTLE: That member will be well aware that his former role and my current role will shortly run out of work to do, because we will have, by and large, completed the Treaty settlement process. But, as Sir Robin Cooke said in 1987, the Treaty is alive, it is a relationship, and we have to think about what that relationship looks like and how it is conducted in the years ahead. That is what that set of words he referred to describes about the future for Aotearoa.

Hon Christopher Finlayson: Does he support the Crown-Māori Partnership Office having the same status as Treasury, the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, and the State Services Commission, and that the office will need to be consulted with on all Cabinet papers?

Hon ANDREW LITTLE: That detail has not been determined by Cabinet, but that member will be well aware of other offices of the State that are not complete departments. One is the Office of Treaty Settlements. That is clearly understood, has a very clear identity, and has a very clear role to play.

Hon Christopher Finlayson: Could the Minister therefore confirm that yesterday a new office for Crown-Māori partnership was announced, but none of the detail has been worked out?

Hon ANDREW LITTLE: What was announced yesterday was Cabinet’s initial consideration of a paper that has been the result of extensive consultation—particularly with Māori and iwi and hapū, and many other people besides—as we head towards putting together the basis of conducting the Treaty relationship post the Treaty settlement period.

Hon Christopher Finlayson: Can he please explain what exactly it means when it’s said, as was said yesterday, that he and his agency will also work with the Minister of Justice to examine the constitutional and institutional arrangements supporting the Crown-Māori partnership in the long term?

Hon ANDREW LITTLE: Yes. It is pretty clear that the Treaty has a standing in our legal framework that has been confirmed by the Court of Appeal, by the Privy Council, and by our own Supreme Court now, and we have to make sure that the legal framework that we continue to operate under continues to maintain the status and place of Te Tiriti o Waitangi.

Hon Christopher Finlayson: Was it appropriate or dignified to have someone convicted of assaulting a sitting Prime Minister in the Cabinet room as part of the announcement of the establishment of the Crown-Māori Partnership Office?

Hon ANDREW LITTLE: As that member will well know and as this House well knows, this is a Government that canvasses and consults widely, including, in other contexts, listening to the voices of offenders.

Provincial Growth Fund—Announcements

5. JENNY MARCROFT (NZ First) to the Minister for Regional Economic Development: What recent announcements has he made regarding the Provincial Growth Fund?

Hon SHANE JONES (Minister for Regional Economic Development): Ngā mihi i roto i Te Wiki o Te Reo Māori. Recent provincial growth announcements were made in Gisborne, where provincial fortune met capital intervention. The capital intervention reflects not only the quality of the thinking and the policy but also the $152.7 million, which was announced by the Prime Minister, in an area that has been neglected, overlooked, and has finally enjoyed the attention that it deserves from this coalition Government.

Jenny Marcroft: How many jobs will be created in Tai Rāwhiti as a result of the Provincial Growth Fund announcements?

Hon SHANE JONES: Tahi, rua, toru, whā—hundreds of jobs. The reference to the jobs is at least 100, and they were created the moment that the Prime Minister made her announcements. Many more will come as a consequence of the New Zealand Transport Agency reflecting the revamp of the principles governing the allocation of that independent transport fund into the regions. The Gisborne District Council has already begun working on developing cadres of workers to be trained to take on the roles of the opportunities that will come from mount Titirangi, Cooks Landing. It’s Māori Language Week: Titirangi means “to pierce the heavens”—somewhat like our aspirations.

Jenny Marcroft: How will this Government funding improve the economic and social well-being of the region?

Hon SHANE JONES: The Tai Rāwhiti area comprises about 49,000 people, and it’s important that we understand—and we will repeat it with great regularity—that as a consequence of regional transportation funding changes and the Provincial Growth Fund, nigh on $390 million has now been committed to the Tai Rāwhiti over the three-year period, possibly a bit longer. This represents a pipeline of infrastructure activity. It represents an opportunity to turn around the fortunes of that part of the economy, because without robust, well-funded infrastructure, where will tertiary investment come from? That was the nature, given with my characteristic modesty, of the delivery in Tūranga-nui-a-Kiwa—Gisborne—last week.

Economy—Forecasts

6. Hon AMY ADAMS (National—Selwyn) to the Minister of Finance: Has he seen the latest NZIER consensus forecasts; if so, can he confirm that the September forecast for GDP has been revised down compared to the June forecast for both the remaining full years of the Government’s term, being the current 2018/19 year and the 2019/20 year?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister of Finance): Yes, and, in addition, the New Zealand Institute of Economic Research’s (NZIER’s) consensus forecasts still show very close to 3 percent growth over the two-year period.

Hon Amy Adams: Is the reason his answer to the primary question is seemingly unconcerned about the drop that he is unconcerned or unaware that these forecasts indicate that the economy will now be $2.2 billion smaller by the end of this Government’s term than was predicted in this year’s Budget?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: No, the answer to that question is that I continue to be concerned about working with business and getting a strong relationship and getting the economy growing on a productive and sustainable basis.

Hon Amy Adams: Is he aware that when this Government’s policies contribute to reducing the likely size of the economy by $2.2 billion in 2020, that’s a loss greater than the entire size of the regional Tai Rāwhiti or West Coast economies?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: The member is at risk of catastrophising here. The economy is still growing. The economy is forecast to grow at around 3 percent. Unemployment is forecast to come down to around 4 percent. We’re getting on with the job of building an economy fit for the 21st century, after a near decade of sitting on the sidelines by the previous Government.

Hon Amy Adams: Is he concerned that the NZIER consensus forecasts have not only further revised GDP growth down over the last quarter; they’ve now also significantly reduced the forecast Government surpluses over the remainder of this term, and they’re predicting smaller wage growth, and the only things that they’ve revised upwards were the cost of living and unemployment?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: No. In fact, unemployment is forecast to fall to 4.1 percent over the next four years. Employment growth is forecast to be stronger than in the previous forecasts. Wages are forecast to grow by more than 3 percent on average over the next two years.

Foreign Affairs, Minister—Statement on Russian Chemical Weapons Attack in Salisbury

7. Hon TODD McCLAY (National—Rotorua) to the Minister of Foreign Affairs: Why didn’t he condemn the Russian Government for the nerve agent attack in Salisbury in his written statement issued on 6 September?

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS (Minister of Foreign Affairs): Kia ora; tēnā koutou katoa. Sadly, the member is mistaken. I did. The statement on 6 September was issued after my return from the Pacific Islands Forum in Nauru as an immediate means of expressing support for the UK. The NZ Government’s position is clear, as emphasised in the subsequent comments to the media. We have consistently supported the United Kingdom in condemning the use of chemical weapons in Salisbury the moment there emerged clear evidence attributing the attack to Russia.

Hon Todd McClay: Is it usual practice for the Government to release a holding statement on an area of important international significance, then follow it up with a further statement but not proactively release that statement until after questions had been asked by the media almost 24 hours later, as the Prime Minister said yesterday.

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: Alas, that member is again mistaken. The reality is I was flying back overnight from Nauru, awaiting an impending speech by Prime Minister May in the British House of Commons, and we already had a clear idea what we thought it was going to be about, but we didn’t have her speech. And, being like a well-trained lawyer, we usually wait for the facts before we beat our gums off.

Hon Todd McClay: Why then, following his statement, did it take an appeal from a British Minister for New Zealand to join other allies to actually condemn Russia for the nerve agent attacks in Salisbury before his Government did so?

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: Again, I think the member is mistaken, because I have here—

Hon Dr Nick Smith: No he’s not. He’s exactly right.

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: No, Nick. The member, your colleague, is mistaken, and shouting out every day—

SPEAKER: Order! Order! It’s Dr Smith.

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: Well, he might be a doctor to you, but he’s a doctor that makes people sick.

SPEAKER: No, no, no, no. Be seated—be seated. Now, the Deputy Prime Minister knows that that’s disorderly—both the comment and the reply to me. He will withdraw and apologise.

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: I withdraw and apologise, sir, but there are some doctors that make you well, and some make you sick.

SPEAKER: Order! The Deputy Prime Minister will withdraw—

Hon Gerry Brownlee: We’ll take five.

SPEAKER: I was just about to award some bonus questions to the member’s side, and he just lost them. The Deputy Prime Minister with withdraw and apologise unreservedly.

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: I unreservedly withdraw and apologise.

SPEAKER: Order! Order! The member will resume his seat. The member has one last chance to withdraw in the appropriate form.

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: I withdraw and apologise.

SPEAKER: Thank you.

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: May I answer the question?

SPEAKER: Yes.

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: Thank you very much; I am indebted to you. The member’s mistaken because on this date—on 7 September—the British High Commissioner, Laura Clarke, was saying this in a tweet: “welcome New Zealand’s clear and unequivocal support for conclusions of UK investigation and condemnation of Russia’s use of chemical weapons.” It’s all there.

Hon Todd McClay: Does he realise that since becoming foreign Minister, he’s not once criticised Russia in the House before today for anything, and why is that?

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: Sadly, the member’s getting more mistaken as the questions proceed—13 March: the foreign Minister’s office has a mention of Russia in that press statement, then—

Hon Todd McClay: You had to change that press statement.

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: No, no, no, no—16 March: the Prime Minister’s and Deputy Prime Minister’s joint statement also mentioned Russia. Now, 22 March—again, mention of Russia three times. Then, on 29 March, the whole press statement was a criticism of what had gone on, and 29 March, again, the Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister again mentioned Russia. And then, on the 6th, we put out the other statement, which got the grateful acknowledgment from the British High Commissioner.

Hon Todd McClay: Does he now accept that the Russian Government was responsible for the downing of Flight MH370, the hacking of emails from the US Democratic Party, interference with the 2016 US presidential elections, the poisoning of people on British soil, and the funding of anti-establishment movements and some political parties around the world, and will he condemn them for these actions?

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: I can answer the question—

SPEAKER: No, no, the member can’t answer the question.

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: Well, some of them, I can. One of them, I can.

SPEAKER: No, it very clearly does not flow from the original question. There’s a whole list of other events unrelated to the primary question.

Hon Todd McClay: Point of order.

SPEAKER: Does the member want to have another go?

Hon Todd McClay: No. I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. Thank you, Mr Speaker. You’re right that the primary question was very clear. The Minister, since then, has spoken to a number of statements he believes the Government has made—that he is part of—that actually come to all of these issues. I believe it is within—

SPEAKER: Can I seek an assurance from the Deputy Prime Minister that the statements that he was referring to do not relate, or not all of them relate, to the Salisbury attack.

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: Sir, the statements that were in the question are pretty wide. Some of them would be within the ambit of a New Zealand foreign Minister and some are clearly not. For example—

SPEAKER: Sorry, I just want clarification that the Minister of Foreign Affairs ran through a list of statements that he had issued, some of them with the Prime Minister. Were those related to the Salisbury matter or other matters?

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: Sir, I believe they were related to Salisbury.

Hon Gerry Brownlee: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. Perhaps we could have those papers tabled, because it’s quite clear that some of those matters referred to occurred before Salisbury.

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: Speaking to the point of order, these have been in the public domain since they were released on the very day.

Hon Gerry Brownlee: Well, put them on the Table.

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: No, get off your backside and go to them yourself.

SPEAKER: Right. Does the member have another supplementary? Question No. 8, Angie Warren-Clark.

Angie Warren-Clark: Tēnā koe e Te Mana Whakawā. Kei te Minita o ngā take Energy and Resources: What recent announcements has she made with the review of electricity prices in New Zealand?

Hon Gerry Brownlee: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker—sorry. It was a legitimate request before that the Minister referring to papers that he held in the House table those papers. For him to tell us to go and look in the public domain—that’s not reasonable.

SPEAKER: Well, I—

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: Speaking to the point of order—

SPEAKER: No, I’m going to make it absolutely clear. They’re press statements. They are in the public domain, and I am not going to put leave—as my predecessors have not put leave—for matters which have clearly already been in the public domain.

Hon Gerry Brownlee: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. The Minister has claimed—and you have accepted—that they only relate to Salisbury. But we have a recollection of the list that he gave, some of which refer to matters that occurred before the Salisbury poisoning. So it’s not unreasonable that we ask the Minister to table the documents that he was relying on that ultimately led to his not being required to answer a perfectly legitimate question that we would see in the context of his answer using those papers.

SPEAKER: And—

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: Speaking to the point of order. The complaint is that the press statements refer to matters before Salisbury. I’m afraid, sir, they do not. I recited as my first evidence a press statement from 30 March. That was as a response to Salisbury, and the member’s misleading the House in other respects.

Hon Gerry Brownlee: That admission, sir, surely brings the question that the Hon Todd McClay asked into the ambit of this afternoon’s proceedings.

SPEAKER: No, I think it’s quite the opposite.

Energy Market—Electricity Pricing Review Report

8. ANGIE WARREN-CLARK (Labour) to the Minister of Energy and Resources: What recent announcements has she made about the review of electricity prices in New Zealand?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS (Minister of Energy and Resources): Tēnā koe e Te Mana Whakawā. Today, I was pleased to release a report following the conclusion of stage one of the electricity price review. The review formed part of the coalition agreement with New Zealand First and was initiated because we’re well aware that for many New Zealanders, power bills are becoming unmanageable. The report is a clear demonstration that many New Zealanders aren’t getting the benefits from the retail market, and it appears a two-tier structure is emerging. The report also highlights the major changes that are facing the sector in coming years and the need for the Government to be planning ahead. The report has been deliberately written to be accessible to a wide audience to ensure everyone can have a say, and I encourage people to do so.

Angie Warren-Clark: What steps has this Government already taken to help vulnerable people with high power prices?

SPEAKER: No, that does not relate to the review.

Angie Warren-Clark: How does the Government intend to respond to the report?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: Obviously, we’re keeping an open mind about changes that may be needed until we receive the final report. Once that comes in, we’d expect to consider those recommendations and make changes that we believe appropriate. We’re committed to affordable power for Kiwi families. The report is just one part of the Government’s aim to help address the high cost of living for many New Zealanders.

Justice, Minister—Cost of Criminal Justice Summit

9. Hon MARK MITCHELL (National—Rodney) to the Minister of Justice: Does he still defend the cost of the coalition Government’s two-day Criminal Justice Summit of $1.5 million?

Hon ANDREW LITTLE (Minister of Justice): Tēnā koe e Te Mana Whakawā o Te Whare. While the costs seem somewhat excessive, I can say that the summit, which was held over three days, was an important first step to fixing our criminal justice system to ensure that we have less offending, less reoffending, and fewer victims of crime, and, thereby, safer communities. What stuns me is that the members opposite were quite happy to preside over an increase in locking up prisoners, to the tune of $500 million a year and more, and didn’t bat an eyelid.

Hon Mark Mitchell: Does he support the Prime Minister’s opinion that the cost of the justice summit is indefensible?

Hon ANDREW LITTLE: I agree with the Prime Minister that the costs are excessive and that departments should stick to their budgets.

Hon Mark Mitchell: Does he think a budget of $2,500 per participant represents value for the taxpayer, and what lessons will he take from this exercise as he starts planning more summits?

Hon ANDREW LITTLE: I’m very glad that the members opposite are now concerned about the cost of our corrections system, given the massive increase in it during their time in Government. But for the cost of locking up 15 prisoners a year, to try to reduce the number by over 3,000 you’ve got to start somewhere, and you’ve got to start with getting the ideas out and engaging with people who have a contribution to make, and that’s what the summit achieved.

Hon Mark Mitchell: What does he think is a better use of taxpayers’ money: funding croissants and luxury pies or supporting victims and their families through the Integrated Safety Response pilot his Government refuses to fund?

Hon ANDREW LITTLE: I think what would’ve been a better use of money—if that member and his three colleagues who attended for less than one hour on one of the days—[Interruption] Should’ve been there for the whole lot. But I actually think it’s a waste of money to be locking up thousands more people and seeing our reoffending rate at the same level that it was 20 years ago because those members opposite were happy to lock people up and ask no questions about what was the cause behind it.

Māori Language / Te Reo—Maihi Karauna Strategy

10. TAMATI COFFEY (Labour—Waiariki) to the Minister for Māori Development: He aha te kokenga whakamua kua taea e pā ana ki Te Maihi Karauna?

[What progress has been made on the Maihi Karauna?]

Hon WILLIE JACKSON (Associate Minister for Māori Development) on behalf of the Minister for Māori Development: I whakarewa mātou i te tuhinga hukihuki o Te Maihi Karauna hei whakawhitinga kōrero mā te marea i a Rāmere, te 3 o Here-turi-kōkā. E koa ana au ki te purunga atu, ka whai wāhi ngā tangata o Aotearoa ki roto i ngā matapakinga marea, ka mutu, he huhua tonu ngā urupare whai whakaaro ki ngā āhuatanga o te rautaki e pai nei rātau, ā, me te āhua hoki o te whakapakari ake i te rautaki. Ā, ko tōku tūmanako, ka kite ōku hoa i ngā taha e rua o Te Whare Pāremata i, ngā ango kua tuwhera mai, i runga i te huarahi e mahitahi ai, patui ai Te Karauna me Te Māori i roto i te whakarauoratanga o Te Reo Māori. Ā, nō reira, ko taku tūmanako anō hoki, mō tātau katoa ki te whakatenatena tāngata ki ki roto i tēnei matapakinga.

[We launched the draft copy of the Crown’s Maihi Karauna Strategy for discussion by the public on Friday, 3 August. I am thrilled with the insertion that individuals of New Zealand will have a chance to participate in the public discussion, and furthermore, there are quite a number of thoughtful responses to aspects of the strategy that they like, and also to the manner of strengthening the strategy. And so I’m hopeful my colleagues on both sides of Parliament will see that gaps have opened up on that pathway where the Crown and Māoridom will work together arm in arm in the revival of the Māori language. And so my desire as well for all of us is to encourage the people towards this discussion.]

Tamati Coffey: He pātai i tua atu anō mō Te Minita: he aha tātau e mahi pēnei ai i nāianei?

[A further question for the Minister once again: why are we being like this now?]

Hon WILLIE JACKSON: E kite ana tātau i te kaha tautokohia o Te Reo Māori roto i ō tātau hapori, engari, kāre anō he ingoa kē kia kitea i te wā nei. He take nui kia eke kotahi mai ai tātau ki runga i tēnei waka, me te kore hīkaka mō te pai rawa o Te Reo Māori i te mea, no tātau ake Te Reo nei, otira, he taonga, ā, kua hīrautia hokitia ki roto i Te Tiriti o Waitangi.

[We are seeing how robust the support of the Māori language is in our communities but haven’t yet seen any names. It is a matter of significance that we come aboard this vessel as one and not being overzealous about the Māori language being worthwhile, as this language of ours is indeed one of our official ones, and it is a treasure indeed that has been well and truly embroiled in the Treaty of Waitangi.]

Tamati Coffey: Pātai whakamutunga: ā, ka pēhea tātau e mōhio ai e whai hua ana Te Rautaki o Te Maihi Karauna?

[Final question: and how will we know that the Crown’s Maihi Karauna Strategy is beneficial?]

Hon WILLIE JACKSON: Ā, nō reira, mō ngā whakatakotoranga mātāmua kua oti te whakatakotō ki roto i te tuhinga āwiki a Te Maihi Karauna, kei ā mātau te raraunga, hei whakamahuki i a tātau ki tētahi o ōku haepapa kei ahau i tēnei rā. Ka whakatauria he rautaki o Te Maihi Karauna i te marama o Whiringa-ā-rangi i tēnei tau i muri i te whakawhitinga kōrero me Te Māori. Ka haere ngātahi tēnei i te taha o tetahi pīhi mahere hei whakatinana, ā, kei roto rā ngā tikanga hei aroturuki, hei arotake hoki. Mā te pēnei e taea ai e tātau te whai ake me te pana whakamua atu whai muri ake.

[And so in regards to the primary proposals set out in the weekly document of the Crown’s Maihi Karauna Strategy, we have the data that will enlighten us about one of my responsibilities that I have today. A strategy of the Crown’s Maihi Karauna strategy will be determined in the month of November this year following discussions with Māoridom. This will go in unison with a bit of a plan to implement which will have protocols in it to be monitored and reviewed also. By doing it this way will enable us to follow it up and push it forward afterwards.]

Employment—Statements and Commitments

11. Hon PAULA BENNETT (Deputy Leader—National) to the Minister of Employment: Does he stand by the Government’s statements and commitments with regard to employment?

Hon WILLIE JACKSON (Minister of Employment): Yes—in the context, of course, in which they were made.

Hon Paula Bennett: Does his Government remain committed to abolishing starting-out rates, as previously stated, or has he done another deal with a coalition partner?

Hon WILLIE JACKSON: Mr Speaker—

SPEAKER: Order! I just want to make sure that this is an area that the Minister is responsible for.

Hon WILLIE JACKSON: No, I have no ministerial responsibility for youth rates. The member will need to direct that question to the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety.

Hon Paula Bennett: As he stated on Q+A that there’s “huge investment in terms of the regions” and “there is going to be more employment—there has to be”, was he referring to projects like the Kawakawa tourism hub, which is predicted to cost $2.4 million and produce just three jobs?

Hon WILLIE JACKSON: No.

Hon Paula Bennett: When he said on Q+A in relation to abolishing starting-out rates that they would no longer be abolished and that that was simply a campaign and not something that this Government stood by, had he seen the press release by Iain Lees-Galloway in December which clearly stated it was a Government intention?

Hon WILLIE JACKSON: I can’t remember that press release.

Jo Luxton: What other Government commitments does he stand by?

Hon WILLIE JACKSON: I stand by this Government’s commitment to our rangatahi, our young people, and I stand by that commitment to reduce the constant deficit between the unemployment rate of the general population and that experienced by Māori and Pasifika communities. I think it’s an outrage when you look at the average wages of Pākehā, Māori, and Pasifika. For European it’s $69,056, for Māori it’s $54,000.80, and for Pasifika it’s $48,256—

SPEAKER: Order! The member’s answered the question and might be answering questions to other Ministers.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Is he conflicted by the fact that you’ve got Northland MPs from all parties backing the Kawakawa project to the hilt, yet the front bench of the National Party’s opposing it? And which one would he prefer?

SPEAKER: Order! None of that is the member’s responsibility.

Greater Christchurch Regeneration—Expectations and Intent

12. Hon NICKY WAGNER (National) to the Minister for Greater Christchurch Regeneration: Does she stand by all her statements and actions?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS (Minister for Greater Christchurch Regeneration): Tēnā koe e Te Mana Whakawā. Yes.

Hon Nicky Wagner: Why has she not provided new letters of expectations to Ōtākaro and Southern Response after 10 months in office, when according to the Statutory Crown Entities: A Guide for Ministers this is the first step in setting strategic direction and the annual performance of Crown entities?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: Given that we have changed expectations from the previous Government for both entities—i.e., finally delivering anchor projects on time and on budget and a speedier claim settlement—we took a pragmatic view that there was nothing to be gained by both agencies producing two statements. On 30 April, I wrote to both these agencies around the letter of intent. We are taking a pragmatic view in light of the exceptional circumstances, and I’ve received advice from Treasury that this is an acceptable course of action.

Hon Nicky Wagner: How does this fit with her commitment to seeing more momentum in the Christchurch rebuild and her statement that, “We can’t keep on doing the same thing and magically expect a different outcome”, when Ōtākaro and Southern Response are still working to the letters of expectation they received from the previous Minister, Gerry Brownlee?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: E Te Mana Whakawā, this fits very neatly with my statements around how we’re not prepared to keep doing the same thing and magically expect a different outcome, because we have a very different set of expectations for those agencies in Christchurch. We are not content to be a Government that did not deliver a single anchor project on time or on budget. So that is how those statements gel together.

Hon Nicky Wagner: Can she confirm that when she became a Minister she said, “We need to show the people of Canterbury that there’s been a change of Government.”, and, if so—when her key organisations are still working to these expectations of the former National Government?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: What I would like to point out to that member is that we’ve made it very clear to those organisations that there are a changed set of expectations, and I have met with them on several occasions to do so. In fact, I’m the first Minister to have ever attended an annual general meeting of Southern Response. We have made it abundantly clear that through preventing the cost blowout at Metro Sports Facility and finally getting the project back on track, we’ve got on with stumping up the funds, finally, for a stadium in Christchurch and initiating the business case. We’ve got under way with construction on the convention centre, and we have identified alternative claims resolution services at Southern Response that is finally seeing some momentum around Canterbury people getting their insurance claims settled and getting on with their lives—something that member failed to do as a Minister.

Hon Nicky Wagner: So when will the Minister produce a letter of expectation to guide both Ōtākaro and Southern Response?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: Imminently.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Please, Minister, can you confirm that no longer for Christchurch will it be “Billy Bunter Lazy Street”?

SPEAKER: Order! Well, the Minister’s certainly not going to answer the question.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Oh, she wants to.

SPEAKER: And the Deputy Prime Minister’s trying my patience.

Hon Gerry Brownlee: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. It is all very well for you to say that your patience is tried, but the fact is that there was a terrible insult just laid at the feet of Megan Woods, and I think you should do something about that.

SPEAKER: We come to questions for members.

Questions to Members

Education and Workforce Committee—Quorum at Meetings

1. Hon NIKKI KAYE (National—Auckland Central) to the Chairperson of the Education and Workforce Committee: What will she do if the committee does not have a quorum for its meeting this Wednesday for hearings in Auckland?

Dr PARMJEET PARMAR (National) Chairperson of the Education and Workforce Committee: I’m really concerned that there may not be a quorum for this meeting—

SPEAKER: Order! It’s a very direct question. The member will answer it.

Dr PARMJEET PARMAR: The fact that two education bills have been put on the Order Paper for this Wednesday means—

SPEAKER: Order! The member will answer the question.

Dr PARMJEET PARMAR: It will be embarrassing for the whole parliamentary and—

SPEAKER: Order! Question No. 2.

Education and Workforce Committee—Meetings

2. Hon NIKKI KAYE (National—Auckland Central) to the Chairperson of the Education and Workforce Committee: Did she call a committee meeting in Auckland on Wednesday this week?

Dr PARMJEET PARMAR (National) Chairperson of the Education and Workforce Committee: The request for leave to meet in Auckland—

SPEAKER: Order! The member will answer the question—directly.

Dr PARMJEET PARMAR: Yes, I did. The request to—

SPEAKER: Order! The member will resume her seat.

Hon Nikki Kaye: I seek leave for Government orders of the day Nos 3 and 4 to be moved to the bottom of the Order Paper.

SPEAKER: Is there any objection to that? There is.

Hon Iain Lees-Galloway: Mr Speaker—

SPEAKER: No, it’s my turn.

Urgent Debates Declined

Hon Clare Curran—Ministerial Resignation

SPEAKER: I have received a letter from the Hon Simon Bridges seeking to debate, under Standing Order 389, the resignation of the Hon Clare Curran as Minister. This is a case of recent occurrence and it does involve ministerial responsibility. Last week, the House debated Ms Curran’s removal from Cabinet. I allowed that debate because a Minister had been removed from Cabinet for conduct involving questions from this House, and because of the public interest in ministerial probity. Ms Curran announced her resignation on Friday. Given that the substantive issues have recently been debated, I’m not convinced of the need to set aside the business of the House to debate this matter again today. It could be raised again in the general debate tomorrow, and I do not think that waiting an additional day to address it is likely to diminish the nature of the debate. Therefore, the application is declined.

Hon GERRY BROWNLEE (National—Ilam): I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. Do we take it from your ruling that, in fact, the resignation of a Minister is of less interest to the House, and consequently the public, than the simple reassignment of a Minister by the Prime Minister?

SPEAKER: No, I think all one takes into account is that the issues had been debated in the House, and between Tuesday and when I received the letter, there was not enough that occurred for a further debate.

Sittings of the House

Sittings of the House

Hon IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY (Deputy Leader of the House): I move, That the sitting of the House today be extended into tomorrow morning for further consideration in committee of the Education (Teaching Council of Aotearoa New Zealand) Amendment Bill, the second reading of the Education Amendment Bill, the second reading of the State Sector and Crown Entities Reform Bill, the interrupted first reading of the Conservation (Indigenous Freshwater Fish) Amendment Bill, and the first reading of the Building Amendment Bill.

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

Ayes 63

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

Noes 57

New Zealand National 56; ACT New Zealand 1.

Motion agreed to.

Bills

America’s Cup Road Stopping Bill

Second Reading

Hon DAVID PARKER (Minister for Economic Development): I move, That the America’s Cup Road Stopping Bill be now read a second time.

The purpose of the bill is to support the construction of the facilities for the 36th America’s Cup in Auckland by permanently stopping a portion of Brigham Street on Wynyard Point. Hosting the America’s Cup has the potential to bring economic, social, and other benefits to New Zealand. The economic benefits obviously include the people coming to visit and the other participating teams coming and spending money in the country. They also include technology development as New Zealand stays at the forefront of these yachting technologies. Benefits to Auckland include the revitalising of Auckland waterfront, and benefits to wider New Zealand include not just the wider economic benefits of, perhaps, some increased tourism but also celebration of the world-leading success of the America’s Cup team, led by Grant Dalton.

Stopping a portion of Brigham Street enables the construction and operation of syndicate bases on Wynyard Point so that the yachts can be launched from that point into the adjacent harbour during the America’s Cup. This has reduced by 16,000 square metres the reclamation into the harbour that would otherwise have occurred, which is the equivalent of forty 400 square metre sections. It was also cheaper than other options.

From the point of view of the Prime Minister, Mayor Goff, and myself as Minister for the Environment, we were keen to minimise further reclamations into the harbour. It’s interesting, when one reflects on the history of that area, that the harbour used to extend, at that point, all of the way back across Victoria Park to Victoria Street. That’s a lot of land that’s been reclaimed through the years, and early proposals here—given that the land that had previously been reclaimed has been built upon—were to reclaim more land. The Government was of the view that that was not a desirable outcome and that we have to stop reclamation sometime, and so we explored other options, including clearing off some of the tank farms on Wynyard Point. That’s what’s going to happen, but in order for that former land of the tank farms and some adjacent car parking areas to be used for America’s Cup spaces, in practice, a portion of Brigham Street adjacent to it has to be stopped. This doesn’t restrict public access to the rest of Wynyard Point, because there is another road line that services that and links up, also, with the portion of Brigham Street that is not being closed.

The legislation is being pursued because the normal road-stopping processes under the Local Government Act 1974 and the Public Works Act 1981 wouldn’t have been able to have been implemented in the required time frame needed to enable the construction of the bases. The bill has been considered by the Environment Committee, which received three submissions on the bill. All three were supportive of the bill, as well as making some suggestions for amendments to the bill. The three changes made to the bill at select committee are, first, to disapply section 40 of the Public Works Act to the road that is stopped, or to that portion of the road that is stopped, for so long as Auckland Council owns the land. Under usual road-stopping processes outside of this bill, under the Public Works Act, section 40 would be disapplied in this way for the territorial authority. Therefore, disapplying section 40, on this occasion, aligns the bill more closely with usual road-stopping processes and outcomes.

The second change is to clarify that the 36th America’s Cup is a public work for the purposes of the bill. This is to ensure that section 40 of the Public Works Act, which relates to offer-back of land, is not triggered by the use of the stopped road for the America’s Cup. The third change is to insert a traditional clause to clarify that relevant clauses will continue to apply after the bill itself self-repeals after 12 months. That means that the bill doesn’t clutter up the statute book in the future but the effect of the bill continues. These changes will ensure the bill is effective in its purpose of stopping the road, to allow construction for the America’s Cup to begin. It also enables the greater Wynyard - Hobson location to be achieved, and, of course, that was a negotiated outcome of negotiations between central and local government, as well as Emirates Team New Zealand.

I believe that the location is one that all New Zealanders will be able to be proud of. It is a lower cost than others and, as I’ve said, it has a smaller intrusion into the harbour and sees clearing off of the tank farm that occupies part of the site at the moment. There are also provisions that are being sought by the Crown that enable the continued open nature of this site, so that a future America’s Cup or some other equivalent event in the future can be held on that open site and that we don’t have to go through this palaver again to create open space on the Auckland waterfront for these sorts of events.

It is a narrow bill with limited impacts. It will ensure that this portion of Brigham Street can be stopped in a timely manner. Can I thank everyone who submitted on the bill, the select committee, and other parties in this Parliament for their consideration of the bill, and express my thanks to them for their cooperation and confidence that the construction will, thereafter, be able to get under way. They’re in the middle of consent processes at the moment, in the Environment Court, and I’m not prejudging them, but as soon as they are completed—assuming they get their consent—this will mean that they’re not delayed further by Public Works Act complications.

Hon GERRY BROWNLEE (National—Ilam): The National Party is supporting this bill, and, indeed, has agreed to its facilitation through to the third reading this afternoon. Let’s just, for a moment, set aside all of the proposals that might have been around the provision of the infrastructure around Wynyard Point that might have facilitated some better outcomes for those who are participating in the event itself but also left a great legacy for the city of Auckland, which clearly does take a lot of its identity from these sorts of events. Indeed it’s named the City of Sails.

This is a pragmatic way of going about getting some degree of certainty about the ability to construct on time. That will be very, very comforting to the organisers of this event who put a lot at stake. It shouldn’t be, at a time like this, inappropriate to recognise the value that that engagement has had for New Zealand over a large number of years and will continue to have beyond the event itself in 2020. It is one that has certainly put New Zealand’s technology right to the fore in a range of different parts of industrial activity. It’s simply not confined to what might make a race boat go faster, but, in fact, allows the sort of innovation that is contributing to that speed to be applied in other parts of the economy. For New Zealand, the benefits of that are quite large and, in fact, very tangible.

The other point, of course, is that New Zealand is a country now that is very, very dependent upon its tourism industry, and it’s events like this that allow so many other parts of the world to see what’s on offer here and for people to consider just what they might be able to experience should they choose to come this far south to the bottom of the Pacific.

So it is a proper way to go about getting some haste in the build process. As the Minister has said, there was a select committee process that allowed public input into this bill. That input was all favourable, and the committee itself made some other changes that were outlined by the Minister that will make the bill more effective. The idea that the power used under the bill will endure beyond the life of the legislation itself is also, I think, a smart way to go about providing an opportunity for the construction to proceed. We support that—I hope the whole House will—and would express a view that there would seem to be not a huge need for any extensive debate on this this afternoon.

Hon EUGENIE SAGE (Green): E Te Māngai o Te Whare, tēnā koe. Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. The Green Party is very pleased to support the America’s Cup Road Stopping Bill. Like the previous speaker, the Hon Gerry Brownlee, I don’t think there is need for a lot of debate on this. There were only three submissions on it. It stops about 230 metres of Brigham Street and the bill was needed because the processes under the Local Government Act would have taken too long, wouldn’t have allowed construction to start in November, and if the processes under the Public Works Act to stop the road had been followed, that would have required an esplanade reserve to have been set off around the water margin. Of course that would have been really difficult in terms of providing for public access, given the construction machinery and the cranes which would be working in the area.

So we know Wynyard Point and the tank farms there. This bill and the work that it will enable on the construction of the bases for the America’s Cup in 2021 will then enable a much more attractive public amenity area and recreational space to be developed. We’ve seen with the Viaduct Basin and the work that has been done there for the previous America’s Cup challenge how the public really value and enjoy that area. So this was a bill that was needed because the processes under existing legislation didn’t deliver. I understand that construction will start in November, which is why it is really useful that the House debates both stages today.

I commend the Minister for Economic Development, the Hon David Parker, and the negotiations that he had with Auckland Council and Emirates Team New Zealand, and the way in which that resulted in a much smaller footprint of some 6,600 square metres instead of what originally I think was over 20,000 square metres intruding into the harbour. That means there is less visual interruption. It means that more of the public sea space is still available for recreational and other use, and this stopping of the road can proceed expeditiously so that construction can start so that Auckland is in a position in 2020 to start hosting the preliminaries to the America’s Cup in 2021.

Like other members of the House, I was intrigued by the foiling in the previous America’s Cup and look forward to seeing the monohulls and the way in which yachts can suddenly fly. Tēnā koe, Madam Deputy Speaker. Thank you.

CLAYTON MITCHELL (NZ First): Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I rise on behalf of New Zealand First—

Hon Gerry Brownlee: Briefly.

CLAYTON MITCHELL: —ha, ha, as long as I feel necessary, to speak on this very important but well-supported bill around the House. We’d also like to take the time to acknowledge the work that’s expedited this bill through the House and the support that continues to go on. The America’s Cup has become quite a feature in New Zealand internationally and it’s put New Zealand on the map in many respects, certainly for those yachting enthusiasts and it has actually helped shape the current design and layout of Auckland as we see it now.

In fact, in 1995 when we won the America’s Cup then right through to 2000 when we started the second round racing in the Hauraki Gulf, we had the viaduct set up and bars and restaurants were created for it. That has obviously expanded. A huge amount of construction’s gone in, and hotels, accommodation to look after these visitors and guests bringing hundreds of millions of dollars into our economy. And here we are again talking about the growth and expansion and opportunity that is before us but trying to think about practical outcomes to least affect people of Auckland and the city of Auckland and enable it to get on with its life as well as providing a haven and location for a world-class event such as the 36th America’s Cup.

Look, I’ve got a diagram here of the very small stretch of area on the waterfront, and the cameras can see that for the people back home that aren’t 100 percent sure where Brigham Street is—through there. But it is a third of a rugby field in size. When people talk in hundreds or thousands of square metres, you can get a better perspective in a long, narrow—one-third the length of the size of a rugby field puts that into perspective. New Zealand First sees this as important and to be expedited speedily through the House. They want to start construction on this in November this year, which is fast coming up, and of course the America’s Cup will be happening in 2021, where we hope to retain that America’s Cup and hear those famous words again. It is still the America’s Cup as we remember all those years ago.

I’m not going to go into any great detail. I had some other notes of the history of the America’s Cup, but I think, with tongue in cheek, people back home are just pleased that we’re getting on with our job. I’m sure the gallery is filled with media that will be writing front page reports on this collegial approach to politics. Of course they won’t, because we all agree and it’s great to see some collegiality from time to time in this House where we can hold hands in “Kumbaya”, and get on with the show. Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. We commend this bill to the House.

Hon KRIS FAAFOI (Minister of Broadcasting, Communications and Digital Media): As a member of the Environment Committee who took some time to scrutinise this bill, can I say it has been a pleasure to be part of the process. Can I acknowledge David Parker, who has shepherded this piece of legislation through the House. Can I thank members opposite for their cooperation. As Minister Sage mentioned, there is a time line and some time frames in which this piece of legislation has to happen in order for the work to stop the road and for the construction of the America’s Cup team bases to begin, in order for the cup to take place on time. So can I thank the Opposition and Mr Brownlee for his assistance in that today by allowing the second reading, the committee of the whole House, and the third reading stages to happen with some speed.

If people are wondering why we’re even doing this—when Peter Burling crossed the line to make sure we won the America’s Cup, some questions started about how we were going to host it. Critically, when we defended the America’s Cup previously, a lot of that infrastructure that was in place has now been taken over by other commercial interests. So there was a need to find a new home for the America’s Cup bases, and this piece of legislation will allow for those team bases to happen on Brigham Street, on a part of the Auckland waterfront.

So, on that note, can I thank Mr Brownlee for his assistance again to make sure that this happens in a speedy way, because this will make sure that the defence at the 36th America’s Cup regatta can get under way and we can do a good job of it. Thank you, Mr Brownlee.

MICHAEL WOOD (Labour—Mt Roskill): Can I say tēnā koe initially and, also in honour of Hindi Language Week this week, namaskar. I just want to take a brief call on this bill. I’m primarily a land-based member. The contents of my stomach don’t tend to stay in their appointed place if I get too near to the open seas, and my primary sporting objective over the summer season is to watch as much test cricket as possible. But none the less I’m keen to see that this bill proceeds and that it enables us to get on with the construction of the America’s Cup bases for two quite important reasons.

The first is that we know that this event is a significant economic stimulus, both to the Auckland region and the New Zealand economy more broadly, injecting around about one billion dollars over three years—that’s the estimate. The second and—to my mind, more important thing as a proud and patriotic citizen of Tāmaki-makau-rau—is that this is a spur for a significant legacy investment in Auckland’s downtown area. We already see that from previous America’s Cup campaigns, where the Wynyard Quarter and Viaduct Basin areas were significantly enlivened by that investment. By getting an appropriate investment into Wynyard Point, which will initially be set up to host the America’s Cup bases but afterwards will revert to a range of uses, including significant public open space, we can have an outstanding urban regeneration outcome stemming out of this America’s Cup hosting.

But it’s very important, before we get to that point, that we do have this road-stopping bill, which enables the whole development to proceed. In a previous life in local government, I’ve dealt with a matter of road stopping with a very inconsequential small road that went through a local cemetery in my part of the world. I can tell all members of the House, if you go through the normal local government processes, it is an extraordinarily complex and time-consuming process. So bringing it with some urgency to the House to get a resolution is absolutely the appropriate thing to do to enable construction to start next month and get on with this very important project. I once again commend the bill to the House. Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker.

Bill read a second time.

Third Reading

Hon AUPITO WILLIAM SIO (Minister for Pacific Peoples) on behalf of the Minister for Economic Development: I move, That the America’s Cup Road Stopping Bill be now read a third time.

Bill read a third time.

Bills

Family and Whānau Violence Legislation Bill

Second Reading

Hon MARK MITCHELL (National—Rodney): I’m very happy to take a call on this, the Family and Whānau Violence Legislation Bill. I note that—

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! Someone does actually have to move a second reading, normally from the Government.

Hon Gerry Brownlee: I raise a point of order, Madam Speaker. I seek leave for the House to progress to the next item on the Order Paper while arrangements are made for that motion to be moved.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Well, you can seek leave, of course.

Hon Gerry Brownlee: I sought leave.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Yeah, that’s right. You sought leave. I’m putting the leave. Is—sorry, the leave is denied.

Hon AUPITO WILLIAM SIO (Associate Minister of Justice) on behalf of the Minister of Justice: I move, That the Family and Whānau Violence Legislation Bill be now read a second time.

I’ve not been part of the discussion on this particular bill, but for me and for this Government, when we’re talking about the Family—

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

Hon AUPITO WILLIAM SIO: —and Whānau Violence Legislation Bill—

DEPUTY SPEAKER: I’m sorry to interrupt the member.

Hon Gerry Brownlee: Madam Deputy Speaker, this seems a little bit on the messy side. I wonder if you might explain to people who could be looking on, who might want to understand, just what has transpired here. You called the Hon Mark Mitchell after a period of silence from the Government. He began his speech, at which point you interrupted him and made it clear that the process was that there should be a Government Minister moving the second reading. Now, that has occurred, but does it naturally follow, on a second reading, that a Government Minister then has a speech? It’s normally the chair of the select committee that has the speech at that point.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Unfortunately, Mr Brownlee, in order to have something debated on the floor, there does actually need to be a motion. So we did actually have to call on the Government to move the motion, and only a Minister can move that motion. So I do regret having to interrupt the Hon Mark Mitchell, but we did need a motion for him to debate. His turn will certainly come.

Hon Gerry Brownlee: Madam Speaker—

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Speaking further to the point of order?

Hon Gerry Brownlee: Yeah, I’m just wanting to be clear myself, because I’m still learning about parliamentary process. It would appear then that the motion was not initially put after that period of silence because the Government didn’t know what it was doing.

Kiritapu Allan: Speaking to the point of order—

DEPUTY SPEAKER: I don’t need any further discussion on this. We now have a motion on the floor. The Hon Aupito William Sio is speaking to the bill at the second reading.

Hon AUPITO WILLIAM SIO: Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, and I’m happy to make a contribution with regard to the Family and Whānau Violence Legislation Bill. This bill is about the Government position on preventing and eliminating family violence, and is one of the greatest opportunities to improve New Zealanders’ well-being. I’m going to allow my other colleagues to tackle the specific parts of the bill.

Yesterday, I had the opportunity to speak at a Faith2Move mountain conference. The first time it was held, it was organised by Affirming Works. At this conference, the Pacific communities had brought together a number of church ministers to look at what the Pacific community does about eliminating family violence, and, in particular, looking at how we go about eliminating sexual violence. It is the feeling and the belief of all New Zealanders that until we eliminate family violence, eliminate sexual violence in our families and in our communities, we are not going to be in a position to realise the fullest potential of this country of ours, and, in particular, provide opportunities for the next generation to achieve greater well-being than they have ever had.

One of the issues that I’ve been determined to raise with Pacific peoples, and that has been raised from time to time in my ongoing engagement with Pacific peoples throughout New Zealand’s regions, is that this is an area that many are afraid to talk about openly, because often it involves family members. Often both the offender and the victim are members of our family. For far too long—and this is the voice, certainly, that is coming from our young people, who often find themselves in situations where they are disassociated from families and their communities. We have one of the highest suicide rates. That is nothing to brag about, but they’re just hard truths that this bill attempts to address.

We often find ourselves, as members of the Pacific community, feeling that we disassociate ourselves when we’re talking about family violence and sexual abuse in the family because of the shame that comes upon us when we’re talking about family members. I’ve asked and will continue to ask Pacific communities throughout New Zealand, at all levels of our Pacific infrastructures and social structures, to provide the leadership that is necessary to enable the next generation of Pacific peoples in New Zealand to be able to achieve their fullest potential as contributors to New Zealand’s economy at all levels.

I have found that our Pacific communities have to move on from this space of feeling the whakamā, as would be the word in Māori, o le mā in Samoan, or, basically, just feeling a sense of shame to talk about these things. But until our communities confront these issues head on, until we recognise the harm that it causes our family members—our young people, in particular, and our mothers, our sisters, our aunts. Until we confront these head on, until we recognise the harm that it causes, we’re not in a position to be able to be receptive to the works that many, many organisations are involved with at the moment—namely, Affirming Works, Le Va, the work that Pasefika Proud are leading. These—

Hon Dr Nick Smith: I raise a point of order, Madam Speaker. We are debating the Family and Whānau Violence Legislation Bill in the second reading, after the Justice Committee has given this bill extensive consideration. The Minister has spoken for almost five minutes without any reference to the bill, or any reference to the select committee report on the bill, and is out of order.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Yes, I do understand the point of order, and I will say to the Minister speaking that the second reading is a really important part of the process, whereby the recommendations from the select committee, from the work that has been done in the select committee, are actually accepted by the House. Therefore, during his speech, he does have to make some reference to the select committee and the changes they have made, the recommendations they are making, in order for the second reading to then accept the work that the committee has done. So whilst he is making comments on the wider aspects of family violence, I do ask him, at this stage, if he would come to at least make reference to the work that the select committee has done, so that the House can then debate whether to accept those recommendations or not.

Hon AUPITO WILLIAM SIO: The point I was making in making the general reference is that in the Pacific communities this is a particular issue that is of concern to me. I have said, in the opportunities that I’ve had to speak directly with the Pacific community, that we need to take on board the thrust that this bill is now bringing forward.

So I make reference now to the specific amendments of this bill. The Supplementary Order Papers that will be introduced at the committee of the whole House ensure that victims have enough time and protection to seek support services they need, to better identify family violence offending, and to recognise the evolving status of society’s understanding of family violence—who it affects and how. The definition of family violence is being clarified and new offences introduced. A better recognition of the situation in which family violence can occur is also reflected in the Supplementary Order Papers—modernising the Domestic Violence Act by updating the structure and language.

While that is important, and while the work of the select committee is to be commended and, certainly, will guide the debate here and in the committee of the whole House, in terms of protection orders applied for by a child—and I make reference also to the programmes and the prescribed services and orders relating to property—many of the details of this bill will go over the head of many communities. I made reference specifically to the Pacific community because of my own responsibility in the portfolio that I hold. I see this as a matter that I called on Pacific communities for, that we have to be the authors of our own solution within the frameworks of this particular bill.

I don’t want to take too much time off the House, but, simply, I say that the statistics that this bill attempts to address speak for themselves. One in three Kiwi women experience physical or sexual violence from a partner in their lifetime. More than a quarter of our country’s children have witnessed family violence. Between 2009 and 2015, 194 New Zealanders were killed as a result of family violence. Whilst this bill provides some of the answers, ultimately the answers lie in our communities, because it will be our communities, our families, and our leaders at all levels who must pick up the mantle of what this bill produces and implement it.

I make reference also to the difficulty of some communities, particularly my own, where violence and sexual abuse in the families is a thing that is often kept in the dark because of the shame it brings. And, yes, we might feel confident in supporting everything that is in this bill and saying that this is going to be the solution, but I want to say to this House that this is only the start of the process. The real solution is when minds are changed. The real solution is when people recognise that there is a wrong being committed. The real solution is for all of us to do our part, not necessarily to rely on this House and the solutions that this House comes up with by legislation. But the real solutions lie when we’re able to change the mind-set of communities, that are often bound by cultural norms and will not allow them to see the darkness and the harm that are often caused. So, without further ado, I commend this bill to the House.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: I call the Hon Mark Mitchell, and you have the full 10 minutes.

Hon MARK MITCHELL (National—Rodney): Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. Just to put it on the record in this House, the reason why I took a call while this House was waiting for the Minister to arrive or for a Minister to move a motion is because we take the Family and Whānau Violence Legislation Bill extremely seriously.

I want to acknowledge the Hon Amy Adams, who has been the Minister leading this work, and I just want to point out the fact that had I not taken that call, this bill, right now, would not be getting debated in the House. The Minister himself—the Minister of Justice—did not see fit to get himself into this House to move a motion to allow us to debate this bill. So don’t sit on the other side of the House—they might find it funny; there’s someone over there laughing. It’s actually not that funny. If you want to be serious, if you want to take this issue seriously, then show that you’re serious about it.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: I am actually quite serious about it.

Kiritapu Allan: I raise a point of order, Madam Speaker. There’s a long convention in this House and as per the Standing Orders that we don’t make reference to members who are not within the Chamber, and—

DEPUTY SPEAKER: I’m sorry; I’m going to sit the member down, because, actually, in this case, this House was held up because the Minister was not available to move a motion that was on the Order Paper. So it is not about someone being absent; it’s about the Government not being able—[Kiritapu Allan stands] You’re not going to argue with me. It is not a Standing Order.

Hon MARK MITCHELL: Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. And that’s why I chose to stand and take a call on this: because, actually, I want to hear what the chairman of the Justice Committee, Raymond Huo, has got to say. I want to hear Greg O’Connor’s contribution—another member that has dedicated a large part of his adult life to dealing with family violence. I want to hear what Ginny Andersen has got to say—another member that has worked within the police system and has probably got a contribution to make and some comments to make around this bill. I want to hear what my colleagues have to say. I want to hear our police spokesperson, Chris Bishop, and his contribution on this bill, or the Hon Dr Nick Smith and what his thoughts are on it, because this is important.

We stood in this House, and we debated a bill that the honourable Jan Logie brought through in terms of domestic violence. I had to tolerate the fact that I was continually attacked and challenged around my own commitment to dealing with and trying to address the family violence issue—and it is a big issue in this country—when, actually, I’ve dedicated most of my own adult life to dealing with that.

It’s not some sound bite. It’s not something that we talk about just because it’s politically convenient. It’s actually something, fundamentally, that’s very deep and part of my own DNA. I’ve spent and dedicated most of my adult life into trying to improve people’s lives and trying to get on top of family violence. So I find it pretty deeply offensive that I’m having to take a call in this House when the Government should be moving the motion to try and keep this bill debated. So thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for allowing me to lay that out there so that people at home will actually understand exactly what did happen and what went on in this House. People can judge for themselves the actions of others.

This bill implements the decisions announced by the National Government in September 2016 aimed at breaking the pattern of family violence and reducing the harm and cost inflicted on those who suffer violence and the wider New Zealand society, including increasing access to risk and needs assessments and services and more accurately recording family violence. And I have to say that there’s been a very recent case that we’ve all probably been following, and that was the tragic case of the mother in a small township in the central North Island—her husband was convicted of it recently—where she was killed. She was left in the ute and was pushed off a boat ramp, and she sat there for almost 12 months.

One of the indicators that we know can clearly tell us whether a woman is in serious danger of maybe ending up as a homicide statistic is the fact the offender will often start to grab them around the throat and hold them around the neck. If you go back and if you have a look at the history in that case, you would have seen that, actually, he had started grabbing her around the neck and holding her around the throat.

So under this bill, that information has to be captured and has to be shared with the relevant agencies so that it’s a red flag and it becomes something that we can act on much quicker in terms of getting measures in place to provide the protection that she would have needed. Then, perhaps, we could have prevented a terrible and a tragic outcome for the family—and for her, obviously.

Some of the things that we have done, in terms of our term in Government—and I do congratulate the Government for bringing this bill to the House, although it was reported back by the select committee in August of last year, so it has been languishing on the Order Paper. I would have preferred to have seen it come into the House before the domestic violence in the workplace legislation, but it’s good to have it here now, and it’s good that we are debating it.

In 2016, National introduced a $132 million package of reforms which overhauled family violence laws and the way the system prevents and responds to family violence. In Budget 2017, we invested $37.2 million into targeting family violence services, including the Integrated Safety Response pilot, and I would make an appeal to the Minister—and I know that I put this to him today in the House—please, let’s see the funding switched on again for the Integrated Safety Response pilot, which we knew was working.

It also folded in the Gang Action Plan, and I see we have the Minister of Police in the House today. I know that he’s taken a very firm stand against the gangs and organised crime. One of the things that he could do is talk with his colleague the Minister of Justice and actually switch the funding back on for this programme. It was achieving results, it’s a good programme, it’s already been developed; keep using it.

In 2017, the investment fund for mental health saw an additional $4 million to pilot a culturally responsive therapy service for children aged five to 12 years that have experienced or been exposed to family or sexual violence. I think the one thing that we can all agree with in this House is that, very sadly, when we see family violence, often the perpetrators have been victims themselves. They have actually grown up in an environment where they’ve been the victim of serious violence, sexual assault, and psychological abuse, and I think we’re all committed in this House and in this Parliament to try and tackle those really tough social issues.

The only point that I would make, though, is that because you have suffered, because you have been a victim yourself—that doesn’t give you a licence to create more victims. It gives you a licence to seek help and seek support, and this is where the real investment is, what can really make a big difference in terms of Government’s investment: actually getting in much earlier in people’s lives and providing that support and that help, and maybe staying alongside of them for a lot longer, as well.

National took action across the board to better protect victims of family violence by a new 24/7 national sexual violence helpline to provide nationally accessible information and support to people affected in any way by sexual harm. We established the Ministerial Group on Family Violence and Sexual Violence. This was across 16 portfolios—so it reduces that risk of having people trying to operate across siloes—to oversee a work programme aiming to improve the current system and to deliver the best results for all those affected by sexual violence.

We significantly improved our investment in crisis support services for victims of sexual violence. The Ministry of Social Development and ACC have worked together to ensure service coverage across prevention crisis response, long-term care, and recovery.

We increased the penalty for breaching protection orders. This was really important. We identified that offenders were largely ignoring and breaching protection orders on a regular basis. So we looked at, number one—one thing that we did was we actually made it easier for a woman to get a protection order, which I think was really important, because we identified that a barrier was the complexity in the process that they had to go to to actually get a protection order put in place. So we made sure that it was easier for them to get a protection order in place. We also made sure that we increased the penalties so that the protection order was less likely to be breached.

We improved judges’ access to information in family violence cases by improving information-sharing regulations. This is really important because if you talk to judges, often one of their frustrations is they’ve only got bits and parts of information. They’ll often have to end up sending prosecutors or court staff away to try and gather and try and fill out, so the judges can get a holistic, whole picture of what’s going on in terms of that person’s life, and then they’re able to make much better and much more informed decisions. So this was actually a very, very good step and a very, very good measure that can make a genuine difference when a judge is trying to apply a protection order or a sentence, or is making sure that for the victims that are involved, their situation is properly considered.

So I’m very happy to stand and take a call in support of this bill. Thank you.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: OK, so I think we’re one all now. Let’s focus on the actual piece of legislation in front of us.

Hon STUART NASH (Minister of Police): Obviously, I’m standing in support of the Family and Whānau Violence Legislation Bill, but, Madam Deputy Speaker, I think you’ll have to allow me just two seconds to say that I think Mr Little is actually one of the most committed Ministers in a generation to solve the scourge that is family violence. What I would like to say is that all the justice sector Ministers meet every week formally—that’s Minister Davis for corrections, myself for police, Minister Little for justice, and Minister Sio for youth justice—to talk about action plans we need to put in place and how we can all work together as a Government to solve the issue that is domestic violence. Jan Logie—you will find no one more committed in this country, let alone in Parliament, to deal with the scourge that is domestic violence.

So I do not doubt the previous speaker’s commitment to also coming up with solutions to domestic violence and I don’t think anyone would question the Hon Mark Mitchell’s credibility on this. We know he’s an ex-policeman, and he’s probably seen a lot of the effects of domestic violence, but what I would really like to say is—

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! Order! Look, I’m sorry, but we’re now on to the third speaker and we’re still debating the same stuff. What’s happened has happened, but we have a bill in front of us, and I made it very clear that we’re going to be debating the bill. If the member does not come to the bill, then I will have to sit him down.

Hon STUART NASH: I raise a point of order, Madam Speaker. For the last four minutes of the previous speaker’s speech, he sat here and he had a real go at the Minister of Justice, and I think that as one of the justice sector Ministers—

DEPUTY SPEAKER: I know—

Hon STUART NASH: —I have a right to defend that Minister.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: No, because we’ve already—previous to that—had a Minister who had to take the call who clearly didn’t know what the bill was actually doing, and we had almost 10 minutes of a general speech, given genuinely by the member, about domestic violence. I made it very clear that we were one all. We’re now going to address the bill.

Hon STUART NASH: Well, what does this bill actually do?

Hon Dr Nick Smith: Damned good question.

Hon STUART NASH: Damned good question, and obviously that former Minister has no idea.

Hon Dr Nick Smith: I do.

Hon STUART NASH: No, you—what this bill actually does is it seeks to break the pattern of family violence and to reduce harm and costs inflicted on those who suffer violence in wider New Zealand society, including by increasing the link and the needs assessment and services by more accurately recording family violence offending in the criminal justice system and by enabling the introduction of codes of practice and new information-sharing provisions.

Well, how bad are things? Let me tell you how bad things are at the moment. The police, every single year, attend about 125,000 domestic violence incidents. In the past, they would spend about five or 10 minutes on each incident; now they are spending up to two hours on each incident. This is taking a substantial amount of police time—

Hon Dr Nick Smith: That’s just rubbish.

Hon STUART NASH: —a substantial amount of police time—and Dr Smith says that is absolute rubbish. I am happy to organise a briefing from police for Dr Smith about how seriously they take this and what they are actually doing.

I actually believe, and most people believe, that family violence is our nation’s shame. It really is. Five hundred thousand instances of family violence—500,000 family violence instances—are committed every year, and we need to do something about it. One thing that I would love more than anything is for Parliament to come together to work as 120 MPs to come up with a solution.

This is a good bill. I’m not saying that this is a bad bill. This is a good bill, but it is a start. There is no such thing as a silver bullet around solving the scourge that is domestic violence. This bill acknowledges that early intervention is key to addressing family violence—the need to identify and manage risks before they escalate to cause serious harm.

Early intervention helps disrupt what we now know is a pattern of behaviour in relationships. What we now know, for example, is that a child’s brain is wired differently if they have grown up in a house where violence is prevalent. Their brain is wired differently—this is this whole fight versus flight—and I do agree that growing up in a household with family violence is no excuse for them becoming a perpetrator. But what we do know is that those who have been victims of family violence, and certainly those who have grown up around family violence, are more likely to become perpetrators. We need to break the cycle, and there is a lot of work to be done—of that, there is no doubt.

Changing legislation and amending different Acts is important—there is no doubt about that. This is an ongoing challenge that we will all face, and I know that Jan Logie is spending an inordinate amount of time and effort and energy driving the change that we need to see. But this is only part of it, and I agree with Minister Sio that as well as legislation and as well as what this bill does, it will actually take an attitudinal change in our communities—that is, saying it’s not acceptable. I know we’ve seen the ads and all this sort of stuff, but it’s a little bit more than that. It’s when you’re hearing the screaming from the neighbours next door—instead of pulling the curtains and going, “Nothing to do with me.”, you actually call the police.

One thing I would say, Madam Deputy Speaker—and I know the Deputy Speaker is a former Minister of Police—is that the police are taking this incredibly seriously these days. I have sat in on an Integrated Safety Response (ISR) panel, and I have seen how inter-agencies work together to try and come up with solutions on how we’re going to put programmes in place to stop perpetrators going on and significantly—end up murdering people. In fact, since ISR has been going in Christchurch, no one has died from family violence.

Now, I know you’ve given direction, Madam Deputy Speaker, but I would just like to say to the former speaker that the ISR programme is still operating. There are still five months to go until the end of the year. We have not said we’re not going to continue with this pilot, but what we have said is that any programme that spends taxpayers’ money has to be evidence based. We are evaluating this programme at the moment, and if it comes out that it is a good use of taxpayers’ money, that it is really making a difference in this space and can continue to make a difference, then I have no doubt that Jan Logie will present something to us to say she recommends that this continues—I have no doubt about this—but it has got to be evidence based. Please, Madam Deputy Speaker and everyone listening, I would not like people to get the impression that this is no longer happening.

I would also really reiterate that we are completely committed to this. Police are absolutely committed to this. In fact, police fund ISR out of their own budget. Police fund Whangaia out of their own budget. Every single year, police see 124,000 instances of family harm, and it is not acceptable any more—it really isn’t.

So, as mentioned, we can change legislation, and that’s good. It is good that we can work together in a way—because this was the former administration’s bill. We’ve made a few changes, the Justice and Electoral Committee’s made a few changes, and there’s been a Supplementary Order Paper that’s been tabled. We will work together. Minister Little extended an invitation across the House to the Opposition spokespeople on police, on justice, and on corrections and said, “Come along and hear what people have to say. We would welcome your input.” So he extended an olive branch in a way that I haven’t seen in my time in this House, and I just do hope that we can work together as a Parliament to do something about the scourge that is domestic violence.

I have absolutely no doubt—I don’t want to speak on behalf of Parliamentary Under-Secretary Logie, but I have no doubt that if those from the Opposition parties are keen to participate in a meaningful and constructive way, then we will absolutely welcome their input, because this is something that we do need to get to the bottom of, and it’s not going to happen overnight. There is absolutely no doubt about that. In fact, as mentioned, this is going to take generational change, but it is one of those things where if we bury our head in the sand and say it’s all too hard, then we do the communities we serve a massive disservice.

So of course we support this bill. Of course we are going to implement everything in this bill, but there is a lot more to do. In fact, this is only the beginning. Thank you very much.

CHRIS BISHOP (National—Hutt South): Thank you very much, Madam Deputy Speaker. This is a really important bill on a really important issue. Frankly, it’s embarrassing that it’s taken a year to move the second reading. I was a member of the Justice and Electoral Committee in the last Parliament. This bill was introduced on 15 March 2017, and had its first reading on 11 April—kind of at the tail end of last Parliament, we considered it, with a number of very serious submissions from very august bodies. We reported the bill back on 16 August 2017.

Now, no one would expect Parliament to consider the bill on 16 August—in fact, I think it might’ve been the very last act of the last Parliament before the election on 23 September—but fair enough to assume some progress would’ve been made between August 2017 and September 2018, yet none has been made. I agree with the remarks of the Hon Minister Stuart Nash about the importance of working in a bipartisan way across the Parliament, about how we all need to take family violence extremely seriously. It would be nice if the Government provided some impetus for that themselves through the legislative programme. So that’s my first point, around the delay.

I also want to deal with the Integrated Safety Response (ISR) pilot, which he made much mention of. He said, “Well, I’ve sat on an Integrated Safety Response panel, and I’ve seen the great work that it does. No one in Christchurch has died as a result of family violence since the ISR was introduced.” Well, that initiative came out of the cross-Government work that the last Government was involved in, was engaged in, across various different Ministers. Stuart Nash said, triumphantly, “We meet weekly”, as if this was some grand achievement, that Ministers meet weekly. If he’s only just discovering today, a year in, that Ministers meet on a weekly basis to discuss things, I think he’s got a few issues. That’s not an achievement, meeting weekly; actually, outcomes are what matter. These guys in the Government love the meetings. We’ve just had a $1.5 million summit, which was a very large meeting. You know, actually, the meetings are all well and good, but you need to get the outcomes, and the ISR came out of the various meetings that the previous Government did.

Stuart Nash says, “Well, I’ve sat on a panel.”, and he said, “Well, we welcome the Opposition’s support for the Integrated Safety Response panel.” Well, I tried to go and sit on a panel in Christchurch. I arranged it. It was all due to be arranged, and literally just 45 minutes before I was due to go and sit on the panel to see first-hand for myself, as a member of the Justice Committee and the Opposition spokesperson for police, exactly how it worked, the meeting was cancelled by the Minister’s office. So, look, I welcome Stuart Nash’s call for bipartisanship and for kōrero across the Parliament in order to make sure we take this problem seriously. I completely agree with him. It would be nice if he actually backed that up with actions, and I’m looking forward to the next request to go and visit the ISR being approved by him rather than cancelled.

He also needs to get to grips with his portfolio, because the Integrated Safety Response is funded out of Vote Police. It’s not a Budget bid from Jan Logie as under-secretary, which is what he said would happen; it’s a Vote Police funding line. He doesn’t even know his own portfolio, and the reality is—

Clayton Mitchell: I raise a point of order, Madam Speaker. Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. Look, you’ve been very clear in your rulings on people speaking to the bill, and you had a quid pro quo in relation to a tit for tat at the start that has been seen around the House as the way to move forward. For the last three minutes, we’ve heard a rant that hasn’t been anything to do with the bill. It’s been somewhat personal in an attack on the Minister.

CHRIS BISHOP: Speaking to the point of order, I’ve spent about as much time talking about Integrated Safety Response as the previous Minister did.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: The difficulty that I have is that the previous Minister didn’t actually address the bill either, and talked generally and raised a whole number of points which this speaker is now addressing. So they’re already on the floor. I’m actually wondering whether anyone in the House has actually read the bill and understands it and is going to speak to it, but I call Chris Bishop.

CHRIS BISHOP: Well, Madam Deputy Speaker, I’ll take you up on your invitation, because I have the read the bill, and, as I say, I sat on the select committee in the last Parliament. I’m very proud to be a member of the Justice Committee—it was the Justice and Electoral Committee; now it’s the Justice Committee.

I want to talk about the name of the bill and, in particular, the reference to “Whānau”. One of the interesting issues we considered—and if you read the select committee report, you can see that the Labour Party minority view, as there was a minority view, was to delete the reference to “Whānau”. It’s Māori Language Week, Te Wiki o Te Reo Māori, so it’s appropriate that we have a debate about that. There was a view that came through from some submitters that the reference to whānau in the bill was inappropriate, and I think you can have a legitimate debate about that. I’m not sure I necessarily agree with that, but the Labour Party certainly backed that view through their minority view, so it’ll be interesting to see whether or not they are going to change the name through that deletion.

The second thing about the name is that we had an interesting debate the select committee about the word “family” and, particularly, whether or not there should be a reference to “domestic violence”. At the moment, the Act is the Domestic Violence Act 1995. It’s quite outdated—it’s now 23 years old—and this bill seeks to, essentially, replace the Domestic Violence Act by reference to “family violence”. That’s the new term—the new nomenclature is “family violence”. There were some submitters who turned up and said, “Well, we don’t actually see any problem with keeping the phraseology of ‘domestic violence’. There’s nothing wrong with it because it’s violence that occurs largely in the home—it’s family violence in the domestic setting—so we should call it domestic violence.”

There were other submitters who came and said to us that—and I found this submission very interesting—the reference to “domestic” implies and indicates that it’s something that should be off limits to the criminal law. When people talk about a husband and a wife or family “having a domestic”—people used to talk about that. It’s an old-fashioned term now, but it’s actually probably where the Domestic Violence Act 1995 got its logic from. People would talk about “having a domestic”, and when they talked about having a domestic, they meant, you know, “That’s something that’s nothing to do with me as a bystander, or nothing to do with me as the neighbour next door, or nothing to do with me as the person down the street who sees a woman go to the dairy with a black eye; they’re just having a domestic.” It implies that that’s something in the private sphere that the State shouldn’t pay any attention to. And, more importantly than that, it implies it’s something that wider society should not have a view on or pay any attention to, or report to the police, or report to an agency that helps people who are victims of family violence—in most cases, women.

So you might say, OK, what’s in a name? Actually, the name matters. I freely admit I went into the select committee process at the start, thinking: why are there so many submissions about the name “family”, or “domestic”, or “whānau”, or whatever? And, actually, it became very clear through the submissions that it really mattered to the people at the front line dealing with this, and it was really important. I listened to all the submissions and I listened to the various arguments put either way, and, actually, I strongly agree that we should not call it domestic violence.

It is not something that is just a domestic that neighbours and communities and society should have no interest in and the State should not have any interest in. Family violence is a crime. Family violence is a social scourge, and it is absolutely right that the State takes an interest in that. And, actually, one of the most remarkable—or one of the most excellent things about the change in New Zealand society over the last 15 to 20 years is that we don’t really refer to domestics any more. That terminology has become passé. We talk about family violence, and having an Act that is called the Family Violence Act—or at least not the Domestic Violence Act—is actually really important. So that deals with what I didn’t think would be a vexed issue, the name, but actually it is.

In terms of the other really important changes, other speakers have sort of canvassed some of the changes. We’ve recommended, as a select committee, making a series of changes to the bill as introduced. I don’t think you would say they’re outrageously wild changes to the bill; they don’t really go to the substance. The select committee report endorses the direction of travel, but there are some minor changes that are important. So, for example, with protection orders, we’ve recommended simplifying the age-based distinctions in the bill to allow children aged 16 years and over to choose whether to make an application for a protection order in their own name or through a representative. We have recommended including a provision to enable a judge to interview a child at any stage in the process if the judge deems it necessary or desirable. That’s because the courts are very intimidating to anyone, but particularly to children, so this is all about allowing children to better express their views. We’ve made some recommendations around the quite complicated issue of information sharing and disclosure between family violence agencies and social service practitioners.

So it was a pleasure to serve on the committee considering this bill. I would have liked to have seen it come back before the House for a second reading before now, but it’s here now and I’m looking forward to its passage through the House in the coming weeks and months.

JENNY MARCROFT (NZ First): Tēnā koe, Mr Assistant Speaker. Thank you for the opportunity to rise and speak on behalf of New Zealand First on this, the Family and Whānau Violence Legislation Bill. It’s a pleasure to take a call on behalf of my colleague, the Hon Tracey Martin. She made a first reading speech back in the previous Parliament, but, unfortunately, isn’t able to be here for this today, so it has fallen upon me to take the call on behalf of my party, New Zealand First.

This is a fairly difficult topic for me to traverse, and I’d just like to give you, Mr Assistant Speaker, a little background as to why that is. I’ve been fortunate to grow up in a family—a whānau—with really loving parents, with educated parents, who gave us a really great foundation in life. However, circumstances changed in our family, and I then had a stepfather. And, unfortunately, although I had this fantastic base, which grounded me in great values in life, I ended up with a violent stepfather. What happened over the course of the next number of years was very much swept under the carpet. And during the 1970s, as what was considered a middle-class white family, you didn’t talk about those sorts of things. The type of violence that we suffered wasn’t just physical, although that was pretty horrific; it was certainly emotional and psychological. So I have quite an understanding of what those victims of family violence have suffered, not just at the time but ongoing throughout the rest of their lives.

One of the things that I really want to say to the victim is that whoever is the perpetrator of the violence, do not allow them to steal your power. What matters is how we treat people, and if we always have some kindness, then I’m sure that’s a really good guiding factor. It’s tragic to hear about family violence, and this bill certainly encompasses that. It is tragic to hear about not just the physical violence but the emotional violence and psychological violence as well, not just experienced by, predominantly, women—men as well—but also, most important, by children. At the heart of this it’s about protecting our children. The level on which this causes all manner of societal dysfunction cannot be overestimated. And if we take into account the rippling effect of violence for children throughout their lives, then that’s something that we as a Parliament certainly must ensure we can change so that we bring about a change for these people’s lives.

Looking at this bill, preventing and eliminating family violence is one of the greatest opportunities to improve all New Zealanders’ well-being. Between 2009 and 2015 alone, almost 200 people were killed as a result of family violence, and over half a million New Zealanders were directly affected by family violence each year. Looking at the number of women, New Zealand women—one in three of these women—experience physical or sexual violence from a partner in their life, and more than a quarter of New Zealand children have witnessed family violence. You know that kid that hides under the stairs in a cupboard, because they’re hearing the violence and the abuse going on upstairs. What are the ramifications for them? How can they live good lives and fulfil their potential?

With this bill, it’s really a framework for a more effective system, improving civil orders to better support victims, including protection orders and police safety orders. This bill, this framework, will enable better reorganising the dynamics of the family violence and criminal justice system, also creating a more integrated family violence system that promotes coordinated and collaborative responses.

You know, it was really unfortunate, listening to the speeches today, that I wasn’t actually part of the Justice and Electoral Committee hearing submissions on this bill. I think it probably would have been something that would have been really good for me and for my wairua as I look forward to ensuring that any leftover ripple effects from my situation are clearly and cleanly swept from me and swept from not just my mind and my memories but also throughout—physically and emotionally. It is really part of the healing process, so I think it would have been good for me to have been part of that Justice and Electoral Committee. However, it is good to read some of these submissions, to hear what people are saying, particularly the Human Rights Commission in their submission talking about and highlighting—in the commission’s submission to the committee on the Domestic Violence—Victims’ Protection Bill.

Domestic violence is so prevalent in New Zealand that it’s thought there could be around half a million victims. That is a very large group of people. It’s believed that only 20 percent of victims report to the police. That was certainly the case in my family history. We certainly never spoke about it outside the family. It went on under the carpet, and there was no way we would have ever spoken to police. I’m sure there are so many families that still feel that way: you don’t take this and take it outside of the family; you keep it hidden. Keeping it hidden keeps the mamae still enclosed inside the family. The Families Commissioner, in the submission, said currently the best indicators we have of family violence are reporting of family violence to police, and that’s also what the human rights commissioner noted. It’s a really hard thing to be able to admit not just to yourselves as a family but to the outside world that your family is broken.

Oranga Tamariki—Ministry for Children has been involved through this process, through this bill, and I’d just like to note some of the points that they have noted. They have been closely involved in the development of the bill. The bill widens the circumstances in which the police safety orders and the protection orders can be used. It will enable young people to be protected in their own right. Oranga Tamariki is working with police to develop guidance and support for front-line staff, to help ensure that the well-being and safety of children and young people are always paramount when police issue police safety orders.

It is important that there is information sharing, as well, and the Oranga Tamariki Act and the Family and Whānau Violence Legislation Bill will both introduce information-sharing provisions to help ensure that those working with children and young people have the information that they need to keep them safe—and it is all about keeping the children safe. Oranga Tamariki, as well, is working with the Ministry of Justice to ensure the interaction between the information-sharing provisions in this bill and those in the Oranga Tamariki Act work together and are well understood by the sector.

Those are the ways that Oranga Tamariki is working through this bill to ensure overall that there is safety for our children, and that’s what it’s all about. We need to be a society that has greater heart, and any way that we can help and support families to break the cycle of abuse, we must do all we can. I commend this bill to the House.

Hon Dr NICK SMITH (National—Nelson): The chaos, the confusion, the gap between promise and performance is so well illustrated with what we’ve seen in the Parliament this afternoon on this important Family and Whānau Violence Legislation Bill. There isn’t any disagreement in this Parliament that violence in the home is one of the most important social issues for our country—on that we agree. But there’s somehow this view on the Government benches that if you give fluffy speeches saying you care about something, that somehow that makes a difference for New Zealanders. It does not. It is good quality action and good quality programmes that will address those issues.

Let’s firstly begin by reciting what happened in the Parliament this afternoon. We had the Associate Minister of Justice giving the first speech on this bill, the biggest reform of our family violence legislation in a generation, and the Minister didn’t have the foggiest. He had no idea about the bill. It clearly has been a screw-up on the Government benches. The Minister couldn’t even get to the House on time. But it’s more serious than that. You only need to read the minority view in this bill to see the failings of this just 11-month-old Government. Let’s cite the record: Amy Adams, a committed, competent Minister, announced the biggest batch of changes to New Zealand’s domestic violence laws in late 2016, and drafted this over - 100 page bill. It took her three months from the announcement to get the bill into the House. It then took four months from when this bill was introduced in the House for the very capable Justice and Electoral Committee in the last Parliament to report it back in August of last year. My question for Government members is: what have you been doing for 11 months?

Hon Member: Ha, ha!

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: Because you cannot, I say to the member who is interjecting, beat your chest and say that issues of family violence are the most important issues for the Government and then allow this bill to sit on the Order Paper and make absolutely no progress for 11 months. Then to hear three speeches from the Government benches on this bill, without anybody having any idea of what it actually does, shows how shallow—how shallow—and inadequate the Government is on this important issue.

Let me talk about the important reforms that are contained in this bill. Let’s firstly start with burying the language that “It’s just a domestic.” It is not just a domestic. It is violence against New Zealand citizens that needs to be treated seriously. The first part of this bill makes a really important change. It says that issues of violence in the home are actually not just about the two adults; it’s about the children. The provisions in this bill, as they relate to giving children a real voice in dealing with issues of family violence, is absolutely critical if we are to change the cycle, that we all know, of children growing up in family violence and then going on to be violent partners in a relationship.

Here is the second really important change in this bill. We all know that when there are instances of family violence, so often the victim, for whatever psychological reason, will not be prepared to take out a protection order. The existing law only allows a protection order to be triggered by that victim. What this bill absolutely, appropriately does, both for protection orders and for police safety orders, is it gives the capacity for the police and others that are involved in domestic violence to be able to trigger that process and to get those orders in place, and that will make for safer families.

There’s also the issue around the harm and the intimidation that goes around family pets. I was surprised to find out that, actually, more than 60 percent of New Zealand homes have a pet. So often when there is tension in a relationship, sometimes that intimidation is taken out on pets, and that issue is dealt with within this bill. The process for being able to obtain a police safety order is made far more simple and quicker by the amendments that are provided in this bill. There are changes to our Criminal Procedure Act and also in respect of our Sentencing Act, to ensure that where that are perpetrators of family violence, they cannot continue that intimidation from inside the prison, and that is an important and appropriate change.

I also want to point to the very difficult and challenging issues in this bill that make changes to the Evidence Act, because in the select committee’s consideration, you’ve got this fine balancing of rights—ensuring that we are serious about addressing the issues of family violence but, equally, ensuring that there are rights of fair process. I was particularly interested in and wanted to hear from a member of the Government about what their view is on this National bill around increasing the penalties and changing the bail laws in respect of improving safety when there is family violence. I’ve heard lecture after lecture from members on the Government benches that they are opposed to firmer sentences and ensuring we hold people to account where they commit acts of violence.

Every single bill that we have on the Order Paper that attempts to hold people to account and imprison them has been proposed to be watered down by members of the Government. And that’s where I say there is such a confusing agenda from the Government. I want to know, because I didn’t hear from either of the Ministers, whether they support the provisions in this National bill that tighten up the bail procedures in respect of the perpetrators of domestic violence. If I was to listen to the Minister of Justice, Andrew Little, he has consistently opposed and rejected National’s provisions to make our communities safer by tightening up those bail laws, and I would love to know from him as to whether he is going to support this well-constructed bill.

This is a complex bill. It has over 100 pages of changes in all of those laws that I have mentioned. It is the most comprehensive rewrite of our family violence laws in 25 years, and so I have a question for the next Government speaker. Where have you been for the last 12 months? Why is it that this bill has been such a low priority for the Government? The Government cannot go on pretending that if it just beats its chest and says that issues are somehow important, that that somehow is a substitute for actually getting on and addressing the issues.

Angie Warren-Clark: Good things take time.

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: Oh, “Good things take time.” I hear from the member. Well, can I read from the Labour Party’s minority report, in the report back? It criticised the National Party for taking eight months to draft the bill, develop the policy, and get it to a select committee—eight months. What has the Government done with this bill in nearly 12 months? Absolutely zip—again showing both the chaos and the confusion within the Government on these important issues: the confused way that this bill has sat on the Order Paper, and the disgraceful conduct of a Government in not even bothering to give a second reading speech. That second reading speech on this bill would be the worst that I’ve ever seen from a Minister, and shows that this Government is proving to be all talk about these important issues of family violence rather than getting on with the action. We need to get on and pass this good National bill.

JAN LOGIE (Green): Tēnā koe e Te Mana Whakawā. Ahiahi pai ki a koutou. I’m very pleased to stand in the House today and support the Family and Whānau Violence Legislation Bill. The levels of domestic and sexual violence in our country are, frankly, an indictment on all of us. Every year over 500,000 New Zealanders are directly affected by family and sexual violence, including over 120,000 children. And behind every one of these numbers is a human story: the story of someone just like us, or, indeed, one of us. The dynamics and circumstances may vary, but this blight affects people of every socio-economic class, age, ability, and gender.

A survey released by Women’s Refuge yesterday showed a high prevalence of suicidality and self-harm amongst victims, and this mirrors international findings. In the words of Dr Ange Jury, the head of the Women’s Refuge—she said, “If you … think about the experience of being abused by a partner, someone who is supposed to love you and care for you, the obvious potential for at least severe depression is really, really clear.” We cannot continue to accept such high levels of violence. We must ensure family violence becomes an absolute aberration rather than something that is commonplace, as it is now.

This legalisation is an important step: a mix of relatively simple updates and clarifications of the law, and more transformative fundamental changes. I would like to acknowledge the Hon Amy Adams, the previous Minister of Justice, for her work developing this legislation, and putting family violence back on the political table, and getting to some pretty fundamental, gnarly problems with this legislation. And as previous National members have been indicating a real sense of wanting to get to the detail and the importance of action, I’d like to indicate that I look forward to working with them in the not-too-distant future on that programme of work.

I was part of the Justice and Electoral Committee, which considered this bill, and I would like, too, to acknowledge the committee members and all those who made a submission. The Greens have always supported this legislation, but at the time when this was reported back I did note my concern that the response was not proportionate, necessarily, to the size or the complexity of the problem. So I do want to thank Minister Little and this Government for seeing the value of this legislation and also recognising that we need to do more around this.

This Government has created my position to integrate our response across Government, to ensure that this remains a priority. This Government has increased funding and reset the relationship with our front-line services who are so essential in our response. They’ve initiated a review of the 2014 Family Court changes that prioritised money saving over the safety of victims and survivors, and they’ve put money in the last Budget towards a central agent to properly coordinate Government action to ensure that we all know what our role is in responding effectively. So now is the time for us all to work together and play our part to break the cycle of violence.

The Family Violence Death Review Committee noted in their fifth report that we have a family violence system in name only. Rather than a coordinated or integrated response, we have, to quote them, “a fragmented assortment of services and initiatives - islands of practice - commonly underpinned by old ways of thinking about family violence”. They noted that “Real help for victims of [intimate partner violence] within our current system is sporadic, unpredictable, and frequently not available. There are few strategies to address their partner’s abusive behaviour.”

Now, this piece of legislation provides for a more integrated family violence system, a greater ability to identify and manage risks before they escalate, and better identification of family violence within the justice system, and it creates modern language to reflect our modern understanding. It creates a concrete definition of the family violence sector, involving most of our key Government agencies, and it enables, by Order in Council, the development of codes of practice right across that family violence sector to ensure that everyone’s practice is informed by best evidence. That is truly potentially transformative. It gives us a framework to ensure best practice and consistency, recognising the complex and cross-cutting nature of family violence. It is a Government priority to address—and ultimately, I hope, end—family and sexual violence. This bill shifts our response from the bottom of the cliff, adding early intervention as a core role in the response to family violence into the principles of the legislation, and acknowledges that we need to identify and manage risks wherever possible. Early intervention interrupts and disrupts what we know is a pattern of behaviour.

So a key provision in this legislation is the ability to obtain a risk and needs assessment when a police safety order (PSO) is issued. A PSO can be the first point at which a potentially violent relationship is registered with police, and it’s a critical opportunity to assess the situation and determine what support is required for both the victim and the perpetrator.

Thorough risk assessments are necessary to ensure the safety of victims, and we haven’t had them in place before. Needs assessments help us support victims and remove barriers in the way of perpetrators changing their behaviour. A PSO, with this legislation, will be able to be issued alongside an arrest, which will strengthen our response in cases where there may not eventually be enough evidence to proceed to prosecution. There’s no intention for PSOs to be used instead of charges where there is evidence of family violence, but this ensures that no matter what happens, there are pathways for supporting people to stop using violence, rather than just leaving us with a blunt choice between prosecution and total inaction.

This bill also creates new long-awaited family violence offences: non-fatal strangulation, which is a serious act to gain power and control over a victim, which is significantly indicated as a higher risk for suicide. It also creates assault on a person in a family relationship alongside male assaults female, acknowledging other forms of family violence, while continuing to recognise the gendered violence within and outside of family relationships.

We’ve heard the particular challenges of women in ethnic communities and people with disabilities when it comes to engaging with services and feeling as if their needs are covered by the legislation. This bill strengthens our response for people with disabilities and people from migrant communities by the clarification that their needs are covered by this legislation when, in practice, they haven’t been for far too long.

This bill also clarifies that some behaviours that appear trivial in isolation can have a cumulative impact, and we highlight the use of coercive and controlling behaviours in family violence to ensure that our courts really understand the dynamics of this violence. There is much, much more that it does, and I am looking forward, in my role as Parliamentary under-secretary, to overseeing the implementation of this to ensure that we get really strong, consistent practise, so that every victim is supported to safety and every person who uses violence is given the absolute opportunity to change their behaviour and to be held to account for their violence.

HARETE HIPANGO (National—Whanganui): Tēnā koe e Te Māngai. E mihi ana au ki ngā tāngata o Aotearoa mō te kaupapa o tēnei wiki, Te Wiki o Te Reo Māori. Ka huri au mō te kaupapa o tēnei wā e kōrero au ki Te Whare Pāremata ōku whakaaro i tēnei pire.

[Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker. I greet people around New Zealand with regard to the focus for this week, Māori Language Week. I now turn from that to the present matter where I shall present my views on this bill to the House.]

My greetings to all of our citizens of Aotearoa in acknowledging that this week is a celebration for us to embrace Te Reo Māori—our Māori language—as an official language of this nation. I do that as I turn to speak about the kaupapa, the purpose, of the korero before the House this afternoon. These are my thoughts that I share in relation to this bill, the Family and Whānau Violence Legislation Bill. I’ve not been a member of the Justice Committee. Although I have sat on it on several occasions, I wasn’t able to at the time that this bill came before the Justice and Electoral Committee. My colleague the Hon Nick Smith commented that it is a comprehensive rewrite of family and violence legislation—a comprehensive rewrite that was last done 25 years ago.

I will address the House on my experience of 25-plus years of not only talking about this type of legislation and all the other laws that this bill, as an omnibus bill, is addressing to make amendments to, but I will also share my journey, my walk of the talk within all of these laws. Those laws that this bill is amending include the Domestic Violence Act 1995, including changing its name from the Domestic Violence Act to the Family and Whānau Violence Act. This bill will also amend the Bail Act 2000, the Care of Children Act 2004, the Crimes Act 1961, the Criminal Procedure Act 2011, the Evidence Act 2006, and the Sentencing Act 2002. In all of this legislation, I have either represented clients, be they perpetrators or victims, and also children before the courts—for every single piece of that legislation that is being amended under this omnibus bill.

Now, an oversight that I have made, and I wish to turn to this, is that the honourable Minister Sio mentioned that this bill is about addressing wellness—bringing back to our nation the responsibility of wellness being embraced by our communities. Law is but a tool that provides the levers for a solution. It is not the solution. The wellness within our communities is about our communities taking responsibility to provide those solutions, but this law is about enabling the tools for the courts to address some of those concerns.

I turn specifically to some of these aspects that have been talked about in addressing family violence. This bill is focused on reducing rates of family violence. It is a comprehensive approach prioritising early intervention and prevention. It has three main features. The first is: “Establishing a framework to support a cross-government response”—cross-government response—and that is about “increasing people’s ability to access risk and needs assessments and services, providing for codes of practices, and new information-sharing [provisions].” That is one of the three main features, and I will come back to address the House on that. The second is about: “Making changes to improve accessibility and effectiveness of civil orders”. The House has been addressed on police safety orders and protection orders. Time permitting, I will return to that. The third main feature is: “Improving the criminal justice response by creating three new criminal offences and providing for more accurate recording of family violence offending in the criminal justice system.”

If I may return the first of those features—“a framework to support a cross-government response”. As counsel advocating the plight, particularly for children who have been caught up in cross-party fights and the fuelling of fights between their parents on either parenting orders or protection orders or bail applications, we have had difficulty accessing necessary and crucial information from Government agencies to provide and put as evidence to the court, reasons why either bail orders should be made, why certain conditions of protection orders should be made, or why certain conditions of parenting orders could be made. And the frustration that we, as advocates for our child clients, have had is Government agencies not providing the disclosure of that information to provide as evidence to the courts. This will free that up.

I turn to the second of those three main features—improving the accessibility and effectiveness of civil orders. The bill—and should the opportunity be presented to me to address the House again, perhaps at the committee stage, I will speak more in detail around that—does address the fact that police safety orders can now be such that in the event that there is a child, and that is defined as a person who is up to the age of 18, a police safety order can be made against a violent child.

I have represented mothers of violent children, and there’s been no provision for them to seek the support, by way of a court order, to be protected from that violent child, unless their child comes before the Youth Court system and is detained. Where there are clear grounds to believe that family violence has occurred by a child who is aged 16 years or over but under the age of 18, the police are able to issue a police safety order for the benefit of the mother or the woman.

I turn now to the third of those three main features: improving the criminal justice response by creating three new criminal offences and providing for more accurate recording of family violence offending in the criminal justice system. One of those has been alluded to by my colleague the Hon Mark Mitchell, around the creation of a new offence of strangulation. Over many years, I’ve advocated representing women who are the victims of domestic violence, and one of the critical—critical—features of that assault, male assaults female, has been strangulation. It’s been evident that that is the precursor to more serious criminal offending. This will now enable and create that in its own right as a criminal offence—strangulation.

The other is coercion to marry, and that has been canvassed in previous legislation by colleague Jo Hayes with the introduction of her bill to the House now to be made into law. We talked about the protection of vulnerable young persons around coercion to marry.

Then the other, the third, is a specific offence created: an assault on a family member, not just either a summary offences common assault charge or a male assaults female charge under the Crimes Act but a specific notation of assault on a family member. What many people won’t be aware of unless they’ve traversed the criminal justice system on a regular basis is that judges are often restricted to have noted on the record the nature of or the specific status of a person as a family member—for that to flag with any future appearances that may come about before the court.

So this bill addresses those aspects that I have raised before this House. Opportunity permitting, there will be so many more. It is comprehensive, it is detailed, it has been 25 years before there has been this, as I say, comprehensive overview, and I certainly commend this passage from its second reading through to the third reading. Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker.

VIRGINIA ANDERSEN (Labour): Tēnā koe. Thank you for the opportunity of speaking on this bill, the Family and Whānau Violence Legislation Bill. The key reason why I’m so happy to see this bill is that it addresses two really important areas, and the first is early intervention—the ability to get in early and provide support to New Zealand families when they need it the most. The second reason that underpins this bill, that is so important and closely tied to the first, is the impact it has on our children and the impact it has on the next generation of New Zealanders—the ability to break the cycle of family violence within New Zealand, and that is important.

I remember quite clearly when the It’s Not OK campaign first started. I was a stepmother and my 6-year-old son came home wearing a white ribbon on his shirt. I asked him what he thought that meant and he said, “It means you don’t hit girls.” I thought, you know, he wasn’t quite right; there was a bit more to it than that—he probably shouldn’t be hitting boys either—but there was a really clear message to me that gave me hope that the next generation of New Zealanders can learn to do differently. I believe this bill provides that same opportunity of hope for the next generation of New Zealanders.

There are four key points I’d like to briefly speak to. The first is the change to police safety orders, the second is the definition of “family violence”, the third is the new offence of non-fatal strangulation, and the final and probably the most important is a more coordinated response to protection orders going forward from here.

Changes to police safety orders are important. Initially, they were used as a cooling-off period. When police come to a home where there’s been an incident, it enables—usually the male—to be taken outside of the home and given time for things to cool off. What typically happens in those situations is that that person then heads to the pub, continues to drink, and more violent offending occurs outside of the home, but it does not address the underlying reasons why that family violence occurred. So this bill enables risk and needs assessments to be taken and for the victim to be provided support—again, addressing that early intervention that is so importantly needed.

The definition of “family violence”—a very important area that’s been well traversed, but it’s important to identify coercive and controlling behaviour to be included in that. The recent survey by Women’s Refuge has shown that depression, self-harm, and suicide are key areas where women are seeing issues again and again. So including that and also including a better recording of family violence data will enable that to happen far better than it was already.

The new offence of non-fatal strangulation—this is a common mark of abusive, coercive behaviour—to enable both police and the courts to better identify that behaviour at an earlier point in time offers real hope to stop abusive behaviour early on in relationships and to provide support to both the offender and the victim.

Finally, I’d like to briefly speak on the more coordinated response to protection orders. Probably one of my most harrowing times in police was being responsible for the family violence death reviews: going through police files of homicides one after the other and identifying the reasons why that person’s life could have been saved. The key area was in protection orders: that Government was not joined up with NGOs, that people did not speak to each other, and that there was a fear of sharing information that, quite truthfully, would have saved lives.

I’d like to highlight the change that will enable a more coordinated response. These changes will provide police with more information about the violence that led to a protection order and clarify that police are able to share this information with other agencies where appropriate. It also enables the family violence sector—which provides such an important role—including specific Government agencies, those NGOs and others, to share information that is relevant to creating safety plans, assessing risk, and doing so when appropriate. It is important to be aware of privacy, but at the same time the ability for Government and NGOs to share information holds the ability to save women’s lives and protect our children’s future.

So thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker. I’m very happy to commend this bill to the House.

Hon DAVID BENNETT (National—Hamilton East): Kia ora. It’s great to be able to speak to this bill as well, and I think the speeches around the House indicate that there is strong support in this House for this bill. I think it’s because everybody here recognises the importance of the work that this Parliament and Government need to do in regard to families and especially violence within the family environment. That is something that probably could have been undertaken by the current Government a lot earlier in the process, rather than having to wait till 10 or 12 months into their term before we get to this bill, but it is a bill that was set up by the previous Government and reflects many of the reforms that were set up at that time, and it’s good to see that the current Government is going to fulfil those ambitions and see this bill passed as well.

There are some changes there—or some parts of this legislation—that have been thoroughly traversed through the speeches this afternoon, but one of them is a better understanding of family violence and how to respond. We all understand the need for that in our communities, and it’s part of a new way of dealing with family violence. It reflects those decisions made by the previous Government on how to reduce harm and the cost inflicted on those that have suffered family violence and also the wider New Zealand community.

The bill amends the criminal and civil law and the legislative framework around keeping victims of family violence safe. It holds perpetrators of family violence to account for their behaviours, ensures adequate resources to family violence in all forms, and promotes consistent and collaborative practices. So those are important principles that nobody would deny or debate, and those principles are seen in the legislation, where victims must be protected from all forms of violence, the disruption to everyday lives of victims is to be minimised, responses are to be culturally appropriate, responses to Māori must reflect the community, and practitioners are to work together to protect victims’ safety.

So those are all very nice words, and those are all things that we want to see happen, but the reality is that family violence can be a very difficult situation to deal with. It can reflect a number of social problems going on in our communities, and it can be something that is ongoing and not a one-off incident. Some of those situations can be tragic in the sense of what it does to the family environment as well, and that can have longstanding influences on the next generations of New Zealanders that suffer from family violence within their family and their community. So while we are talking about very abstract and wide terms, it actually has a real impact on families, communities, and especially the children that have to grow up in those environments, so it’s important that we do this legislation to support those people that suffer from family violence.

There are also some initiatives in the bill around perpetrator behaviour, trying to get in earlier in the process, to basically be in front of the problem. That is something that all political parties have now adjusted their thinking to, and they are supporting intervention rather than at the other end of the scale. We see that through this bill as well, in protecting victims by making it easier for police to issue orders and to prove a breach. Those protection orders are an important tool that the police have in the situation to deal with family violence, and this bill is important in providing more support for those protection orders, enabling them to be used more effectively, with the aim of reducing the fear of violence.

There are also more reforms in the bill around keeping victims safe, and that is something that we see emphasised in the previous Government’s approach to criminal justice, and we would encourage the current Government to carry that approach on, because often the victims are forgotten about in situations in the criminal justice system, and it’s really important in legislation that we actually make this a focus and look at the victims, and this bill does do that. Thank you.

ANGIE WARREN-CLARK (Labour): Tēnā koe. It is a real pleasure to stand tonight and to talk about the Family and Whānau Violence Legislation Bill. This has indeed been my life’s work. I remember back—in the beginning of time, it almost seems—when we were working under the Domestic Protection Act. That then became the Domestic Violence Act, and I worked for 11 years as a domestic violence adviser in the Ministry of Justice—my role was to know that Act inside out. So it is a pleasure to stand tonight and to talk a little bit more about this omnibus bill that is before the House tonight.

I want to talk very briefly on three aspects. The Criminal Procedure Act amendment inserts new section 16A, specifying that an offence is recorded and listed as a charge for family violence. Why have I picked on that particular provision? The Criminal Procedure Act 2011 is important—as I know, having worked in the Family Court and across the jurisdictions of family and criminal law, the two jurisdictions do not speak to each naturally. As we know, the Family Court is a quiet, closed, and private court, so the relationship between the two jurisdictions is not naturally and easily breached. So it is noted, on the record, across the jurisdictions. This assists the judiciary in making decisions around the process of conviction and the information. It is relevant and interesting information. It is important information, particularly where there have been charges in the criminal jurisdictions, which would not naturally travel across to the Family Court, particularly in matters of custody and day-to-day care. So I want to make reference to the amendment to insert new section 16A.

I’d also like to talk—and others have—around the amendment to the Crimes Act around strangulation. I have spoken in this House previously about my work in both the Family Court but also as a manager in a refuge. Strangulation is defined as “blocking that other person’s nose, mouth, or both:”. It’s extremely important that this aspect is put in, because people do not understand that they have been strangled, often. We would ask the question quite a lot, “Have you ever been strangled or choked?”, and they’d say to us, “No. No I haven’t.” “Did he hold his hand over your mouth?” “Yes.” “Did he hold you down and prevent you from breathing?” “Yes.” That is the highest and most risky indicator of death and it is extremely serious. So I wholeheartedly support strangulation going into the Crimes Act through this bill.

I’d also like to very, very briefly talk about the meaning of family violence. It is with great pleasure that I see the extension of the family violence definition. Now, the reason I talk about that is that, clearly, under the Domestic Violence Act we had physical, sexual, and psychological abuse, but what we have now is an extension, and it’s an important extension. It is the cumulative effects. It can be one act or it can be the cumulative effects of patterns of violence. That coercive control is recognised and acknowledged.

I do have to acknowledge the Hon Amy Adams for bringing the original bill to the House. We will be making some changes through a Supplementary Order Paper. However, she has done this House and our country a great service in the work that she has done to bring this to the House. I also want to acknowledge the select committee in this process.

So, very finally, in my concluding statement I would like to recommend that we, as a House, stop the petty politics across the floor and start voting for these bills, including our previous domestic violence leave bill. I say to the Opposition, please just start supporting the changes that this Government is bringing in. We all recognise domestic violence is an evil. Just start supporting us. I commend this bill to the House.

CHRIS PENK (National—Helensville): Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker, for the opportunity to speak in the second reading of the Family and Whānau Violence Legislation Bill, as it will be renamed, no doubt, in due course. I’d like to acknowledge the remarks that others have made across the House more generally about the evils of domestic violence, or family and whānau violence. I don’t wish to belabour the point of the particular evil that is indeed the scourge of our society, except to say that, of course, like every other member of this House, I do acknowledge the importance of that and, therefore, the need to do something about it. It is something, therefore, that we must do if it is a useful and worthwhile thing in itself—and it is. But it’s also worth acknowledging, I think—and, again, I believe that every member of this House does acknowledge—that there is much more that can and should be done in this arena.

Let me begin, sir, please, by noting that a number of different Acts will be changed by this bill, and it seems to me that that reflects the fact that this is a complex area. It’s an area of our legal system where a number of different facets—for example, bail, the care of children, the Crimes Act, and so forth—are touched by this legislation. So I acknowledge the work of the officials and also the members of the Justice and Electoral Committee, who have considered all of those very diligently, and, of course, the previous and indeed current Ministers for taking that comprehensive view to our legislative framework and our statute book to do the things that are necessary in order to make this bill work.

My colleague Harete Hipango, who has serious credibility and experience in this field, has talked about the main features of the bill. So I won’t belabour that point, except to say that I would like to focus on some of the aspects that go particularly to the definition of violence. That seems to me very germane, or indeed crucial, to the way that the bill operates and the way that it will be executed, so to speak, in the field—indeed, in the home, most often.

I’d like to focus in particular on clause 9, which talks about amending the definition within the Act of psychological abuse. This is very interesting to me as a matter of lawmaking, of course, in addition to the very serious substantive issues that are discussed and raised in relation to the type of abuse that would be covered by this bill. One of these is the definition of psychological abuse as it reflects forms of abuse in relation to the elderly and also disabled people. So, if you’ll allow me, sir, I’d like to go through some of the detail of that because it seems to me very important to the issues that we are at least trying to rectify by passing this legislation, if, indeed, we go through to the third and final reading.

In new section 3 in clause 9, we look at the meaning of family violence. It says in this proposed legislation that “(3) Violence against a person includes a pattern of behaviour (done, for example, to isolate from family members or friends) that is made up of a number of acts that are all or any of physical abuse, sexual abuse, and psychological abuse, and that may have 1 or both of the following features:”, and then it goes on to list two features.

I’d like to pick out the words “pattern of behaviour” because it seems to me very important that we are acknowledging as a Parliament and as lawmakers that sometimes the nature of abuse is that it is, effectively, cumulative. The bill is quite explicit about the fact that a number of acts when viewed in isolation may appear to be minor or trivial, and yet the cumulative effect of those—or the “pattern of behaviour”, to use the wording of the bill—is such that that is serious enough that we should consider it to be abuse and, therefore, we should offer to those who are suffering such abuse the protections of this bill. For the sake of completeness—and, I think, very wisely—the bill also does say quite explicitly that a single act may amount to abuse. So, of course, it’s not just a pattern, but it might be a one-off instance of sexual or other physical or, indeed, psychological abuse that would be covered by the bill.

Psychological abuse is somewhat complex. I suppose it’s less obvious, potentially, to those who are becoming involved in helping the victims of such abuse. It might also be less obvious to those who are suffering the abuse that they have, in fact, been subjected to psychological abuse. So it includes threats of physical or sexual abuse, and it also includes particularly, we find in this bill, in relation to people who are already vulnerable—of course, by definition, a victim of abuse is vulnerable, but the bill does actually set out that there are particular categories of people who are already vulnerable and whose vulnerability is, therefore, multiplied by the situation of being abused in such a way as, for example, where a person is unable to withdraw themselves from the care or charge of another. There might be the removal or hindering, or the threat of a removal or hindering, of an aid or device that affects or supports that person’s quality of life.

So that example is important. It is important that it is an example and that we’re not narrowing the effect of the legislation. There’s been some considerable effort, I note from reading the commentary, to ensure that the examples don’t limit the scope of the bill. That shows to me that some care has gone into this piece of legislation that an as wide as possible application will be had, and that is indeed a positive thing.

I’d like to take a moment to acknowledge the fact that there are factors that are outside the ambit of the bill, but not by reason of it having been drafted in a way that is limited, except to say that all law is limited in the sense that as a society, as a community, and, indeed, as families and whānau, we must, as the saying goes, own the issues in a way that acknowledges that with all the best will in the world of the Parliament—and it seems that the Parliament does so far unanimously support this bill—there are factors outside the ambit of the law that are things that we do need to take ownership of and do outside of the legislative framework. With that in mind, I note that in the regulatory impact statement, there are a number of key constraints set out. Non-regulatory options were considered, but the scope of the review that had led to this bill being crafted was not focusing on those explicitly or exclusively.

There was some discussion as well about the quality of the evidence base. It was noted that there’s a range of factors that contribute to perhaps a lack of understanding of what family violence might be. An obvious reason for that might be because such violence takes place behind closed doors almost by definition, and that there has been historically low reporting of such incidences.

Looking further down the agency disclosure statement, we see that it’s noted that there will be, no doubt, an increased demand for services as a result of this bill. That is a good problem to have in itself if it’s the case that more services are required to give effect to helping those who are in situations of abuse, but we do then face the conundrum of being unsure whether an increase in services being required reflects the fact that there is better reporting, greater acknowledgment, and, indeed, better assistance being given, as distinct from an increase in the rate of violence or abuse.

So that is something that we must remain vigilant about as lawmakers and, indeed, as a society as a whole. It goes to the point that was highlighted, I think, very well by various colleagues earlier about the name of the bill, and acknowledges that a disagreement including physical, sexual, or psychological abuse is not merely a domestic matter and is not merely behind closed doors, and that a man’s home, or, indeed, a person’s home is not his or her castle in a way that should preclude us from taking an interest and taking action in these cases.

With my remaining time, I’ll simply note that the bill has undergone considerable scrutiny in its time so far, having reached us now over a period of some months. No doubt there will be more. That’s appropriate for such an important area of legislation as this, and I look forward to hearing from other colleagues and continuing to see this bill’s passage through the House.

PRIYANCA RADHAKRISHNAN (Labour): Tēnā koe e Te Mana Whakawā. I rise to take a call on the Family and Whānau Violence Legislation Bill, which is a step that the previous Government took towards strengthening the legislative fabric that exists around family violence, or to address family violence here in New Zealand, and I commend them for that. In fact, I’ll begin my speech by commending the former justice Minister, the Hon Amy Adams, for the work that she did to get the bill to where it’s at today. I will also acknowledge and commend the current justice Minister, the Hon Andrew Little, and also the under-secretary to the Minister, Jan Logie, for the work that they’ve done and continue to do to address this issue, as well.

Now, previous speakers have talked about what an issue family violence is and quoted some of the stats around why it’s such an issue for us here in New Zealand. I won’t relitigate some of those points, but I will make this point: the Social Services and Community Committee recently, over the last recess, visited Australia. Now, the focus of that trip was to look at Australian initiatives that addressed poverty—poverty reduction—and also homelessness. The one point that I want to make is that in every single meeting we had over there, whether it was with Ministers and members of Parliament, Government departments, or, indeed, NGOs working at the front line to address either of those two issues, the issue of family violence was brought up as a driver of all of those issues, as well. So it is a complex issue. Family violence is not just a justice issue; it’s a human rights, health, and social issue that we must, indeed, eliminate here in New Zealand.

This bill is an omnibus bill which overhauls the Domestic Violence Act, and that’s a good thing. I’ll just quickly go through, in the time that I have, some of the main points or main changes that this piece of legislation, once passed, will enact. The member Jan Logie talked about the fact that when a police safety order is issued, the ability to obtain a risk and needs assessment—which is what this piece of legislation will allow—is incredibly important so that both the victim and the perpetrator get the types of support that they need for the victim to stay safe and for the perpetrator to actually be supported to stop perpetrating violence. We have to get to a point where the perpetration of violence stops for us to be able to eliminate this scourge.

The second change that this bill makes is that it changes society’s understanding of what family violence is. Previous speakers have touched upon this as well, so I will keep it brief, but it acknowledges the fact that family violence can be one incident of physical, sexual, or psychological violence that is significant, but it is also a pattern of power and control, of coercion and control. I’m excited that this bill makes that point, because it’s not one that many have acknowledged previously, including those who work in the sector as well.

The introduction of a new offence of non-fatal strangulation is critical, is crucial. I remember reading somewhere that victim survivors who have been strangled are seven times more likely to be killed—to be a victim of family violence homicide. It’s a major risk indicator for homicide, and I’m pleased that it’s included in this bill.

At the end of the day, this bill presents us with an option for a more coordinated response to address family violence and a whole host of changes that I won’t go into in more detail, but it is a good bill, and that’s why there is cross-party support for it.

The one point that I will make is that the member Jan Logie touched upon the fact that this bill does include an element on, or criminalises, coerced marriage or forced marriage, and therefore touches on some of the issues that relate specifically to women from ethnic communities. Submissions have been made during the select committee process that indicate that this needs to go further—that there are other issues, like dowry abuse, that exist in New Zealand that must be addressed as well.

Finally, I will say that this bill sits alongside the work that this Government is doing to eliminate family violence in New Zealand, which includes the position of the under-secretary to the justice Minister that focuses on domestic and sexual violence—because it’s the first ever, internationally, to focus on the elimination of these forms of violence—funding for front-line services that was in Budget 2018; and, indeed, prioritisation for a central agent that will implement the coordinated response to eliminate family violence. It is indeed my pleasure to commend this bill to the House. Thank you.

Bill read a second time.

Bills

Education (Teaching Council of Aotearoa New Zealand) Amendment Bill

In Committee

Part 1 Amendments to principal Act

Hon NIKKI KAYE (National—Auckland Central): Well, look, I am very pleased to be standing here in the Chamber having this opportunity to speak, but I’m not actually pleased that this is the legislation in education that we are choosing to spend our time on. For people who are watching the television right now, the Government has 19 reviews under way, and it is choosing to spend the members in this House’s time on a bill that, effectively, changes the name of the Education Council. It goes back and reverses changes that have been previously made around the institution—and I’m going to walk the committee through that—and it also costs the taxpayer about $700,000. My colleagues here, on this side, we know the value of that: that is equivalent to tens of thousands of teacher-aide hours.

Now, let me talk you through a little bit of the history here. The original Teachers Council was set up in 2002. There was a very important review in 2010, and that came out of some very difficult circumstances that were recognised in terms of the ministerial inquiry into the employment of a convicted sex offender in the education sector. So that is the first thing for all members in this committee to acknowledge: that there were serious issues raised previously around the processes of the previous body.

The second issue that members need to be very aware of is that there were financial issues—and I am getting to Part 1, and I want to talk about amending section 348. We know that it is the previous Government that had to, effectively, bail out the former Teachers Council, which became the Education Council, to the tune of about $21 million because of the financial difficulties. So to be standing in this Chamber—and my colleagues are going to talk about different aspects of the bill before us—and to recognise and respect the history of the change from the Teachers Council to the Education Council is to acknowledge there were serious issues around the processes, but it is also to acknowledge there were serious issues from a financial perspective as well.

The other point that we would make is: is this a great use of the House’s time? We’re going to talk through the difference between membership organisations versus a competency-based skilled organisation. When you have 19 reviews under way at the moment, you have more than 18 broken promises in education that haven’t been delivered—and that’s in part because we’ve got $2.8 billion that’s been spent on fees-free and students rather than the compulsory sector—instead, this committee is here debating a bill that changes a name and, potentially, goes back in history to a structure that was rejected by multiple reviews in 2010, then also in 2012. So we do severely question the Government’s priorities when not only are they not delivering fiscally in the education area—they have had bad priorities, including fees-free—but that, also, they are ignoring history with regard to this bill. And then, as I’ve said before, they’ve got 19 reviews under way, and this, they consider, is one of their greatest priorities.

So we go to clause 4, amending section 348. It, effectively, changes the names. From our perspective, we think, at the very least—even if you were going to go and change this body, how on earth can one justify $700,000 of expenditure on this name change when we know that that is equivalent to tens of thousands of teacher-aide hours?

Again, I want to take members back to some of the submissions to the Education and Workforce Committee, and some of the submissions that opposed the name change in particular, and I want to acknowledge Yvonne Groot and the Waitakere Area Principals’ Association. They made the point that the cost and the money could be spent on other priorities. Another point that they made was it would be unnecessarily disruptive for very little gain, and it would not look good, as the council had recently gone through a name change. So let’s talk about that.

We’ve gone through a review in 2010. We’ve gone through another report in 2012, which is what the Hon Hekia Parata considered, then we had various announcements, and the changes go through several years later. Now we’re less than a couple of years in, and, as the submitters quite rightly point out with regard to section 348, it is disruptive and the money could be spent on other priorities. Also, the other point that they raised was there is a risk of diluting the council’s identity, which could negatively impact on its important mahi.

Dr PARMJEET PARMAR (National): Thank you, Madam Chair. I would like to speak to my Supplementary Order Paper 102. This is to put an amendment into schedule 2. Schedule 2, in Part 1, is about ministerial appointments, and this actually gives the description of what kinds of people can be appointed by the Minister as members of the Teaching Council.

As we know, the membership is being increased from nine to 13, and, yes, there will be some members who are going to be appointed by the Minister and some will be elected, but this one specifically talks about ministerial appointments. It is about notification, and it is also about the Gazette notice specifying the appointment process and listing the criteria of appointment that is specified in subclauses (3) and (4).

But in subclause (4), when the Minister is considering someone to appoint, the Minister must keep in mind that each candidate’s ability to carry out the duties is there, and that the person is able to represent the public interest and to “have regard to the collective skills, experience, and knowledge making up the overall composition of the Teaching Council, [and this is] including (but not limited to) the candidate’s knowledge and experience in any of the following areas”. It actually lists these areas: “(i) education: (ii) governance: (iii) leadership experience and skills: (iv) financial skills:”—and the fifth one in there is—“(v) understanding of the partnership principles of the Treaty of Waitangi.” My amendment is to add in this subparagraph as a sixth point: “(vi) understanding of the partnership principles between the Crown and proprietors of partnership schools kura hourua.”

So what we have seen in this Part 1, in schedule 2, where the Minister has described the criteria of people that the Minister can appoint on the Teaching Council—it is short-sighted. This is just based on what this Government wants to, but we have already announced in the National Party that we will bring partnership schools back. So it’s important that any legislation that goes through the House has that vision, is long-sighted, and is not something that we bring back each term to change.

The Minister has completely ignored the fact that partnership schools actually provide a very different kind of education model, and that needs to be taken into consideration when the Minister is making appointments. So this amendment is to ensure that when appointing a member to the Teaching Council, the Minister can have regard to the candidate’s knowledge and experience relating to partnership schools and to how this will contribute to the collective skills, experience, and knowledge making up the overall composition of the council.

The composition of the council is really important, because this is not only about providing the experience or the background from the education sector but it’s also about providing the experience from the different kinds of education models that we have in New Zealand. The partnership school model is a model that is highly regarded by people: those who have experience of sending their children to partnership school; teachers who are teaching in those partnership schools and, of course, those people who are running partnership schools; and people who have seen the outcomes of students who are in partnership schools—students who were not able to succeed in normal schools.

So it’s important that we take that into consideration, and I would actually like to ask the Minister in the chair, Jenny Salesa, if the Minister thinks this amendment should not go ahead, to give us a reason why this amendment should not be adopted and should not be made part of schedule 2. Partnership schools—yes, we understand that this Government does not support that model, which is giving us really good outcomes for those children who are falling through the cracks in the mainstream education system. But, in the long term, we definitely want to see partnership schools coming back and succeeding and providing a different education model to those students who wish to pursue that.

When I’m talking about the whole governance experience, I also want to talk about a submitter. This submission is from the Education Council—yes, the Education Council itself. This legislation—the whole legislation—is actually to change the Education Council to Teaching Council and to change the membership and the composition of membership of the Teaching Council.

So this submitter, the Education Council, said very clearly in their recommendations—I want to just highlight two recommendations that they made. The first one is point 8 in their submission. This is: “The Cabinet Paper on the Bill suggests it is sufficient that these skills are represented among those members appointed by the Minister.”—and then it says—“The Education Council agrees there cannot be criteria imposed on elected members, but we think all members of the Council should have some experience in these important skill areas, especially as elected members will comprise the majority on the Council.” So, clearly, what we have seen here is that the Education Council does not believe—[Time expired]

Hon NIKKI KAYE (National—Auckland Central): I’m delighted to just go back to my initial conversation that I was having about section 348, so we go back to the submissions. There were a range of other reasons that people put forward for not making this change. I mean, the other reason that was put forward was that it does not reflect the work of teachers, which is the work of education, and that, rather, it implies a lack of professional confidence, and the term “education” is a far more inclusive term for what happens within schools and educational facilities. So the point is that by then reverting back and inserting the word “teaching”, we are shifting away from the more generic term, which then reflects teachers, principals, and students. So that’s the other point that I wanted to make.

Just coming back again to that section 348, I have a range of Supplementary Order Papers (SOPs) in my name. I want to just touch on one of them, SOP 103, which is around representation, and a number of my colleagues have other Supplementary Order Papers here. As we have been very clear at the outset, if you look at the history of this, we have argued for a competency-based model. The reality is that the Minister ends up choosing people that may be involved in representative organisations, but the concept that you would have the best people that were up for the job is absolutely at the heart of our policy on this issue. Not only are we seeing, as part of this bill, a growing of the body to 13 members—which is another cost, which members will talk about—but then there is also this issue of every person coming to select committee and arguing for another representative body. So one of the amendments that I have put up is that “At least one of the appointed members must be appointed after the Minister consults with, and receives recommendations from, representatives of parent, school trustee, and community interest groups”.

So the point here is that of all of the organisations that came to the Education and Workforce Committee—and, I should say, remember, there are tens of thousands of teachers out there. We had 36 submissions, so this is hardly the most important issue in terms of education. But the one group that were missed out, in terms of the Government members, were parents, and we know there are more than a million parents out there that actually want to have a say in our education system. So my amendment—and I really do want to hear the Minister’s views on this, because, as I say, we actually oppose these changes, but we’ve tried to be helpful through this amendment process.

I want to hear the Minister’s views on why it is that the Parliament, if we’re going to be here and we’ve got 19 reviews under way, if we’re going to be spending $700,000 changing the name of this council, and if we’re going to be reversing all of the reviews that have occurred around this body—and this question is directly to the Minister—then why is it that the one group that are missed out are parents? A million parents out there are not given the opportunity, unlike all of the other representative groups, to have their own representation. I would really, really like to hear from the Minister on that issue.

The other issue that I would like to hear from the Minister on is that I want the Minister to respond to Yvonne Groot and the Waitakere Area Principals’ Association, and I want the Minister to justify why—when even, I think, a number of the unions turned up to select committee and said “We don’t necessarily think you need to change the name.”—the Government progressed for a $700,000 change. We understand they wanted to make this representative body change, but why did they progress with this name change when it was going to cost that amount of money?

The other key question that I do have for the Minister is totally separate to proceeding along these lines for the Education Council. Why is it that this is happening so quickly? Why is it that we’re not respecting the amazing Barbara Ala’alatoa and all of those people that have put their time and energy into this body and not accepting that there should be a decent transition? Why is the Government pushing on through, spending this money on reversing what have been previous major reviews in this area, and then riding roughshod over incredibly respected educators to force this change to happen so quickly?

So those are a couple of key questions that I have for the Minister. We’re going to be bedding in for a long ride here.

DENISE LEE (National—Maungakiekie): Kei te whakamana au i Te Reo Māori mō te kaupapa i tēnei wā.

[I wish to honour our current focus on Māori language.]

I really appreciate the chance to take this call and would like to refer to one particular submitter that also represented another peak body, and that was the Association of Proprietors of Integrated Schools (APIS), which is the body, along with the New Zealand Catholic Education Office (NZCEO)—the bodies that represent integrated schools here in Aotearoa New Zealand. They represent over 360 State-integrated schools here in New Zealand, some 11 percent of all students that are in our education system. As we will know, back in 1975, under the Private Schools Conditional Integration Act, State-integrated schools were established. This particular submitter—and I wish to thank Paul Ferris, who appeared before us as a committee—was very particular about what he wanted to see. It’s a real pleasure to be on the Education and Workforce Committee, and as a committee we thought, especially those of us on this side of the House, that he was very reasonable in that he didn’t ask for or request an actual position on the council. What he did, though, was request that the council and the Minister lock in knowledge and understanding of what it is that State-integrated schools face when it comes to their partnership with the Crown. Of course, they were very particular about this piece of legislation, seeing an opportunity to progress and move forward.

What Mr Ferris raised is that while it’s important that the council has at least one member that understands the principles, they want to see that the Minister of Education understands this as well. So this is a question that I have specifically for the Minister—in fact, I’ve got two. One is: how will the Minister address the valid concerns of Mr Ferris and APIS and NZCEO on how State-integrated schools will be given regard, if not through a council position—which, to be fair, they didn’t ask for—but through the Minister having regard? My second question is: does current legislation, and I’ll refer to—actually, I retract that. It’s not legislation; it’s a memorandum of understanding (MOU) between the Association of Proprietors of Integrated Schools and the Crown, and this is a particular piece of documentation that Mr Ferris presented us with. How will the Minister take into account that sort of documentation, an MOU, and how will he warrant more specific attention to the needs of State-integrated schools?

What Mr Ferris specifically was wanting to know was that if there was one member that had specific regard to what they have to go through in terms of their partnership with the Crown, that person—and we can’t guarantee that as the bill is proposed, there will be a person, once the council is fully elected under the new regime, that has State-integrated school knowledge to the degree of knowing specific rules, of knowing and being able to understand when to take specific actions, and also when that particular council member or council members—it would be great to have more than one—would have knowledge of the principles and the legal requirements under which State schools need to operate.

These are the principles, these are the valid concerns, that were raised to us by this particular submitter, and I repeat again that I would very much appreciate the Minister being very clear about how these valid concerns will be addressed, given the very reasonable request that they not have an actual council member but that the Minister can prove that there will be regard to their particular requirements, as laid out in their partnership between Crown and proprietors.

So, Madam Chair—in fact, Te Kaiwhakahaere—I really appreciate the Minister addressing those concerns.

SARAH DOWIE (National—Invercargill): Thank you very much, Madam Chair, for an opportunity to join the chorus of opposition to this amendment bill, which, quite frankly, is amendment for amendment’s sake, based on an ideology that does not work. It’s on the back of several years of review undertaken by the previous Government in 2010, the Education Workforce Advisory Group report, which looked into the failings of the previous council. It was found that the profession was not being held in high esteem and, certainly on the back of some criminal activity, that screening of teachers was not at a place that it should be, given that teachers are responsible for some of our most vulnerable and impressionable in our community.

With that, I refer to Part 1 and, in particular, clause 5, which looks to replace section 380. That goes to the composition of the Teaching Council. It refers to there being six members appointed by the Minister and then, in new section 380(1)(b), goes on to describe, in a very prescriptive manner, the make-up of the seven elected members. Now, what I know from my time on the committee—I’m no longer part of the Education and Workforce Committee, but, certainly, what I know from my time on that committee, from the submitters, and from my own work as an electorate MP is that when I go to visit teachers, the most common issue is that they want to be recognised for their expertise, they want their profession to be held in high esteem, and they want to be recognised for the work that they do in shaping the hearts and young minds of our future. To do that, through the workforce review, we wanted to lift the bar, and the way to do that is to make sure that any representative body has the excellence represented on it, that we have the skills and the expertise available to drive the profession forward. We’re not talking about looking at deficits; we’re talking about driving the profession forward to innovate and make sure that we obtain excellence in our teaching.

Now, in new section 380(1)(b), in an ideal world, if we could get excellence throughout all of that prescription, that would be fantastic, but the reality is that we will not. We need to have a level of oversight over the expertise and competencies that come on to the council so as to get the best results for teaching moving forward. It’s like in this Parliament: we want diversity because diversity brings about the best decision making. So what we need to do is make sure that we have those core competencies represented on the council—not a prescription of people that hold certain positions but an emphasis on core competencies.

Again, back to the issue about creating robust systems that mean that any criminal behaviour or screening of teachers is completed in a fair but very decisive manner, to make sure that nobody of ill character gets through to end up teaching and being in control of our children moving forward—this bill won’t achieve that. It won’t achieve excellence in the sector, and it’s certainly taking us backwards to where we were prior to the 2010 review.

JO LUXTON (Labour): Thank you, Madam Chair. It’s a pleasure to stand and take a call this evening. I wanted to disparage a couple of things that members opposite have said this evening, one being the Hon Nikki Kaye, where she talked about the fact that this is just a bill that changes a name. Well, it does a lot more than change a name, to the teachers in the teaching profession. It sends a clear message to the teachers that they matter, that they count, and that we trust them to be in charge of their own council, not like when the last changes were made and that was stripped from them. This is about democracy and having an election of elected members to a council. And I just want to also talk about the fact that IHC also reiterates what I just said in their submission, where they said, “IHC welcomes and fully supports this Bill which aims to give back to the teaching profession ownership of, and trust and confidence, in their professional body. This Body is charged with raising the status of the teaching profession and ensuring quality teaching and learning for all children and young people.” And there it is: it is in raising the status of the teaching profession.

The Hon Nikki Kaye also mentioned the fact that parents weren’t going to be consulted, didn’t have the opportunity to be consulted, on this particular bill. If you look at the information around the bill, it does say here that, actually, the Minister is going to appoint six members of this council. It does say here at least one of these members would be appointed after consultation with representatives of parents and community interest groups in the early childhood and schooling sectors. So, I’m sorry, but it states quite clearly that these groups are going to be consulted with and have the opportunity to contribute.

Now, I just want to talk a little bit about the composition of the teaching council. It talks about seven elected members. And there it is: elected members, democratically elected by people from the teaching profession.

I also really want to talk particularly about the teacher representation from the early childhood sector. I’m really, really excited about that, because I feel, personally, that for too long, early childhood has not been given the same status as primary or secondary teachers—we’ve been considered the poor cousin—and this bill will raise the status not just of early childhood teachers but all teachers in the teaching profession.

SIMEON BROWN (National—Pakuranga): Thank you very much, Madam Chair. I just want to start by replying to a couple of those very interesting comments from the member across the other side of the Chamber, Jo Luxton. The first comment which was made was: this is going to send a message. Well, it’s a very expensive message. Maybe New Zealand Post might be interested in that, because they might need a bit of help. Is that message going to be sent in the post? I’m not sure, but it’s a $700,000 message—a very expensive message. Then she said, “It’s about democracy.” Well, we’ve got a bill here which does change the name of the Education Council to the Teachers Council, and then—

Jo Luxton: Teaching. Teaching Council.

SIMEON BROWN: Sorry? The Teachers Council, that’s right.

Jo Luxton: Teaching.

SIMEON BROWN: Teachers. Oh right, sorry. The “Education (Teachers Council of Aotearoa) Amendment Bill”. I hope I got that right.

Jo Luxton: No.

SIMEON BROWN: Anyway. Maybe I need—anyway, I won’t go there. This is about democracy, so why do we have to change the name as well? I guess this is a core question. I’ve got some questions for the Minister. Why are we changing the name? Let’s put aside the arguments. We’ve got arguments as to why we oppose the bill, but I’d like to know why we have to then also change the name. It’s a $700,000 bill to change the name, so why are we doing that on top of all the other changes? Even if we put aside all of the arguments that we have on this side of the Chamber over all of the other changes which are made, why do we have to go ahead and change the name?

I’d like to ask the Minister what advice from officials she has received in regards to the cost of changing the name. How much is it going to cost? The Education and Workforce Committee has had evidence presented by the Education Council that says it will cost around $700,000 to change the name. I’d like to ask the Minister what advice she has received from officials as to what that cost will be. Does she agree with the evidence provided to the committee about the cost, which has been given to the committee by the Education Council? And then the next question is: does the Minister believe that that cost is justified? Because, well, we can put aside the arguments here, but does the Minister believe that that argument is justified?

So I was having a read of the “Education (Teachers Council of Aotearoa New Zealand) Amendment Bill”—the commentary. It says there: “Clause 4 of the bill as introduced would amend section 348 of the Act, changing the name of Education Council of Aotearoa … to the [Teachers] Council of Aotearoa. We recommend, by majority, amending clause 4 and inserting clause 4A to change the name of the council … This would better reflect the bicultural nature of this country.” So is that the reason why the Minister thinks this change is required? Is that the only reason? That’s the only reason that we actually see here in the report from the select committee, which was voted on by the majority of Government members. Is that the only reason that the Minister can use to justify changing the name of the Education Council, or are there other reasons that the Minister has? Does the Minister have—

Marja Lubeck: What did the teachers tell us?

SIMEON BROWN: Why don’t you ask the Minister a question? I’m asking the Minister some questions right now. So I’m just waiting for the Minister to answer that question and, hopefully, that will inform the committee, including the other members on the other side.

So does the Minister feel that that cost is justified? And then my next question is: has there been a cost-benefit analysis done by officials as to this name change? Weighing up the costs and the benefits, has there been a cost-benefit analysis? Has the Minister seen a cost-benefit analysis done by officials on the costs of changing this name and the benefit that it will have to the teaching profession?

I guess, on this side of the Chamber, we look at it and say, “Well, look. You’re changing a name.” This is the first piece of legislation which this Government is getting through Parliament in regard to education policy and all it does is it changes the name and it does a few other inconsequential things. There have been arguments about this—there will be more arguments about this—but this is the first thing the Government has brought to the House, and all it does is change a name. I’d like to know whether a benefit-cost analysis was done. Has there been a working group? Has there been a review? What kind of thought has been put into this? What Ministers have come together and had a think about this? What committee meetings have been attended? Who sat on those? You know, I’d like to know what thought actually went into this, because otherwise all we’ve got is one line, and that doesn’t cut it.

Hon JENNY SALESA (Associate Minister of Education): Kia ora koutou katoa i Te Wiki o Te Reo Māori. Kia kaha Te Reo.

[Greetings to you all during this Māori Language Week. May the language be strong.]

This legislation that we are putting through, on behalf of Minister of Education, is not just about changing the name. It is absolutely not just about changing “EDUCANZ” and inserting “Teaching”. To the question posed by the member of Parliament Simeon Brown: the council’s name should reflect the central role that our teachers have in their own council. It should also ensure that they have the power to elect their own members. This is about democracy, ensuring that our teachers can elect their own members to govern them.

Several of the questions posed earlier on were: what about the voices of partnership schools, what about the voices of State integrated schools, what about the voices of parents? Well, this legislation provides that the Minister will be able to appoint six of the 13 members. Seven of the members are elected, and six are going to be appointed by the Minister. The bill provides that in appointing those members, the Minister will have regard to their collective skills, their experience, and their knowledge, in making the overall composition of the Teaching Council. It could include all of those other areas that I had questions on earlier in terms of representation and parents being included.

In terms of the question posed about the costs, the question was: do we have any advice on how much it will cost to change the name? As far as I’m informed, the Education Council has estimated that changing the name would cost about $220,000. The question was also posed: is this a good investment of money? We are doing a whole lot in this space. We have, as you know, according to the Hon Nikki Kaye, 13 different working groups, including Tomorrow’s Schools and NCEA. All of that work comes to Cabinet at the end of this year, and this is but one of the things that the Ministry of Education and the Minister of Education, the Hon Chris Hipkins, are working on. One of the things that we knew while in Opposition, as well as during the submission process, and what teachers have told us many, many times over, is that they would like to have a say. They would like to elect their own people.

When we look at other professions, be they doctors or lawyers or nurses, they have a say in who gets elected and then who governs them. We are giving teachers the respect that they deserve, so that they can elect their own to govern their own. Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

Hon NIKKI KAYE (National—Auckland Central): Madam Chair, I am absolutely delighted. Firstly, can I just acknowledge the Hon Jenny Salesa. What a great speech. Can I suggest that, potentially, we haven’t seen the Hon Chris Hipkins in a while—and I know I’m not supposed to mention that he’s absent from the House—but at least you are in the chair and you are responding to the questions that we asked. But I’ve still got a few more questions to go, and I want to just ask some more questions of the Minister. I’m hoping that she will immediately then respond and we can really get this debate going.

So just with regard to the costs—I need the Minister to stand up and actually clarify this, because as I understand it, it may be $220,000 in one year, but the overall cost over several years is $700,000. So we need to have that clarity, because that is, potentially, I think, 30,000 teacher-aide hours—30,000 teacher-aide hours. So we need that clarity.

The second point I want to make is that I do have questions around the representative nature of each of the positions. The point I want to make—and I want to make this in response to one of the honourable members previously—is separate to the generic appointments, and the point is that it does matter if you are allocated a specific representative position. And our point, and my amendment around parents, is exactly to say that this is about equality. This is about respecting parents just as much as some of the members opposite respect some of the union organisations. So my question for the member—this isn’t about the generic appointments—is: why is it that we are not going to be very specific that there will be a dedicated appointed person that represents parents and boards of trustees?

The next point that I want to make is actually in response to the member saying, “Well, we’re a busy Government, because we doing 13 reviews.” I sat down with a very senior education leader the other night, and I said to them, “Look, this Government is doing about 13 education reviews.” They corrected me—and I would love for the member to stand up and confirm whether this is correct—and said, “It’s actually not true that there are 13 reviews under way. There are 19 reviews under way.”

So I would love to have that clarity, because I think it is relevant now that the Minister has brought this into the debate. And just along the same lines of what Simeon Brown said, as to what was the review that may have happened behind the scenes to mean that this became a priority piece of legislation for the Government—so that’s my other question for the member. Given that she’s now brought that into the debate, can she confirm that there was somehow a review before this legislation was dreamed up by the member?

The next point that I want to bring in, that members haven’t talked about yet—and actually that a lot of members of the public and the profession probably don’t know about, because the Minister of Education has hidden this in the depth of a press release that links to some websites—is that one of the whole reasons for these changes was to give independence to the profession. What the profession and many people don’t realise—as I see when I get out and about in New Zealand—is that the Minister has some secret plans under way to create policy directions that would mean that the Minister could tell this council what to do. Now, I don’t think we have heard from members opposite about that particular policy.

I would like other members to address the fact that we’re in this Parliament, they’re all standing up giving pious speeches about how this gives the profession greater autonomy and independence, and then at the same time in the background the Minister of Education might be putting this piece of legislation through the committee but he is, through secret plans, giving himself the ability to direct the council on policy, completely pulling the rug underneath many thousands of teachers in this country by directing them what to do, and that is a sham. That is an absolute sham. It is an absolute sham that we are being required to debate in this committee a bill that is supposed to give greater independence but then behind the scenes the Minister is manipulating the situation so he will control this council. Thank you.

JAMIE STRANGE (Labour): That speech pretty much sums up the Opposition: conspiracy theories. If they’re so worried about things not going right, why don’t they find out who the leaker was in the Opposition there?

CHAIRPERSON (Poto Williams): Order!

JAMIE STRANGE: I will return to the bill, Madam Chair.

This bill is about one thing. We’ve got the Hon Nikki Kaye over there and we’ve got her team behind her and they’ve all got their lines, and that’s OK, but this bill is about one thing: do we as a country want teachers on the governing body for teachers? Do we: yes or no? Do we want teachers elected by teachers to be on there? On this side of the House, the answer is yes. The Opposition have a different view, and that’s fine. Why do we want teachers elected on to this council? Because teachers know what is happening in the classrooms of New Zealand.

For the first time ever, as my colleague mentioned, we’re going to have teachers from the early childhood sector. This is one thing that is particularly exciting for me, because the first five years of a child’s life are absolutely vital in terms of how they will carry on.

If we look at the composition of the council in section 380(1)(b)—this is in clause 5—we see in subparagraphs (i) to (iv) that there is one teacher representing early childhood, one representing the primary sector, one representing the secondary sector, and one representing ongoing teacher education. So that’s four teachers who are at the coalface. They are absolutely in the classroom, living the job. They know the changes that may need to happen in their profession. They know the challenges. They’re right there. Then paragraph (b) continues with subparagraphs (v), (vi), and (vii), which are talking about a principal from primary, a principal from secondary, and a lead teacher from early childhood. So we’ve got three teachers around the area of leadership. So we’ve got those at the coalface and we’ve got those in leadership, and I think that’s an excellent balance.

I do wonder what the Opposition have against teachers being on the Teaching Council, and that’s the key question.

Hon Member: There’s six of them now.

JAMIE STRANGE: Yes, there may be one or two, but the reality is we’re talking about elected teachers. The way the legislation currently is we may or may not have a teacher on there. There was no guarantee under the previous legislation. This guarantees seven teachers on the Teaching Council.

There was something mentioned opposite there about the partnership schools. Now, the way the Opposition talks about partnership schools is that they think it’s the most wonderful thing since sliced bread. How many charter schools did the previous Government bring in? Maybe 200, 300? I mean, they really believed in them. No? One hundred, 50? No. Thirty charter schools? Twenty, 15? Twelve charter schools. The reason I say this is because I’m responding to what one of the Opposition members said, waxing lyrical about the benefits of charter schools. There are only 12 in existence. Did the previous Government really believe in them? I don’t think so. There are only 12.

I’m just going to finish on my one point there, which is around having “Aotearoa” in the name. It’s Māori Language Week at the moment, and I think it is particularly appropriate to mention that we do have the word “Aotearoa” in the Teaching Council.

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

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Anne Tolley): Kia ora tātou e Te Whare. When we rose for the dinner break the committee was considering Part 1 of the Education (Teaching Council of Aotearoa New Zealand) Amendment Bill. Jamie Strange had the call with one minute and five seconds remaining, should he so wish.

JAMIE STRANGE: Madam Chair, thank you for the opportunity to finish my speech. As I say, the crux of this bill is having teachers elected on the Teaching Council, guaranteeing teacher representation on the Teaching Council.

Simeon Brown: How many are there now?

JAMIE STRANGE: That’s the question that I ask the Opposition. Why do you not want elected members from the teaching profession on the Teaching Council? The teachers are at the coalface so the teachers know some of the challenges in the classroom, and so the teachers are in the best place to provide that insight around that.

I commend this bill to the committee, and I thank the Minister for the work he’s done on this.

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister of Education): I move, That the committee report progress and sit again presently.

House resumed.

Progress reported.

Report adopted.

Business of the House

Business of the House

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Leader of the House): I seek leave for the motion agreed earlier today on the business for tomorrow’s extended sitting to be amended so that the business to be considered is as follows: the second reading of the State Sector and Crown Entities Reform Bill, the interrupted first reading of the Conservation (Indigenous Freshwater Fish) Amendment Bill, the first reading of the Building Amendment Bill, and the cognated first readings of the Regulatory Systems (Economic Development) Amendment Bill, the Regulatory Systems (Housing) Amendment Bill, and the Regulatory Systems (Workforce) Amendment Bill.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): Leave is sought for that purpose. Is there any objection? There appears to be not. That motion is accepted.

Bills

Education (Teaching Council of Aotearoa New Zealand) Amendment Bill

In Committee

Debate resumed.

Part 1 Amendments to principal Act (continued)

DENISE LEE (National—Maungakiekie): Te Kaiwhakahaere kei te whakamana au Te Reo Māori mō te kaupapa i tēnei wā.

[Mr Chairman I wish to honour our current focus on Māori language.]

I wish to speak to Supplementary Order Paper 100, in my name. It seeks to amend schedule 2, new clause 1 of schedule 21, and insert, after subclause 4(b)(v), a new paragraph (vi), and the wording is: “understanding of the partnership principles between the Crown and proprietors of State integrated schools.”

For those who were here before the dinner break, they’ll recall that I made reference to a very thorough and a very well-thought-through and reasoned submission by the peak bodies that represent State integrated schools and, specifically, the Catholic integrated schools. I posed a question to the Minister back then about how their valid concerns will be addressed, given that they’ve been very reasonable in not requiring or asking for a specific council position but wanting to make sure that the Minister would have specific regard to their connections or their understanding or their principles—the partnership—between the proprietors of State integrated schools and the Crown. It’s with great pleasure that my Supplementary Order Paper is precisely the Supplementary Order Paper—well, they didn’t phrase it like that but as an amendment—that they would like to see inserted. So what I’ve done is take some of their wording and insert it and make it into a Supplementary Order Paper in my name.

What it does is ensure that, when appointing a member to the Teaching Council of Aotearoa, the Minister can have regard to the candidate’s knowledge and experience relating to State integrated schools specifically and how this will contribute to the collective skills, experience, and knowledge making up the overall composition of the council. If you look at some of the undergirding documentation, going back to 1975 and under the Private Schools Conditional Integration Act, you’ll see that there is quite an understanding between the Crown and State integrated schools around necessary actions that arise out of the principles of this documentation, specific rules, specific actions, knowledge of principles, and legal requirements under which State integrated schools operate. It’s actually quite complex and incredibly important that at least one member on the council can lay claim to specific knowledge for State integrated schools. We can’t guarantee, under the legislation that we’re debating here tonight, that council members will have this knowledge. So that’s what the Supplementary Order Paper seeks to do. The amendment seeks to make sure that the Minister has regard to understanding the partnership principles between the Crown and proprietors of State integrated schools.

One particular point that he made—the submitter that was representing the schools was Mr Paul Ferris, and he did very well in presenting to us on the committee—when he referred to 11 percent of all New Zealand students who are in State integrated schools in New Zealand—that’s quite a high number; 360 schools to be precise—was that if one person doesn’t understand the partnership principles that are in place between the Crown and the proprietors of State integrated schools, then, in fact, you wouldn’t be having regard to the foundation documents. He did present us with one, and that’s the memorandum of understanding dating back to—no, I can’t see a date. But it covers areas such as funding for consequential property costs, updating of the legislative framework, which is an interesting point in itself, and specialised teacher training—all areas that need regard.

SIMEON BROWN (National—Pakuranga): Thank you very much, Madam Chair. I appreciate the opportunity to take a second call on this very important piece of legislation. Well, I don’t think it’s that important, actually, because it seems to be the sort of big issue, or the big thing, that this Government’s trying to push through in regards to education but, really, it’s only changing the name of the Education Council to the Teaching Council. But I just want to make a couple of comments and ask the Minister, Chris Hipkins, a few questions in regards to a couple of submissions which came before the Education and Workforce Committee. I must acknowledge Dr Parmjeet Parmar, who did a fantastic job, actually, in chairing that committee, and has done a great job since she was appointed. It’s a privilege and pleasure to have been able to work with her through this process and through other pieces of legislation which are slowly winding their way through the legislative process.

Anyway, back to the bill, and the submission that I’d like to touch on is in the name of Mr David Brock. He’s in support of the bill. So he’s someone who supported the intention of the bill, and he says it’s the right way to go. That’s his view, but then he asks a really important question here around the way that the democratic process—or so-called democratic process—works, and says, “I am happy with sector representation through the recognised groups but wouldn’t be against some form of democratic, independent, direct representation from the sector.”

I look at clause 5 of this piece of legislation, and it has seven elected members from seven different sector groups. I know my colleagues here have been talking about some of the groups, or, if you were going to be going for sector groups, then some of the groups which are missing. And he makes a very good point, which is: why are we not just electing at large? Why are we not defining the education sector at large, and why are we not giving them all the opportunity to put forward candidates and then also to be able to vote at large?

I just want to ask the Minister whether that was something which he or his officials considered as part of the process in developing this piece of legislation, and whether that’s something which he sees as having some merit. I think, while we’re looking at this—you know, we do have one teacher representing the early childhood education sector, one teacher representing the primary education sector, one representing secondary, a teacher educator, one principal representing the primary sector, one principal representing the secondary sector, and then an early childhood education service leader.

I guess the point that this submitter was making—and, yes, as I noted before, he’s in support of this piece of legislation—is: why are we not looking at this as a whole, rather than sort of looking at it independently of each other, and why are we not saying, “Let’s get some sort of democratic, independent, direct representation from the sector.”?—to quote Mr David Brock’s words.

I’d appreciate some comments from the Minister. Maybe we could put some amendments through which could maybe look at how that could be done; whether that’s merging some of these roles together. If he thinks that’s something which is a sensible amendment, I’m happy to help draft and facilitate that, but I would appreciate his comments on that.

The second submission that I was keen to get some comments from the Minister on was from Mr David Graham; again, someone who supported this legislation and wants to see it go through Parliament. He makes the comment that, “Renaming the council as the Teachers’ Council would also increase the relevance of the council.” I’d like to ask the Minister’s opinion on that. Does he agree? Does he disagree? How will it actually have an impact on the relevance of the council? From my reading of the legislation, this doesn’t actually change the function of the council. It doesn’t change what the council does. All it does is it changes a name, and we’ve talked about how much that costs. We’ve talked about what that money could be going towards, instead of changing a few letterheads and a sign on an office door somewhere in Wellington and a few other parts around the country.

So how will it actually increase the relevance of the council? What does it actually do—because it doesn’t change the core function. So what does it actually do, other than change the name and change the mix of the make-up? And we’ve heard that 66 percent of the people on the council are already teachers. I mean, that’s a key point which we’ve heard over and over again from this side of the House, but how does that actually change that relevance?

NICOLA WILLIS (National): Tēnā koe. Ngā mihi nui ki a koutou katoa i tēnei wiki, Te Wiki o Te Reo Māori.

[Thank you. I pay you all warm compliments of the week, Māori Language Week.]

I rise to make three brief points in this call. The first is to respond to speakers opposite who have perpetually referred, this evening, to the fact that this bill, the Education (Teaching Council of Aotearoa) Amendment Bill, will somehow revive democracy. They’ve said that this bill is about ensuring that teachers’ own members can elect themselves to their own body. I just want to question the Minister of Education, Chris Hipkins, as to whether he believes it is truly democratic if, as was the case in the last election for the Teachers Council, only 13.7 percent of registered teachers choose to vote. And I’d ask the Minister how representative can a body truly claim to be if the vast majority of that profession choose not to vote and have not had a say in electing the members of the council?

But I’d also say that if you’re putting yourself on this high principle of democracy, I would take you back to the purpose of the Teachers Council, which, in fact, is to be a steward for education in the country. That is where I want to come to this question of the name change. In particular, I want to draw the committee’s attention to a submission from Ms Yvonne Groot, who has made a very specific call where she has said, “I cannot believe that you are changing the name of the council yet again, surely the cost of doing so could be better spent elsewhere like speeding up and improving the application process.” As has been discussed by previous members, around $700,000 will have to be invested in this name change. So my question for the Minister is: has any consideration been given to what effect $700,000 could have on speeding up the application process for teacher registration at the Teachers Council? What effect could that level of resource have?

The reason, of course, this question is so important right now is that we have been told time and again by that Minister that we are facing a teacher shortage. I would have thought, in light of that, that it would be quite proper that officials would have considered how resources could be applied to ensuring that the registration process occurs smoothly. But as Ms Yvonne Groot points out in her submission, “What is in a name anyhow, it is what actually happens within the organisation that matters.”

We’ve had some speakers previously claim that the cost of this name change is only $220,000. I would like to point out that, in fact, the cost of elections every three years—in which only 13.7 percent of people have historically chosen to vote—will be $150,000, that the associated cost with increased membership is $105,000 per year, and, again, I would ask the Minister: what would the potential impact of those resources be on the ability of the Teachers Council to conduct its job if they were applied otherwise?

Finally, I want to come to an amendment in my name, which goes to this idea of how we get the right skills and knowledge on to the Teachers Council, because what we have consistently argued on this side of the House is that representation should be competency based. The reason we have said that is that we want a range of skills and knowledge brought to the table. Historically, of course, that’s meant that a number of registered teachers have been around that table. In fact, right now there are registered teachers on the Education Council whose wisdom and experience bring great richness to the role. What my amendment suggests is that we should also, in the future, ensure that the Minister has a mind to understanding the partnership principles between the Crown and proprietors of special character schools when he is making appointments.

The reason I have tabled this amendment is that I think it’s very important that the Teachers Council does have a diversity of thought and experience on it. What we don’t want is a uniform set of experiences. We want to make sure that it has those who have particular experience with special character schools, which, by their very definition, are there to be different from State schools, and offer education which is significantly different from the State option. So making sure that people with that varied experience are there is important.

Of course, this is something that was backed up by submitters. In particular, I draw your attention to the submission from Filipe Menezes, who drew attention to the fact that—sorry, it wasn’t Filipe, although he made some good points which I’d like to refer to later. Frian Wadia pointed out that the Minister, of course, is only actually required to give regard to the views of parents and the wider community with one of his appointments. I would argue that that is substandard and means that this council will not operate as effectively.

MARK PATTERSON (NZ First): Thank you, Madam Chair. I rise to take a very brief call just to register New Zealand First’s support for this Education (Teaching Council of Aotearoa New Zealand) Amendment Bill, the first part in particular, which we are covering at the moment.

What an outrageous state of affairs that teachers would want their own elected representatives on their own professional body! I cannot believe we’re actually having this debate. My sister, who’s a teacher of 30 years, her husband also a 30-year plus veteran—why should they not have the ability to vote for the people that represent them on their elected council? I would have thought that was perfectly obvious. And there are the checks and balances. In answer to the previous member’s contribution—those six independent appointees—there is still the opportunity to look at where there may be a skills gap that we need to identify, and the Minister can make those appointments.

Also in one of the previous contributions, from the Hon Nikki Kaye, she did allude to—I think my colleague Jamie Strange suggested—almost a conspiracy theory where there was a press release, apparently, that if you went to a link on a website there was some dastardly power that the Minister was going to invoke. Well, actually, those seven teachers—those seven elected teachers—are the bulwark against that very sort of behaviour. They are independent; they are not appointed by the Minister. They do not owe the Minister their fees, their directors’ fees; they have earned it because they’ve had support from their fellow teachers. If it was 13 percent, I agree that would not be a particularly high number but 13 percent is 13 percent. The other teachers had the ability to vote too. That is a right, as well. They may have indicated that there was some degree of comfort with the way that council had been going, but at least they had the right.

Do we want to take democracy away from this country if the voting drops below 75 percent, because maybe people aren’t interested or something like that? That’s a Draconian statement, and we need to push back about that in any way, shape, or form. So we in New Zealand First absolutely support this bill, especially Part 1 of this bill as we are debating now. Teachers need their own representatives elected on their own professional body. It is the right thing to do, and we are totally behind that. Thank you.

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Anne Tolley): I call Tim Macindoe.

Hon Christopher Finlayson: Honourable.

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Anne Tolley): Hon Tim Macindoe.

Hon TIM MACINDOE (National—Hamilton West): Kia ora e Te Kaiwhakahaere. Tēnā koutou e Te Whare. Ngā mihi nui ki a koutou mō tēnei Wiki o Te Reo Māori hei whakanuia e tātou.

[Good evening to the House. I offer warm greetings as we celebrate Māori Language Week.]

I was interested in listening to the New Zealand First member Mark Patterson a moment ago. He seems to be so obsessed with talking about the election for this particular council that he completely failed to discuss what its purpose and function would be. This debate essentially hinges around what will give the best range of skills to meet the requirements of the Teaching Council.

I’d like to extend an invitation to his party colleague the Associate Minister of Education to take her opportunity at this stage of the committee to withdraw and apologise for an outrageous slur she has made not once but twice against me, suggesting that I told the select committee that anyone can teach. Now, as a former teacher, I am absolutely convinced that no teacher would ever make such a claim. I have never made such a claim. I have invited Mrs Martin to come and withdraw that ridiculous assertion, because I have no idea why she made it and I’m still waiting for her to do so. I believe she’s an honourable person and so I hope she will nevertheless take the opportunity.

But let me move on, because my colleague across the river in Hamilton, Jamie Strange, was speaking just after the committee stage resumed after dinner, and he suggested that the National Party doesn’t want teachers on this particular council. Now, I found that a bizarre assertion as well. That is, of course, nonsense and I have to say it’s inconceivable that any Minister in making appointments to the council—from whichever party might lead the Government and any parties that might make up a Government in this House—would take such an approach. No Minister would make such exclusive appointments. But again, Part 1 of this bill is about ensuring that the Teaching Council—or it should be about ensuring that the Teaching Council—has that range of core skills and competencies that are required to do the very best job. The Labour Party and its partners in this Government, when you look at new section 380, inserted by clause 5, in redesigning the composition of the Teaching Council—

Simeon Brown: What partners?

Hon TIM MACINDOE: Well, they have partners in New Zealand First and the Green Party, Mr Brown. You’ve been here for nearly a year and I thought you might have noticed that, but anyway.

Simeon Brown: They hate each other.

Hon TIM MACINDOE: Well, I take your point, Mr Brown, but their obsession here in expanding the membership from nine to 13 includes, in new section 380(1)(b), seven elected members. Here you have, “(i) 1 teacher representing the early childhood education sector, elected by teachers from that sector; and (ii) 1 teacher representing the primary education sector, elected by teachers from that sector; (iii) 1 teacher representing the secondary education sector, elected by teachers from that sector;”, one teacher educator, “(v) 1 principal representing the primary education sector, elected by principals from that sector; and (vi) 1 principal representing the secondary education sector, elected by principals from that sector;”.

Now, they’re all very fine people, but what I think it tells us is that this is a Government that is far more interested in having a little bitsy sector representation right across the board rather than focusing on what the skills are that each of these people will bring to the table. Some of those sectors are already represented and always would be represented on the Teaching Council, because, as I say, no Minister of Education is going to exclude all of their skills and background and professional experience. But to suggest that each and every one must be represented in that way shuts out other people who—and the review in 2012 showed this—could bring to the council the sorts of skills that would really enhance its ability to function as it’s intended.

I am dumbfounded that this approach from the Labour Party is so concerned with this sort of segmentation that they would overlook the grand picture. I ask the Minister therefore to take a call and to explain why such a prescriptive model is likely to produce that range of skills that is required, as opposed to just achieving the sector representation set out in that section.

As I say, the 2012 review found that there was a need—[Time expired]

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister of Education): Thank you, Madam Chair. Look, I think it’s fair that I go through the various Supplementary Order Papers put forward by members and provide some comment on those, so I’ll try and run through them in numerical order.

Supplementary Order Paper 95, which is in the name of the Hon Nikki Kaye, would require the Minister to report back, following the election, on the skills of the members who had been elected around education, governance, leadership, financial skills, and understanding of the partnership principles of the Treaty of Waitangi. This really would have no practical effect because they would have already been elected, and unless the Minister was going to overturn the democratic election, it would be rather irrelevant because the Minister would already need to consider those matters in making the appointment to the balance of the council. So there would be no practical necessity or benefit from doing that.

Supplementary Order Paper 96 in the name of Simeon Brown would require the Teaching Council in its annual report to provide a summary from each elected member of the council outlining the impact of the council’s operations on the group that that representative was elected from. There’s nothing to stop the council doing that now, and, of course, those members, having been elected by that relevant part of the teaching community, will have a direct interest in ensuring that that part of the teaching community knows what they have been doing on their behalf. So in terms of following the elected incentives, they will probably have been wanting to do something like that anyway.

Supplementary Order Paper 97, again in the name of the Hon Nikki Kaye, basically would require that the Teaching Council’s rules included a requirement for public disclosure of any union membership by those standing for election. I simply say, why stop there? Why not ask them to declare any religious affiliation they might have, any political party membership they might have—what would be the limitation on requiring them to disclose any type of affiliation or interest that they might have before standing for election? I think that, ultimately, teachers don’t need to know that information. If they want to ask somebody, of course they can ask somebody. That’s part of the democratic process.

Supplementary Order Paper 98, in the name of Erica Stanford, effectively does the same thing, which basically would require people to declare membership of a union, in standing.

Supplementary Order Paper 100, in the name of Denise Lee, talks about integrated schools and suggests that there should be criteria around considering the understanding of the partnership principles between the Crown and the proprietors of integrated schools. The criteria listed in the bill are not exhaustive criteria of things that the Minister needs to consider. If the Minister considered—whoever the Minister was—that a sector or group of teachers was not represented, then they can certainly address that in their appointments.

Supplementary Order Paper 101, in the name of Nicola Willis, effectively, does the same thing but it talks about “special character schools”. In the law there are integrated schools, which are special character schools, and then there are designated character schools. Designated character schools do not have proprietors; they are part of the State school system. Therefore, this, effectively, does exactly the same thing as Supplementary Order Paper 100 because there is no difference between a State integrated school and a special character school—they are one and the same thing.

Supplementary Order Paper 102 suggests that the people being appointed should have an understanding of partnership schools, or kura hourua. The Government is progressing a bill—at some point, when the House gets around to debating it—that will remove that model of education from the Education Act.

Supplementary Order Paper 103, in the name of the Hon Nikki Kaye, deals with extraordinary vacancies, and suggests that the Minister should have—no, sorry; that’s the next one. This one deals with the Minister’s appointment of members and ensures that members must be appointed after consultation with “representatives of parent, school trustee, and community interest groups in relation to schools and early childhood education services.” I think this is a legitimate argument, but it’s difficult to see how any Minister wouldn’t do such a thing, and it does somewhat contradict the principled position that the Opposition have been taking, which was actually just recently elucidated by the Hon Tim Macindoe in arguing that there shouldn’t be a representative structure. So having said that there shouldn’t be a representative structure, they’re now trying to add additional representative criteria to it. It does seem to somewhat contradict their position.

The final Supplementary Order Paper is Supplementary Order Paper 99, and that, again, is in the name of the Hon Nikki Kaye. I’m assuming that there might be some more Supplementary Order Papers coming, but these are the ones that have been tabled so far. Supplementary Order Paper 99 deals with extraordinary vacancies. Again, I think there’s some validity in this. What this would do is—“If an extraordinary vacancy occurs within 6 months of the expiry of the vacating member’s term, the Minister may—(a) appoint a replacement; or (b) leave the vacancy open.” The bill allows for the council to make that determination in the case of an elected member. So that does leave, therefore, the election and the integrity of the electoral process with the council, so I don’t see any need to adopt the provisions that are being suggested by that.

ERICA STANFORD (National—East Coast Bays): Thank you, Madam Chair. I’m not on the Education and Workforce Committee, although I occasionally get whipped on.

Hon Member: You should be.

ERICA STANFORD: I should be. I’d like to be. It’s a great committee. I occasionally get whipped on—I wasn’t in any of the sessions where this was discussed, but I spoke on this bill in its first reading and second reading.

Jamie Strange: Strong start.

ERICA STANFORD: Yeah, thank you. I’m feeling positive about it.

What we have is a body of competent, well-respected people with a great deal of knowledge and ability to govern. What we’re trying to do with this is go back to something that we had, that was broken. We know that what we had before wasn’t working—they weren’t able to self-regulate, they had financial difficulties, which is why we made the change. Jamie Strange got up here tonight and tried to tell us that there weren’t many teachers on the Education Council. We know that’s not true—

Simeon Brown: He can’t count.

ERICA STANFORD: —because we know that there are six of them. He had trouble counting. Although Mark Patterson redeemed members on that side of the Chamber by saying “13 percent is 13 percent.”, so that was good.

But what Jamie Strange doesn’t seem to understand is that there is a majority of teachers on the Education Council. In fact, one of them is from my electorate, from Albany Senior High School—a wonderful, competent woman on a body that is full of good, competent people. I would like to point out that at no point in the proceedings did any of the submitters or anyone ever say that any decision that was made by the current Education Council was in any way a bad decision or that anyone was unhappy with any of the work that they’d done.

I would like to speak tonight about one of the submissions that I’m particularly interested in, the Graduate Women New Zealand submission.

Hon Member: Good submission.

ERICA STANFORD: It is. It’s relating to Part 1 of the bill. I want to speak to this, as it relates to Part 1 of the bill, and I’m particularly interested in the views of Graduate Women New Zealand because of their work in creating positive differences to education and employment outcomes for women and girls in New Zealand. They made a really detailed and interesting submission in which they made a number of suggestions that are worthy of note and that I’d like to bring to the Minister of Education’s attention. I’d like to hear from the Minister as to why some of the suggestions were not included or were not fully included in the bill as it is now. I do acknowledge that for the most part of this submission they did agree with many of the parts and they supported the bill, but their detailed submission did centre around diversity. They talked in great detail about wanting a range of diversity. They say they believe “diversity on governance councils is beneficial for functioning. Therefore, the guidelines directing the Minister and Councils to have regard for ethnic and socio-economic diversity, gender balance, and to include at least one Maori member [should be] encouraged.”

I note, from the part of the bill where the Minister’s obligations are laid out for the members that he selects, they include things like education, governance, leadership experience and skills, financial skills—which is good, given the problem with the financial irregularities of the old Teachers Council—and understanding of the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi. The Minister must consider the candidate’s ability to carry out the duties as a member of the Teaching Council and represent the public interest. So that’s all great, but there is no requirement to consider the things that are important to Graduate Women New Zealand—no requirement to consider socio-economic diversity, gender balance, ethnicity, or with a view to including one Māori representative.

The Government talks about gender balance all the time. It’s something that they have a very strong opinion on. I’m not saying that I particularly agree with this submission—I want to make that very clear, Mr Hipkins. I don’t agree with it, but what I am interested in is hearing from the Minister as to why these considerations weren’t taken into consideration, as per the requests from Graduate Women New Zealand in their very detailed submission.

One of the other issues that they brought up was the issue of international students. There aren’t a huge amount of international students in New Zealand but they deserve to have their voice heard as well. Their concern, it seems, from their submission is around the fact that there may not be someone on this body who is able to represent their views.

Look, I know that we’re not going to win this argument overall—the Government are eventually going to get their way on this—but I think what is important is that we make sure that the bill is as good as it’s going to get. If we are talking about representation, then we need to take all the submissions into account and have a look at what they think. There were a number of views that did think that there could be better representation.

Dr PARMJEET PARMAR (National): Thank you very much, Madam Chair, for giving me this opportunity to take this call. It was really interesting to see the Minister in the chair, Chris Hipkins, responding to my Supplementary Order Paper 102. I suggest the Minister go back and hear what the Minister who was in the chair before the dinner break, Jenny Salesa, said. That Minister very clearly said that, yes, there are some ministerial appointments. In responding to my Supplementary Order Paper she said, yeah, that could be a possibility. Now this Minister in the chair, he said, with a funny gesture, that we are getting rid of partnership schools so—ha, ha!—why do we need any kind of knowledge and experience that is related to partnership schools on the Teaching Council. So it looks like the two Ministers don’t know what they’re talking about, because in my previous contribution I very clearly said that this experience and knowledge is needed because we want to have legislation that is working long-term for our country, not just for this Government.

We have already announced that we will be bringing partnership schools back, and that doesn’t mean that if this Government has decided to get rid of partnership schools we should be working on legislation that is valid only for two years. So that was the point that was made in my previous contribution, and it was really interesting to see the response of the Minister that is in the chair now, and compare that response with the Minister that was in the chair before the dinner break.

I also heard a member from the Government side making fun of partnership schools—counting the numbers of partnership schools and saying that, if the Opposition was really interested, why, when National was in Government, did we just have 11 partnership schools? I actually felt really sad, seeing that member making fun of partnership schools. On one side, they want to have Māori seats entrenched—and these partnership schools are helping Māori kids achieve, and they want to get rid of these schools and get rid of the future that these Māori kids can have through partnership schools. I really want to emphasise this point, that the Minister should take another call and explain the discrepancy in the responses that I have heard from two Ministers in the chair.

I also would like to talk to one submission which relates to the composition of the Teaching Council. This submission is actually from the Education Council—the Education Council that we are dealing with through this whole legislation. Very clearly, they have stated that the elected members’ criteria does not mean that they bring all the skills and the experience that is needed on the council. Then they went on to say, in point nine in their recommendations—this is quoting from their submission—that “We consider it would be helpful if the Bill required members to receive some training once they are elected, to make sure they are able to participate in the Council effectively and constructively.” So now we are talking about training, after having this big description of who can get elected on the Teaching Council.

So, yes, we are increasing the membership from nine to 13—six members are going to be appointed by the Minister, and seven elected members. There’s a full description of who these members can be, saying this has to be “1 teacher representing the early childhood education sector, … 1 teacher representing the primary education sector, … 1 teacher representing the secondary education sector, … 1 teacher educator, elected by registered teachers … 1 principal representing the primary education sector, … 1 principal representing the secondary education sector,” and then the last one is an early childhood education service leader. In spite of this description, the Education Council itself is not satisfied that people will bring the level of leadership and governance experience that is needed at the Education Council, which is going to be called the Teaching Council.

I would like the Minister to take another call and explain to us how he can overlook this big requirement of the Education Council of having the governance experience. This is actually available through the structure that we put in place through the changes that we brought in when we were in Government, because we wanted to make sure that there are people on the Education Council who bring governance experience. So, yes, we wanted to make sure some people have a teaching background and bring teaching experience, but, along with that, some people who bring governance experience not necessarily from a teaching background but from the wider sector, because that is always helpful.

Leadership and governance experience can be transferred to other sectors, and this Minister has completely ignored that. Now the Education Council is saying in their submission that there should be some kind of training available to those people who get elected on the Education Council. Then they compared it with legislation governing district health boards. Yes, that is the basis of this legislation: the doctors have their representation, nurses have their representation—they get the training, so this council should also get the training. It’s completely mixing up two issues here, so the Minister should take the call and explain these points to the committee.

Hon NIKKI KAYE (National—Auckland Central): Look, I am very pleased. Unfortunately, you only get a certain number of calls in a committee stage, and I think this is actually my last one, but the good news is there are a lot of amendments and a lot of National MPs that want to speak on this bill.

Firstly, my first basic question to the Minister—and I mentioned it before, and I was called a conspiracy theorist by Jamie Strange—is that the whole purpose of this bill, that we have been told, is to enable the profession to have independence. So my first question is for the Minister Chris Hipkins, and that is: is it correct that he has taken papers through this Government that indicate that he wants to have a greater say over this entity, therefore taking away its independence? So we’ve all been standing in this Parliament—in my view, in a bit of a sham—pretending to be giving this entity back its independence, but the Minister has taken through papers or briefings that indicate he wants to be able to direct this entity to do what is Government policy, rather than independence of the profession. That’s the first question that I would like the Minister to answer.

The second point that I want to make is that I couldn’t believe we heard this Minister utter the words around partnership schools and this bill and representation. He also made the comment that, somehow, us putting up Supplementary Order Papers (SOPs) indicating that he could change representation was somehow backward-flipping on our position. The reality is we do not support this bill. We know the reviews that have previously happened—that indicated there were serious financial issues and that there were issues around process in terms of sex offenders and the teaching profession, as to why we had the original Education Council. We don’t support this bill going through but we are doing everything that we can as part of the democratic process to improve this bill, and I take offence that we are being told that we shouldn’t put these SOPs up.

Now, I can’t believe that the Minister is criticising us around partnership schools, when this is the Minister that has just admitted that for several months he failed to acknowledge via Crown Law that a Waitangi Tribunal claim exists, which involves iwi leaders, which is a major reason why we should not be debating the Education (Teaching Council of Aotearoa New Zealand) Amendment Bill—and I’m glad that he has shifted that bill off the Order Paper so we’re not debating it tomorrow morning. I would love the Minister, in the context of that SOP, to explain to this House how we could be potentially, over the coming weeks, railroading that bill through when there is a Waitangi Tribunal claim.

The next thing the Minister did was reel through a range of SOPs, and I want to deal with a couple of them. He did raise SOP 95. We do think it is right that as part of this new entity’s business it does report back on the education, governance, leadership experience and skills, and financial skills of this entity. We think that matters to New Zealanders. We’re shifting away from a competency-based body. And, actually, the sum of the information around that entity and who has been responsible for major decisions affecting tens of thousands of teachers—it is important to report that.

But, as I said before, one of the most important SOPs that we have put up—and it relates to my first point—is that we believe that if the Minister is true to the intent of this bill, he will support our amendment that makes it absolutely clear that this entity is independent of the Government and cannot be directed on policy by the Minister. We want an answer in this committee, because we think that the tens of thousands of teachers out there that thought that the Government was being nice and somehow giving them greater autonomy and independence need to know that in the background the Minister is pushing through a policy that enables him to direct the council to do what he wants from a Government perspective.

Finally, can I just make this point: as we have said before, there are 19 reviews under way in education. Not only is this going to cost money—the rebranding of this council—not only is it against all of the reviews that have happened in the past, not only is there representation around the council now, but this is not the largest priority in education. We go throughout New Zealand and we meet different members of the community, from teachers to principals, and what they are saying to me is they are drowning in reviews. They are drowning in reviews, yet the most important priority that the Minister has brought to this Parliament is the renaming of the Education Council.

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

SIMEON BROWN (National—Pakuranga): Thank you very much, Madam Chair, for the opportunity to take a third call on this bill, the Education (Teaching Council of Aotearoa New Zealand) Amendment Bill. I’d like to talk about my Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) 96, which the Minister was very quick to say was something which needed to be thrown away and he didn’t really want to get into the detail of, but he did make the comment that this was something which could be done. Well, my message to the Minister is: why not legislate it?

So let’s get to the substance of this SOP. Supplementary Order Paper 96, in my name, inserts new clause 5AA “Section 385 amended (Reports)”, and it is to ensure that “The Teaching Council must present to the House of Representatives an annual report on its operations, including, but not limited to,—(a) the audited financial statements of the Teaching Council; and (b) a summary from each elected member of the Teaching Council outlining the impact of the Teaching Council’s operations on the group from which that respective member was elected.”

The purpose behind this SOP is to ensure that this body—this Teaching Council, which is going to be renamed at a huge cost to the taxpayer—will be accountable to the taxpayer and accountable to the people who will vote the people onto this new body. At the moment, we know the history of the Teachers Council and the Education Council. There was a review done. There were some issues which were uncovered which were then reviewed. And then we moved to a competency-based model, with a high degree of people put in place with competency. Now we’re moving back to an elected member body, which will be in charge of funds and in charge of the functions of this body. What my amendment is saying is that there should be a high degree of accountability, particularly over the fact they have taxpayers’ money and that they have responsibility for the money of their members and that these reports—the financial reports—should be brought to Parliament to be scrutinised. So that is the first leg of this Supplementary Order Paper.

The second leg is to ensure that each of these elected members is providing a summary which outlines the impact that they have had on the Teaching Council. The purpose behind this is because it really is being contested, here in this debate, over what the value proposition is for changing from having the current model, where they’re appointed by the Minister, to this elected member model. What we’re saying is, if teachers are going to be represented through this model, where there’s seven different categories and they all vote through their different categories—and, yep, Mark Patterson added to the debate that only 13 percent of teachers voted, or something very minuscule like that. If they’re going to be, well then there needs to be that accountability back to those people so they know exactly what value was put forward.

I think there’s this healthy degree of scepticism over these different groups. We had submitters coming to the Education and Workforce Committee, and the New Zealand Post Primary Teachers’ Association said they wanted their own special person on that Teaching Council, and another union wanted their own special person on the Teaching Council. It could be looked at, by reading this legislation, that the seven different bodies could easily fit into one or two unions to get one or two slots on this body each. That’s something which could easily be read into this piece of legislation, because we understand the other side are having to pay back the unions through legislation, and this is one of them.

Kieran McAnulty: I raise a point of order, Madam Chairperson. It’s, as I understand it, clearly against Speakers’ rulings to suggest that the Government is—in the words of the member—paying back a certain party.

Brett Hudson: Which Speaker’s ruling?

Kieran McAnulty: Speaker’s ruling 49/1, Mr Hudson, is specifically the one I’m referring to, which clearly states that “A member may not (1) impute improper motives to the Government; (2) suggest that the Government has received orders to put a bill through; (3) impute dishonesty to the Government; [or] (4) suggest domination by outside bodies.”

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Anne Tolley): The member is absolutely correct, so the member on his feet needs to be very careful about those imputations.

SIMEON BROWN: I apologise, Madam Chair. Thank you very much, Madam Chair. There is concern over the influence and there are concerns over the management of funds, and so this Supplementary Order Paper is required to ensure that there is a high degree of accountability. I guess the questions I’ve got for the Minister—he said this should be something which naturally happens. Well, why is he not prepared to put it into legislation? If he agrees with the intent of this Supplementary Order Paper, why is he not prepared to put it into legislation to ensure that that accountability is in place? The question needs to be asked: where is the accountability in this legislation? Where is the accountability back to the taxpayer and back to the people who are voting in these processes which will be set up for the Teaching Council? I’d like the Minister to take a call and answer that question. Where is the accountability? Where is the scrutiny by Parliament over the Teaching Council? Where is the appropriate level of scrutiny so that everyone can have that? Thank you.

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister of Education): Thank you, Madam Chair. I’ll just respond to a few other issues that have been raised. With regard to the most recent contribution by Simeon Brown, I have already spoken to that particular Supplementary Order Paper (SOP), SOP 96, and I don’t intend to repeat myself on that. But in his earlier contribution, he asked why representatives should not be elected at large. The bill makes it very clear that we’re trying to get a representative balance of the teaching profession. That’s what the Government’s policy is designed to achieve, and that’s why it is structured in that way. That would not be assured through an at-large election process.

Nicola Willis asked why elections should not be scrapped if turnout is low. Similar approaches could be tried in other areas where there is low turnout—for example, local government, where there is a persistently low turnout. I don’t think that’s a legitimate argument for scrapping local councils—because turnout is low. I’d like to see more people participating, but the fact that the turnout is low is not necessarily a reason for scrapping an election. Nicola Willis also asked about speeding up applications. Well, that’s not relevant to the bill. I’m pleased to inform her that a new online services project by the council will certainly speed up the process of registrations.

Erica Stanford argued that as long as people are competent, then elections don’t matter. Again, the Government doesn’t agree with that position. She did raise issues around why gender balance was not included in the criteria that a Minister would need to consider. The Government’s already made commitments around gender balance across the Government in all of the appointments the Government makes, and that is a commitment that has been opposed by the Opposition, so I’m sure that they would be opposed to that being put into the legislation.

Parmjeet Parmar raised that the Government—

Andrew Bayly: Parmjeet who?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: Parmjeet Parmar. Sorry, have I got—I hope I haven’t got that pronunciation wrong.

Hon Member: Doctor.

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: Doctor—doctor—that the Government can’t make laws based on—well, she argued that we should make laws based on what a future Government might do, that we should look into our crystal ball and decide what a future Government might do and make provision for it in legislation. I think that that would clearly be a nonsense. The remainder of the points that she was raising were largely relevant to the next education bill that the House will be debating.

Nikki Kaye did ask some legitimate questions about future amendments that the Government might bring forward regarding the ability to issue a Government policy statement. That will be dealt with in a future bill, and the House will have an opportunity to address that fully when that happens.

Finally, I’ll just quickly run through the remaining amendments that have been tabled. Tabled amendment No. 17—I’m just going on the handwritten numbers in the corner there. It’s already inherent in the overall nature of the council’s legislative mandate that it needs to operate independently, and therefore I don’t see any need to support that amendment. No. 18—I’m not really sure that even the National Party would really support the idea that the Minister and the Government should have absolutely no ability to have any say over the activities of the council. I mean, I think that completely contradicts what the National Party spent the last nine years trying to achieve, so I have some difficulty in accepting the sincerity of that amendment. Tabled amendment No. 19 in the name of Andrew Bayly talks about, once again, concerns about the low turnout in elections, and I would simply refer to the comment that I made in response to Nicola Willis.

Finally, tabled amendments Nos 15 and 16 are around the removal, with just cause, of somebody for neglect of duty or bringing the council into disrepute. I’m satisfied that the existing provisions in the bill are robust enough. Of course, issues around neglect of duty or bringing the council into disrepute will be incredibly subjective, and one of the things about elections is that there is an election process, and if you create a subjective criteria that allows a Minister to override those elected results, I think that you’re somewhat contradicting the purpose of the overall intent of this legislation.

ANDREW BAYLY (National—Hunua): Oh, thank you. Ngā mihi ki a koutou. Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you to my colleagues for such warm support. I must admit I think it’s just rather odd that the Minister in the chair, Chris Hipkins, took the opportunity to rebut what I’m about to say. Normally in debates, you listen and you understand what’s going on before you actually reflect and actually respond. I thought that was normal. I’ve never yet been in a debate where you actually give the answer before you know what the question is, but somehow we have a very smart and intelligent Minister of Education—very smart—because he can interpret. He knows what’s coming! He knows what’s right for all of us! He even knows what’s right for the 50,000 teachers in the industry—of course he does!

The other thing I’d like to say, Madam Chair, is that I am particularly disappointed, looking across this wonderful debating chamber—with, of course, you sitting in the middle. On the other side, we have these wonderful speakers of Te Reo and we have people who sit on the Education and Workforce Committee, and which of those people have stood up and given a substantive speech on this bill tonight? I think it’s exceptionally disappointing. We’ve got a whole raft of people who are self-proclaimed experts on the other side, and yet they are silent tonight. Why is that? Why is that, eh? I think some of them know a bit of Te Reo, and they should be standing up. But it is very unfortunate, and I’d like to see some decent contributions from these people.

Now, I’d just like to turn to my amendment, which, of course, the Minister thinks he knows all about. I just want to recap for a moment. My amendment is actually in relation to clause 5, new section 380. Of course, what this is about—I think we’ve heard about it, but it’s a while since we actually have—is that the Minister’s chosen that we’re going to increase the council from nine to 13 members. The way that that council is going to be constituted is that we’re going to have seven elected from the teaching profession, and they must be registered teachers with a current practising certificate, and in respect of the remaining six members, they will be appointed by none other than the Minister of Education. Now, all that sounds quite good in principle. Of course, as part of the six that we’re going to have appointed by the Minister, we’re going to have a representative from parent and community interest groups in the early childhood education and schooling sectors.

Well, my amendment inserts a new subclause (7) into new section 380 in clause 5. It states: “Following each election of elected members to the Teaching Council, the Teaching Council must publish the following information by way of notice in the Gazette; (a) The number of teachers who took part in that election. (b) What proportion of teachers in possession of a [practising certificate] took part in those [elections]. (c) A comparison of the figures provided in (a) and (b) with numbers in previous elections (if any).” The reason why I have chosen to pursue and put forward this amendment is, first of all, there should be transparency about elections. We all face it as MPs; there is no difference in this sector. I’m sure that those people—and I’m talking about the seven representatives from the teaching profession—will feel that they are legitimately elected and should be subject to public scrutiny around their election.

I challenge one of the members from the other side to stand up and tell me why that should not take place. You tell me why there should not be transparency about that election process.

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Anne Tolley): I’m not going to tell you.

ANDREW BAYLY: Of course, I’m referring to people across the other side. I think the whole thing about this is that these are good principles around any governance structure but this whole thing may be a sham, of course, because I understand that the Minister is looking forward to another bill that will override all these provisions.

ANAHILA KANONGATA’A-SUISUIKI (Labour): I move, That the question be now put.

BRETT HUDSON (National): Thank you, Madam Chair. It’s a pleasure to rise and take a call. Before I come to my question to Minister Chris Hipkins, I just want to reflect for a moment on comments he was making in his last contribution. He referred to statements that my colleague Dr Parmar had made. His point was that she was seeking to bind the current Government to policies or actions which a future Government might want to take, and he claims that that is either speculative or somehow wrong.

Well, I just wanted to take this opportunity to remind the Minister that not so many months ago, when he and his colleagues sat on this side of the Chamber, the Hon David Parker—and I use a technical term here—banged on for months about how the National-led Government should not negotiate in the Trans-Pacific Partnership to allow foreign ownership of residential properties in New Zealand because a future Labour Government might want to legislate that away. There’s a non-parliamentary word that describes the Minister’s current position tonight and the position that he and his colleagues held in Opposition. Suffice it to say that consistency of former words and current actions is a foreign concept to this Government.

But my question for the Minister around this bill and in this part is, given that he wants to have registered teachers only, principally, elect the seven members of various parts of the teaching profession—and, although we oppose this bill, as my colleague the Hon Nikki Kaye has said, our job is to try to panel beat this into the best possible shape it can be, even though we ultimately don’t support it. If he is so adamant that the teachers should elect the representatives from various parts of the education sector, why does he value the knowledge and experience of those teachers so little that he will not allow them to have a voice in the specialist skills that he will appoint to the council? Why can those teachers not make decisions about the people with the best governance skills or appropriate financial management skills or understanding of the Treaty of Waitangi? For instance, apparently a registered primary school teacher is able to know who the best secondary school representative on the council is—because I’ll get to that—but they can’t possibly understand who would have the requisite and proper sort of financial management expertise that they should also sit on the council.

So he’s limited their voice quite significantly in the structure he’s chosen to put in place, but it’s perhaps slightly more egregious than that, because the structure, I contend, is a lazy structure. Although it allows—well, actually, it doesn’t allow. It states representatives from each part of the education sector—so you’ll have a representative from the secondary education sector and a representative from the primary school sector. The actual weight of numbers for electing each of those representatives is not from the registered teachers within that sector, because all registered teachers appear to get a vote across all those members. So if you take the collective numbers of registered teachers in early childhood education and primary and the other sectors, well, they’ll outnumber the number of secondary school teachers. So the actual representatives elected will actually be the decision made by the weight of the numbers from outside of that part of the sector. It is, I would argue—and I’d ask the Minister why he chose this model—a model which will ultimately elect a representative from each part of the sector, but in no way does it guarantee, or even give a strong sense of confidence, that you’ll get the very best of the representatives from each of those sectors.

It’s odd, really, I think, that a primary school teacher gets to elect a secondary school representative but they don’t get a voice in other specialist elements of the council, whether it’s governance skills, leadership and experience, or financial skills. I think it’s a flawed model. Actually, I think the bill’s a flawed bill. But, certainly, if I look within it, it looks, on the face of it, easy, but at the heart of it is actually a lazy means to give a headline model which appears to look like it offers some sort of democratic representation but, in reality, doesn’t necessarily deliver the best set of skills from each part of the education sector. I’m kind of keen to hear from the Minister why he chose to adopt that model.

DAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): Oh, well, thank you very much, Madam Chair, for a call to speak on what I consider to be an extremely important bill—an extremely important bill for a number of reasons. Can I just say, one of them is that it reveals the priorities of a Government. Madam Chair, you ruled, quite rightly, earlier, in accordance with Kieran McAnulty, who, like a good young new member, has been reading not only the Standing Orders but the Speakers’ rulings to establish that it is wrong to say that an outside force is coercing any person in this Parliament or any Government to do anything. But I’d put it to you, Madam Chair, that this Government didn’t require an outside force to make sure that its first legislative act in education was nothing to do with kids, nothing to do with standards, nothing to do with achievement, nothing to do with engagement, and everything to do with teacher politics. They don’t need to be influenced by it from the outside, because it is them—they are so tightly intertwined that no corrupt influence was required whatsoever.

But I also want to draw your attention and perhaps get a response from the Minister in the chair, Chris Hipkins, on one of the new sections in this bill that’s come back from the committee, section 380(3) and 380(4). What that section tells us is that the elections must be held “in accordance with rules made under section 388.” Now, presumably, the Minister knows what those rules are. Presumably, he will have to make new rules after this amendment passes, because if you go on to new section 380(4), it then says, “However,—(a) elections must be held … 4 months before members take office; and (b) the Teaching Council must provide confirmation of the election results to the Minister at least 3 months before [the] members take office.” That means that the Minister, if I’m reading this correctly—and I hope he can tell me I’m wrong about this—has a three-month window where he knows how the registered teachers have voted, and he has six more votes that he can put on to the council. Some might say he would be tempted to use that for political purposes to stack the committee and frustrate the purpose of the electors in electing a certain group of people.

So the electors might have a particular beef, a particular gripe with the operation of the council, and they might seek to elect candidates who promise to work in a particular way, who promise to fix whatever that problem is that the electors—the registered teachers, that is—had with the operation of the council. They might manage to elect, say, I don’t know, five out of seven, maybe six out of seven that they’re allowed to elect on to the council and believe that they had given a democratic mandate for their particular beef or gripe to be fixed under this legislation. How wrong they would be when they discovered that, actually, the Minister of the day—and it’d behove these people in the sector to remember that the Minister is not always quite as friendly as the ones that they’ve got used to—might then decide to frustrate their democratic intent by stacking the committee against them in order to frustrate their intentions to give a democratic mandate to a group of elected representatives to achieve an objective for them.

I put it to you that if that’s really what the Minister intends—and, again, I hope he can stand up in a second and tell me I’ve got this all terribly wrong—then that’s actually worse than simply dictating who gets to be on the council. That is worse than telling people that they have no real power because they don’t. It is dishonest to tell them that they have power, and yet they do not have it at all. It’s dishonest and it’s a lie to the people who think that they are benefiting from this bill, and I put it to the people who are behind it that they may well have been hoodwinked by this Minister and they will be dominated in ways that they won’t imagine by future Ministers.

You can only imagine the corollary if such an act was to play out in this Parliament, if there was some higher power—[Time expired]

NICOLA WILLIS (National): Tēnā koe. Ngā mihi nui ki a koutou katoa. I want to take a moment to respond to members opposite and remind the people at home that National values teachers—absolutely. We value teachers such that on the Education Council, which we put together, six of the appointed people on that body were in fact registered teachers, because they had the competencies, the skills, and the diversity of experience to make for a strong governance body.

The argument we have against this piece of legislation is that the changes are unnecessary, they are costly, and they will not advance the ability of this organisation to fulfil its core functions. In fact, at no stage during this debate have we had a speaker stand up and really present to us a case for change. We have never really had a speaker say, “This is what the current Education Council’s getting wrong. Here is the decision that it shouldn’t have made. Here is the process that could be improved. Here is the egregious error that it’s made.” No, there has been no such example, because the reality is that there is no case for change, but it does come with a cost: $700,000 that members opposite are quite happy to throw at a name change.

But the item I want to turn to in this contribution relates to this very issue of independence, which is the word that’s been bandied about by both the Minister of Education and others this evening, claiming that, somehow, by having an elected process, this body will become more independent. I would like to point out that, in fact, the elected process does open up this body to potential politicisation, which could be dangerous to its underlying mission. The reason I say that is because we only need to look to history to see how many people actually have voted in these elections.

Simeon Brown: How many?

NICOLA WILLIS: So in—that’s a very good question, Simeon Brown. How many registered teachers are there who were eligible to vote last time? There were 100,953. Now, of that hundred thousand, how many do you think voted?

Stuart Smith: 70,000.

NICOLA WILLIS: Seventy thousand, someone says. No, you’ll have to go lower. What do you think it would’ve been?

Hon Member: 50,000.

NICOLA WILLIS: I’m sorry, you’ll have to go lower again. Only 13,865 people actually voted, 13.7 percent. So then I ask the Minister who sits in the chair tonight, Chris Hipkins: in that context, where such a small proportion of people have shown willingness to vote for these members, who is it that we expect will be elected? Because I would venture a guess that the people that are most likely to be elected are those that have access to the resources of a nationwide body that’s used to running campaigns and used to doing a bit of advocacy and has access to a broad spectrum of membership. I would suggest that the Post Primary Teachers’ Association (PPTA) and NZEI may be able to influence that election process unduly. I would ask the Minister whether this is something he has considered and whether he has any concern about that, or is this not an issue that is of concern to the Minister?

As we sat on the Education and Workforce Committee, we did have some members submit, and members opposite will remember Mr Chris Abercrombie, who suggested explicitly that the change he would like to see is that there be specific representation for the Post Primary Teachers’ Association as the voice for secondary teachers. I want to be very clear that I recognise the role of the PPTA, which has a function that is important in terms of advancing its own members, but the purpose of this council should not just be about the interests of teachers; it needs to be about the interests of children and of young people, and it needs to be about advancing the interests of education. So what we do not want to see is a politicisation of who is appointed to that body, and that is why it is very important that these elections are, if they going to happen, in some way accountable to some sort of process.

So I have proposed Supplementary Order Paper 101, which would mean that the rules for elections made by the Teaching Council under amended section 388—after each election, those rules would have to be reviewed. So you’d have to see how the election actually had gone. What members actually supported or suppressed voter turnout? Were there efforts by people to actually get out to vote or to suppress the vote? Were the rules actually appropriately enforced, and how did those rules operate in practice? Because if the Minister wants to stand on the high horse of democracy, accountability, and independence, he had better be prepared to stand also on the horse that says that those things have been delivered by the process that this bill sets up. I would venture to this House that, as it is currently formulated, we are not going to see the vast majority of teachers voting; we are going to see only a small group. I would therefore venture that it is a very large claim to make to say that this will be a democratically elected body.

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister of Education): I’ll just quickly run through a few of the points that have been raised. I think Brett Hudson probably needs to consider the difference between not binding a future Government and trying to pre-empt what a future Government might try and do. Certainly one Government shouldn’t bind—or try to bind—a future Government, but trying to pre-empt what they might do isn’t the most desirable thing for them to do, either.

He seemed to then go on and argue that 100 percent of the members should be elected. I’m not sure that’s consistent with what his colleagues have been arguing. He did question why an early childhood teacher might be voting for a secondary teacher representative, and I simply draw him to the provisions of the bill that specify—new section 380(1)(b)(i) in clause 5, for example, states “1 teacher representing the early childhood education sector, elected by teachers from that sector;”. If you run through all of them, they all require the teachers who are electing those representatives to be from that sector. So I think that clearly addresses his concern. I commend to members on that side of the Chamber the virtue of reading the bill before speaking on it.

With regard to David Seymour’s comment—he claims that this is the first legislative Act in education by this Government. We either have a numeracy problem or a comprehension one. In fact, we’ve had other education bills passed by this Government during this term of Parliament. He raised a legitimate question regarding the three months between the election being declared and the Minister having to make the appointments. That is deliberate, and it is to ensure that the Minister has an opportunity to ensure that the right balance of representative people is on that council, so that is deliberately by design—bearing in mind that the Minister is still only appointing the minority side on the council. The majority are elected, and therefore the Minister can look at that and say “Well, we’re short on a particular perspective on the council.”, and therefore fill that perspective. They couldn’t, as David Seymour was claiming, jack up the council, because they’re only appointing the minority of the members.

Nicola Willis raised much the same argument she raised earlier, which I’ve already referred to, arguing that the case for democracy hasn’t been made. Well, I would say that the case for democracy is inherent in itself—that low turnout is a reason for not having democracy—and I don’t agree with her. She then argues that there shouldn’t be outside influences on an election process. I’d be interested to see how that would apply in a general election. For example, there would be no political parties in a general election if people weren’t allowed to have any other affiliations. I don’t think that that case has been made, but I’ve addressed all of those points earlier, as I have already indicated.

STUART SMITH (National—Kaikōura): Ngā mihi nui. Thank you very much. It’s great to have an opportunity to speak on this bill. I’d actually like just to go back to what Mr Brett Hudson’s point was, which the Minister was refuting here. I think, given the very low turnout of only 13,000, they might need votes from all sorts of sectors to cover it, because it’s such a poor turnout. I think that’s a really small number. We’re going from nine to 13 members, and, certainly in my Government’s experience, eight is an ideal size for a board; nine you can live with—that’s fine—maybe even 10. But going up to 13, it becomes far less workable. It actually is quite an issue for a board to get some sensible discussion and sensible decisions being made with some progress. Having 13 around the table will slow that down quite significantly. And you’d have to wonder why we’ve gone to that, going for representation as it is. In fact, I’m sure my colleague Nicola Willis has already worked this out: that’s one person on the board for every 1,000 votes. So that’s a pretty poor result, I would’ve thought, in terms of numbers.

I was really stunned. I thought David Seymour’s contribution was outstanding. And, you know, he’s quite right. This isn’t about kids and it isn’t about education; it’s about teachers. And I think, while they are connected, I suppose, one would hope the primary focus of Parliament would be to get education right, and to get everything right for the kids, rather than some sort of quasi body that’s looking after teachers—particularly when we look at the reference to the policy statement that the council will have to take regard to. And I think that is really quite concerning. I think Mr Seymour might not have been aware of that when he made his contribution, in that he was making a claim that the Minister would be able to see how the elected members go and then judge their political leaning, and then he could stack the deck with the remaining appointees. I think that, while that might be a valid argument, that’s actually not going to be the case, because it seems like this is really a stalking horse, or a shroud, if you like, for this policy statement. Effectively, the Minister will run the council, because they will have to take direction from his policy statement. I think that is a very dangerous position to be in and I suspect the teachers will be very disappointed when they find out what they have really been delivered. I’m sure it has been delivering on a promise. You can take that any way you like, but I’m absolutely certain that will be the case.

I also wanted to mention Nicola Willis’ Supplementary Order Paper (SOP)—No. 95, I think it was—where the Minister would have to report on the skills of those appointed to the board and elected to the board. I think that’s a really important SOP. I think the Minister has dismissed that without really going into why he would dismiss that. One thing we do know is that sunlight is a great disinfectant. If we can see, and it was plain for everyone to see, who was on that council, what their skills were, what they were bringing to the table, that would be a real incentive for them to deliver on those skills, on their mandate to represent those teachers. I think it’s a pity that he didn’t take that a little more seriously. I do think he should reconsider that.

I do note the New Zealand Catholic Education Office was very keen for a greater representation.

Simon O’Connor: Be careful of those Catholics!

STUART SMITH: Yeah, well, I think they do raise a very good point, because when charter schools come back in, and that’s not going to be very far away—I mean, they just made such a significant contribution to education. They were punching way above their weight. It’s really important that we have good representation, and I’m sure we should cut it back to nine and certainly make sure that charter schools are well represented on that Teaching Council. We could perhaps even rename it. I’m sure we could do it for less than $700,000. It’s not that expensive to do a bit of rebranding—quite popular with this Government. I think Damien O’Connor probably gave the Minister the idea, because he’s rebranding the Ministry for Primary Industries. So thank you, Mr Chairperson.

JO LUXTON (Labour): I move, That the question be now put. [Interruption]

CHAIRPERSON (Adrian Rurawhe): Kāti rā. Mēnā he kōrero hou me tukua ki te komiti nei.

[That’s enough. If there is new information, it must be submitted to this committee.]

OK? I call Tim Macindoe.

Hon TIM MACINDOE (National—Hamilton West): Ha, ha! Tēnā koe e Te Kaiwhakahaere. Kia ora e Te Whare.

Mr Chair, thank you for that call. This is only my second call in Part 1 of this debate, so I’m pleased to feel that I can now resume where I left off. I was going to acknowledge the member for Hunua for his passionate oratory a short time ago; in particular, for ensuring that my fine constituents in Hamilton West were able to hear him without the assistance of the fine technicians up in the broadcasting box. It was a very impassioned approach.

I was also going to acknowledge the Minister for having taken a few calls, because it’s very important in the committee stage that the Minister is willing to engage in the debate and, in particular, to answer the legitimate questions that the Opposition members are putting forward. This is, after all, our detailed scrutiny, part by part, clause by clause. As I say, I was going to acknowledge the Minister but I have to say I think actually his contributions have been in the nature of pre-emptive strikes. In fact, one of Mr O’Connor’s most distinguished constituents would probably describe it as something of a three hearts bid in trying to anticipate what might be coming, and then a very quick once-over-lightly treatment rather than detailed engagement in the substance of the Supplementary Order Papers (SOPs), because, as he’s highlighted, there are a large number of SOPs on this bill, and I want to talk about a couple in this contribution.

I just feel that so far he has dismissed some without really actively engaging with them, as if by suggesting that if he mentions them here in the Chamber that will do; he’ll convince people that we’ve had the debate. Well, Minister, that won’t do. We do need far more detailed engagement. I’m very pleased to see the Associate Minister of Education, the Hon Tracey Martin, has been sitting over there with her head down. I assume that she’s been writing out her apology that she’s going to deliver shortly for the outrageous slur that she uttered against me in both the first and second readings of this bill. So I encourage Mrs Martin to take a call and to acknowledge that at no stage have I ever uttered the suggestion that anyone can teach. Mrs Martin knows that and I look forward to her correcting the record, because I know that she is a decent and honourable person and she wouldn’t mean to have allowed that slur to go on unchallenged for so long.

I was making the point to the Minister of Education that in Part 1, in new section 380(1)(b), is this obsession with one representative per sector. The Minister in his reply suggested that I was arguing against representation. Well, of course, I wasn’t doing that at all. The point I was going to be making, had I not been interrupted by the five-minute bell, was that in going for such a highly prescribed sector representation, I think that the Minister is throwing the baby out with the bathwater. He’s actually overlooking the fact that, just as not all politicians speak with one voice—and here we have tonight a range of people in the Chamber who have different views; that’s a good thing—to suggest that one person elected from, say, the early childhood sector and, let’s say, might be from down in Invercargill, can speak for all of the early childhood sector teachers right around the country is farcical.

Yet the Government seems to have accepted that this idea of very sector-specific representation will bring greater skills on to the council than we have at the moment. Well, even if that was an untested theory, it would be highly dubious, but the evidence totally contradicts it. So I want to ask the Minister, has he really given detailed consideration to the review that was commissioned and released in 2012 that showed the very substantial flaws in the previous entity, which, effectively, the Minister is now trying to reintroduce, because he’s taking us back to a model that was discredited? As the Hon Nikki Kaye pointed out, it was one that was beset by financial issues. I wouldn’t want to overstate it, but there was a problem with a sex offender being caught up there. The most important thing, however, was just a lack of core competencies, and that’s why the new structure, the new entity, was set up.

Again, if we look at the evidence, the new entity is working incredibly well. So why would you move away from a model that has been proved to be working well, that is actually highly respected in the profession, to go back to a model that is highly prescriptive, will not achieve the degree of representation that the Minister requires, and which will overlook much of the core competencies that are the whole point? So, Minister, I ask, what is the rush?

I want to move on to the Hon Nikki Kaye’s amendment, and that is an amendment to clause 2. If we talk about what is the rush, here we have a provision—[Time expired]

CHAIRPERSON (Adrian Rurawhe): I just want to repeat what I said earlier, except in English. Mēnā he kōrero hou, tukua mai ki te komiti nei.

[If there is new material, submit it to this committee.]

That means that if you have any new arguments, now would be the time to bring them out.

DENISE LEE (National—Maungakiekie): Ka pai e Te Kaiwhakahaere. It’s a pleasure to speak in Te Wiki o Te Reo Māori. I appreciate the call, and, yes, I do have some new material. It’s specifically in regards to an amendment in my name and it seeks to amend clause 6: “After clause 6(8), insert new 6(9)”, which is “In Schedule 21, clause 4(a) after [the words] “neglect of duty,” insert [the words] “any actions that may bring the Teaching Council into disrepute,”.

This is, of course, around schedule 21 “Removal from office” and “Disqualification from office”. This is the sort of thing that you speak on and you hope that things always work out and that you don’t have to get to this stage in any game where someone is disqualified, once having been elected or appointed. But it is necessary that we do look forward, look ahead, and know that sometimes these things happen. “This”—amendment in my name—“clarifies that any actions undertaken by a member of the Teaching Council which may bring the reputation of the Council into disrepute are considered just cause for removal from office. This contributes”, I think, “to the stated intention of the bill to lift the status and reputation of the Teaching profession.”

If you look at schedule 21 of the Education Act, which is where the current disqualification material comes from, you see that in schedule 21 under clause 3, “Removal from office (1) The Minister may revoke the appointment of a member of the Education Council at any time for just cause. (2) The revocation must be made by written notice to the member with a copy to the Education Council. (3) The written notice must state—(a) the date on which the removal takes effect, which must not be earlier than the date on which the notice is received; and (b) the reasons for the removal.”

Now we get to the section where my amendment specifically inserts some new words. “(4) In this clause, just cause—(a) includes misconduct,”—and I want to come back to that word in reply to something the Minister said earlier—“inability to perform the functions of office, neglect of duty,”—and then this is where I think, and I’m contending, that we should be inserting the words “any actions that may bring the Teaching Council into disrepute”, and then would carry on and say—“and breach of any of the collective duties of the board or the individual duties of members (depending on the seriousness of the breach);”. It then goes on to talk about the case of a member holding a practising certificate, and if they cease to hold that certificate, they’re disqualified. It even mentions a judge who may or may not be on the council and non-payment should you be disqualified.

But what’s really interesting is that—I’m on several boards: the Sir Peter Blake Marine Education and Recreation Centre; I’m a patron of Onehunga Historic Society, a cadet unit, and political parties and voluntary organisations—the phrase “bringing into disrepute” is quite common and I think that this is something that we should insert. It does, obviously, have broad coverage, but that’s exactly why it should be inserted. We can cover the bases and easily put in language that is common in quite a few spheres. If you look at the stated purpose of the bill, which is to raise the status of the profession, this would help to do that, because it’s another mechanism to ensure that council members don’t undermine that. So if a council member undermines lifting the teachers’ status because they’ve brought the council into disrepute, this would be a good mechanism.

I just want to come back to that word “misconduct”. The Minister of Education raised this topic before I’d even got to speak to it, and he said that this is too subjective. Well, the word “misconduct” is subjective, so I’m not sure that that argument stacks up. In fact, I’d like to hear from the Minister: does he think that the word “misconduct”, which is currently in the Act, is subjective, like the words “bring into disrepute” that I’m contending should be in the Act. Is “misconduct” also subjective? If it is—[Time expired]

KIERAN McANULTY (Junior Whip—Labour): Ka mea ahau kia whiua te pātai.

[I move, That the question be now put.]

ERICA STANFORD (National—East Coast Bays): Thank you, Mr Chair. I’m going to speak tonight to Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) 98, in my name. It hasn’t been spoken to yet at all, so it is absolute new material. Before I do so, I do want to go back to my first contribution, because one of the things that I specifically asked the Minister of Education wasn’t addressed. I have to agree with my colleague Tim Macindoe in that some of the Minister’s answers haven’t been as full, perhaps, as they could be. I specifically asked, and I think we owe it to the Graduate Women of New Zealand to have this question answered, because they did specifically say in their submission that they would like to see better representation in terms of ethnicity, socio-economic diversity, and have one Māori representative on the council. Now, I’m not saying that I agree with what they’re proposing, but what I am asking and what I’m really interested in is to find out what the Minister of Education thinks. All the Minister did, in fact, tonight was talk about gender balance, which was only one of the four things that I mentioned, so I would like the Minister to address those things.

Moving on to my SOP, I have to say that I am a victim tonight of the pre-emptive strike. Mr Hipkins did come up tonight and dismiss my SOP, basically by saying it was very similar to another one. I would like to use the Minister’s own words back at him and suggest to him the virtues of listening to a contribution on an SOP before passing judgment. He did disregard completely my SOP without listening to what I had to say, but I have to say that is entirely in keeping with the way that this Minister operates.

I’d like to just pre-empt my SOP argument by saying that what Nicola Willis said earlier fits in perfectly with my SOP. Nothing that the other side of the committee or the Minister has said has given any reason as to why the current council is in any way acting inappropriately or making bad decisions. In fact, their only argument is that teachers want to elect their own people to the boards. But what we’ve said is that only 13.7 percent of these people actually vote, so what that means is they’re open to influence. That leads me perfectly into my SOP.

Basically, what I’m advocating in my SOP is proper process. We want to “ensure that the process of nominating and electing members does not undermine the independence of the Teaching Council from any relevant industry advocacy organisations;”. This is specifically talking about making sure that the process is proper, fair, and that the body is, in fact, independent. This is the first time anyone’s spoken on this SOP. We oppose the view that members of this council should be elected for reasons that I’ve outlined earlier tonight. But given that this Government is going to get its way because they’ve got the numbers, the votes, it’s important—

Hon Tim Macindoe: Well, we might persuade them.

ERICA STANFORD: Well, I know. We like to think that we get our way every now and then, but we’re not going to in this case. It’s important that we discuss the fairness of the process. There are legitimate concerns around the way in which teachers have a fair and free opportunity to elect their peers to this body. There are going to be elections. They have to be conducted properly. They have to be conducted fairly, and it’s a concern that we have that the unions—the NZEI Te Riu Roa, the Post Primary Teachers’ Association, and other industry organisations—have a monopoly on what good teaching should be. In fact, they don’t. They have an important contribution to make but in no way do they have a monopoly on good ideas. They don’t know everything about teaching, and, in fact, they don’t represent all teachers. What’s important is that we have a set of processes in place to ensure that teachers can nominate and elect members, and that they conduct these elections in a way that does not undermine the independence of the Teaching Council.

If we look at elections in general, the biggest elections we’ve got are of this Parliament and local body elections, and there are a number of things that, when we hold these elections, have to be adhered to. When we change the law under this bill, we change the way in which teachers are appointed and elected. There must be a proper process in place. I’m not going to devise that entire scheme, but what I do want to ensure is that there are important safeguards that are in place around the conduct of these elections to make sure that they’re fair and that the Teaching Council has independence from industry advocacy organisations.

The Teaching Council has an important role to play in the lives of teachers and the governing of their professional conduct. The Teaching Council is there for all teachers, a large number of whom belong to unions and believe in what unions stand for. But in a free country like New Zealand where we value independent thought and the freedom of individuals, these are principles that you hold that are important, whether you’re red, blue, yellow, or green. If the Teaching Council is to fairly and properly represent—[Time expired]

JAMIE STRANGE (Labour): I move, That the question be now put.

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

Ayes 63

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

Noes 56

New Zealand National 56.

Motion agreed to.

The question was put that the following amendment in the name of the Hon Nikki Kaye to clause 4 be agreed to:

delete clause 4.

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

Ayes 56

New Zealand National 56.

Noes 63

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

Amendment not agreed to.

The question was put that the following amendment in the name of Barbara Kuriger to clause 5 be agreed to:

delete clause 5.

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

Ayes 56

New Zealand National 56.

Noes 63

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

Amendment not agreed to.

The question was put that the amendment set out on Supplementary Order Paper 95 in the name of the Hon Nikki Kaye to clause 5 be agreed to.

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

Ayes 56

New Zealand National 56.

Noes 63

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

Amendment not agreed to.

The question was put that the following amendment in the name of Andrew Bayly to clause 5 be agreed to:

In clause 5, new section 380 after subsection 7, insert:

(8) Following each election of elected members to the Teaching Council, the Teaching Council must publish the following information by way of notice in the Gazette:

(a) the number of teachers who took part in that election:

(b) what proportion of teachers in possession of a practising certificate took part in those election:

(c) a comparison of the figures provided in paragraphs (a) and (b) with numbers of previous elections (if any).

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

Ayes 56

New Zealand National 56.

Noes 63

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

Amendment not agreed to.

The question was put that the following amendment in the name of Nicola Willis to clause 5 be agreed to:

In clause 5 new section 380(9) after subsection 9, insert:

(9) The rules for elections made under section 388 must be reviewed by the Teaching Council after each election of elected members, with regard paid to:

(a) measures which supported or suppressed voter turnout:

(b) were they appropriately enforced:

(c) how those rules operated in practice:

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

Ayes 56

New Zealand National 56.

Noes 63

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

Amendment not agreed to.

The question was put that the following amendment in the name of Nicola Willis to clause 5 be agreed to:

In new section 380B replace 380B(2) with:

(2) The Minister may remove an elected member of the Teaching Council under clause 3(1) of Schedule 21.

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

Ayes 56

New Zealand National 56.

Noes 63

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

Amendment not agreed to.

The question was put that the amendment set out on Supplementary Order Paper 96 in the name of Simeon Brown to clause 5 be agreed to.

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

Ayes 56

New Zealand National 56.

Noes 63

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

Amendment not agreed to.

The question was put that the amendment set out on Supplementary Order Paper 97 in the name of the Hon Nikki Kaye to clause 5A be agreed to.

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

Ayes 56

New Zealand National 56.

Noes 63

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

Amendment not agreed to.

The question was put that the amendment set out on Supplementary Order Paper 98 in the name of Erica Stanford to clause 5A be agreed to.

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

Ayes 56

New Zealand National 56.

Noes 63

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

Amendment not agreed to.

The question was put that the following amendment in the name of Dr Parmjeet Parmar be agreed to:

delete clause 6.

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

Ayes 56

New Zealand National 56.

Noes 63

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

Amendment not agreed to.

The question was put that the following amendment in the name of Nicola Willis to be agreed to:

repeal clause 6(5).

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

Ayes 56

New Zealand National 56.

Noes 63

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

Amendment not agreed to.

The question was put that the amendment set out on Supplementary Order Paper 99 in the name of the Hon Nikki Kaye be agreed to.

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

Ayes 56

New Zealand National 56.

Noes 63

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

Amendment not agreed to.

The question was put that the following amendment in the name of Andrew Bayly be agreed to:

In clause 6(8) replace new clause 4A(3)(b)(i) with:

(i) appoint the candidate who had the next highest number of votes in the last Teaching Council election to the position as the replacement; or

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

Ayes 56

New Zealand National 56.

Noes 63

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

Amendment not agreed to.

The question was put that the following amendment in the name of Denise Lee be agreed to:

After Clause 6(8) insert new 6(9)

(9) In Schedule 21, clause 4(s) after “neglect of duty,” insert “any actions that may bring the Teaching Council into disrepute,”

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

Ayes 56

New Zealand National 56.

Noes 63

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

Amendment not agreed to.

The question was put that the following amendment in the name of Dr Parmjeet Parmar be agreed to:

After clause 6(8) insert new 6(9) in Schedule 21, after clause 7(3), insert:

(4) The Teaching Council must ensure that it remains independent from any relevant industry advocacy organisations, and there is no real or perceived integration of the Council and these organisations.

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

Ayes 56

New Zealand National 56.

Noes 63

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

Amendment not agreed to.

The question was put that the following amendment in the name of the Hon Nikki Kaye be agreed to:

After clause 6(8) insert new 6(9) in Schedule 21, after clause 7(3), insert:

(4) The Teaching Council must ensure that it remains independent of Government, and not be directed by any policy directives proposed by the Minister.

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

Ayes 56

New Zealand National 56.

Noes 63

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

Amendment not agreed to.

The question was put that the following amendment in the name of the Hon Nikki Kaye be agreed to:

delete clause 7.

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

Ayes 56

New Zealand National 56.

Noes 63

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

Amendment not agreed to.

A party vote was called for on the question, That Part 1 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.

Part 1 agreed to.

Part 2 Consequential amendments to other enactments

CHAIRPERSON (Adrian Rurawhe): Members, we now come to the debate on Part 2, the debate on clauses 8 and 9 and schedule 4, relating to consequential amendments to other enactments.

Dr PARMJEET PARMAR (National): Thank you, Mr Chair, for this opportunity to take this call on Part 2 of this bill. This Part 2 is about consequential amendments to other enactments and these are clauses 8 and 9.

If we look at these clauses 8 and 9, they sound really simple, because clause 8 is “Education Council Rules 2016 renamed” and states, “From the commandment of this section, (a) the Education Council Rules 2016 are [going to be] called the Teaching Council Rules 2016;”, and there is another subclause, which is clause 8(b). Clause 9, again, sounds really simple. This is just about changing the name from the Education Council to the Teaching Council throughout. But it is not that simple.

The most important thing is the Education Council submission. Yes, I would like to refer again to the Education Council submission in this contribution as well, because that is the actual body that this legislation is about. This legislation will change the Education Council’s name and composition. So where we are talking about the consequential changes, that is to change the “Education Council” name everywhere to “Teaching Council” after the commencement of this section. But when I looked through the Education Council’s submission, there is no mention of a name change at all. They have different headings. Under different headings they have talked about different issues that they have raised, but there is no focus on the Education Council to be called the Teaching Council. That means the consequential amendments are just a waste of everybody’s effort, because this comes down to just a name-change exercise in this whole legislation.

If I just go through the summary of the Education Council’s recommendations on the bill, they talk about introducing a provision that requires members to receive training. They talk about specifying a process for the removal of elected members to ensure consistency between members who are appointed and members who are elected. Then they talk about specifying a process for filling extraordinary vacancies on the council. Then they talk about the Education Council’s support of the bill’s clause for staggered turnover of appointed members. Then they talk about specifying the criteria for who may nominate and who may second candidate a for election to the council to provide certainty that only the teaching profession will nominate and second candidates, and adding an express power for the Teaching Council to make rules for the conduct of elections and the establishment of electoral rolls and other things related to that. All they say about the name change is that they have noted the cost.

During the select committee process, we did ask them about the cost, and when we talk about the consequential amendments it’s not just about typing the name in the legislation and changing the name from “Education Council” to “Teaching Council”. There will be other consequential costs because of this amendment, and it’s important that we highlight those costs because this is not a cheap bill. This is just a name-change exercise. It is not a cheap bill, because this will lead to a lot of other costs. The cost breakdown that was provided by the Education Council on the committee’s request—they did a really good job with that request.

The communications cost—that includes logo and brand elements, printed resources, website, and social media platform updates. The cost for that is $30,960. Administration cost—that will include the letterhead, business cards, signage, building, and directory update; that will cost $29,150. Procurement cost—that will include contract and lease name changes and legal fees; that is going to cost $14,200. Finance costs include registration of new company names, logo, and payroll changes; that will cost $3,830. I’m listing these costs because it’s important for everyone to see the cost of these amendments. The IT cost includes certificates, domain name, software, and email signatures; that is going to cost $77,500. Human resources costs include operation manuals—$3,120. These things are not cheap.

And then it does not finish there. Registration costs include practising cards and templates—that’s $52,640. Professional responsibility costs include updates, templates, and forms—that will be $1,600. And then professional services costs include promotional events, which they use—$820. Then, of course, they need some other funds for other expenses, which are put down at around $6,000.

When I add up all these figures—the added figures were provided to us—it comes close to $220,000. So these amendments are actually going to lead to a waste of money of $220,000, and I urge the Minister to explain to us why this kind of cost is required.

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister of Education): The debate on Part 2 is a very technical part of the debate. I listened very carefully to the member Parmjeet Parmar’s contribution regarding the cost of changing the name. But, of course, the cost of changing the name was canvassed thoroughly in Part 1—that is where the committee made the decision to change the name. Nothing in the member’s contribution actually related to the consequential amendments in Part 2 and, as a result, there is nothing to respond to.

SIMEON BROWN (National—Pakuranga): Thank you, Mr Chair. For the new Minister of open Government, I thought that was a shocking performance—trying to hide the details of this bill from the New Zealand public—and he should be doing a far better job than trying to shove things through in the depths of the evening and dark of night, when the public of New Zealand have a right to know what this Parliament is passing and what the legislation actually means. When legislation has consequential amendments, that means it changes other pieces of legislation as well. So we’re not just looking at the Education (Teaching Council of Aotearoa) Amendment Bill; we’re also thinking about the Ombudsmen Act, the Privacy Act, and the State Sector Act—all of these pieces of legislation are being changed by this bill which we here in Parliament are looking at tonight.

This comes back to the point around Chris Hipkins’ elevation to the role of Minister of open Government. I just want to really congratulate him for taking on board that new role. He needs to take it seriously, not just in whatever role that he actually has but also in every single piece of legislation that he is progressing in this Parliament as the Leader of the House and as Minister of Education.

I’d like to refer to what these changes are. The consequential amendments that are being made to other enactments—firstly, in clause 8, the Education Council Rules 2016 are renamed: “From the commencement of this section,—(a) the Education Council Rules 2016 are called the Teaching Council Rules … and (b) every reference in any enactment and in any document to the Education Council Rules 2016 must, unless the context otherwise requires, be read as a reference to the Teaching Council Rules 2016.” My question to the Minister is, in looking at that clause, what other contexts would he consider may be raised that it could be read otherwise? What guidance could he provide to the committee around that?

I think it’s important to know what’s being suggested by the reference to “unless the context otherwise requires,”. I mean, he could just reply and say “Well, the context might require something separate.”, but can he give some examples as to what that might be? Maybe his officials have some examples in mind which he could readily ask them to provide to him so that the committee could be a little bit more clear as to what we are considering tonight, and potentially, putting into legislation.

Clause 9 talks about “Consequential amendments to other enactments”, and it amends the enactments specified in schedule 4—so that’s the Ombudsmen Act. Basically, what it’s doing is it’s changing the name from the Education Council to the Teaching Council. So it’s making it that inconsequential change, and we can talk about how inconsequential this piece of legislation is, but we have canvassed those arguments in depth this evening. So it makes those amendments—“Unless the context otherwise requires, every reference in this Act or any other enactment to—(a) the Education Council must be read as a reference to the Teaching Council: (b) the Education Council of Aotearoa New Zealand must be read as a reference to the Teaching Council of Aotearoa”. So, again, we have there in clause 9(2)—it says, “Unless the context otherwise requires, every reference in this Act or any other enactment”. It’s a very broad term that’s being used: “any other enactment”. Have the officials looked at what all those other enactments might be—are they aware?

When I went to law school and I studied law and I had a look at the library, all of the pieces of legislation were sitting in the library, and once a year, someone came around and they had to go in there and they had to tape over all of the legislation books, all of the changes which Parliament had made. So the legislation that we make and the consequential amendments which are made have an impact not just on the law but on the law books. That has to be changed not just online but in all of those different places. So have the officials got a real awareness of the actual impact that this legislation will have? How many references are being made to the “Education Council” which will have to be changed because of Part 2 of this legislation?

So I’d like the Minister to give us some examples. Get on his feet—he was very quick before. Get on his feet again and give us some examples as to what these consequential amendments might mean, talk about what “the context otherwise requires,” and what that might mean, give us some examples around what that is—and maybe even his ask officials to provide the Minister with a few, because I’m sure they’ve thought very deeply about that—and give some clarity to this committee. What we want is some openness and transparency in this Parliament, and, as the new Minister of open Government, that’s what he should be doing.

Hon NIKKI KAYE (National—Auckland Central): I’m delighted to have a call on this important part of the bill, “Consequential amendments to other enactments”. Now, I want the Minister in the chair, Chris Hipkins, to answer some questions for me around this. If you go back to the departmental report and you look at the submissions, some people might be listening to this debate and be thinking “Hang on, it only applies to a couple of clauses around the Teaching Council Rules, effectively, changing from the Education Council Rules.”, but let me tell you this: we heard, actually, a number of submissions around this language.

I just want to quote some of the submissions, and I want the Minister to comment on why it is that the officials didn’t land with “Teachers Council” rather than “Teaching Council”. Actually, this was something that David Graham, as a submitter, raised in submissions, and it is directly relevant to these consequential amendments because we are being required through this legislation to change the “Education Council Rules” to the “Teaching Council Rules”, and he dealt with this specifically in his submission. Officials, basically, submitted that there is a big difference between “Teachers Council” and “Teaching Council” in that “Teaching Council” enables a much more encompassing set of rules around leadership and advocacy—not just teachers. So this is quite an important part. It is important because it’s bringing in not just teachers but a whole lot of other education sector workers. So I want the Minister to comment on that.

The next thing that I want the Minister to comment on—and, again, it’s dealt with in a number of submissions, and it was dealt with in the committee in the departmental report—is around this issue of inserting, as we have done in terms of the bill, “Teaching Council of Aotearoa”. Why is “Aotearoa” not mentioned now in the “Teaching Council Rules”, and should it be? Why is it that it’s just in the title of the bill and not actually in the “Teaching Council Rules”? This was actually raised as part of—the Minister’s laughing, but, again, I’m looking at the departmental report. One of the reasons—and this is what was quoted to us—is that “It is Government policy to change the full legal name of the Education Council to the Teaching Council of Aotearoa New Zealand. Adding ‘New Zealand’ to the name of the Teaching Council of Aotearoa would better reflect the bicultural nature of Aotearoa New Zealand.” How important is that? How important is that this week when we are debating the important aspects of Māori language? We’ve heard members in this House talking about that this week. So I just would love the Minister to answer the question as to why it is the title change, but then when it comes to the Teaching Council Rules, that also hasn’t been dealt with.

We’re going to get into this when we have adequate time to debate new Part 5B in schedule 1, which is around the transition but it does actually relate to these consequential amendments, and that is this issue of cost. It is relevant. It is not OK for the Minister to stand up and say, “Hang on, this isn’t relevant to consequential amendments.” It is, because the whole point of these consequential amendments is to go and change a whole lot of other provisions in law, which may add costs because, as Simeon Brown has quite clearly pointed out, it’s so wide.

This part of the bill says “every reference in any enactment”, and we already are told—and it’s in, again, all of the advice from officials—they can’t tell us how much the election processes will actually cost as a result of this legislation. They’ve gone and had a look at other councils, but they can’t actually confirm that. They can sort of tell us that adding additional members will cost between $15,000 and $18,000, but now, in this part, we’re being required to amend—let’s just look at the wording again—“every reference in any enactment”.

We already know this thing is going to cost $700,000. We’ve got some unknown costs, but I would really value the Minister potentially walking us through—and, particularly, I’d like him to comment on the amendment around sections 357 and 368 of the Act and what that specifically will mean in terms of costs. It is important to this House, when we’re dealing with a situation where people are saying we need to spend more in certain areas in education—and, again, this was raised in committee. People were saying in committee, “We would rather money is spent on additional learning support”—yes, Tracey Martin—“than on rebranding this council and potentially changing the council rules.”

JO LUXTON (Labour): I move, That the question be now put.

NICOLA WILLIS (National): Tēnā koutou e Te Whare i tēnei wiki, Te Wiki o Te Reo Māori.

[Good evening to the House in this special week, Māori Language Week.]

I rise to speak, very conscious of the contribution from the Minister Chris Hipkins earlier, who—while I’m sure—wasn’t seeking to trifle with the Chair, did suggest that any discussion of these consequential amendments were somehow beyond the remit of this committee this evening. What I’d like to put to the Minister is that if he thinks it is not a priority to debate the changing of the name of this institution throughout our legislation, throughout our statute book, then why is it that he has prioritised this name change? Why is it that he has decided that of all the matters this committee could spend its time on in order to advance the interests of New Zealand’s children and ensure that our education system performs better, he has decided that legislation that changes the name of the Education Council to the Teaching Council should be prioritised?

For those of you listening at home, I want to take you through what these consequential amendments mean. What the consequential amendments require is that a number of other Acts must be amended to have the name of the Education Council removed and have the name “Teaching Council” put in place. Those Acts include the Ombudsmen Act 1975, the Privacy Act 1993, and the State Sector Act 1988. Then, beyond those statutes, which the good men and women of the Clerk’s Office and others will go through and change accordingly, we then have to have amendments to legislative instruments. So we need to have amendments to the Education Council Rules. This is but one of the many examples of bits of paper that over the next few weeks and months will be ripped up, put in the shredder. Where’s Chlöe Swarbrick when we need her, with her concern for waste? They’ll be ripped up, they’ll be put in the shredder, they’ll be thrown away, and, instead, a new rule book will be created.

What will be the difference between the old rule book, the Education Council Rules, as created through the legislative instruments, and the new Teaching Council Rules? Oh! Well, it will be the name change. So it really does draw attention to how this bill uses the priority of this House that these are the sorts of changes that we are now required to pass in a bill this evening. Not only does this amendment to the legislative instrument take place in terms of the name on the front of the book but then throughout the book, we have to go to rule 11, rule 12, rule 35, and rule 37, and we have to change the name.

What we are asked to believe by the Minister in the chair, is that by making this change, we will somehow advance and value New Zealand’s teachers. I say to this committee that that is an absolutely patronising argument: to say that, somehow, the men and women who are teaching New Zealand’s children, who are giving their best every day, and who were striking out the front of Parliament just some weeks ago—and, who knows, might be again soon—what will make them feel better, what will make them feel valued, is if we rip up the rule book and we put a new name on the front, and if we make some consequential amendments to the Ombudsmen Act, the Privacy Act, and the State Sector Act to change the reference to the “Education Council” to the “Teaching Council”.

I would suggest to the members of this committee that that is the sort of thing that gets you the label of being virtue signallers and not being concerned with substantive matters that New Zealanders want advanced, because, actually, when you talk to people about what they want progressed in education—when you talk to parents about what it is they want for their children—they don’t say, “Look, I’m really concerned about the name of the Education Council.” In fact, I have been to dozens of early childhood education centres—

Hon Nikki Kaye: Has anyone raised it?

NICOLA WILLIS: No. Ms Kaye asks whether anyone raised the name of the teachers council. Well, I have spoken to dozens and dozens of early childhood educators, in particular, and not one of them has said to me, “You know, the thing that’s really burning on my mind, the thing that I really think would change things, is if there were consequential amendments made to the Ombudsmen Act, so that when it refers to the Education Council, it’s changed and it’s called the Teaching Council.”

This may seem like a trivial argument, and I would not use the time of this House on a trivial argument if it weren’t for the Minister requiring me to do so by placing this legislation in front of us and claiming that this is the thing that we should be prioritising. I would say to him that he’d better sort out more than the name of the Education Council if he wants to advance New Zealand’s teachers.

MICHAEL WOOD (Labour—Mt Roskill): I move, That the question be now put.

Hon TIM MACINDOE (National—Hamilton West): Kia ora e Te Kaiwhakahaere, and thank you for that opportunity. I have to say that was a very fine contribution by one of the newest members of the National Party caucus, Nicola Willis. I was a little slow in rising to my feet at that point because I thought that the Minister of Education would take a call. Ms Willis has highlighted a very significant point. The consequential amendments that are the feature of Part 2 of this bill are very significant.

This time last year, I had the great privilege of being an Associate Minister of Education, and I can confirm that no one raised with me this particular need to change the name of the council, or, in fact, to change the actual structure of the council. So when we look at these consequential amendments, it surely is at least incumbent on the Minister to take a couple of calls to explain not only to the teachers of this country but to the public at large—many of whom I know are still watching this debate, because some have been texting me seeking a little bit of clarification as to what’s going on.

Hon Chris Hipkins: Ha, ha!

Hon TIM MACINDOE: I call on the Minister, who’s clearly enjoying this contribution—and I’m delighted at that, because to be able to make anyone laugh at 7 minutes to 10 is quite an achievement, and I thank him for that. But, more importantly, I hope that I will provoke him to stand up and explain to all who are listening, and to all who will be affected by the consequential amendments in Part 2 of this bill, why they are necessary. The call that he took a short time ago was, I think, 27 seconds—as I timed it on the clock—and all he did was suggest to the excellent chair of the Education and Workforce Committee, Dr Parmjeet Parmar, that her contribution had been irrelevant. Well, I want to say to Dr Parmar that I have never heard anything other than a well-reasoned, intelligent contribution from her. She’s doing a fine job chairing this committee. She has steered this bill through the select committee stage.

Hon Nikki Kaye: And these consequential amendments.

Hon TIM MACINDOE: And these consequential amendments, as the former Minister, the very fine member for Auckland Central, is noting. The very least that Dr Parmar deserves, and could rightly expect, would be to hear an engaged and intelligent response to the point she was making, not just a glib dismissal of her contribution as being of no consequence, because—

CHAIRPERSON (Adrian Rurawhe): Sorry to interrupt the member. Engari kua tae mai te wā kia tuku atu te ripoata ki Te Māngai o Te Whare.

[However, the time has arrived to submit the report to the Speaker.]

House resumed.

Progress reported.

Report adopted.

Sitting suspended from 9.56 p.m. to 9 a.m. (Wednesday)

Tuesday, 11 SEPTEMBER 2018

(continued on Wednesday, 12 September 2018)

Bills

State Sector and Crown Entities Reform Bill

Second Reading

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister of State Services): I move, That the State Sector and Crown Entities Reform Bill be now read a second time.

I’d like to acknowledge the members of the Governance and Administration Committee for their work on the bill, the very constructive recommendations they have made for amendment—which I will speak about in a few moments—and for the collegial way that they have approached the debates on this particular matter.

First of all, let me say that there’s much about the New Zealand State sector and State services that works very well. Crown entities are an integral part of our system of public services, and, for citizens, they’re often the public face of Government—the agencies that they interact with most often. Collectively, they carry out a very wide range of functions, from running public hospitals and schools to performing a broad range of other services and regulatory activities. Given the wide variety and the individual autonomy of the Crown entities, it’s important that they remain connected to the core values and unifying spirit of service that the Public Service is required to have.

There are discrete areas where better alignment with other aspects of the Public Service can help to maintain confidence and build trust in the Crown entities as public agencies without affecting the autonomy of Crown entities’ statutory functions. The changes proposed in this bill support greater integrity and accountability in the management of State services. The amendments cover four interrelated dimensions, primarily in the Crown entities sector, with each amendment bringing a part of the State sector into better alignment and consistency with the arrangements that already exist across the Public Service.

So, to recap, Part 1 of the bill addresses the Crown Entities Act 2004. The changes focus on two key things: they will require boards of statutory Crown entities to obtain the written consent from the State Services Commissioner to the terms and conditions of a chief executive’s employment, and they will introduce a term of up to five years—which can be renewed—for future chief executives of statutory Crown entities. This basically brings the terms and conditions of Crown entity chief executives into line with the terms and conditions of chief executives in the core Public Service.

Part 2 of the bill addresses the State Sector Act 1988. Again, the changes in this part of the bill focus on two key areas. They provide explicitly for the State Services Commissioner to set standards of integrity and conduct by applying a code of conduct to boards of Crown entities, and the second is that they improve the investigation powers of the State Services Commissioner by modernising them under the provisions of the Inquiries Act 2013 and providing a more uniform trigger to the exercise of the commissioner’s powers.

The bill was first introduced in February, and it has been considered by the Governance and Administration Committee. I want to, again, thank them for their work. I understand that seven submissions were made on the bill. It is, clearly, not one of the more controversial pieces of legislation that has been before the House, but I do acknowledge the committee has made some helpful recommendations to improve the bill as a result of those submissions.

In relation to Part 1, the most significant amendment that the committee has made—which the Government certainly endorses—is an amendment that would insert new criteria that the State Services Commissioner would need to have regard to in consenting to chief executive terms and conditions. Those criteria include the legal, commercial, and operational context of the entity and any information provided by the board, the public nature of the entity and the related public interest and prudent stewardship of public resources, relevant market information, Government expectations, and other relevant factors. I think this is a very sensible amendment, and it is one that the Government endorses.

With regard to Part 2 of the bill—these are the changes relating to the State Sector Act—the committee has recommended six amendments, mainly to provide greater clarity and consistency between the new provisions in the State Sector Act and related legislation. The first four amendments deal with replacing the State Services Commissioner’s powers of inquiry and investigations. These powers, I was interested to know when we started discussing this bill at the very beginning—or started discussing the concept of the bill—are still rooted in the Commissions of Inquiry Act from 1908. In fact, the Parliament has subsequently passed, in 2013, the Inquiries Act, which provides a much more modern context for inquiries and a much more, I think, streamlined set of inquiry powers, and grades of inquiry that are much more sensible and fit for purpose in the modern context. Therefore, bringing the State Services Commissioner’s inquiry powers into line with those new powers in the Inquiries Act of 2013 is very sensible.

So the bill as introduced could be described as somewhat conservative in the range of provisions from the Inquiries Act that were proposed to be included in the State Sector Act. I’m told that the New Zealand Law Society commented that detailed safeguards introduced by the Inquiries Act should also apply, and the bill as reported back includes additional provisions from the Inquiries Act relating to the duty of the inquiry to act independently, impartially, and fairly, the ability of an inquiry to designate core participants, and the ability of an inquiry to refer questions of law to the High Court. These are all very sound amendments that the Government endorses. Another useful amendment ensures that a delegation under the Inquiries Act must be carried out in accordance with the relevant section of the State Sector Act. Consistency between the operation of those Acts is, clearly, desirable.

The bill reported back from select committee clarifies that inquiries by the commissioner have the same exemption as inquiries under the Inquiries Act in relation to Privacy Act principles. This is very important, and it is one that has been recently highlighted, where an inquiry can only really be effective if people are free and frank with the inquiry. If they’re sharing evidence with the inquiry that is of a sensitive nature which they then know is going to be passed on, it may inhibit the inquiry from being able to get hold of that evidence in the first place. So there is a real tension here between the Privacy Act and the ability to carry out an inquiry. The Inquiries Act strikes the right balance, and the intention here is ensure that that balance is also carried through into the State Services Commissioner’s powers.

So I’m not going to speak in great detail about that, but I think that the amendments that have been put forward by the committee around the powers of the commissioner to conduct inquiries are sensible ones and provide further safeguards on the use of that power in line with the powers that would be conferred under the Inquiries Act. So I want to, again, thank the committee for their work in bringing this bill back to the House, making judicious amendments to the bill, and bringing it back, I hope, in a position—I note that the committee’s report was unanimous and I hope that the bill has been reported back in a way that the House can also have unanimous support for it. Thank you.

Hon Dr NICK SMITH (National—Nelson): Thank you for the opportunity to speak on the second reading and report back by the Governance and Administration Committee on the State Sector and Crown Entities Reform Bill. National will be supporting the bill. I want to join with Minister Hipkins in thanking the chair Brett Hudson and the members of the committee for the work that has gone into this bill. I want to make some comments about the specific provisions in the bill and also in the broader context of New Zealand’s State sector and reform.

The first change in this bill is in respect of the setting of salaries of chief executives of Crown entities and a tension that exists between getting the best people for the job and, on the other hand, making sure that we get best value for money for the taxpayer.

There is a bit of a debate around the extent to which the all-powerful State Services Commission is able to override the judgments that are made by boards of significant Crown entities, whether we look at the New Zealand Superannuation Fund or ACC or other entities. From National’s point of view, we want the best person for the job. While we can have a pretty low-level argument sort of driven by the politics of envy about the salaries that are paid, when you’re dealing with an entity like the New Zealand Superannuation Fund—with $30 billion worth of assets—or with ACC, National wants first-class governance and management of those organisations, because that is what is in the best interests of New Zealand and the taxpayer.

Now, we do want to ensure that the elected Government of the day has some control, so that is why we are not unsupportive of the changes. We would prefer to have gone a little further than where the select committee has, and I commend the select committee on putting a bit more constraint and criteria about the State Services Commissioner’s role in that. We believe it should have been a statutory criteria, and we may move some amendments in the committee stage on that note.

There is also the intention in this bill to more broadly extend codes of practice around the conduct of not just members of the Public Service but those people that serve on boards of our Crown entities. We’re supportive of that. In respect of the Inquiries Act, we’re proud of our work as a Government on the 2014 Inquiries Act. It is a big improvement on the somewhat old and outdated 1905 Act. This State services bill updates the powers of the State Services Commissioner to be able to better interact with the Inquiries Act of 2014.

Now, one of the issues that the select committee grappled with was the issue of the Privacy Act and how that interacts with the State Services Commissioner when they’re doing some inquiry of some wrongdoing that’s gone on within one of the thousands of Crown entities. The only constraint that National would want to note on that issue of the interaction of this bill and the Privacy Act is to be careful that we do not set one set of rules for the public sector and a different set of rules for the private sector.

Parliament is so good at saying that if it’s a State Services Commissioner and they’re doing an inquiry into one of the Crown entities, they should be able to override the Privacy Commissioner to be able to identify wrongdoing. Why should that not equally apply to a private company or entity outside the State sector? That is really a cautionary note, whether it is the Privacy Act or others, to make sure that we have practical laws that are going to work in both sectors. I’m always cautious as a parliamentarian when we’re saying “Actually, there are exceptions to the Privacy Act for the State Services Commissioner because there are special circumstances for it.”, when, actually, there are large private sector entities that have exactly the same issues in respect of wrongdoing and their powers to be able to inquire.

This is a relative minor bill and I do want to put it in the context more broadly of changes that are going on in the State sector. It is entirely appropriate that Parliament this morning is pretending that it’s yesterday, because there is much which the Government is doing in the area of State sector reform that reminds me of yesterday—that is, if we come to the issue of ensuring that our public sector is accountable and performance-orientated. The truth is this Government is taking us backwards. We have seen an announcement from the Minister that he’s going to remove any at-risk component of State sector chief executives. This is that classic left-wing notion that if we just pay everybody the same, somehow that will result in us getting ahead as a country. National makes no apologies for being a party that wants to reward those that make the effort and those that deliver performance.

It was particularly ironic that when Chris Hipkins, the Minister of State Services, announced, with a great deal of fanfare, changes to the employment arrangements of our chief executives, he just happened to forget that he was giving every one of our chief executives an extra week’s holiday in a trade-off for other provisions. That was a bit cute and that was going backwards. I don’t know the justification for why the chief executives of our public sector entities should get any more holidays than the nurses, the doctors, the policemen, and the others that are doing the hard graft and that are at the core of our public services.

I also find it somewhat ironic that in this bill we are setting very tough standards and codes of ethics for boards of Crown entities. I would challenge the Government and say “Please apply to yourselves.”, because in so many instances we are seeing this gaping canyon between standards that this Government demands of others and what they are prepared to deliver themselves. Whether it be the Clare Curran episode with Radio New Zealand and Carol Hirschfeld, whether it be the issues of the appointment of the Chief Technology Officer, or whether it be the quite extraordinary comments that we saw at the beginning of the year from Minister Shane Jones—and I’m not going to repeat the phrase. I’m simply going to say that he wants the Public Service to be dominated by s-kickers and says that the politicians should be able to control it. He wants an American-style public sector where the politicians are able to appoint their political mates into senior positions in the Public Service—how that contrasts with the high-feeling objectives that are in this bill. Again, it highlights the huge gap that exists between the lofty goals that this Government aims for and what happens when it comes to practice.

It is our view that an independent, politically neutral State sector is absolutely critically to New Zealand’s ongoing success. When we have Ministers sitting down with a very sensitive organisation like Radio New Zealand and with Carol Hirschfeld, the head of news, that is breaching those standards, and the Minister of State Services has been strangely quiet. When you have the Minister for Regional Economic Development, Shane Jones, talking about the fact that the public sector are just asking awkward questions of his Provincial Growth Fund, and he wants to be able to install his political lackeys into distributing those billions of dollars of public funds, we will challenge the Minister of State Services and say that that is wrong.

Equally so, when we have the Government in an absolute pickle over the appointment of the Chief Technology Officer, we will challenge the Government too. This was an appointment that was meant to be made in February. This is an appointment where there is crass political interference in the State sector process. I will challenge the Minister and say, “How do the lofty goals and the code of ethics that you are proposing in this bill and wanting to impose on others”—how have we seen that conduct from those that are responsible for the appointment of the Chief Technology Officer for Government? Whether it is the Minister of State Services, whether it is the Minister for open Government, or whether it be the Prime Minister, who in the Cabinet paper were responsible for that appointment, we see a huge gap between the intent of this bill and the practice by this Government.

So there are some minor changes in this bill that National will support. They are not the be-all and the end-all of achieving a quality Public Service for New Zealand. We are more concerned about some of the broader reforms that the Government is doing in the State sector area that are taking away the incentives for performance and that are taking away the measures of that performance, because members on this side of the House want a strong and accountable public sector, politically neutral, that delivers results for Kiwi families.

PAUL EAGLE (Labour—Rongotai): Mōrena, Madam Deputy Speaker. It’s my pleasure to speak on this bill. Can I just acknowledge the Minister of State Services for the work that has gone into this, and also the Governance and Administration Committee chair and members here this morning, who have contributed to the process to date.

It is an omnibus bill with two parts. We’ve heard about Part 1, making key changes to the Crown Entities Act, and Part 2, making key changes to the State Sector Act. But, in summary, the bill makes three changes really in total: it replaces the use of the old Commissions of Inquiry Act 1908 with substantially similar powers from the Inquiries Act 2013, it provides a uniform trigger to enable the State Services Commissioner to use the full suite of investigation-type powers in the wider State services—all the commissioner’s powers will be available, irrespective of whether the commissioner is directed or requested to act by the Prime Minister or a Minister or the head of any part of the State Service—and, finally, it enables the commissioner to use the full suite of investigatory powers under the commissioner’s own motion for investigations into matters of integrity and accountability.

Integrity and accountability—I think this puts the “public” and “service” back into the Public Service.

I just wanted to comment on a few things that the member for Nelson has brought up in his speech. The best person for the job concept—this is a bill that reinforces that. It’s an absolute myth that if you pay more, you’ll get a better person, or more of a person. We see already, riddled through the last 20, 30, 40 years, many a chief executive who has come in, promised lots, and they are on their merry way. Their CV looks great, but I wonder truly whether they were “public” and “servants” in that private-public push-pull.

This is public money. If you wanted to make money and go do your thing, go join the private sector and have a happy life there, but when you’re in the Public Service, you are a public servant, and I think what we’ve seen from taxpayers, the people of New Zealand, is that it’s unacceptable—some of the salaries that are being paid. We’ve heard that. This addresses some of that. It gets some of the consistency in place that the Government intends to achieve.

There is that performance factor and that risk component there. But, again, we’re not a car factory. We’re not a tyre factory. If they want to sell more cars, more tyres, go work for the private sector and get your risk component built into your salary—end of story. You’re right—there is nothing cute here. This just really is about a better, more transparent, and accountable Public Service which, at the end of the day, gives public trust and confidence in the Government, and that’s what this bill aims to achieve. I commend this to the House.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: I call—sorry, before I do that, I should actually say the question is that the motion be agreed to. I call Brett Hudson.

BRETT HUDSON (National): Well, good news—we’ll agree to it. It’s a pleasure to rise in support of the State Sector and Crown Entities Reform Bill in this second reading debate.

I’d just like to acknowledge the kind words that members have made in contributions to date about the work of the Governance and Administration Committee in scrutinising this bill. I’m almost motivated to seek leave to suspend the Standing Orders so that we can increase the number of calls that we can take on this bill. But I do thank them very much, acknowledging the work that the members do, and I would also acknowledge each of the members on the Governance and Administration Committee for the way that we have all approached not only this bill but also other bills that have been and are before us.

We support this bill, essentially, in full. As Dr Nick Smith has pointed out, there were some areas that we on the Opposition side would have liked to have seen a little different in the amendments that the committee proposed and reported back on—particularly, they are around CEO salaries and terms and conditions, and the State Services Commissioner’s pretty much unbridled role in setting those. Although we were able, through a discussion, to reach a consensus that there should be some criteria to which the State Services Commissioner must give regard if they choose to recommend or require something other than what the board of the entity is recommending, some of us, at least, felt that it would be better, and, particularly, from a true governance sense it would be better, for there to be objective criteria—thresholds, if you will—that must be met in order for the State Services Commissioner to do other than accept the recommendation from the board.

Ultimately, these entities we’re talking about have independent boards assigned to them. Just as in the private sector, if you have a board to govern the company, it is only right and proper that that board is not constrained by external influences other than, of course, those annual shareholder meetings, where shareholders can and do express their satisfaction or otherwise with those boards. We felt that it was important that we maintain very much a consistent approach to the governance of Crown entities: that they have an independent board—or have a board—and that that board should not have its powers and responsibilities and authority constrained unnecessarily. We would have preferred that there were objective thresholds that the commissioner would have to show had been met in order to do something other than what the board recommended, but we do acknowledge that we can go with a consensus, as the bill has been reported back, that the commissioner must at least give regard to those certain criteria.

I do note, as the previous speaker, Paul Eagle, pointed out when he talked about performance—and, of course, outside of this bill but very much related to the subject—that the Minister has changed salary settings for State sector chief executives to remove the performance element of their salaries that previously existed. They’re all getting most of that by default now; it’s the overachievement they won’t be able to get hold of. But, actually, I would argue that that runs very contrary to what the Government wants to achieve and which our Government, the previous Government, wanted to achieve, which is a State sector that is outcomes-focused—not inputs and not outputs, but outcomes-focused—and particularly where those outcomes span across more than just a single silo of a given entity or a given department or a given ministry. The ability to create incentives to chief executives through performance pay is a very, very powerful lever, particularly when it comes to working with others from outside of their ministry. So while it’s not part of this bill, I would urge the Minister to reconsider that decision. I think it actually operates contrary to the State sector outcomes approach that he’s looking to achieve.

On to the other parts of the bill, I was extremely pleased, actually, to see the auspices of inquiries through the commissioner to now be very much mirroring that of the Inquiries Act. We listened very closely not only to submissions but to officials, and we agreed strongly—particularly in the areas of certain suspension of privacy elements such as during an inquiry—to not compromise the work that is under way. While it does constrain certain other privileges and rights, it is, we felt, very appropriate to the nature of the inquiries to not compromise the integrity of the inquiry process that the commissioner may be undertaking. So look, although we have some elements we might like to have seen slightly different, there is no question that we do commend this bill to the House.

Hon SHANE JONES (Minister of Forestry): Kia ora anō tātou—Māori Language Week goes on. I want to just focus on three things. Obviously, we support this bill. Number one, it is a challenge to attract talent into the broader Civil Service when they feel that their prospects could be compromised if we are too constrictive in terms of their entitlements and opportunities to develop as senior executives, but the Public Service is called the Public Service for a reason. Inherent in the word “public” is the notion of “service”. We, after all, are public officials ourselves, and it pains me that the level of scrutiny that I, personally, have suffered from time to time does not seem to be equally shared by these grandees in the Civil Service. This is one of the reasons why I support this bill and our party supports this bill in giving the commissioner of the State sector greater powers to discipline the appetites that have grown out of control—certainly, over the last nine years.

I think at one level our experiment with the Civil Service, right back to Geoffrey Palmer when he introduced this notion of Darwinism—and that’s led to great pillars or silos—has actually gone too far. We’ve debated this, obviously, as politicians on our side of the House, and I’m glad to hear Mr Hudson say that, broadly speaking, they share our concerns. But it should be seen that there is an element of service that is not fully monetised when you take a role like a parliamentarian or a senior executive in the broader Civil Service. If you don’t like that, go and get another job. Go and work for Graeme Hart or Peter Talley and see how much money they are willing to pay you. Don’t come with an unrealistic set of expectations as to what is your worth. First, start from a sense of “What is the service that I’m prepared to develop and bring forward within my own ethical framework?” We feel very strongly about that.

Now, it might be said that we’re going to chase away talent from some of the more peripheral entities that comprise the Civil Service. Well, go away and work somewhere else. I think it’s high time that those of us—as parliamentarians we should stick up for that. We’ve come out of our private lives, into the culture and the code of public service. The people who execute our decisions or who challenge, from time to time, our decision making to ensure that it’s robust and compliant with the law—in my view, this is the new reality for that cadre of fellow travellers in the broader Civil Service.

The other point that I think is important for all of the parliamentarians, and that we most certainly support, is the ability for the State Services Commissioner (SSC)—let’s call him Mr Peter Hughes; he’s the current holder—to undertake inquiries that give him greater scope to uncover what has actually happened. Now, we have had—and just bear with me; I’m not going to stray too far off the script—obviously, a particularly colourful set of issues over the last six weeks, dealing with a senior police officer and the inquiries that have been engaged in in relation to how he got his job and who he might have yelled at and various other matters that, unfortunately, have been trivialised by the Opposition in the business of the House. But an inquiry ought to be based on natural justice. An inquiry should have the ability to cause people to tell the truth, certainly where information has been shared that has a direct impact not only on the ability of us to exercise our accountabilities as members of Parliament but also on the leaders of the State sector to root out elements that actually undermine the ability.

Now, I hear the last speaker, Brett Hudson. He talked about not going too far and about ensuring that not only you don’t make the inquiries process excessively expensive and cumbersome but we don’t trip up in terms of other processes that the State has in place. But this is an opportunity to tidy up a part of our governance culture that has been screaming out for attention. I’m sure I speak on behalf of a lot of the members in the House: I, personally, have had a gutsful of seeing the perquisites, the excessive emoluments, the excessive remuneration culture creep into the upper levels of our Civil Service at a time where it’s being inversely treated for us as parliamentarians. We should never forget that we are only a small body of people—120-odd—and there are thousands and thousands of fellow New Zealanders holding these roles, and I feel very strongly that this law should curb any expectation they have at the top of the tree for ever-rising remuneration packages. The sooner that we see the rear end of that type of personality in the Civil Service, the louder I will clap.

The final thing about this bill is that it’s something that we should all be joined in as parliamentarians. If we don’t build a law that improves accountability, who is going to do it? Are we going to rely on the media to do it? Are we going to rely on people using the powers of the judiciary and the court to do it? No. We should be passing legislation that enables us as parliamentarians to demonstrate in the pyramid of influence that we, the elected people of New Zealand, are up the top of the pyramid and we trust the agencies to carry out their legal mandates in such a way that we can defend not only in action but in remuneration. I hope that this bill shows that there’s a conjoining of all of us that the days of disproportionate appetites to what the role really is are coming to an end.

Now, I accept that the SSC has a view that the best thing to do is to appoint generalists and not appoint people that are technically proficient. I, personally, prefer an option where we encourage as many people that have technical proficiency to roles and teach them to be general managers, rather than get general managers and teach them to be technically proficient in what are demanding roles. But I’m a New Zealand First MP—I’m a long way from ever being the State Services Commissioner, and I gave up on that prospect at about the point I started to go to school. But whether they are technically adept at a certain area or whether they’re generally proficient, the time has come for us to empower Peter Hughes to ensure that their salary expectations and their remuneration packages don’t stray too far from what we put up with as parliamentarians and Ministers, and, if they don’t like it, then the sooner they go out in the private sector and try and earn a living there the better. Thank you very much.

Hon JACQUI DEAN (National—Waitaki): Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I am very concerned when a senior Government Minister takes this opportunity and this forum to display his attitude to the Public Service, which is, at best, punitive but also, by his actions in the past and no doubt in the future, could be described as displaying a witch-hunt mentality towards the Public Service.

The implied threat today in the House by Shane Jones, which was repeated several times, was that if Public Service chief executives don’t like the provisions in this bill, in that their pay and conditions will come under extra scrutiny, then, effectively: “If you don’t like it, get out.” That would be seen, at best, as being not helpful and, at worst, just unworthy of a Government. So we really do have to question whether this is a prevailing attitude of a New Zealand First Minister in this coalition Government and whether, due to the power balances—which are very much up in the air at the moment with this coalition Government about just who actually is in charge—this attitude of “If I don’t like you, I’m going after you.” is going to prevail over the next couple of years, or less, until we have another Government.

I also want to take issue with the Hon Shane Jones’ reference to a senior police officer’s appointment process, where he regrets, I think, in the tone of his voice, that the process has come under scrutiny, and where he contends that the Opposition have trivialised that appointment process. No, no, no, no, no. What this Opposition has done is question some of the behaviours that have happened and still happen within New Zealand Police—and I say this in the context of the Public Service appointments process, Madam Deputy Speaker.

What, in fact, the concern around police now is, 10 years after some appalling police conduct, where the Office of the Auditor-General had a programme of scrutiny over the police—and I was assured in select committee by the commissioner that no more police bullying was happening, particularly bullying of women. That remains a concern, and it remains a concern to me that a New Zealand First senior Minister, who seems to be grabbing power with every moment that goes, is defending the behaviour of another Minister in his party—Tracey Martin—who’s made a complete hash of the inquiry into a senior police officer.

So we support this bill—we do support this bill—because it does, in Part 1 of the bill, make amendments to the Crown Entities Act around the appointment of chief executives for statutory Crown entities. We wanted to go further in the bill, but what we want is the best person for the job, because it is an important job. Being a chief executive of a Crown entity carries an awful lot of responsibility. Take no notice of what Shane Jones says about putting a bit of un-monetised work into the job—of course they do. Of course they do. From time to time, chief executives come under an enormous amount of pressure, and it is a very bad situation when that pressure comes from their own Government. Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker.

JAN LOGIE (Green): Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I rise to take a brief call on behalf of the Green Party in the second reading of the State Sector and Crown Entities Reform Bill, and I’m going to do my best to restrict myself to the content of the bill rather than getting into any side discussions today.

This is a relatively simple bill that amends two key pieces of legislation, the State Sector Act and the Crown Entities Act. It’s not going to change the world, but it is an important signal to the country about some of the things that are important to this Government—namely, addressing inequality, trying to rebuild confidence in our public sector, and making more connection between the core State sector and our Public Service in the wider State sector, as well as ensuring that when there may be concerns and the need for an inquiry, it is able to happen smoothly and appropriately.

Within the bill, a key change to deliver on those goals is that there will be the change to the Crown Entities Act to require Crown entities to obtain written consent from the State Services Commission on the terms and conditions of the chief executives (CEs) when they’re employing them, and the reason for this is probably quite well-known to most New Zealanders. We’ve seen quite a few stories in the media about salaries that were perceived to be out of step with wage increases and salaries for the rest of the country, and they were going against the advice of the State Services Commissioner, indeed. So this is just ensuring that that actually can’t happen. We have a mechanism now in law to be able to keep that in step and the decisions and the guidance for the public sector CEs—the Crown entities can’t be out of step with that. I think that’s a really important signal. We do, as a country, absolutely want to ensure that people are properly rewarded for their work and that we’re able to get great people into these important positions, and we can do that without actually going a step too far in terms of increasing inequality.

The bill also sets those appointments for a period of five years, whereas at the moment the appointments are permanent. The reason for this—and when I first looked at this, I didn’t immediately understand why we would be doing that because, typically, when people apply for jobs, they’re permanent jobs, and we support that, but in this case, it’s when the boards who employ the CE turn over. They have a particular life, and when there’s a permanent appointment in the CE position, that ends up as having quite an imbalance of power. When you’ve got a new board and a board who’s turning over and who may reflect different political directions, to have one CE who has 10 years’ experience and knowledge of the organisation becomes quite imbalanced in terms of power, and it actually reduces, in effect, the role and the oversight of the board because of that imbalance of power. From my experiences as a worker working to a board, as well as having been on boards, I understood it in that sense. So we do support reducing the term of appointment to five years.

The other change is for the State Services Commissioner to set standards of integrity and conduct by applying a code of conduct. The intent of this, I think, is pretty obvious to everyone. It is to be able to help people have a sense of confidence. It is to have a joining together of our State sector in a uniform set of values, so that we can have confidence that everyone, no matter what their role is in our State sector, has that sense of commitment to the public and will be abiding by a code of conduct.

The bill also improves the investigation powers of the State Services Commissioner. In this area, in particular, there were quite a few changes made within the select committee, and I too would like to acknowledge the Governance and Administration Committee for the work that they’ve done on this bill. It does indeed seem to have strengthened it helpfully. I understand that quite a few of the amendments that were made by the select committee, at least in some part, stemmed from the submission from the Law Society, who detailed that the protections of the Inquiries Act should also apply in this area, and said we needed to make sure that there was more consistency between this piece of legislation and the Inquiries Act—which, of course, makes sense—and it is a testament to the value of the select committee process.

So aspects that have been added from the Inquiries Act through the select committee process are a duty to act independently, impartially, and fairly, the ability to designate core participants in the inquiry, and the ability to refer questions of law to the High Court when needed. Also, an amendment is being made to ensure that a delegation under the Inquiries Act must be carried out in accordance with the State Sector Act. That is building the consistency between the two pieces of legislation, which just seems terribly sensible to me. On that note, I commend this bill.

KANWALJIT SINGH BAKSHI (National): Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for the opportunity to contribute on the State Sector and Crown Entities Reform Bill in its second reading. First of all, I would like to acknowledge the Hon Chris Hipkins for introducing this bill and, secondly, I would like to acknowledge Brett Hudson, the chair of the Governance and Administration Committee when we went through the process, for his leadership, and all the members who contributed during the select committee process.

This is an omnibus bill which makes amendments to the Crown Entities Act 2004 and the State Sector Act 1988 to provide for greater integrity and accountability in the management of the State sector services. It is important, as the previous speakers have acknowledged, that we have the best people to lead our Crown entities such as ACC and the Superannuation Fund, and we have to find a relevant person who can lead such an organisation, which deals with billions of dollars on behalf of the taxpayers and the Government. They need to have the best talent, and that is the foremost important criterion for the leadership at that stage, as Treasury cautioned that these Public Service agencies are large organisations and are competing against other private sector organisations for top-quality candidates. As we know, it is not only the monetary thing which attracts people to come and lead such an organisation, but there are people who are committed and who want to take these organisations to the next level, and we have seen in the past few years some of that leadership, which has taken those organisations which were performing badly to be the best at this time—for example, ACC.

The bill amends section 117 of the Crown Entities Act to require the board of statutory entities to obtain the written consent of the State Services Commissioner before finalising the terms and conditions of employment for chief executives and subsequent amendments to them. As we know, at present, most statutory entity boards are required to take consent from the commissioner and to have regard to the commissioner’s recommendation. So this bill emphasises that it is compulsory for all entities to get the consent from the State Services Commissioner so that it can be referred to in due course. We know that tertiary education institutions are already required to obtain such consent from the commissioner.

So I think it is a good bill and, with more minor amendments, it can deliver the best for the country. I commend this bill to the House.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: This is a split call.

KIRITAPU ALLAN (Labour): E Te Mana Whakawā, i tēnei wiki o tō tātou nei reo rangatira kei te mihi au ki a koe.

[Madam Deputy Speaker, greetings to you in this week of our esteemed language.]

For those that don’t perhaps live in the Wellington bubble, the name—

Hon Chris Hipkins: What bubble?

KIRITAPU ALLAN: —what bubble?—of the State Sector and Crown Entities Reform Bill might not come across to some as the most riveting and interesting of legislation. However, the State sector—for any ordinary layperson—effectively, is where the day-to-day interaction that most people will ever have with the Government happens, and, therefore, the way in which the State sector conducts itself and represents itself to the ordinary Jane and Joe Bloggs of our communities is inherently important. So the reforms that this omnibus bill seeks to undertake, under both the State Sector Act and the Crown Entities Act—and it’s good to hear that there is common agreement across the House—basically, are to ensure that there is transparency and that the public can trust what the State sector is doing on its behalf, and to make sure that it’s fit for a current and modern context.

There are really only a couple of things I want to speak to. Starting with the State Sector Act, the ability of the State Services Commissioner to undertake inquiries is probably one of the most important elements of the reforms that this bill will bring through. Look, the Commissions of Inquiry Act 1908 has been a very useful Act that the State Services Commissioner has had to operate under, but we know that it has been cumbersome, and we know that it has been challenging, particularly in recent times, to the ability of the commissioner to undertake relevant inquiries. So to bring it into alignment with the Inquiries Act 2013 is common-sense practice, and so on this side of the House, we do commend our Minister of State Services for bringing through those amendments.

Turning to the Crown Entities Act, this is probably some more of the values and principles alignments that I’m really pleased to see we’re bringing in through this piece of legislation. What we did see, and what we have seen—and I think both sides of the House had concerns about the way in which those in executive positions, particularly the CEO positions, were watching remuneration escalate into the six-digit figures, whereas the gap between the executive level and the ordinary worker was just becoming further and further apart. There were concerns expressed under the previous Government, and recommendations were made by Ministers to the relevant boards. Those recommendations—and this is particularly apparent in both ACC and the Superannuation Fund—weren’t taken up by those boards, and there was little, really, that could be done.

So by enacting the amendments in this bill to limit the remuneration, or at least to have the remuneration of the CEO position affirmed by the commissioner—and where there is a dispute, then the Minister will have to come in and work with the board to make the relevant amendments. I think that’s a prudent measure that will increase the public’s trust and confidence in the fact that the Minister will be a backstop in terms of making sure that there aren’t unbridled abilities by those boards to let that remuneration go out of control. And then, secondly, of course, is having that five-year term as a starting point for those in Crown entities. Of course, that’s renewable, so that’s good. That gives certainty to those who want to be involved on those Crown entities and on that board so that they can do the necessary planning, but the buck is that there must be that review at that five-year point.

So I think that the public can have trust and confidence in both the State services sector and the amendments that we are bringing through in terms of the Crown entities to make sure that they are controlled and that there are measures put in place. So, with those brief comments, we commend this bill to the House.

MATT KING (National—Northland): There’s a good argument here for having these sorts of bills reserved for late in the evening on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, to help cure the insomniacs that we have watching from out there in TV land. It’s a bit like watching paint dry or a calculus lecture, but it’s a necessary—[Interruption] I’m not criticising the last speaker, Kiri Allan, at all; I’m just saying this is what it’s about.

Essentially, it gives the State Services Commissioner powers to control the terms and conditions of CEOs. Currently, the commissioner doesn’t have to obtain consent, and this law changes that. It’s potentially a good law change, limiting Crown entities’ employment conditions contracts to five years—I would imagine that’s a pretty good law to bring in—with a right to renew, and setting standards of integrity and conduct for Crown entities boards is another good law.

National is supporting this bill. It’s essentially our bill. It aligns with the “National Inquiries Act”.

Hon Members: Ha, ha!

MATT KING: Yeah, you like that? I’ve been, what, nearly a year in Parliament now, and we’ve been passing a lot of National Party bills in this first 12 months, so I’m looking forward to some really good legislation coming from the other side of the House—their own work. I’m really looking forward to the second and third years for that. But I am worried about the direction that public services are going in under this coalition Government—just to spark it up a bit.

Jamie Strange: What about your own speeches?

MATT KING: The other side’s awake now. Less accountability—they’ve knocked Public Service targets on the head—especially, for example, waiting times in emergency departments, which were proven lifesavers. So it’s the direction this Government’s going in that I am concerned about.

We need to ensure that we are incentivising for performance. Now, I know Minister Hipkins is keen on dropping the measurement and setting performance standards—they’ve been doing that since they got in. Instead of pulling up the bottom rung of the ladder, they’re trying to take down the top. You’ve got to remember that these chief executives are responsible for investment and expenditure of billions of dollars. We need good, competent people fronting our organisations. Otherwise, we’ll get bosses like you see on the show Gliding On.

We have to compete with the private sector. I know the Institute of Directors states that this bill may undermine good governance, that appointing and managing CEOs is one of the most important functions of a board, and that it’s important that these functions are at arm’s length from the commissioner. Boards such as the Superannuation Fund—that chief executive heads a fund with $38 billion worth of assets under management. I would want the best person in charge of that show, wouldn’t you?

So we support this bill. We just have our concerns about the attitudes displayed by some of them across the House.

RAYMOND HUO (Labour): Tēnā koe, Madam Deputy Speaker. Kia ora. I rise to take a call at the second reading of the State Sector and Crown Entities Reform Bill. Previous speakers displayed their respective attitudes, as displayed by my learned colleague Matt King, but I’d like to follow my portfolio Minister, the Hon Chris Hipkins, in looking at some principal points under this bill.

Now, the title of this bill may sound a little bit arid, but if we put it into the context, it is much easier for us to get the real picture. For citizens, Crown entities and the State services sector, and so on and so forth, are often the face of the Government. Collectively, they carry out a wide range of functions, from running public hospitals to our schools and performing a broad range of service delivery and regulatory activities. So it is very important that they remain connected around core values based on a unifying spirit of service to the community. So it is a no-brainer for us to maintain the confidence and public trust in Crown entities and State services.

Some of the principal proposals in this bill include, firstly, the remuneration setting for Crown entity chief executives, and, secondly, five-year appointment terms. Previously, chief executives of Crown entities had to be appointed on an ongoing basis, which, in plain English, means permanently. This may have created some strange situations, because, largely, board members would be responsible for chief executives whom they did not appoint, and a chief executive’s terms of appointment would go beyond the terms of appointment of those board members.

Thirdly, in terms of standards of integrity and conduct for Crown entity board members, under the proposals of the bill we would be able to catch up to international practices such as the Code of Conduct for Board Members of Public Bodies issued by the UK Cabinet Office.

Last, but certainly not least, I mention the State Services Commissioner’s powers to investigate. There were different thresholds and powers applicable to different functions, but it is highly desirable to put in place a single investigation package that aligns with the Inquiries Act 2013.

Without affecting the autonomy of Crown entities’ statutory functions, the legislative changes in this bill support greater integrity and accountability in the management of State services. So this is a simple, narrow, but very important bill, and, without further ado, I commend this bill to the House.

Dr JIAN YANG (National): I will take a brief call on this bill. This is actually a minor bill. It is not as important as it sounds, because much of what we are talking about has been applied to much of the State sector, so it is actually a minor bill. This bill actually empowers the State Services Commissioner to, basically, make sure that our Public Service has strong integrity and accountability. So this is the essence of this bill.

Openness is like a keyword in this bill. The current Government has been talking about openness, but this is actually what the Government is lacking.

What we should also pay attention to is the balance between strengthening the integrity, accountability, and openness of our Public Service sector, and the capability to attract competitive or capable leaders to our State sector. That is another point that we can consider.

Overall, this is a good bill, so we would like to commend this to the House. Thanks.

VIRGINIA ANDERSEN (Labour): Kia ora. He mihi mahana ki Te Whare i Te Wiki o Te Reo Māori, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā tātou katoa.

[Warm greetings to the House in Māori Language Week, greetings, greetings, greetings to all.]

It’s a privilege to stand and speak on the State Sector and Crown Entities Reform Bill. As a member of the Governance and Administration Committee, it was also a really interesting process to hear the seven submissions from parts of Government. One submission in particular, which I’ll pay reference to, was from the Law Commission, which made a very valuable contribution. It opened my eyes to the value of having detailed scrutiny from outside entities looking at the legislation and providing improvements.

The improvements made to this bill have been done at the select committee level and that is really good to see. In terms of what Crown entities are, they very much provide a public face to the Government and they carry out a very wide range of functions. Because they are not part of the Public Service, it is also important that they should still remain aligned to the work that the Government does and remain consistent across those areas. That’s where this bill has helped to bring the pay range, in particular, of senior members from Crown entities into line with the rest of the State sector.

I think, in particular, that consistency is important for the appointment process of chief executives if we want to strengthen the public’s trust and confidence in the way that the Government does its business. When we look at Crown entities, it’s very important that they remain connected and aligned with the remainder of the State sector, and so this bill has set out to do that and has, indeed, done a good job.

The nub or the crux of where the discussion at select committee lay was in trying to get that balance right—trying to get that balance right between getting the right person for the job, the person that’s best suited for that chief executive role, but, at the same time, as this Government has made increasingly clear, not to pay excessive amounts to chief executives, which has been done in the past. In that it’s been an interesting discussion at select committee, acknowledging that part of being in the Public Service is that we have skilled and experienced people who serve in the Public Service. They are motivated by many things, and remuneration is just one of those many things in life that can motivate any individual.

So getting that balance right was an interesting discussion. I’d like to acknowledge the chairmanship of Brett Hudson of the select committee, for doing an excellent job of being able to ask good, thorough questions from those submitting groups, and to arrive at a good balance between those two areas of making sure there is the right person for the job but also making sure that we’re not paying excessive amounts to chief executives.

I would like to acknowledge the fact that the changes that this bill has done, in particular, have enabled the right balance to be struck to make sure that in those key areas—where we’ve seen change in terms of how those decisions are made and also how inquiries are carried out—a bill has been developed that strengthens the Public Service and gives the public greater trust and confidence that there is transparency in the way that Crown entities are run alongside other Public Service entities. I would like to acknowledge all those who submitted and all those public servants that spent many hours making these changes, and I commend this bill to the House.

Bill read a second time.

Bills

Conservation (Indigenous Freshwater Fish) Amendment Bill

First Reading

Debate resumed from 4 September.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: When we were debating this last, we were up to a National Party call. I understand it is a split call, and so I call Todd Muller, with a bell at one minute.

TODD MULLER (National—Bay of Plenty): For how many minutes, Madam Deputy Speaker?

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Five minutes.

TODD MULLER: Five. Very good.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Bell at one.

TODD MULLER: OK. That’s very good. Thank you very much, Madam Deputy Speaker, for the opportunity to just say a few words in support of the Conservation (Indigenous Freshwater Fish) Amendment Bill in the first reading that we started a week or so ago. Obviously, we signalled that we’re going to support it, but I do just want to call out poor process, which is becoming a consistent theme for this Government, and particularly for Minister Hipkins.

When I looked through the regulatory impact statement, there was a section here which talked about key limitations of the analysis of the bill’s fit for purpose. It says that the key constraint in preparing the policy proposals was time frame. This means that the proposals that are listed in this bill could not be tested. They had not allowed any time for consultation with iwi and stakeholders. And then the reason given for that from the Government is their intense legislative programme. That’s what they have signalled is the reason why there has been no stakeholder engagement and the suggestions that are enabled in this legislation have not been tested.

I mean, this is completely woeful. We sit on the Environment Committee. In the last year, we’ve had the Exclusive Economic Zone and Continental Shelf (Environmental Effects) Amendment Bill, which we had to look at a couple of times because we didn’t quite get the detail right; the America’s Cup Road Stopping Bill, which is about two clauses; the Litter (Increased Infringement Fee) Amendment Bill; and the Conservation (Infringement System) Bill—high-order issues! Clearly, we’re under the pump on the Environment Committee, to the extent that the legislative programme is so packed that we’ve got to put this bill in front of the House without testing it with any stakeholders, and with the quality assurance from the Government officials saying, “Well, actually, we don’t actually know whether these proposals are going to work, because they haven’t been tested.”

That talks to extraordinarily poor process. In fact, this Government wouldn’t know good process if they tripped over it. They’re not under pressure, had nothing in front of the Environment Committee, and have a new bill that’s been pushed through by Eugenie Sage that hasn’t been tested with stakeholders, hasn’t been tested with iwi—and their own regulatory impact statement says, “Actually, we can’t even be sure this will work, because we haven’t tested the proposals.” Now, we’ll support it, because the intent is in the right direction, but be assured we will interrogate this fiercely and do what the Government should have done before they put the first reading up in the first place. Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker.

ERICA STANFORD (National—East Coast Bays): Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I’m pleased to take a call on the Conservation (Indigenous Freshwater Fish) Amendment Bill at first reading. The objectives of this bill are to “improve the workability of [the] fisheries management tools in the Conservation Act 1987” to “provide a complete and effective toolbox for … fisheries management”, and on the surface, the aims in this bill are good. Our indigenous freshwater fish are in need of protection. In 2013, nearly three-quarters of our indigenous freshwater fish were at risk of extinction, and 50 percent of those are not found anywhere else in the world, so the stakes are really high. And there are dozens of fish that are native to New Zealand—57 species, in fact, from slithering eels to tiny whitebait, each of them entirely odd, like the prehistoric boneless fish known as the vampire of the sea because it bleeds the blood out of its prey. It’s an ancient, spineless, endangered species that literally sucks the life of out of its host, leaving it an empty, useless shell. It’s a New Zealand First—I mean, sorry, a New Zealand fish, totally a New Zealand fish, called the lamprey, and it’s weird and wonderful and cool, and it is worthy of protection.

We acknowledge that these weird, wonderful, and special indigenous fish are precious, and we will support this bill through to select committee, but we do have some serious concerns, as my colleague Todd Muller pointed out, about the potential overreach—the unstated impacts this bill may have on our recreational fishers and our rural communities. Commercial whitebaiters, rural water users, and fishermen feel that they are adversely affected by this bill. They feel aggrieved that they have not been consulted. They feel that the excuse for no consultation—that the fact that it couldn’t happen was because of the legislative timetable—was feeble.

Fish & Game, who represent thousands of people across New Zealand, have not been consulted, despite the impact that this bill will have on them, and I’d say that this is unbelievable, but given the previous actions of this Government, the lack of consultation is entirely believable. One hundred and ten thousand anglers are represented by Fish & Game, so the unintended—or otherwise—effects of this bill will impact on a large number of people. So the question is: does this bill undermine the interests of Fish & Game? With no consultation from the Minister of Conservation, Fish & Game had to hire a lawyer to get an opinion on this question. The advice back wasn’t great. Fish & Game’s lawyer Geoffrey Palmer’s legal opinion says that “aspects of the reforms impact directly and negatively on Fish & Game”. He goes on to say he considers this bill has the potential to seriously impact on Fish & Game’s interests.

Hon Member: Who paid him for that?

ERICA STANFORD: As we can see, tensions are high. And there needs to be a balance between protecting our environment, saving our native fish species, and allowing New Zealanders to enjoy access to nature, to the environment, as they’ve been doing for hundreds of years. It’s not one or the other, like the Greens would have us believe. In the select committee’s process, we will need to hear the vital evidence from Fish & Game, private landowners, recreational fishers, and the public. We will take their concerns seriously, as it is the first time that they will be heard. With that in mind, we look forward to scrutinising this bill at select committee. Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker.

ANGIE WARREN-CLARK (Labour): Tēnā koe e Te Mana Whakawā. It’s a pleasure to rise to speak on this bill. It will be a very short contribution. I want to congratulate the Hon Eugenie Sage, Minister of Conservation, for bringing this bill, because in fact we haven’t really got anything that protects our freshwater indigenous fish in this country. This bill is overdue and it’s important, because we actually get to turn our sights to our indigenous freshwater fish species in this country.

E Te Mana Whakawā, you may not be aware that apparently all fish are equal, but some fish are more equal than others. We have many indigenous sea fish, and we have lots and lots of marine fish, which have over 600 pieces of legislation or regulation that protect them. In this country we have one piece that protects indigenous freshwater fish, and that fish is extinct. So it is due time that we pay heed to the freshwater fish in this country. We would say, “He iti pounamu”—many of them are little but precious.

So, very briefly, this bill, as the name would surely suggest, specifically looks at indigenous freshwater fish, and it clarifies the name of indigenous freshwater fish as opposed to freshwater fish. It looks at changing the principal Act, the Conservation Act 1987, to tidy up a whole pile of things. When we hear the Opposition talk about the regulatory impact statement and the timing issues—let’s not forget that the Opposition, when in Government, didn’t even bother with some pieces of legislation having a regulatory impact statement at all—we just need to remember that this bill is a tidy-up. It’s a fix-up. It’s a protection for our freshwater fish within conservation areas. Really, it seeks to improve the management of our indigenous freshwater fish and it is, essentially, a conversation that we are beginning to have about fish such as whitebait and tuna, which are very important to us all as Kiwis.

So it is the beginning of the conversation. I am looking forward absolutely to the select committee process, and, as the Opposition knows, we take this seriously. We look forward to the contributions of the community. I commend this bill to the House.

Hon Dr NICK SMITH (National—Nelson): Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. It’s a pleasure to take a call on the Conservation (Indigenous Freshwater Fish) Amendment Bill that National is supporting to select committee. We’re a party of practical environmentalists and conservationists and so, firstly, we support the view of the Government that our indigenous fish are the next sensible order of priority in terms of New Zealand’s indigenous species. We’re actually very proud of our record in Government in turning around a number of species that were on the road to extinction. For instance, our Battle for our Birds saw the numbers of takahē in our period in Government more than double, despite the fact that they had been in constant decline for the previous 20 years. I note my passionate colleague about conservation, Sarah Dowie—I’m sure she’s delighted with the efforts of her own constituents around the recovery of the kākāpō and the brilliant work that has been done in that regard. When we look in the North Island at the efforts of our Government to recover a really precious bird—my favourite bird, the kōkako, in terms of its call—again, we’ve seen those numbers switch.

Then I want to acknowledge my colleague Maggie Barry, who launched a tremendous campaign around the country, a War on Weeds, and a real focus on plants. Nobody would be surprised that Maggie Barry, with her experience and passion for plants through her long experience with the garden show, made a real focus of protecting those plants that are special to New Zealand. And so it is a logical progression, having worked on the birds, having worked on the plants, to put this focus on our indigenous freshwater fish.

I do want to challenge members opposite who were keen to make disparaging comments about National’s record on fresh water. I would remind them that the very first National policy statement on fresh water was introduced by our Government. It makes specific mention of the importance of protecting our indigenous freshwater fish, and it’s particularly focused on the issue of sediment, because I think anybody who was scientifically focused on this issue would realise that the management of sediment is actually at the core of us giving our indigenous fish a better chance of survival.

I’d also note that when the previous National Government passed the national Environmental Reporting Act that required our collective Government agencies to produce a comprehensive state of the environment report, it did give credit in saying that in areas like birds and plants we were doing well, but did highlight the fact that we were going backwards on indigenous fish, and I see this additional focus being a logical response to that.

The areas where National does want to scrutinise this bill quite heavily are the extent of the regulation-making powers, because we are a party that wants to ensure that the environmental measures are practical for people like our farming communities and those that are passionate about whitebaiting. I have a father-in-law who is absolutely passionate about his whitebaiting. He’ll be out there in the rivers of Golden Bay right now, collecting a worth, and I confess to getting a dividend from that. This bill is going to make changes to whitebaiting, and I’d say that every New Zealander who has an interest in whitebaiting will be wanting to ensure that the extra regulatory powers that we are giving to the Department of Conservation around those freshwater fisheries regulations ensure that our whitebaiting communities are actually going to be consulted and engaged. We all want to enjoy a good feed of whitebait, but we equally have a duty to ensure our grandchildren in a hundred years’ time will be able to enjoy a good feed of whitebait.

The last point I would make is in respect of the practical issues for our farming communities in the regulation-making powers around allowing access for Government officials on to farmers’ land. Again, they are provisions that we want to scrutinise in the select committee stage to ensure that in finding that balance between protecting that which makes New Zealand special, we are also respectful of private property rights and the practical job that our farmers have, from Kaitāia to Bluff, in managing their properties as we go about this challenge.

So I commend the Minister for bringing the bill to the House, and look forward to the serious engagement at the select committee to ensure that we get the detail right.

VIRGINIA ANDERSEN (Labour) E Te Māngai, he mihi mahana ki Te Whare i Te Wiki o Te Reo Māori; tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā tātou katoa.

[Mr Speaker, warm greetings to the House in Māori Language Week; greetings, greetings, greetings to all.]

Thank you for the opportunity to stand and speak on the Conservation (Indigenous Freshwater Fish) Amendment Bill. Learning the fact that we don’t have as many protections in this space as we ought to has been an interesting case. Also, I was interested to learn that this fish right here [Holds up illustration], the white spotted grayling—

Andrew Bayly: Can’t see it. Can’t see it.

VIRGINIA ANDERSEN: You can google it later, Andrew.

SPEAKER: Order!

VIRGINIA ANDERSEN: You can see that this is the only one that has actually been listed as being protected, and in fact, that fish is now extinct. So it proves that there is important space for there to be greater protections for freshwater fish. New Zealand has 77 species of freshwater fish, and 56 of those are indigenous.

Interestingly enough, I learnt a lot about freshwater fish while completing my Master’s at Canterbury University, because one of the big issues that came up while looking into the tino rangatiratanga of Ngāi Tahu rūnaka, when interviewing each of those, was the fact that those farmers were clearing out their drains at times when the tuna were swimming up to lay their eggs, and also when they were breeding. The time of the year that the farmers were undertaking this was hugely detrimental to the tuna population in parts of Canterbury. Only through Ngāi Tahu receiving their settlement and being able to go to the Environment Court and take this issue to a court were they able to receive an outcome that enabled a greater working relationship between iwi and farmers to make sure that those regular duties that did need to be taking place were being done at times of the breeding cycle that weren’t detrimental to the tuna breeding population. And that was seen as a great outcome for the Ngāi Tahu settlement, to have that ability to do that.

So it’s great to see a bill that now looks more closely at how that will be working and how we will be protecting freshwater fish species within New Zealand. I would like to note that there are particular implications for the Treaty settlement legislation as well, noting that freshwater fisheries are a vital resource for most iwi who have been significantly affected by the decline of their fisheries. Always, too, when looking at cultural settlements and cultural redress in a Treaty settlement package, freshwater fisheries are therefore key issues in many of those Treaty settlement packages.

So it’s good to see that this bill will specifically improve the overall tool box for protecting, managing, and restoring fisheries and taonga species that are of such importance to iwi. A complete and effective tool box will give the Crown more ability to work closely with iwi in the restoration of local fisheries. In the case that I’ve already mentioned, it also enables a better working relationship at a practical level between farmers who are utilising the land and iwi who want to access those freshwater fisheries.

So I look forward to a day when we have more protected fish that aren’t actually extinct, and I look forward to the rigorous debate and further submissions that we will see during the select committee process. E Te Māngai, I commend this bill to the House.

IAN McKELVIE (National—Rangitīkei): Tēnā koe, e Te Mana Whakawā. I want to remind the last speaker, Virginia Andersen, that we all suffer when the fish species suffer—not just sectors of our community; the whole community suffers.

I’ll take a brief call on the Conservation (Indigenous Freshwater Fish) Amendment Bill. I think it’s certainly worthy of supporting to the select committee, and I take note of all those points that have previously been made, particularly by this side of the House, around some of the nervousness that might occur around what may happen to this bill in the course of it going through the Environment Committee.

I, like a number of the previous speakers, if I ever had time, would be a very keen whitebaiter. I don’t have the patience for it, unfortunately. And that’s not because we don’t catch any; it’s just because I don’t have the patience to sit down there and watch them swimming past the end of the net.

There are a couple of things I want to raise in here, and they relate to an issue that was raised very early in the piece by the Minister David Parker. He said that property rights never gave property owners the right to destroy nature, and I absolutely agree with him on that. The issue I’ve got with this bill relates to clause 11. So, because we live in a built environment that’s been changed and, I suppose you could call it, “built” over the last 150 or 160 years, or even longer than that, we have to live with what we’ve got now, and we’ve got to make what we’ve got now work better for us.

The issue that concerns me about clause 11 in this bill is that it gives the Government or its agents the right to enter private property and to close down, effectively, or potentially close down, pieces of nature reserve, or whatever, that have been hugely developed by farmers, by other landowners, by public trusts and all sorts of people who have changed the nature of our land—and they’ve created environments that are quite different than they were a couple of hundred years ago, but none the less they’ve created environments that are very productive from a fishing perspective or from a fish-breeding perspective.

I would be very nervous to think that we would get State intervention in that type of activity. That’s what clause 11, effectively, allows. So I think that, like many other things that we deal with in Government, we need to make sure that, whatever we do in this area, we are acting constructively and working constructively with those people who have created, sometimes through generations, these quite innovative wetlands and areas where fish can breed.

I’m very keen on eels. I like a smoked eel—you can’t get anything better than a smoked eel. I do accept that when we were young, or when I was young—I’m not talking about you, Mr Speaker, I’m sorry; I realise you’re quite a bit younger than me—you could go down to any river and catch eels quite easily. And I’d have to say that nowadays you still can go down to the river and catch eels—it’s just not quite as easy as it used to be. I think that’s the reason for this bill.

So I support this bill to the select committee. I am a little nervous about where it might take us, and I think from a fishing perspective, particularly a whitebaiting perspective, and from an eeling perspective, we need to make sure that all of those people’s views are respected as it comes through the select committee. So that’s my small contribution to this bill. Thank you.

Hon RUTH DYSON (Labour—Port Hills): Rau rangatira mā, tēnei te mihi i runga i te kaupapa o te rā. Tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā huihui koutou katoa.

[Esteemed elders and others, I pay tribute to our purpose today. Greetings, greetings, greetings to all gathered here.]

It gives me great pleasure to speak in this first reading of the Conservation (Indigenous Freshwater Fish) Amendment Bill. I want to commend the Minister of Conservation, the Hon Eugenie Sage, for her work in this area and in many other conservation areas. She’s an inspiration to people around New Zealand who care about our freshwater species, our bird life, our forests, and our environment. So I want to acknowledge her work and her passion in this area.

Freshwater fish has not been an area of particular attraction, I would say, for a lot of conservation Ministers in the past, because it doesn’t get people up and bouncing in the way that saving a kākāpō or a kiwi does. People love cuddling kākāpōs, and I can highly recommend it, having done it myself, but if you talk about the protection of whitebait or other freshwater fish, people don’t get as passionate about it. You don’t cuddle whitebait. I think, as the previous speaker, Ian McKelvie, saw, there is a different destiny for whitebait in the minds of most New Zealanders. So protection of them is not high in people’s minds. But our indigenous freshwater fish are a really precious part of our natural heritage. I’m delighted that the Minister of Conservation has recognised the lack of robustness in our protection mechanisms, and has taken what is quite a small step, to be fair—as, I think, the Minister even acknowledged in her first reading speech—but it’s a really vital step, and it’s a step on the path to better protection.

I also want to acknowledge that these freshwater fish are important not just in terms of being part of our culture but being important socially and being important economically. We’ve got a legislative framework that is very outdated. It doesn’t allow for decent data to be used, it doesn’t allow for review of protection mechanisms, and it doesn’t provide the robustness that we need to ensure our fisheries are fit for purpose in the future. In fact, the only fish that is legally protected in New Zealand is extinct, which is quite a bizarre fact for this House to ponder. So it’s pretty obvious, I think, to all the speakers—and I’m delighted that we seem to have unanimous support for this legislation. I’m really pleased that people have recognised that our legislative framework isn’t any longer fit for purpose.

This bill doesn’t cover the full gambit of fish, and I was really pleased to hear the Minister of Conservation’s personal commitment to working with iwi and consulting the public before we consider our extensions to protection for fish in lakes, in streams, and in wetlands. So the Minister indicated a clear path of work ahead, but also a very good process for making sure that iwi and other members of the public are involved in that.

One of the first things that I know members of Parliament often ask when they look at a bill that’s before the House for consideration, is: is there a problem, do we need this legislation to fix the problem, and is it the right way to fix it? We’ve got 77 species of freshwater fish; 56 of those are indigenous, and many—in fact, most—are found nowhere else in the world. So we have a resource in New Zealand for which we are responsible for protecting.

Out of those 56 indigenous freshwater fish species, 21 out of 56 are threatened with extinction. So I don’t think anyone would deny that we have a problem. As I said earlier, we talk about protecting kiwi, but to have 21 of 56 freshwater fish species threatened with extinction is not something that you hear in the mainstream media or talked about, you know, over the barbecue when people are doing their whitebait patties. So we certainly have a problem. In my view, the legislative fix that is proposed in this bill is an appropriate way of dealing with it. But I have confidence in the Environment Committee, to which the bill is proposed to be referred, under the leadership of Deborah Russell, who has shown an extraordinary talent in bringing out the best of people on that select committee, and she’s got some very experienced and competent people on that committee—I am really confident that she will be able to use her skills, and the skills of the committee, to rigorously assess the content of this bill, hear the submissions that I’m sure will be forthcoming, and bring back to Parliament perhaps even an improved bit of legislation. So I’m delighted that it’s proposed that it go to that committee.

Of course, there are always considerations which we need to make, and, as Ian McKelvie and others have mentioned, we don’t want to put the recreational activities of many New Zealanders—we don’t want to threaten them. But at the same time, we have to balance our responsibility, which I think is superior to recreational needs, to ensure that these freshwater fish survive in the future, for our children and grandchildren, and their children and grandchildren. I do think that the bill has been drafted with a lot of consideration of that balance that needs to be met. There appears to have been a lot of care taken in ensuring that we don’t have any threats, that we only have win-wins.

The contribution of Fish & Game to the consideration of this bill should be noted. They have a valuable contribution as guardians of our waterways around New Zealand, and I understand that they’ve had a good amount of input into this bill, and, I’m sure, will make further submissions.

So I’m pleased that, at last, the Minister of Conservation—the current Minister of Conservation—has recognised other less interesting, less attractive species that are worthy of protection, and has brought this legislation to Parliament. I look forward to the deliberation of the Environment Committee. I am sure they’ll receive a lot of submissions, and, as I said, under the competent chairpersonship of Deborah Russell, I’m sure that this House will receive a good report back at the second reading, and, in the meantime, I commend the progress of this bill to the House.

Bill read a first time.

Bill referred to the Environment Committee.

Bills

Building Amendment Bill

First Reading

Hon JENNY SALESA (Minister for Building and Construction): Kia ora o Te Wiki o Te Reo Māori o Te Whare Pāremata o Aotearoa. Kia kaha, Te Reo!

I move, That the Building Amendment Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Transport and Infrastructure Committee to consider this bill.

The Building Amendment Bill is the culmination of years of work across government to address gaps and barriers relating to managing buildings after an emergency, and investigating building failures which caused, or could have caused, serious injury or death.

This bill amends the Building Act 2004. It will empower the Government to act more responsively and decisively when faced with an emergency event or threat or tragedy, and it marks an important step in futureproofing our stock of buildings.

The Building Amendment Bill has two parts. The first part introduces new emergency management powers as part of an end-to-end process for managing buildings from response through to recovery following a significant emergency. The second part provides the central building regulator, the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment, with a clear set of powers to investigate significant building failures. These proposals are drawn from a range of sources, such as the findings of the Canterbury Earthquakes Royal Commission, experiences from recent emergencies, and consultation that took place across government with stakeholders and with the general public.

New Zealand’s environment is dynamic and unpredictable, which can place considerable stress on our buildings, meaning we need to be vigilant against building failure. The first part of this bill achieves this by clarifying our legislation on the management of buildings after an emergency. The existing business-as-usual powers of the Building Act proved inadequate to manage buildings after emergency events such as the Canterbury earthquakes and the Kaikōura earthquakes, and this led to ad hoc legislation and identified particular problems with the current system. There is insufficient flexibility in the current system, which can lead to unclear and imprecise responses to situations we have not faced before. There was also uncertainty on the ground around the chain of authority, which resulted in compromised decision-making, and the time frames of the powers exercised were not designed for the length of time needed to manage damaged buildings.

This bill grants new powers to the Minister for Building and Construction and territorial authorities to provide better clarity, certainty, and consistency around how we manage damaged buildings that pose a risk to people and to property. Due to the inherently unpredictable nature of emergency events, the bill has been designed to provide flexibility. It provides for a streamlined transition between powers under civil defence legislation and the Building Act. It gives the people on the ground more options for responding to the challenges caused by, and faced by, buildings in emergencies. It allows for longer-term thinking about the management of buildings and allows decisive action by expert officials without unnecessary red tape.

This bill will empower the Minister for Building and Construction to designate areas for emergency management of buildings. This is a separate power from State emergencies or transition periods under the civil defence legislation. The time frames of these designations have been specifically designed to reflect the length of time it can take to remediate damaged buildings. Consultation with Heritage New Zealand will be required where actions are directed or decisions made that affect heritage buildings. It also includes new powers to inspect buildings and place placards and require works to be carried out on buildings. Property rights are protected by a framework of checks and balances to ensure the proposed powers are used appropriately. Furthermore, for the purpose of emergency management of buildings, MBIE, as the central building regulator, will be able to access information gathered under the civil defence and emergency management powers.

The second part of the Building Amendment Bill recognises the importance of learning from when things go wrong with buildings in order to prevent future building failures. This bill will give MBIE the tools that it needs to investigate significant building failures, where such failures did result, or could have resulted, in serious injury or death. As important as it is to deal with emergencies effectively, it is also vital that we learn from when things go wrong. The current system relies on the cooperation of building owners to gather the information that is needed to identify what went wrong. There are no powers of enforcement to ensure the information is gathered promptly and in full.

This bill addresses the shortcomings in the current system by providing MBIE with the full suite of powers needed to investigate a failed building. This includes powers for MBIE to enter a site; it empowers MBIE to carry out an inspection, compel information from property owners, and publish reports on their findings. With this suite of powers, investigations can be carried out in a timely and straightforward manner, and ensure the best possible information is gathered so that we can better understand any weaknesses of our buildings. This knowledge can then safeguard against the dangers that poorly performing buildings can pose to lives and to livelihoods.

This bill will improve how we coordinate our responses to managing buildings in an emergency, and building failures. These new provisions will allow for risks to be better managed by providing for decisive action in the face of an emergency event by ensuring clarity, consistency, and certainty in the way buildings are managed, as well as greater capacity for us to learn from when things go wrong so we can be better prepared for the future. I commend this bill to the House.

Bill read a first time.

Bill referred to the Transport and Infrastructure Committee.

Bills

Regulatory Systems (Economic Development) Amendment Bill

Regulatory Systems (Housing) Amendment Bill

Regulatory Systems (Workforce) Amendment Bill

First Readings

SPEAKER: Is there a Minister who’s going to take the call? [Interruption] Right, we’ll move on to Government orders of the day—No. There being no Minister taking the call, the House stands adjourned until 2 p.m. today.

The House adjourned at 10.48 a.m. (Wednesday)