Wednesday, 7 November 2018

WEDNESDAY, 7 NOVEMBER 2018

WEDNESDAY, 7 NOVEMBER 2018

The Speaker took the Chair at 2 p.m.

Prayers.

Motions

Samoa—Influenza Epidemic Anniversary

Hon AUPITO WILLIAM SIO (Minister for Pacific Peoples): I seek leave to move a motion without notice and without debate to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the start of the influenza epidemic in Samoa.

SPEAKER: Is there any objection to that course of action? There is none.

Hon AUPITO WILLIAM SIO: I move, That this House acknowledge that today marks the 100th anniversary of the New Zealand ship Talune arriving in Apia from Auckland, carrying foreign passengers with influenza that subsequently infected approximately 8,500 people, more than 22 percent of Samoa’s population, which is one of the most disastrous epidemics recorded anywhere in the world in proportion of deaths to population.

Motion agreed to.

Privilege

Parliamentary Security—Threat of Cyber-Attacks

SPEAKER: Members, I have been concerned at the possible threat that cyber-attacks may pose to the security of our Parliament. It is a concern shared with my predecessor, the Rt Hon David Carter, who began work to address it in his time as Speaker. Such attacks are known to have occurred in overseas parliaments. Whether they seek to disrupt the business of Parliament or Government or to target individual members and their constituents, it is important that Parliament is as well defended as possible from such attacks.

Taking steps to prevent overseas intrusions into our information systems also raises the issue of allowing high levels of access to a third party provider in the parliamentary complex in relation to member and staff devices. The exercise of such access must be balanced against members’ freedom to carry out their functions as elected representatives and the House’s power to control its own proceedings and precincts without outside interference.

The parliamentary precincts are also a workplace for both parliamentary employees and employees of Government departments. Access to parliamentary information systems must therefore also have regard to the respective rights of employers and employees, and the role of the Speaker as responsible Minister, and the Prime Minister and her Ministers.

Before undertaking further steps to secure Parliament against cyber-attacks, I believe that we need to assure ourselves that such security measures will not obstruct members and officers of the House in the discharge of their duties. The matter is one that should be considered by the Privileges Committee. Consequently, I have determined that a general question of privilege arises. The question stands referred to the Privileges Committee.

Oral Questions

Questions to Ministers

Question No. 1—Regional Economic Development

1. MARK PATTERSON (NZ First) to the Minister for Regional Economic Development: What recent announcements have been made regarding Provincial Growth Fund support to economic development agencies?

FLETCHER TABUTEAU (Parliamentary Under-Secretary to the Minister for Regional Economic Development) on behalf of the Minister for Regional Economic Development: On behalf of the Minister, I would like to take this opportunity to address the lack of acknowledgement of the hard work of the under-secretary and his efforts around economic development agencies. He’s been travelling up and down the country and doing a lot of good work, but with regard to the announcement, I have to acknowledge that the under-secretary was able to recently talk to Economic Development New Zealand and make the announcement that we are able to provide critical support through the Provincial Growth Fund, and we have done that in the way of a $985,000 contribution over three years, which will ensure that they are able to produce a comprehensive professional development programme and a suite of best-practice resources for the economic development agencies (EDAs).

Hon Nathan Guy: What’s he talking about?

FLETCHER TABUTEAU: Well, you wouldn’t know.

SPEAKER: Order! The member will resume his seat. The under-secretary will stand, withdraw, and apologise for his last comment.

FLETCHER TABUTEAU: I withdraw and apologise, Mr Speaker.

Mark Patterson: What work are you undertaking, as part of the Provincial Growth Fund, to help economic development agencies build capability in our regions?

FLETCHER TABUTEAU: On behalf of the Minister, our EDAs have been doing a great lot of work over the last few years, but there have been a particular few who have shown, through their efforts and engagement with the Provincial Growth Fund, just what can be done and what can be achieved and how EDAs have made a huge contribution to the empowerment of the Provincial Growth Fund. So the work that is being undertaken to help is around the delivery of development and management programmes to help build EDA staff skill sets. We have seen firsthand how, if we have the right people in the right place at the right time, those people on the ground can make a huge difference. This Government wants to make sure that all of our EDAs are fully equipped to succeed in this way.

Mark Patterson: What role could economic development agencies play in the Government’s regional development strategy?

FLETCHER TABUTEAU: On behalf of the Minister, regional economic development agencies are a critical part of bringing together our regions’ stakeholders and ensuring that everyone is on the same page. Each EDA is actually quite unique and has evolved differently over time, and they will be required to evolve as we move forward. They are not Government agencies or departments, and neither should they be. So what we’re trying to achieve here is to ensure that the work that we are undertaking in the Government is about EDAs optimising their position to represent their regions in the best possible way. From Kaitāia to Invercargill, EDAs have that crucial role—

SPEAKER: Order! I think we have had enough, and we’ll have the daily grammar lesson, as well: there’s no such thing as “quite unique”.

Question No. 2—Prime Minister

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

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS (Deputy Prime Minister) on behalf of the Prime Minister: On behalf of the Prime Minister, yes, particularly those actions which have seen our economy thrive, leading to a rate of unemployment of 3.9 percent—the lowest figure since the Labour - New Zealand First confidence and supply Government a decade ago.

Hon Paula Bennett: Will new information being looked at in the Karel Sroubek case include the burglary of his estranged wife’s house just days after Sroubek learnt it had gone on the market?

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: All the information will be looked at that was available at the time that he should have been exported from our country, according to the evidence starting to emerge now, and was not—and was not. And I can say that over 150 decisions were made by the previous Government, of that nature—of that nature—and after 2014, those decisions were made not by the Minister but the same officials that advised Mr Iain Lees-Galloway.

Hon Paula Bennett: Will the investigation look at whether police have questioned Karel Sroubek about a break-in at his estranged wife’s house?

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: Again, all the information that should have been available to this Minister, and which will be available now, and should have been available, because of the way it was being handled by certain people in the bureaucracy, clearly—maybe not—and which was the reason that the 19 September letter from the Hon Iain Lees-Galloway is loaded with caveats as to whether or not he’s told the truth.

Hon Paula Bennett: Has the Prime Minister changed her mind from yesterday, when she declared it wasn’t the officials’ case, and can we take it from her answers today that she is now blaming them?

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: Let me make it very clear: the Prime Minister is not one to rush to make a judgment on other people, unlike some, but she wisely pointed to the fact that there has to be a reason for this mistake, and, personally, I think we’ve found it.

SPEAKER: Order! I’m just going to do the reminder now, on the “on behalf”—we’ve got to get the persons right.

Hon Paula Bennett: Has she been informed about any recent intimidation by Karel Sroubek?

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: The Prime Minister is relying upon the inquiry that has been appropriately ordered by the Minister of Immigration, and when that inquiry is complete, we’ll all be au fait with the information, which, we must say, should have been available to us from the word go, but was not.

Hon Gerry Brownlee: Why not?

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Because you didn’t do your job, that’s why.

SPEAKER: Order!

Hon Paula Bennett: Does, as she described it today, “absolute discretion” also mean “absolute responsibility”?

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: Well, I don’t know why we’re having this Philadelphia lawyer type of argument about what it means. We believe in common sense and plain facts, and the plain fact is that the Minister was relying upon the same people that made over 152 decisions of the previous Government, and he was entitled to rely upon an officialdom properly, adequately, and fully prepared to advise him. We are finding out now what happened, and when we do, rather than make some cheap political points, we’ll own up to the party who was mainly responsible, and we’re looking at it. It sits over there.

Hon Paula Bennett: If, as the Prime Minister just described, they are looking at plain facts, isn’t it the plain fact that her Minister of Immigration didn’t ask the right questions and instead has given residency to someone who has committed passport fraud, forced a family into witness protection, continuously lied to officials, and has been convicted of drug smuggling?

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: The answers to those four questions are: no, no, no, no. The one that is a yes—on behalf of the Prime Minister—is: which was the party that enabled him to travel offshore, despite all of those matters of grave concern that they exhibit now? That party was the National Party.

Question No. 3—Finance

3. WILLOW-JEAN PRIME (Labour) to the Minister of Finance: What recent announcements has he made about Budget 2019?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister of Finance): As widely signalled, Budget 2019 will be New Zealand’s first well-being Budget. We have identified five core priorities that will define this Budget. They cover the areas where we think the outcomes will make a substantive difference to both our current and future well-being. One of these will be mental health. This coalition will finally be giving mental health the priority and focus it deserves. This will see my ministerial colleagues working together to produce initiatives that are squarely focused on long-term intergenerational improvements in mental health.

Willow-Jean Prime: Why has the Government made mental health a priority?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: We can no longer track our success as a country on just a narrow measure such as GDP growth. We are moving beyond GDP to look not just at our financial health but also the well-being of our people, the health of our environment, and the strength of our communities. Mental health is an obvious example of an issue that has a significant say in our overall well-being. What makes our approach to addressing it different is that by making it an overall priority for the Budget, all Ministers and agencies are expected to identify how they can contribute to it. We will be breaking down the silos of Government and finding a new way of working which will see, for example, education, justice, health, and other areas working together for long-term mental health outcomes.

Willow-Jean Prime: What are the other Budget priorities?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: The full detail of our Budget priorities will be revealed during the Budget Policy Statement on 13 December. They will include sustainably growing and modernising our economy, lifting children’s well-being, and, as I’ve already said, giving mental health the focus that it needs. I can also assure the House that as part of our well-being Budget I will still keep a close eye on our finances and a steady hand on the economic wheel. We owe that to future generations, but we also owe to them and to all of our communities the chance to live fulfilling and meaningful lives and to be valued more than just as numbers on a balance sheet.

Question No. 4—Immigration

4. Hon MARK MITCHELL (National—Rodney) to the Minister of Immigration: Does he stand by all of his statements and actions in relation to Karel Sroubek, also known as Jan Antolik?

Hon IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY (Minister of Immigration): Yes, in the context of the information that was provided to me at the time.

Hon Mark Mitchell: Does the Minister agree with the Prime Minister’s statement that there has been a mistake in the Karel Sroubek case?

Hon IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY: As the member is aware, there is an investigation under way into this matter. It is important that I do not prejudice the investigation or any possible further action. Because of this ongoing work, it is not in the public interest for me to answer questions on the matter at this time. I’ll be able to provide more information at the appropriate time.

Hon Mark Mitchell: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. In the question by the deputy leader of our party to the Prime Minister, the Prime Minister stood in this House and said that there had been a mistake made. The Minister has not answered or addressed my question.

SPEAKER: He very certainly did address the question in a way which is absolutely consistent with the long-term policy of this House.

Hon Mark Mitchell: Is the investigation of Immigration New Zealand considering information relating to a break-in at the house of Karel Sroubek’s estranged wife?

Hon IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY: I refer the member to my previous answer.

Hon Mark Mitchell: Is the investigation by Immigration New Zealand considering information relating to a New Zealand family being put into the police witness protection programme as a result of actions by Karel Sroubek?

Hon IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY: I refer the member to my previous answer.

Hon Mark Mitchell: Is the investigation by Immigration New Zealand considering the facts around Karel Sroubek undertaking business trips back to Europe while on bail?

Hon IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY: I refer the member to my previous answer.

Hon Mark Mitchell: Is the investigation by Immigration New Zealand considering Karel Sroubek’s involvement and contacts within Operation Ark?

Hon IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY: I refer the member to my previous answer.

Dr Liz Craig: Does he or his office have any record of Mr Mitchell asking to receive a briefing in relation to the Sroubek case?

Hon IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY: No.

Hon Mark Mitchell: To the Minister—

Hon Gerry Brownlee: Why would you seek a briefing when the Minister can’t tell you anything?

SPEAKER: Order! The member has started his question.

Hon Mark Mitchell: Does he believe Karel Sroubek is in any danger from the Government of the Czech Republic?

Hon IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY: I refer the member to my previous answer.

Hon Gerry Brownlee: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. It is of course the right of any Minister not to answer a question because they deem the answer to be inappropriate as far as public interest is concerned, but there was a patsy question from the Minister’s own party asking him if he had received any requests for a briefing, from the Hon Mark Mitchell, on this matter. Are we to believe from that, and could the Minister perhaps elucidate to the House, as to whether he would give Mr Mitchell any more answers than he’s been prepared to publicly give to this House today?

SPEAKER: Well, that’s a very satisfactory supplementary question. If the member wants to ask it, go ahead.

Hon Mark Mitchell: If the Minister were to receive a request from me asking for a briefing in relation to Karel Sroubek’s residency, would he provide that briefing?

Hon IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY: Well, I’m interested that the member is asking me that question, because he’s already claimed that he asked for such a briefing. He has not, but if he does ask, I’ll consider it.

Hon Mark Mitchell: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I would just like to clarify for the House that I—

SPEAKER: Sorry, is this a supplementary?

Hon Mark Mitchell: It’s addressing—

SPEAKER: So it’s a point of order?

Hon Mark Mitchell: It’s a point of order for personal explanation, Mr Speaker. There is in fact a request—

SPEAKER: No, no. You can’t seek an explanation. It either a point of order or it’s not.

Hon Mark Mitchell: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. There is a request from my office to the Minister’s office for a briefing—

SPEAKER: Order! I think that if the member wants to make a personal explanation, he may, but he must seek the leave of the House to do it. He doesn’t just try and do it in an unparliamentary manner, as he did.

Hon Mark Mitchell: Could I seek the leave of the House to make a personal explanation?

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

Hon Mark Mitchell: This morning, after a request, I wrote a formal letter to the Minister offering to attend a briefing by him and his officials on why he granted residency to Karel Sroubek. That is in the internal parliamentary mail system at the moment.

Question No. 5—Immigration

5. Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (National) to the Minister of Immigration: Other than Karel Sroubek’s lawyer and family members, who made representations on his behalf in respect of his deportation liability?

Hon IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY (Minister of Immigration): Along with Mr Sroubek’s legal representatives and family, a number of other people did make representations on his behalf in relation to the decision to deport him that I considered as part of my decision. As the member is aware, there is an investigation under way into this matter. It is important that I do not prejudice the investigation or possible further action as a result. Because of this ongoing work, it is not in the public interest for me to specify who made representations. I will provide more information at the appropriate time.

Hon Michael Woodhouse: Did Alex Swney, an inmate with Mr Sroubek at Wiri Prison, make representations in support of his application not to be deported?

Hon IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY: I refer the member to my primary answer.

Hon Dr Nick Smith: What are you hiding?

SPEAKER: Order! The Hon Nick Smith will stand, withdraw, and apologise.

Hon Dr Nick Smith: For saying “What are you hiding?”

SPEAKER: And there will a deduction of supplementaries as a result of the further interjection.

Hon Dr Nick Smith: I withdraw and apologise.

Hon Michael Woodhouse: Did John Sinclair, Mr Sroubek’s yoga instructor, make representations in support of his application not to be deported?

Hon IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY: I refer the member to my primary answer.

Hon Michael Woodhouse: Did Richie Hardcore, former martial arts champion, make representations in support of his application not to be deported?

Hon IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY: I refer the member to my primary answer.

Kieran McAnulty: Does he or his office have any record of Mr Woodhouse offering to provide information in relation to Karel Sroubek?

Hon IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY: No.

Hon Gerry Brownlee: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. One of the rules of question time is that you should not use inference in the way a question’s asked—it’s quite clear; the Clerk will point it out to you—or you shouldn’t make those inferences and you should avoid that type of approach. That question—

SPEAKER: You can’t “make” an inference. You can take an inference; you make an implication.

Hon Gerry Brownlee: Oh, well, thank you. Every day you learn, and in this place the rules change every day, so there’s a lot to learn. The point I’m making is that, in asking that question, the member is trying to suggest that somehow Mr Woodhouse or my colleague Mark Mitchell should have known about the Minister’s consideration of this. Now, given that the Minister can’t tell us anything about what he was doing, how on earth could they possibly know to have asked for those briefings earlier?

SPEAKER: Well, I’m not across all of the media, but I got a very clear indication earlier in the day today that, in fact, one of the members the Hon Gerry Brownlee has just referred to had in fact asked for a briefing, because he said so.

Hon Member: We haven’t had the answer to that question, Mr Speaker.

SPEAKER: No, we did get an answer. It was a very short one.

Hon Michael Woodhouse: Is the Minister denying that the request for a briefing and to offer information was made to him through an intermediary around lunchtime last Wednesday?

Hon IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY: I would say to the member that asking a member of the media to backchannel something without making a direct request is hardly an appropriate way to make an offering to a Minister.

Hon Michael Woodhouse: What weight did the Minister place on the representations of supporters of Mr Sroubek who were not family members?

Hon IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY: Not much.

Hon Dr Nick Smith: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I’d ask you to reflect on the answers that we’ve had to the last two questions, in that the purpose of question time is for Opposition members to ask questions of the Government. The only answers that were given any information were actually about members of the Opposition and what they might or might not have done in this case.

SPEAKER: The member will resume his seat, thank you. It has long been the ruling of Speakers in this House that decisions for deciding not to fully answer questions in this House are decisions for Ministers. They make the decision as to whether something is in the public interest or not, and when they make those pronouncements, the House takes them at their word.

Question No. 6—Social Development

6. PRIYANCA RADHAKRISHNAN (Labour) to the Minister for Social Development: What announcements has she recently made regarding family violence funding?

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI (Minister for Social Development): I was pleased to announce today at the National Collective of Independent Women’s Refuges AGM that the Government is investing $15.379 million from Budget 2018 into whānau resilience services. These will provide long-term support beyond our current crisis support services for families who have experienced violence, and will be developed in partnership with communities, whānau, and providers. This reflects the Ministry of Social Development’s commitment to kotahitanga, partnering for greater impact, reflecting that we are stronger when we work together.

Priyanca Radhakrishnan: Why do we need these new whānau resilience services?

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: The majority of family violence providers have said that because most providers are funded for the short-term crisis period, they do not have the capacity to work with whānau to break intergenerational cycles of violence. Providers have told us that they have seen the same clients over and over again and are now seeing some of the children and grandchildren of these clients. These new whānau resilience services will provide an opportunity for providers to walk alongside these families for up to three years so they can support them toward better long-term outcomes. The sector has welcomed this announcement and the opportunity to provide the best possible services for families in their communities.

Priyanca Radhakrishnan: What will be different about the whānau resilience services?

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: Whānau resilience services will be a whole new approach to getting the right outcomes and breaking down cycles of violence. We know that different communities and families have different needs, so we want to ensure that service providers have the flexibility and security to be able to provide the right support for everyone who comes through the door. Whānau resilience services will be about providing localised solutions and building resilience in our whānau and communities so that together we can make a difference in the lives of our whānau and our tamariki.

Question No. 7—Finance

7. Hon AMY ADAMS (National—Selwyn) to the Minister of Finance: Does he stand by all of the Government’s statements, policies, and actions in relation to the economy?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister of Finance): That is an excellent question, which the member asks me most days. Each day, I think seriously about my answer to it, and today, with unemployment at a 10-year low of 3.9 percent, I can say that the answer is yes.

Hon Amy Adams: What advice has the Minister received on the effect that labour market capacity constraints are likely to have on the New Zealand economy?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: We received a lot of advice, both formal and informal, about the importance of getting skilled staff and making sure that there are people available to fill job vacancies. And just today I received advice about the increased labour force participation rate at 71.1 percent, the increased employment rate at 68.3 percent, the decreased unemployment rate at 3.9 percent, and the decrease in the underutilisation rate at 11.3 percent—all important information.

Hon Amy Adams: Does the Minister accept that our current flexible employment system has been a critical factor in New Zealand’s strong employment data?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: I think it’s important that we have a balance in our employment relations system, to support the excellent work that is going on in businesses around the country, and it is that balance the Government is seeking to achieve.

Hon Amy Adams: Why is this Government looking to change that strong, flexible employment system that has led to today’s low unemployment numbers?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: The reason we’re looking to change that is because we believe in fairness.

Hon Amy Adams: So with unemployment having fallen, how does this Government explain there being 9,000 more people on jobseeker benefits over the past year—an increase not only in numbers but also in proportion of our working-age population?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: Those are matters that the Minister for Social Development is best placed to answer, but I thank the member for her continuing questions today about New Zealand’s decade record low unemployment rate.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: So close to the famous race in Australasia, can he confirm the economic and social quality of a surplus of $5.5 billion, best growth in two years and higher than the average of the last nine years, lowest unemployment in a decade, and some very favourable polling?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: I can confirm—

SPEAKER: Well, as long as the polling has to do with economic polling.

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: Absolutely. I can confirm that New Zealanders believe the country is going in the right direction under this Government, and the other three elements of the trifecta are paying handsomely.

Hon James Shaw: Why is the Minister focusing so much on real data about the real economy and real people rather than on the ANZ business confidence survey?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: It is tempting to look at business sentiment surveys, but, on this side of the House, we’ll continue to focus on real data, such as a surplus of $5.5 billion, such as an unemployment rate of 3.9 percent, and such as a growth rate of nearly 3 percent.

Question No. 8—Transport

8. Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH (National) to the Minister of Transport: Does he stand by all of his Government’s policies and actions in relation to the transport portfolio?

Hon PHIL TWYFORD (Minister of Transport): Yes.

Hon Paul Goldsmith: Is he still committed to a light-rail link from the CBD to Auckland Airport, and, if so, has a detailed business case been completed?

Hon PHIL TWYFORD: The detailed business case is currently being completed by the New Zealand Transport Agency (NZTA).

Hon Paul Goldsmith: Is he still committed to a light-rail link from the CBD to Auckland Airport?

Hon PHIL TWYFORD: Yes.

Hon Paul Goldsmith: If the analysis showed that it would be much cheaper and more effective to connect the airport to the current rail system at Puhinui station, would he consider it?

Hon PHIL TWYFORD: I agree with the analysis that’s been done by Auckland Transport, by NZTA, and the Ministry of Transport under the former Government when Simon Bridges was the transport Minister, that light rail is the most appropriate mode to deliver a rapid transit service between the central city and the airport precinct.

Hon Paul Goldsmith: Does he agree with his colleague Shane Jones’ statement to One News that the Marsden Point rail spur is “a done deal” and that construction is beginning; and, if so, has a business case been completed?

Hon PHIL TWYFORD: The business case on that excellent project is currently under way, but I think it’s an excellent idea, and I agree with my colleague the Hon Shane Jones.

Question No. 9—Health

9. GREG O’CONNOR (Labour—Ōhāriu) to the Minister of Health: What recent announcements has he made about the new Wellington Children’s Hospital?

Hon Dr DAVID CLARK (Minister of Health): Earlier today, I visited Wellington Hospital for a mauri stone laying ceremony to mark the start of construction for the new children’s hospital. As members may already know, this project has benefited from a substantial donation of $50 million from businessman Mark Dunajtschik, and I want to put on record once again the Government’s thanks for his incredible generosity. Today, I’ve announced that the Government is also committing $45.6 million to the project to build the new Wellington Children’s Hospital. This is a great investment in the health and well-being of future generations.

Greg O’Connor: How will the new Wellington Children’s Hospital benefit patients, family, and staff?

Hon Dr DAVID CLARK: The current children’s hospital is almost 30 years old and has services located around different parts of the regional hospital. This is not ideal for children or families who are already going through a stressful time, nor for hospital staff who want to provide the best service for their patients. This new, purpose-built hospital with state-of-the-art equipment will provide these services under one roof. It’s been designed with children and their whānau at the centre, and will make it easier for hospital staff to provide the high-quality care they are so committed to delivering.

Greg O’Connor: When will the new Wellington Children’s Hospital be completed?

Hon Dr DAVID CLARK: This is a major project. The new hospital will be spread across three floors and will have 50 beds and 21 clinic rooms. It will feature more single bedrooms but also—

SPEAKER: Order! Order! Please answer the question. It’s a very simple question.

Hon Dr DAVID CLARK: To get to the point of the question, I’m advised it will be ready to open in 2021.

Question No. 10—Internal Affairs

10. CHRIS BISHOP (National—Hutt South) to the Minister of Internal Affairs: Does the report of the Inquiry into the Appointment Process for a Deputy Commissioner of Police recommend that the appointment process be reopened?

Hon TRACEY MARTIN (Minister of Internal Affairs): The Government is not going to talk about the findings of the report until it is publicly released. We are following the process recommended by the inquiry, which is to first provide the report to the interested parties.

Chris Bishop: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. This is a question on notice. The Minister may think it’s not in the public interest to answer, but she didn’t say that; she said that she’s going to follow some process to do with pre-releases to those affected by the report.

SPEAKER: Well, I think it would’ve been helpful if the Minister added the words “because it’s not in the public interest” or something similar to it. So I’ll ask the Minister to do an addendum to her answer.

Hon TRACEY MARTIN: Because it is not in the public interest, we are following the process recommended by the inquiry, which is to first provide the report to the interested parties.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Does the Minister know of any other times that section 15 restrictions have been used with regard to recent inquiries?

Hon TRACEY MARTIN: Section 15 has actually only been in existence since the National Government put in the Commissions of Inquiry Act—2013—but section 15 restrictions have been used, for example, on the Government inquiry into allegations regarding Judith Collins and a former director of the Serious Fraud Office in 2014, and the Government inquiry into matters concerning the escape of Phillip John Smith in 2015.

Chris Bishop: Why did she say yesterday, and is repeating today, that the reason she can’t release the report is because of “pre-releases to those who need to see the report”—e.g. those who participated in it—when it’s been a public law principle since the Mahon inquiry into Erebus that people mentioned in inquiry reports have an opportunity to comment on the report before its release?

Hon TRACEY MARTIN: It is only fair that the people involved in the inquiry receive the report before the public does. We want to do this as soon as possible and are getting advice, including legal advice, on how best to do this. We are following the process recommended by the inquiry. There were a range of people interviewed by Mary Scholtens QC who will be affected by the report one way or another. We are very mindful of any potential impact on these people. The member may want to consider those people also.

Chris Bishop: Does the report of the inquiry into the appointment process for a Deputy Commissioner of Police make findings or recommendations in relation to the allegations of bullying against Mr Haumaha made by the three public servants who worked with him?

Hon TRACEY MARTIN: I refer the member to my answer to the primary question. It is those people exactly who we are trying to make sure are protected.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Can the Minister confirm, in light of the report, which she has seen, that the allegations of a cover-up are just plain ridiculous?

Hon TRACEY MARTIN: Unfortunately, the scope of the inquiry is not around the terrible allegations put forward by members of this Parliament.

Chris Bishop: Will she recommend to the Prime Minister that the appointment process for a Deputy Commissioner of Police is reopened?

Hon TRACEY MARTIN: That is not my capacity. I do not have the ability to recommend to the Prime Minister. It is not within my job description to do so. There is an inquiry that has been undertaken. That inquiry will be released when it is appropriate to do so. It will be released by the Minister of State Services and then he will deal with those issues that the member raises.

Chris Bishop: Why is the Minister of State Services releasing the inquiry when the report was to her as the appointing Minister for the inquiry?

Hon TRACEY MARTIN: The job that I’ve had as the Minister of Internal Affairs was to make sure that the inquiry was completed independently and under the Inquiries Act as implemented by the previous Government. That has been completed. An oral item has been taken to Cabinet. It will now be handed over to the Minister of State Services as soon as we are confident that all parties involved have been given an opportunity to see the report.

Chris Bishop: Why has she not given a copy of the report to the Minister of Police, Stuart Nash, when it was a joint Cabinet paper in the name of him and Prime Minister Ardern that proposed appointing Mr Haumaha in the first place?

Hon TRACEY MARTIN: My job was to make sure that there was an independent inquiry into the appointment process of the Deputy Commissioner of Police. I delivered an oral item to the Cabinet. The Cabinet decided that the Minister who would then be best placed to take possession of the inquiry report and release it and follow through with anything, should there need to be anything followed through with, would be the Minister of State Services.

Chris Bishop: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. That was all very interesting, but the question was why she hasn’t given a copy of the report to the police Minister. It had nothing to do with what she just said.

SPEAKER: Well, I think if the member had listened, he would’ve worked out that it had everything to do with what she just said.

Hon Gerry Brownlee: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. Yesterday, you were quick to correct Marama Davidson when she mentioned that a particular law had been passed by the National Government—a piece of law, at that stage, that we were very pleased to have recognised as being our work—and insisted that she should refer to it as a law passed by Parliament, which is, of course, most correct. But today, when the Hon Tracey Martin made a similar suggestion in an attempt to, I suppose you would say, blacken the reputation of the National Party, you allowed it to stand. Can we just have a little bit of consistency when it comes to what are, effectively, political attacks from Ministers who are supposed to be answering questions.

Hon Tracey Martin: Speaking to the point of order—

SPEAKER: No, no, I don’t think we need to. The fact that one member said a bill was passed by a Government and the other was—I think, and I’m happy to go back and have a look—passed under a Government; they are quite different things.

Hon Gerry Brownlee: That’s not what she said. The Hansard will show.

SPEAKER: If I got it wrong, then I apologise to the member, but my intent—I didn’t go off at that particular comment from Tracey Martin.

Question No. 11—Energy and Resources

11. JONATHAN YOUNG (National—New Plymouth) to the Minister of Energy and Resources: Does she stand by all her answers to oral question No. 10 yesterday?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS (Minister of Energy and Resources): Yes, in the context in which they were given.

Jonathan Young: So when the Minister said yesterday “this Government is intent on building a resilient energy system with more resilient forms of renewable energy.”, how many megawatts of new renewable generation will be needed to reliably replace coal, gas, and diesel generation?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: As we’ve traversed many times in this House, the Transpower report makes it really clear that we, roughly, need to, by 2050, double the amount of electricity generation in this country. That equates to a very achievable target of around the equivalent of 4.5 wind farms per year. I would point that member to the very good decision that Genesis Energy have made in recent weeks to build a 100-megawatt wind farm in Taranaki as a sign of the good things to come.

Jonathan Young: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. This question was, I think, relatively simple. The Minister has talked for weeks about the transition away from fossil fuels. She ought to know what coal, gas, and diesel generation represents—

SPEAKER: Order! Does the member have a point—the fact that the member doesn’t like the answer is not a point of order.

Jonathan Young: Well, she didn’t answer the question. I asked how many megawatts of new renewable generation would be needed to replace those elements that exist today.

SPEAKER: And I think the Minister did say that renewable generation would have to double.

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: Yes.

Hon Gerry Brownlee: No, that’s not right. Mr Speaker—speaking to the point of order—what you will find in the Hansard is that the Minister said that the Transpower report says that electricity generation needs to double by 2050. It does not exclude those other sources of generation that are not renewable, and that is why the question has been specifically asked of the Minister today. It’s an important one.

SPEAKER: Ask the question again.

Jonathan Young: Thank you, sir. When the Minister said yesterday “this Government is intent on building a resilient energy system with more resilient forms of renewable energy.”, how many megawatts of new renewable generation will be needed to reliably replace current coal, gas, and diesel generation?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: As I said in the previous answer, the Transpower report, which talks not just about electricity but talks about the coming needs of the energy system, talks to a doubling of the need for generation in order to make that transition towards a low-carbon system. That equates to around 4.5 wind farms per year equivalency, of which the member should take great comfort. Genesis Energy announced the building of a 100-megawatt facility in his electorate of Taranaki—that is, the energy and not just the electricity system.

Hon Gerry Brownlee: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I think the Minister has just demonstrated the point that we’re making by repeating, again, that the Transpower report says doubling of New Zealand’s electrical energy requirements without—remember that a lot of it at the moment does come from non-renewable sources. The question is: if you take the renewable sources out, what do we need? And the answer that she has given does not give us that figure.

SPEAKER: Yes, and that’s absolutely right. It doesn’t give that figure, and if the member wants specific figures like that, he should have set up his primary questions in order to elucidate them.

Jonathan Young: Well, how can New Zealanders be confident in her assurances that there will be no energy supply gap when she doesn’t even know what investment is needed to achieve that assurance?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: We can have confidence because, as I talked about in the reading of the legislation yesterday, there is a large body of evidence that shows that impediments to the transitions to renewable aren’t either financial or technical; they’re around political will, and this Government doesn’t lack in that. That member can have great comfort in the fact that in this country, we have hundreds of megawatts of consented but not yet built renewable energy. We also know that technological change to store the roughly 6 terawatts of surplus energy we produce in summer that we can use in winter is coming not just through battery power but through things like molten salt, like hydrogen, and a range of other storage facilities. I invite that member to join the 21st century.

Jonathan Young: So what is the Minister’s view, with lake levels at 62 percent of the historical average for this time of the year, with wind energy generating only 25 percent of its installed capacity over the last 13 weeks, natural gas reserves depleting, the Minister severely limiting future oil and gas exploration, electricity demand—

SPEAKER: Order! Question, please.

Jonathan Young: I started with a question. With electricity demand forecast to more than double, as she has said by 2050, what is her view that New Zealand will not be heading into an energy crisis as commentators are starting to say?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: First of all, I wish that member would stop scaremongering. We are not in an energy crisis. We have some short-term issues around gas infrastructure and hydro lakes that are still in the normal range. So that member should not try and create a crisis. But this Government is very clear. The problems we are experiencing at the moment are short term, but we have to have a plan to transition to a 100 percent renewable system, and that is what we’re doing. The problems we are seeing at the moment are that member’s party’s failure to act around the opportunities that were in front of them when they were in Government.

Jonathan Young: After the Minister said yesterday “this Government is intent on building a resilient energy system with more resilient forms of renewable energy.”, how many megawatts of new renewable generation is specifically being built in the next 12 months?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: Well, I can point first of all to the 100 megawatts that was announced to be built in his own electorate. But what we know is that we have hundreds or thousands of megawatts that is consented but not yet built. In terms of building it, that is over to the individual generators, and this Government is working with those generators to give them the long-term signals that there is demand for the building of that renewable energy. The member needs to understand that actually leadership is required from a Government in order to send those long-term signals, and we are doing just that.

SPEAKER: Question No. 12, Dr Deborah Russell.

Jonathan Young: Sorry, I have another supplementary, sir.

SPEAKER: No, I’m informed that the National Party has used all its supplementaries. [Interruption] Well, can I have an assurance from the National Party whips—I will do a reconciliation. All right? Further supplementary.

Jonathan Young: Thank you, sir. Following that answer, considering that wind generation over the last 13 weeks was just 25 percent of its installed capacity, what level of investment would be required for wind energy to meet the requirements that she is expecting, particularly around the new Waverley Wind Farm, when she is quoting 100 megawatts?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: One of the things that we know is that wind energy on its own is not sufficient to provide the security of supply that our energy system needs. What I said in a previous answer is that we are a country that produces roughly 6 terawatts of surplus energy in the summer months and has roughly the same deficit in the winter months. So to ask that question without also including what needs to be done in terms of storage capacity misses the opportunities that sit in front of this country. What the member is asking is what the private investment will be from the generators, and they are prepared to make those investments when they see the long-term demand signals and see there is a Government that has a strategy around building a renewable and resilient electricity system, and that is just what we are doing.

Question No. 12—Revenue

12. Dr DEBORAH RUSSELL (Labour—New Lynn) to the Minister of Revenue: How is the Government enabling improvements in the way New Zealanders interact with the revenue system?

Hon STUART NASH (Minister of Revenue): This week the IRD launched a major public information campaign to tell New Zealanders about the biggest changes to the tax system in a generation and what it will mean for them. Just one example: we are taking legislation through the House that will remove secondary tax codes and provide automatic refunds for 1.6 million New Zealanders. IRD’s online services are being significantly redesigned to make it easier for its 2.9 million users, including businesses, who will be able to file all their returns online.

Dr Deborah Russell: How will the improvements to the tax system that are being implemented through the IRD business transformation programme benefit families and low-income earners?

Hon STUART NASH: Because of better information. Of the 1.6 million Kiwis who’ll get an automatic refund, around 530,000 individuals are beneficiaries or people who earn less than the minimum wage and who have never applied for a tax refund before, even though they may have been eligible for one. IRD will also be able to proactively manage and adjust entitlements for 330,000 Working for Families customers so that they are always getting the right amount and don’t have a tax debt at the end of the year. Making sure families get what they’re entitled to, and ensuring that individuals are not over-taxed, will help improve the well-being of New Zealanders and their families.

Dr Deborah Russell: How is the Government ensuring that taxpayers who work a second or third job are not being over-taxed?

Hon STUART NASH: From April 2019, IRD will be receiving salary and other information faster and more frequently. We are proposing that for those Kiwis who work a second or third job, which we know is generally out of need rather than want, they will no longer have the burden of secondary tax. I am disappointed that the Opposition, who are against that bill, want to stand in the way of good, hard-working Kiwis getting their refunds faster.

General Debate

General Debate

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister of Finance): I move, That the House take note of miscellaneous business.

This Government is delivering an economic plan that is benefiting all New Zealanders. As the Deputy Prime Minister said, the trifecta is in: a $5.5 billion surplus has been delivered; we have growth rates approaching 3 percent, on average; and today, we have the release of the household labour force survey that shows New Zealand having its lowest unemployment rate in a decade, of 3.9 percent—3.9 percent. That is built off the hard work of thousands of New Zealanders every day building our economy, and what that is delivering is not just the lowest unemployment rate in a decade; it’s also filtering through to many parts of the workforce who over the last few years have been struggling. For example, we now have youth NEET rates—those not in employment, education or training—down again to 10.1 percent. That is down from 10.9 percent last quarter and 11.3 percent a year ago.

But it gets better, because the NEET rate for women has fallen to 10.1 percent—the lowest since records began in this survey. I know the Hon Willie Jackson is not a man to blow his own trumpet—well, actually, he’s doing it right now at Rātana—but I want to credit the programmes such as Mana in Mahi and He Poutama Rangatahi, which Minister Jackson is overseeing. I also want to credit Carmel Sepuloni for the work on the industry partnership with MSD that is practically getting young people into work and into training on the job.

This Government can be proud of its economic record. We have put in place the Families Package that’s put money into the pockets of low and middle income New Zealanders, and we have made sure that the focus is on investing in jobs and in employment. Wages are growing. People are getting into work. This is the real data of the economy. This is the real story of the economy and I just wish the Opposition would cheer up. I just wish that the Opposition would say, “Actually, the economy is doing well.” and celebrate that story. But, I can understand it, because I do have one concern about unemployment: Simon Bridges, because he is well on his way to becoming unemployed over that side of the House. I know that when Simon Bridges heard the words 3.9 percent, his heart sank. He thought it was the preferred Prime Minister rating for this month, for him and the National Party. But on this occasion, it’s a good number—3.9 percent is a good number.

He is, however, I know—or I am—very pleased, I would say, about the under-utilisation rate. This is the idea that more people are getting into work—the people who want more hours. Simon Bridges, however, was worried about the utilisation rate: the under-utilisation rate of Judith Collins. Because if she’s under-utilised, we all know what’s going to happen on the other side of the House.

But I can say that, with the polls going the way they are, unemployment is definitely a problem over there. I’d say that whole segment there—out. Gone. Gone for good. I did notice that Nicky Wagner was wearing a name-tag when she came into the House today; probably good practice for Nicky Wagner for the future. All of that lot out. Maureen Pugh is at the bottom of the National Party list, but on this side of the House, we’re with Maureen Pugh’s mum. We’re with her mum, saying, “Maureen, you shouldn’t go.”, but the list will move just a little bit further down the aisle here at the rate National’s going.

But, actually, in the end, I say to the National Party: keep talking the economy down. Keeping doing it, because every time they do, it gets better—every time they do it gets better. Here is a tweet from the Hon Simon Bridges from just a couple of months ago. Simon Bridges says, “It’s started. Unemployment’s up. Is anyone seriously going to debate that this isn’t because of the Arden-Peters Government’s policies? It’s time they acknowledge their responsibility and make serious changes for New Zealanders’ sake.” There is only one serious change that’s required, and it’s Simon Bridges getting out of that seat over there.

On this side of the House, we are proud of the fact that more New Zealanders are in work, that unemployment’s going down, that youth unemployment is going down, that wages are lifting. That is the sign of an economy that’s working. That is the sign of the fact that this Government has a plan for the economy to benefit all New Zealanders. This coalition Government is on a roll.

Hon PAULA BENNETT (Deputy Leader—National): Well, ministerial discretion, by definition, is specific powers that Ministers have to make decisions that are provided to them by the New Zealand Parliament. These decisions are considered so important that the Minister is given power over anyone and anything else. They’re often difficult, complex, and have multiple elements to them. The Minister must have known that the Karel Sroubek decision would be controversial. Let’s be frank: to most people, it would be abhorrent. So when you’re faced with a decision like that, you cross your t’s and you dot your i’s. You get officials into your office. You dig. You ask every question that you can possibly think of. You think about it in every conceivable way, and then you sit on it for a few days and you think about it some more. Then you think of some other questions that you perhaps didn’t ask. One goes back to those officials and asks those questions again and digs in, because they know this will be controversial. They know that the public won’t understand or agree with it.

There are even times when, as a Minister, you may take an oral item to Cabinet to inform them of your decision so that they understand. We hear the Prime Minister found out—she told us today—about this decision via the media. So his radar wasn’t even working well enough that he alerted the Prime Minister to something that could be this controversial. You do not do the bare minimum—the bare minimum—expected from a Minister. The bare minimum is what this Minister did—the bare minimum. What I am saying to the Minister of Immigration is: you are a Minister of the Crown; you should put the protection and the safety of New Zealanders first, not an individual, and that is not what has happened.

Here’s what we know to date. I do this to help the Minister of Immigration, because we seem to know more about the Karel Sroubek case than, actually, he does.

Hon Member: Everyone knows more.

Hon PAULA BENNETT: Yeah. Everybody seems to know more. Even today, he had to get a patsy question from his colleagues, saying, “You’re spokesperson on immigration. Please tell me what he knows, because we don’t know anything and it’d be really handy if he kind of let us.”—but, anyway. So he arrived in New Zealand in 2003 under a fake name, fake passport, fleeing from the Czech Republic after some dealings with the Czech police. He gets residency. He stays in New Zealand. Since 2010, he has a rap sheet that would make Tony Soprano think he should be a member of his gang, quite frankly, and one he would be proud of. He was arrested in 2009 on aggravated robbery and blackmail charges.

In 2011, a jury found him guilty of using a false passport and giving false details. He was arrested soon after, as part of Operation Ark, a covert investigation into drugs. I reckon there’s a bit more to come on that, so we’ll keep digging around that one and keep watching that one. That’s a watching brief, because there are a number of people that were involved in Operation Ark and a number that went through that, and the fact that Sroubek is actually part of it just does have another whole lot of links going on there.

In 2014, he was charged with manufacturing drugs. A few months later, he was arrested for importing drugs. He then was jailed for almost six years. The Parole Board declined early release because he’s untrustworthy. So the Parole Board declined release, and then Iain Lees-Galloway cancelled his deportation less than 48 hours later. Yeah—48 hours later. I know it sounds unbelievable—that’s actually because it is unbelievable—but that is the decision that the Minister made, without telling the Prime Minister and without actually going to his colleagues.

Here’s where it gets interesting in the last few days. We’ve got people in witness protection. He allegedly assaulted and intimidated witnesses. The police placed the entire family in witness protection because they were in fear of their lives. Police do not do that lightly. The police actually took this seriously enough. Now we are learning that his estranged wife is having all sorts of dealings to do with the house and that that’s going on sale, and we’ve heard that he’s got caveats on things and everything else. Ironically, when the house goes up for sale, which he didn’t want to happen—because he put a caveat on it—we’re now finding that that house has been burgled. His character is not the type that we want in this country, and that is why he should not have been given residency like he was. There is no way the right decision has been made and no way the right questions were asked of this Minister, and it’s time he took account for it.

Hon STUART NASH (Minister of Police): I remember two years ago sitting in Opposition where those MPs are sitting now and listening to the deputy leader of the National Party speak, and they were behind her. They were cheering. They were yahooing. At the moment, I listened to the deputy leader of the National Party just talk—not a word. But worse than that, there were 33 National MPs here and I counted 20 of them on their phones. Twenty of them were on their phones. They weren’t even listening, because they know she’s gone. They don’t need to get behind any more—they’re out of there. Chris Finlayson, the most capable National Minister in the last nine years—he was there applying for a job or writing his book. There’s just no energy any more. The life has been sucked out of the National Party, and it’s fantastic, and it’s over here.

I’ve got to congratulate Grant Robertson: 3.9 percent unemployment. That is absolutely fantastic. In fact, as the Deputy Prime Minister alluded to, the last time that happened was when Labour and New Zealand First were in Government. We’re back, and it’s on the right track again. Wages are up by 3.3 percent—fantastic. It’s all going really well. Those over there who said it couldn’t happen, it wouldn’t happen—they’re wrong. Not only are we making it happen; we’re driving it forward in a way that is making a difference for all Kiwis. The thing is that I know they don’t like it, but the fact that we’re not only getting along as coalition partners—we’re all mates anyway. It’s all good fun and we’re getting along really, really well. I’m sorry about that, but that is the reality that they don’t like.

Let me talk about police—let me talk about police. We came in with a promise. We came in with a promise, a New Zealand First - Labour coalition promise to deliver 1,800 more police. The reason we did this is because Ron Mark and I had gone really hard in Opposition, because we knew that between 2012 and 2017, police numbers actually dropped by 70 over those five years. In the meantime, P had gone through the roof, gangs got organised and out of control, and we were in real trouble. Burglary rates were through the roof and resolution rates were down.

I can inform you that since we have been in Government, 852 new officers are out in our communities, preventing our crime and keeping us safe—852. I have been to every single graduation—

Matt King: Funded by us.

Hon STUART NASH: —except one, and I can inform the House that the graduates who have chosen the New Zealand police service for a career are phenomenal. They are absolutely phenomenal. I must get you out there, Mr King. I must get you out to the Police College one day so you can have a look.

We made the promise—we made a promise to the people of New Zealand. When we said 1,800 police over three years, one thing we did say is we would not drop the standard of recruits. That was our promise. What I’m seeing now is no drop in the standards—in fact, an increase in the standard. It is going brilliantly.

One of the other things I would like to say is that since we got into power, the prison numbers have dropped by about 850. What we heard is that if prison numbers drop, crime’s going to go through the roof and people aren’t going to be safe. Well, I can tell you, prison numbers are down by 850. Do you know the number of victimisations that are down since we’ve been there?

Hon Members: Tell us.

Hon STUART NASH: Over 10,000 less victimisations in the year that we have been in Government. Over 10,000 less victimisations—

SPEAKER: Fewer—fewer.

Hon STUART NASH: —fewer than 10,000 victimisations. Now, that is progress. That is developing a police service with the resources and the capacity and the competencies to keep our communities safe—not out there fighting fires the whole time, but keeping our community safe. I thank New Zealand First for the commitment to this. It has been absolutely brilliant, because we are delivering and making a difference for our communities right up and down New Zealand.

There’s just one area I’d like to talk on, and it’s something that I’m very proud of. In the tax area, we passed a bill. It was called the Taxation (Neutralising Base Erosion and Profit Shifting) Bill. It gets quite complex, but what it’s actually about is ensuring that all the multinationals who operate out of this country pay their fair share. One thing that we know really gets under the craw of New Zealanders is when people rip off the system. One thing that we really know is that when multinationals don’t pay their fair share when everyone else does, it is fundamentally wrong. We’ve changed that. The base erosion and profit shifting bill means that everyone is paying their fair share of tax.

Well, we could also talk about the R & D tax credits. That is going to drive growth and—we need 15 minutes, not five. That’s going to drive growth in a way that we haven’t seen for a long time. It is an absolute privilege and a pleasure—

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

Hon MARK MITCHELL (National—Rodney): Thank you very much. It’s a pleasure to take a call in the House in the general debate today. Can I just say, firstly, to the Minister of Police: be very careful about the statements that you’re making in this House, because, yes, I think you’re doing a good job, and you certainly started with the confidence of the front-line police officers, but you’re in great danger at the moment, standing in this House and making statements like that, especially around standards which aren’t just a concern, actually, with the public; they’re a concern within the police service themselves. Stay focused on standards, Minister. I assure you.

The other thing I want to say is this: you don’t stand in the House and talk about how phenomenal everyone is when you’ve just had the Minister of Internal Affairs carry out an inquiry at the highest levels of the police leadership and you’re not being transparent around it. If you want some feedback from the front lines, I’ll give it to you, because I was with our local police in Warkworth at a function on Saturday night, which the Minister actually failed to attend—

Hon Tracey Martin: I was there in the back row, you ninny!

Hon MARK MITCHELL: —and I’ll let you know. I’ll let you know what they said.

SPEAKER: Order! [Interruption] Order! The member will resume his seat. I can accept that the member was not trying to call me a ninny, but she, effectively, did. I do require the member to withdraw and apologise.

Hon Tracey Martin: I withdraw and apologise, sir.

Hon MARK MITCHELL: So I’ll just finish by saying to the Minister quite simply this: Minister, they have to go out every day, and they face the scrutiny—and they should face the scrutiny—of the public and also the officers, the sergeants, and the officers in charge of them. They face the Independent Police Conduct Authority. They have to deal with all of that. They’ve just had one of their senior leaders come into this Parliament as part of a process like that, and there’s no transparency around it. Their Minister doesn’t even have the report. So be very careful what you do when you stand in this House—

SPEAKER: Order!

Hon MARK MITCHELL: —sorry, Mr Speaker—when the Minister stands in this House and starts talking about front-line staff when, actually, you need to show some leadership and be transparent around things that are happening at the highest levels. Just to let you know, Minister, that that’s actually—get in touch with the front line and what they’re thinking and what they’re feeling.

In relation to Karel Sroubek, can I just quickly read to you a letter that was sent to the Minister of Immigration: “Dear Minister. This letter relates to the decision taken by you to grant permanent residency to Karel Sroubek. I believe that the briefing documents provided to you would have clearly shown that you should never have granted a residency pathway to Mr Sroubek. I can make myself available for a meeting with you on this case, but must make it very clear it will be an unconstrained meeting, and although I will respect confidentiality regarding specifics and individuals, I reserve the right to be able to speak publicly and indicate after the briefing whether my position has changed at all. As you know, there is a very high level of public interest in your decision, and I’ve been very clear about my own position and the need for transparency.” That letter was sent to the Minister this morning, so I’ll be very interested to see what his response to that is.

The reason why this is so serious, and the reason why this calls into direct question the Minister’s ability to be able to make decisions that relate to New Zealand’s public safety—and there’s actually two things that, inherently, a Government must pay close attention to: national security and public safety. There’s been an abject failure on the part of the Minister. When you hear him say in response to the Hon Michael Woodhouse’s question at the start of this process on 30 October in this House—he came in here and he said, “I’ve taken the opportunity to reflect on the decision that I made and to consider the information that was available to me at the time of making that decision. Having done that, I absolutely stand by the action that I took.”

So even after the New Zealand public had come out very clearly, along with the Opposition, and said, “This is a very poor decision. On the face of it, we can’t see any reason why a convicted criminal from the Czech Republic and New Zealand has been granted a New Zealand residency and is actually protected from a deportation process.”, he then had time to go away and actually ask additional questions. He was on notice. He was put on notice. He came back into this House after being put on notice, after having the time to go away and seek more information—he came back into this House with a very arrogant attitude and told us all that he was going to stand by the action taken.

Not only that; it gets worse. The Prime Minister comes into this House and stands up and says, “Read between the lines.” Her message to the nation was, “Read between the lines.” But it gets worse. Then the Deputy Prime Minister, who normally is quite sensitive to this type of thing, comes into this House and stands up and he says, “I have reviewed the file, and I back the Minister on his decision.” You’ve got three people in New Zealand that believe that Karel Sroubek should be given the right and the honour of having a New Zealand residency—

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

PRIYANCA RADHAKRISHNAN (Labour): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I almost feel a little bit sorry for members opposite who have stood up and spoken today. Such flat speeches, so much doom and gloom and grasping at straws. You would think that we have nothing to celebrate, but on this side of the House we absolutely do.

Firstly, of course, we stand alongside New Zealand Indian communities, who are celebrating this week, across Aotearoa, the festival of lights, Diwali. They are celebrating the triumph of light over darkness that symbolises the triumph of knowledge over ignorance, truth over falsehood, strength over weakness, and hope over despair and fear, and this Government is doing so much to dispel the darkness that is poverty and that is inequity with the light of good economic management and compassion for the many who have been locked out of the benefits of a strong economy over the last nine years.

Today we’ve heard that unemployment is down to 3.9 percent—the lowest level since we on this side of the House were last in office. A strong economy delivering strong surpluses, more jobs, and lower debt—surely, that is a cause for celebration. More people in work and more young people in employment, education, or training. The economy is going well—and it’s hard for the Opposition to swallow that pill—and it’s having an impact on the lives of families and communities, and that must be celebrated. In its entirety, when you look at what this Government, a Government that I am so proud to support, has done through the Families Package, through lifting the minimum wage, through the KiwiBuild programme that will deliver on large-scale, affordable housing through the shared equity schemes that this Government is working on for those on lower incomes who wish to own a home, through more State housing and more emergency housing, through making doctors’ visits cheaper for 600,000 New Zealanders, and through the Child Poverty Reduction Bill, that passed recently, as well—with our Government’s plan, it will ensure that we lift children and their families out of poverty.

In my last couple of minutes, I want to focus on what we have also done in terms of addressing family violence. Just last night in this House, we passed two bills that will make a huge impact on reducing what is really a scourge on this nation. Our family violence rates and family violence homicide rates in New Zealand are sky-high, and it is absolutely something that this Government is focusing on to address. Now, very recently, the Social Services and Community Committee spoke to officials, to Government members, to MPs, to NGOs, and to researchers in Australia. At every single meeting we had with them, they recognised that family violence is not just something that occurs as well and contributes to poverty and homelessness, but is, in fact, a driver of those things.

If we are to ensure that we improve the well-being of our communities, it is imperative that we address family violence, as well. The two bills ensure that we take into consideration the fact that family violence affects us all but that it affects us differently. The recognition that we must expand the definition to include dowry-related violence and make things like forced marriage—that the sector has been campaigning on for decades—an offence shows that on this side of the House, we get it and that there is the will to ensure that we address family violence so that everyone is lifted out of it.

This, coupled with the joint-venture approach that was recently announced—the fact that we will have an integrated system, a whole-of-Government system, where every Government department will contribute to addressing and lowering family violence rates and, eventually, ending it. The fact that we have a Parliamentary Under-Secretary—for the first time, internationally—under whose leadership this will happen, along with the Minister of Justice, to ensure that we have leadership in that space so that everyone contributes, where they can, to address our horrific rates. The fact that in Budget 2018, there was $76 million announced to boost support services that hadn’t seen that in a decade. The fact that just today, an announcement was made of $15 million to fund whānau resilience services to break intergenerational cycles of abuse, because we know that that happens. I’m proud to be supporting a Government that gets it and that is acting to improve lives.

Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (National): If there’s any measure of how quickly out of touch this Government has become with the mood of the people of New Zealand, it was in the opening comments of both Mr Nash and Ms Radhakrishnan, who indicated that because the National Party benches weren’t cheering and baying behind their deputy leader, somehow we’re all morose and sad. We were listening carefully to one of the most important issues facing this Government and this Parliament in the last year, and colleagues were taking it extremely seriously. And so they should, because 10 days into the publicity over the Minister’s decisions around Karel Sroubek, the extraordinary revelations just keep coming, and so does the butt-covering and the throwing of officials under the bus.

Let’s just start with those revelations and the Minister’s reaction. Last Tuesday, he told the House that he had carefully reconsidered the file and that he stood by that decision. But less than 24 hours later, he claimed that new information existed that appeared to directly contradict the information which he relied upon to keep this thug in the country. By Thursday, an investigation had been announced, and that was it. The shutters are up. No questions are being asked. And, ever since that, no comments, no explanations; just, actually, a thinly veiled attack on Immigration New Zealand officials—people who I know extremely well and have worked with very closely for around five years.

The code from the PM: read between the lines. Well, this open and transparent Government wasn’t going to ask the public to read between the lines; they were going to give the public the lines. They were going to be more upfront and more honest with them. These are stories of criminal records, of witness protection, of intimidation, and of the denying of parole.

The Minister actually gives us the impression that this was somehow a difficult decision and that, had he had this new information, he might have made a different decision. Remember, this is information that is actually coming, mostly, from the National Party—a National Party that did some basic research: fundamental due diligence. I’m going to be really interested about when, actually, this file is finally revealed. Because of the terrible things that have been said about public officials, it is absolutely necessary that at some point that happens, because I know that the information that the Minister is now inferring is new information would have absolutely been put before him in the initial situation when he made his decision.

The PM in Dunedin on Saturday again threw officials under a bus. She was asked: does she back the Minister? The answer: yes. Does she have confidence in Immigration New Zealand? The answer: let’s wait and see what the report has to say.

The investigation itself suggests some kind of degree of independence, but let’s remind ourselves what’s actually happening here. The Minister is investigating his own decision. He’s actually going back and asking for some kind of apparent third-party examination of a decision that he made. In order for that to be transparent, he needs to show this House and the public what information he relied on when he made his first decision and what information now exists that was either put before him or should have been asked by him in that straightforward examination of what I believe is a straightforward case.

I have seen a number of these cases. I have seen some pretty amazing submissions in support of what I call a Hail Mary request to stay. A lot of it is relevant but not determinative. I don’t actually care if Mr Sroubek has found God and been nominated for a Nobel Prize. He has committed serious offences, and in this country the right of residence and citizenship is a privilege that we should hold dear. The price of entry into this country and the price of being able to stay in this country has gone down, has been cheapened, by this decision. Other members are going to talk about how hard it is to gain that prize, that privilege, and it’s been cheapened by this Government.

Hon TRACEY MARTIN (Minister for Children): Kia ora, Mr Speaker. Can I start my contribution by just acknowledging the Toastmasters of Warkworth and the great debate that took place on Friday last week. I’m not sure what the local member, Hon Mark Mitchell, was talking about. I was there. My husband was in the team. The moot was “Should New Zealand invade Australia?” The police team were in the negative, and they resoundingly won the evening. I apologise to my husband now, but they showed more wit, they showed more stamina, and they had shiny medals, which I think actually swayed the women in the audience, which was their rebuttal.

The other thing that the police informed me of that evening was the fact that the Warkworth police station is going to go 24/7—24/7—in the next so many months. And that is because of the increased police numbers referred to by the Minister of Police just earlier this evening. They were thrilled to know—and so were the people of that community—that they are now going to have police officers on the beat 24/7, ready for them and available for them.

Kieran McAnulty: When was the last time?

Hon TRACEY MARTIN: I don’t know when the last time was, Mr McAnulty, but I know that it wasn’t the reality over the last decade. I’m fairly confident about that.

Can I move on to another topic? Just quickly though, I am very interested in the conversation coming from the Opposition benches that was raised by the Leader—sorry, just a bit quick there—the Deputy Leader of the National Party, and that was around a series of dates that the member put forward: dates around being let into the country, dates around residency, dates around crimes being committed, dates around people being arrested. All of those dates were in the period of time that she was in Government. All of those dates—all of the dates—that have been articulated by the Opposition were during the period of time that they were in power. So it’s an interesting argument that they’re running, but let’s hope they continue to run it.

On the weekend, the Prime Minister announced $217 million over the next four years for the first tranche of 600 learning support coordinators to be inside our schools. This was not a fly-by-night political announcement; this was a piece of work that Catherine Delahunty and Chris Hipkins and I started back in 2016—and if the Hon Judith Collins was here, I would acknowledge her also. This piece of work came out of the dyslexia, dyspraxia, and children on the autism spectrum inquiry at the Education and Science Committee in that year. There was a majority report that came into this House, but the Government of the day decided that no more money would be put inside this sector—no more money. Any recommendation that came from the majority of the select committee had to have a zero price tag. This Government and the members of it—Minister Hipkins, myself, and, as I say, Catherine Delahunty, who we, unfortunately, no longer have in this Parliament—put in 26 further recommendations that we made sure we started to work on the moment we sat in the seat—the moment we had the opportunity to move forward.

This, however, is only step two of a five-step process. The first step was to actually change the delivery model. The system for supporting our young people with complex and even moderate learning needs is completely broken. There is no point continuing to pump money into it. Even though we knew the need was so neat, we placed funding in as immediately as we could during the Christmas period, and then began work on changing the delivery model. The delivery model has been trialled for the past year and is currently being rolled out across New Zealand and will be across New Zealand by the end of 2019. The learning support coordinators now have a financial commitment for the first tranche, and they will be in place in 2020.

The next thing we are working on is screening tools: to screen at school entry and to screen at seven years old for dyslexia, dyspraxia, dyscalculics, and those on the moderate end of the autism spectrum, because we have no data to tell us the need. So we’re also developing a way to essentially collect that data. We can then use that data to create workforce planning so that we do not run into the shortage that we have run into after a decade of neglect.

I am thrilled that we were able to make that announcement on the weekend, but it is only a part of a longer piece of work, and I will commit to making sure that the further five steps are in place before we get to 2020. Kia ora.

Hon SCOTT SIMPSON (National—Coromandel): It’s a privilege to take a call in this general debate, and normally I have some degree of admiration for the member from New Zealand First that’s just resumed her seat. Normally she’s well-briefed, well on top of her case, but today, I’m sorry, she really wasn’t. She was completely off the boil.

Maybe it’s because there are things afoot amongst the coalition Government at the moment that they don’t really want anyone to be talking about. If I was a conspiracy theorist, I’d be saying that all the beleaguered aggro that’s going on with the Minister of Immigration is all part of a smokescreen and a deliberate ploy to stop him talking about his other portfolio responsibility as Minister of Workplace Relations and Safety. Iain Lees-Galloway has been charged with guiding through this Parliament the opportunity to the new Government to repay its political debt to the trade union movement. And they thought that when they introduced the workplace relations changes back in January of this year, that it would be plain sailing. They thought, “Aha! Here we go. There’s our opportunity to increase union membership, to give unions more power, to make them a bigger player in industrial relations in this country.”, and it hasn’t quite worked out the way they thought.

It now seems, after a Cabinet meeting on Monday, that changes are afoot, and that the bill as reported back from select committee is going to be significantly and radically changed, watered down—a flip-flop back-down. And we knew that some of this was coming, because a few weeks ago, senior members of the trade union movement decided to have a flick—indeed, actually to launch a full frontal missile attack on Winston Peters and the New Zealand First Party. Those leaders—Richard Wagstaff and a fellow by the name of Robert Reid from FIRST Union—decided to have an attack on Winston Peters, because they saw him as having had a play in this industrial relations legislation, in a way that was going to water down the union-friendly, pro-union changes that the new Government wanted to introduce.

Well, I think, actually, it’s a question of New Zealand First having listened—just like the Government is having to listen too—to the opposition that the National Party has put forward on this bill. At every inch of the way, at every turn, at every corner we have opposed it, and we’ve opposed on the basis that it is fundamentally and absolutely wrong in terms of growing the New Zealand economy, of creating better workplace opportunities for New Zealand workers, that it’s bad for employees and it’s bad for employers.

But I think that the New Zealand First Party has actually decided to listen to what the National Party has been saying. They’ve listened to business, they’ve listened to the Employers and Manufacturers Association, they’ve listened to Business New Zealand, and they have listened to the chambers of commerce and their submissions. At select committee, all those organisations made very staunch and strong submissions about how bad this piece of legislation was going to be—that it was going to take us back to the militant trade union scenario and landscape that we had back in the 1970s. Every indication we’ve had this year—the last 12 months—has been that that’s exactly the course upon which the trade union movement wishes to take New Zealand at the moment. In fact, it’s fair to say, in my opinion, that when this bill comes back to the House, probably in the last sitting block, just before Christmas, when the public’s attention is diverted away from it, we will see a significant backdown in terms of the big promises that the Labour Party made to their trade union friends, and they will have to swallow a very significant dead rat. I think we’re on the eve of seeing an embarrassing and humiliating backdown from the Government in terms of the promises they’ve made to trade unions.

And why is this important? Well, it’s important because this is a Government that relies on the leveraging of New Zealand First in order to get any legislation passed. And when Winston Peters said a few weeks ago that this was “a work in progress”, we all know around this Parliament that that is Winston Peters speak for “I’m going to have a fiddle. I’m going to have a play. I want to use it as a branding exercise.” And so that’s exactly what I think is going to occur.

And when the New Zealand Council of Trade Unions president Richard Wagstaff says “We are incredibly disappointed by New Zealand First’s attempts to duck the commitment they made.”, we know, in fact, that that is a concession from the trade unions that they’ve heard from the Labour Party—“We’re not going to be able to deliver on everything we promised to you.” Winston Peters has decided to have a play, has decided to have a fiddle, and we can just hope that the worst, sharpest aspects of this have been softened by New Zealand First in their input.

ANGIE WARREN-CLARK (Labour): Thank you, Mr Speaker.

Kieran McAnulty: Not even a clap.

ANGIE WARREN-CLARK: Ha! Not even a clap. Mr Simpson, you usually make a bit of sense, but today, alas, the conspiracy theory that you’ve brought up is, indeed, a sad indictment on how far the party has sunk. It’s not possible to just stand here and make stuff up in a way that actually creates your—it is amazing and cute, and please don’t use the term “fiddle” any further.

Look, I’m delighted to stand today. I had real trouble with my speech today in that I wasn’t sure—we had so much to talk about, right? I wasn’t sure what I wanted to speak about. Yesterday I missed the opportunity for the passing of the Family Violence Bill, as I was speaking in my own home town in regards to fund-raising on behalf of the refuge and an organisation called Homes of Hope, and so I missed that opportunity. I feel that the member Priyanca Radhakrishnan has covered that extremely well, however.

I’d also like to acknowledge the Hon Tracey Martin. I’m going to speak and pick up on your theme today. I mean, there is so much—

SPEAKER: Her theme today.

ANGIE WARREN-CLARK: Sorry, sir—her theme today. I’m going to have a talk about education today.

So over the weekend, our coalition Government announced 600 new positions in the Special Educational Needs Coordinator position. Not only have we acknowledged 1,500 more teachers and hundreds more modern classrooms—my own local Ōtūmoetai school received $65 million to fix its leaking and mouldy classrooms to create a modern learning environment—but we have 8,000 more children accessing learning needs and special support. The reason I wanted to talk to this today is that it affects me personally and my family personally. In fact, all of us are teachers in some way, are we not?

So over the weekend, 600 learning support coordinators—I have listened to the stories of families for a very long time, talking about how difficult it is to access support and services. Our Government has listened. Our children deserve better. They have spent the last 10 years fighting, and these teachers and parents have spent the last 10 years trying their hardest to find the funds to support these children.

Now, in my own experience, I had to personally fund $800 to enable my daughter to access dyslexia, dyspraxia, and dyscalculia assessment. I had that $800. There is no place in this country—no place—for cheque-book education. Her friends fell by the wayside because those parents were not able to afford that. My daughter was able to access those services. As far as I’m concerned, as a Government, we’re actually listening to those parents.

It’s also about our gifted children, who deserve to be uplifted more than they are. It’s about our children’s teachers, who shouldn’t have an additional task stuffed on the end of their already busy, busy workloads; our principals having to do this job alongside our deputy principals or another senior teacher. These children deserve—and we desire as a Government to actually address that.

My Prime Minister, when she made this announcement—it was amazing. Six hundred—and that is only the first tranche. That is only the beginning of what we here in this Government are doing. We have heard you, parents. We have heard the children’s stories, and we have acted. So Tracey Martin and our coalition Government, I absolutely applaud you, as a parent, and I also am so proud to stand here today and to acknowledge what we are doing for children in this country.

BARBARA KURIGER (National—Taranaki - King Country): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I will acknowledge what the last speaker, Angie Warren-Clark, said around the dyslexia and special needs, and we have welcomed that announcement, but we are carefully monitoring its delivery, because we would like to see that all that has been promised has been delivered. But that’s not going to be the main focus of my speech today.

We’ve heard a lot of comments from the other side of the House, the Government, this afternoon about the mood of the National Party caucus. Well, let me tell you that the National Party caucus is just fine, but we don’t consider this issue around Karel Sroubek to be a laughing matter. We were subdued because we understand the seriousness of what is going on here. Starting right through from Minister Nash to all of those others that have commented on the way through, we’d like to make it clear that we would like the Government to realise that this is a serious situation, as we do. So we are not cheerleaders in some TED Talk; we are actually listening to the conversations, we’re listening to the seriousness of the situation, and it is serious. When a Minister receives some information, it’s really important, when they’re asked to make a decision, that they dig into the information and do the homework, because sometimes the information can be complete. Sometimes, the information may in fact be incorrect—not intentionally, but it happens. It happens that sometimes it’s misinterpreted, and so, as a Minister, nothing should ever be assumed.

We’ve heard the Prime Minister making statements about reading between the lines. We just think, on this side of the House, that reading the lines would be a good piece of advice. Reading the information, reading the lines—don’t worry about what’s in between the lines, because a lot of the time, that’s actually blank. Reading the lines is as important as anything, and it might help.

Now, the other thing that I do want to touch on today—because, following this general debate, we are going to be debating the third reading of the Crown Minerals (Petroleum) Amendment Bill. This would have to be the worst case of not listening that I have seen in—

SPEAKER: Order! Order! The member will resume her seat. It is absolutely against the Speakers’ rulings and the conventions of this House to anticipate a debate which is on the Order Paper for that day. The debate happens during that debate and not before it. The member can’t refer to it.

BARBARA KURIGER: Apology, Mr Speaker. So, just to clarify, it’s OK to speak about yesterday’s debate on the same issue?

SPEAKER: No, not if the member’s talking about the bill—no.

BARBARA KURIGER: OK—

Kieran McAnulty: The member’s a whip. Come on!

BARBARA KURIGER: Excuse me.

SPEAKER: Well, I’m actually not the whip.

BARBARA KURIGER: Yes, thank you Mr McAnulty for your piece of advice. So, look, it’s really important, I think—and we’re focusing a lot this week on the competency of this Government and the focus on information and the focus on how we receive it. It’s very important, as we go and we talk about what’s been going on in this House over the last week. I’ve seen some legislation when Mr Stuart Nash also got up and spoke, when we were speaking about the country of origin labelling bill the other night—I saw some interesting dynamics where Mr Gareth Hughes was sitting in the chair during committee stage and Minister Stuart Nash got up and spoke. Gareth Hughes actually said to him “I wish I’d had a chance to speak to that Minister before he took his call.” So when we’re looking at three parties in a coalition Government where one person gets up and speaks and the other one says “I wish I’d had the opportunity to talk to that person before they got up and spoke.”, then I think it’s probably a good opportunity to talk to each other about what’s going on.

I also saw some angry behaviour in the House the other night from Andrew Little around some members’ bills—in fact, Simeon Brown’s psychoactive substances bill—where the Minister got extremely angry because the support around that piece of legislation wasn’t going his way.

So we’ve seen some really interesting and different behaviour from this Government, and we’re questioning their competency. We would like this Government to step up. Thank you.

CHLÖE SWARBRICK (Green): E Te Māngai, tēnā koe. The synthetics crisis, as was just referenced, continues to grip this country, and today I invite all members of this Parliament to live up to their rhetoric. There is consensus here, at least as far as words go, that we do not want to criminalise users. We want to see harm reduced. We want to stop unnecessary deaths. So let’s prove that with action. I am calling on MPs across this House in all parties today to support sensible drug regulation that stops harm and prevents unnecessary deaths. If politicians aren’t willing to do that, then we cannot pretend that we are treating this as a health issue.

Let’s be honest with ourselves: increasing penalties, the punishment pathway, the war on drugs, simply has not worked. In 1998, when I was four years old, member States of the United Nations signed up to eradicate all drugs by committing to strong, unsympathetic penalties. We told ourselves that if we played by this rulebook, we would get rid of drugs on planet Earth by 2008. That was 10 years ago, and drugs still exist. While we’ve been ratcheting up criminal penalties, we’ve done nothing to reduce the harm that drugs are causing in our community. Drug use flourishes in the shadows, providing billions of dollars internationally in funds for violence and organised criminal activity, leaving destruction in its wake.

Last year, synthetic drugs were implicated in 27 deaths in Aotearoa New Zealand, and this year the death toll has risen to at least 45 lives lost. If these deaths were caused by anything else, anything other than those evil, scary, illegal drugs, we’d be stepping in immediately to regulate harm. Instead, we’re stuck in this punishment feedback loop. We’re seeing more of the same political thinking that got us into this mess in the first place.

So I want to appeal directly to members’ consciences on this issue. Every few months, MPs in this House are asked by the media when they last smoked cannabis. There’s a wee chuckle and a few “ums” and “ahs”, and then we all gaze off into the distance and refer back to our university days. But what about our fellow New Zealanders? What about those who weren’t so fortunate to go to university? What if you can’t choose to leave illegal drug consumption in the mists of time? What if those drugs had killed us? What if we were strapped with drug convictions? What if it took away our future? But it didn’t for us, and we’re here, a substantial number of us who have personally admitted to breaking the law and consuming illegal drugs, and now we preside over that law which penalises people who engage in exactly the same behaviour for doing what we did. Some people are ending up in jail, and now some people are dying, but we are in Parliament with the ability to do something. So what are we going to do?

We can, of course, continue to pretend that everything is fine with a criminalisation that is applied on an ad hoc basis and disproportionately against the poor, against the young, and against Māori. But what exactly is the purpose of penalising drug users? Is it that we want to stop people using drugs? Well, if that’s the case, we’re failing—big time. New Zealand is reported to have amongst the highest drug-use rates in the world, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. Is it that we somehow think that illegality will spur people to access help for abuse and addiction issues? Well, Ministry of Health data shows that 16.5 percent of New Zealanders who sought help for drugs couldn’t access it for fear of law or the police. Is it that we think that we’re somehow getting cost-saving measures out of locking people up who use these drugs? Well, the evidence in independent fiscal modelling released today shows that criminalising drug users alone costs between $34 million and $83 million a year.

I am calling on MPs across this House to move to support an end to punishment for people who use drugs and to provide them with resourcing and support, because if politicians aren’t willing to do that, we cannot pretend that we are treating this as a health issue and we cannot pretend that we care about people who use drugs and the harm that they experience. If we continue to criminalise drug users, we are condemning them—

SPEAKER: Order!

CHLÖE SWARBRICK: —for not living up to the moral standards that we ourselves admit that we are not able to meet. Kia ora.

MATT KING (National—Northland): A little over 10 days ago, I was flicking through my news feeds and I read this rather disturbing story about this Czech criminal—this gangster—who is in jail in New Zealand for drug dealing. The Minister of Immigration, Iain Lees-Galloway, had granted him residency, and I could not believe this. I thought that there must be some sort of mistake and the media must have got it wrong—that’s not uncommon, in my experience. But we were asked to read between the lines: maybe he’s at risk if he’s deported, or maybe he’s not that bad—he’s just a little bit misunderstood. And then we asked a few questions and we found out that, no, he’s been back to his homeland twice, that witnesses that are involved in the case that he’s involved in are on the witness protection programme, and that his estranged wife has taken out a protection order against him. So this gangster—this criminal gangster—is a nasty piece of work, and I’ve met a few of them in my time. I’ve arrested a few.

It made me think about some of the constituents that have come into my office. I thought of a Filipino woman called Juliet Garcia, who has had 11 years in New Zealand and works at the Switzer rest home. She’s just shy of her residency points because they won’t take into account a couple of years of her work experience in New Zealand, so she’s been told that she can’t get residency. So they’ve advertised her position in preparation of the fact that she’s going to be kicked out of the country, and they’ve had no applicants—for two years. They cannot replace her, and the Minister has the authority to grant a waiver to let her stay in the country. There are about an estimated 3,000 Juliet Garcias in this country, and aged care is in crisis, so I would imagine that she’d be a great case in which to grant a waiver.

I have the English woman—a sole child, who came here as a resident. Her mother has died and her father is alone in England. He has the means to come out here and the means to support himself. That’s her only surviving relative—it’s just her and him on this earth. She wants him to come out and live in New Zealand with her in her house, and he can support himself. He’s a little bit old and they won’t give him a waiver. He can’t get residency. He doesn’t qualify under any categories, but they can let him in—this is heartbreaking stuff.

We’ve got a Fijian Indian farm manager. He’s been here eight years. His employer values him and is desperate for him to stay. He’s paid international fees for his son to go through university here. He’s bought his own house. He is two years over the age limit. The Minister has the ability to give him an age waiver to allow him to apply for residency, but they refuse to intervene.

We’ve got South African people wanting to escape South Africa because of the violent crime there. Their Government is seizing their land without compensation, and they want to get out of that country—they have good grounds. One of them, he owned a business over there. The sales rep that delivered the chainsaws to his factory—his truck got robbed and he got shot dead. A couple that they have a barbecue lunch with every second weekend—intruders broke into her house while the husband was away, shot her eight times through the bedroom door, ransacked the house, and left her for dead, basically. She lifted her son—her three-year-old son—out of the window, and he ran the kilometre down the road to get her help. Stories like this are genuine. They’re happening right now in South Africa, and we’re turning a blind eye. We have the ability to accept these people.

Now, I’ve got people that come here on visitor visas from South Africa looking to make New Zealand their home. They are professional people—doctors, teachers, chefs, engineers—but they can’t get residency. It’s heartbreaking stuff, and I see it every day. I understand that we can’t open the floodgates and let these people in willy-nilly, but we certainly can kick an oxygen-thief of a Czech gangster out of this country—hell, I’d do that job for free.

The debate having concluded, the motion lapsed.

Bills

Crown Minerals (Petroleum) Amendment Bill

Third Reading

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS (Minister of Energy and Resources): I move, That the Crown Minerals (Petroleum) Amendment Bill be now read a third time.

I am proud to rise in support of this bill, which makes a strong statement and a transition away from a reliance on fossil fuels, and towards affordable, renewable electricity and energy. But, first, I would like to acknowledge the Environment Committee for its consideration of this legislation. I thank the members for considering more than 7,000 submissions that were lodged, and I would like to thank those who took the time to lodge a submission and those who appeared before the committee. The submissions came from a wide range of sources: from those in the oil and gas industry, from environmental groups, from community groups, from iwi, from students, from businesses, and from everyday New Zealanders. The vast majority of those submissions were either in favour of the bill or felt that it did not go far enough.

Those submissions sent a very clear signal. New Zealanders want to see a future for their country where we take action on climate change, where we have a long-term economic plan for our country, and where we have the courage to look beyond the three-year political cycle and plan for the next 10, 20, 30, and 40 years. That is the time frame we are talking about for the changes that this legislation will bring.

This bill will not end oil and gas exploration overnight, nor will it halt existing production. Existing rights and existing privileges for permit holders are being explicitly preserved within this legislation. This preservation of rights is about ensuring a managed transition to a low-emissions economy and easing the impact on affected businesses, communities, and workers. There are 100,000 square kilometres of permits out there for exploration. That’s about the size of the North Island. Indeed, there are a number of exploration wells due to be drilled in the coming years, and one is currently being drilled. If they are successful, those permit holders will have the same rights and privileges that they do before this legislation comes into force.

I would like to take this opportunity to address some of the issues raised by submitters during the select committee process and highlight some of the changes subsequently made in the final form of the bill. The first of those was clause 4, the interpretation clause. The issue was raised about the definition of the “onshore Taranaki region”—in particular, that this area follows the political boundary of the Taranaki region rather than the geological boundary of the Taranaki sedimentary basin. I would like to make two points in response to that. The first is that the area in the bill catches all areas of current onshore petroleum production. The second is that the intention around allowing exploration to continue in onshore Taranaki is to support a transition, which includes the potential for new discoveries to make use of existing production and transmission infrastructure.

Clause 6A—the grant of a permit—was also something that received a great deal of attention from submitters, and I’d like to highlight one of the changes recommended by the Environment Committee. Clause 6A has been inserted into the bill, which would prevent the Minister from granting new permits outside of the onshore Taranaki region. It eliminates the scenario where an application is made inside the onshore Taranaki boundary, but a future Minister might, in considering where the petroleum resources are likely to be located, decide to grant a permit that extends beyond this boundary. This change reflects a belt and braces approach, and I support it and thank the select committee for their work on this issue.

Clause 8—restricted access to conservation land—was also an area in this bill that received some attention. A number of submitters raised concerns around the provisions that will apply to access to conservation land for new permits inside the onshore Taranaki region. Some considered that these provisions might decrease the protection from mining activities that applies to Egmont National Park or other high-value conservation land. This is not the case. The bill does not make it easier to obtain access to conservation land for activities associated with a petroleum permit; it will only make it more restrictive for some kinds of conservation land which do not already have a high level of restricted access. Egmont National Park itself is already excluded from any petroleum permitting.

The Environment Committee made a number of technical changes to the new clauses 22 and 23 in new Part 2 of schedule 1, to be inserted by the schedule. These changes clarify the Government’s policy position that the changes in the bill are only intended to apply to new petroleum permits and not to existing permits. The policy intention of the bill is to ensure that those with existing petroleum permits, subsequent permits to those existing permits, and applications relating to either, are unaffected by this bill. As such, new clause 23 was amended and new clauses 23A and 23B were inserted to make sure that that was made crystal clear. That is important, because this bill does preserve the rights and privileges of existing permit holders.

The passage of this bill today will be a proud day for New Zealand. It continues our long progressive history of leading on the world stage. New Zealand has shown time and time again through the years that it’s not afraid to make the hard decisions, to raise our sights, and to do what is right. This is what this bill does.

It helps to set us on a new path. It doesn’t say, “It’s too hard. Therefore, we should not try.” It’s a path towards a low-emissions economy, where future generations will have the chance of inheriting an environment that hasn’t been wrecked by the decisions that our generation refused to make. We are taking action right now to help move New Zealand’s economy in the right direction. The just transitions unit has been established within the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment to help prepare for a future that will look different from the world we live in today. We’ve already invested in the Taranaki region. The Provincial Growth Fund has already earmarked more than $21 million in funding for that region, including almost $1 million in support for developing hydrogen as a zero-emissions fuel and storage facility, as well as support for other clean-energy technology projects.

As our Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, has said, climate change is this generation’s nuclear-free moment—our chance to make a stand, draw a line in the sand, and lead the world once again. It’s our chance to raise our sights as a country, to chart a new course for our economy, and to do our bit to protect our planet. I commend this bill to the House. Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker.

JONATHAN YOUNG (National—New Plymouth): Well, I think we have heard there the driving impetus behind this bill: that we want to lead on the world stage. In fact, as I look at this bill and I look at the intent of this bill and its general principles, as I sum up the effects of this bill for Taranaki and New Zealand, and as I look at what the alternative approach would be that we would initiate, I see a huge, huge gap between these two sides of the House.

The intent of this bill is, in fact, quite varied. Frankly, it’s confusing. The commentary on the bill says that the bill is “one of several initiatives that seek to aid New Zealand’s transition to a low-carbon economy”. Well, I think that we would support that. That’s one of the guiding principles of this bill. The regulatory impact analysis’ opening statement says, “The Government has stated that it is committed to acting on climate change. It has said that it wants to show global leadership”, and the Minister has reiterated that this afternoon. Yesterday, recorded on the Hansard, the Minister also said that the underlying principle of this bill is that “we cannot afford an economic shock in this country.”, and she refers to making hard decisions.

Well, I doubt very much whether this Minister will have to pay a high price for her decision. The people of Taranaki will pay a high price for her decision, and I do find that those words do not give any comfort.

I believe that this bill will not achieve a transition to a low-carbon economy. When the Minister was asked for evidence, for research, she was unable to present it to public commentary. Wanting to show global leadership? Well, honestly, it’s hard to get one’s head around that—it really is—because I don’t see us being able to offer global leadership.

When I look at countries around the world, I would say Norway offers global leadership. They’re a country that is 100 percent renewable. In fact, they have such an excess of electricity, they send it into Europe. We have about six to eight weeks of storage in our lakes; they have three to four years. They have a trillion-dollar sovereign fund generated out of the hydrocarbon industry, which they are using to invest in education and development and innovation around renewable activities. They are investing into massive offshore wind farms. Yes, they are involved in the development of hydrogen, but they are doing it as one of the wealthiest countries in Europe. They have the highest level of drivers of electric vehicles, and they have been able to afford it because they have not made their country poorer by decisions like this.

When this Government considered taking their steps, they did not seek analytical advice or information around the cost of it. They did not seek environmental evidence. They did not seek any consultation with the industry. I think that if we were wanting to not create economic shocks in our nation, then going more slowly and being more considered, taking further advice, and getting analysis would be an important step to take. All of the advice and the analysis has come after the fact of the decision, and it’s an embarrassment of how process works.

I think that’s a damaging part of what’s happened here, because offshore investment and investors have looked at New Zealand and they have lost their confidence in us, not just in the hydrocarbon sector and not just those businesses that want to invest in that sector but IT businesses, people who want to come here to this country who have been shocked by the process, by the suddenness, and by the lack of consultation. So when it comes to a driving principle of this bill—which the Minister spoke of last night—of averting an economic shock in this country, I think that the process has created its own economic shock, and I think that’s a particular issue.

I struggle to see how New Zealand can show global leadership. I think my colleague Todd Muller has often said that the problem about what’s happening in this sphere is that we want to be first, fast, and famous. I don’t know whether this is a small-country syndrome, but I think that we should be fast followers. We should not be reckless leaders. I think that we ought to learn from countries that have innovation and R & D that is well ahead of us and adopt their discoveries, adopt their principles. Yes, we have got the ability to maximise our renewable resources, and I am not saying that we should not do that—we should—but what we are seeing here through this bill is a loss of revenue to the Crown, a loss of revenue and economic impact to a region, and potential for an unemployment increase.

Venture Taranaki said that there are 7,000 jobs at risk. No, it may not be today—although, I do note that today it has been announced that TAG Oil are exiting the country. I do know other companies that have closed down, and I do know of people who have lost their jobs, and I know people who have sought to get finance for house purchases and have been pushed back. So to say that the effect of this is going to be in 20 or 30 or 40 years’ time is not true. I think that if the Government had taken their time and consulted, had said, “This is where we want to go. We want to aim for a low-carbon future.”, you know, we would have supported that. But let’s do it in a way that doesn’t create harm but actually becomes part of a transition that is well planned. I think that we are missing that.

I want to talk about—just in the few minutes left—Taranaki being a focus of this bill, because it is. The bill focuses on the onshore Taranaki region as the only area available now for block offers. The counterfactual is that this now excludes any new permits anywhere else. So what it does is it denies opportunities for regions that have potential, such as Northland, such as the East Coast. There’s a very good reason why Taranaki has the highest average wage of any region in the country: it is because of this industry. It is because there is investment coming in. Now, for the Minister of Energy and Resources to say, “Don’t worry, that will continue on.”—I know that when companies come to invest in New Zealand, they want to look more broadly than just in one specific region, because they certainly want to look more broadly across the whole country. That has now been denied.

When we’ve lost TAG Oil for New Zealand, we have got to understand that some of the rationale—well, in fact, maybe, if not all the rationale—has been because of the initiative and the speed and haste with which this Government has driven this bill through. If I could quote Max Murray, he said the Government’s April announcement of restrictions on future exploration activity would discourage foreign investment. TAG Oil is a company that comes from Canada. He said the policy created uncertainty for overseas jobs. I know they apply. They sought to get senior managers into positions in New Zealand, and the people that they approached said, “We don’t know how long our jobs will last in your country.”, and they declined the offer. So they are some of the issues that are there.

We know that New Zealand Oil and Gas, an excellent company, are finding it particularly challenging to find joint-venture partners for their work in offshore Canterbury—a prospect, if it was successful, that would create 3,000 jobs in the South Island. This bill has created uncertainty. The Government has said that they’ve wanted to create certainty. They’ve created uncertainty—certainly for the short term, certainly for the medium term—and I think it’s tragic.

Well, the alternative we offer—let me first say that we will reverse the Government’s decision to ban new offshore explorations. We believe it is poorly planned. It will not achieve emission reductions but will potentially increase them. Just a final couple of comments: we will consult with the sector to see a planned, effective, and smooth reduction of emissions to agreed levels that is technology-led and, I believe, evidence-based and scientifically based. We would want to make a decision and bring leadership in such a way that the New Zealand people would have confidence. Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker.

Dr DEBORAH RUSSELL (Labour—New Lynn): Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. Just as I begin my remarks on this third stage of the bill, may I thank the members of my select committee, the Environment Committee, who worked very hard to hear from all the submitters who wanted to be heard. I appreciate the effort they made to do that.

I want to start by quoting something that my colleague Clare Curran said in the House the other day. She said, “If not now, when? If not us, who?” I submit it does need to be us. Over on the other side of the House, we have heard that the other side supports moving to a low-carbon economy. But if not this, what? It doesn’t seem that there is any plan other than being what is called a “fast follower”. But it turns out, if you listen to what speakers on the other side of the House, or what the one speaker so far, Jonathan Young, has said, they’ve said that they would reverse this policy—they would reverse this policy. So where is the commitment to at least making a start towards a low-carbon economy? I submit that there are fine words on the other side of the House but no action. This bill, the Crown Minerals (Petroleum) Amendment Bill, represents a start—a start that is being made by this transformational Government to get under way with the work of mitigating climate change.

I wish to continue with some of the things that have been said already. If I may start with something that Mr Young referred to in the Minister of Energy and Resources’ speech the other day about not wanting an economic shock—Mr Young has submitted, I guess, that this represents an economic shock to New Zealand. That is an odd claim, I submit. It’s a very odd claim. We remember the 1980s and 1990s and the economic shock that was administered to New Zealand at that stage, and remembering that economic shock, on this side of the House, we have opted for a slow start. We want to get there. But the slow start—we’re not shutting down oil exploration; we are not shutting down the industry. All that we are saying is that we will not open up further areas of exploration. The existing areas remain. The existing 100,000 kilometres of offshore exploration areas remain. All that is happening is that oil companies or fossil fuel companies may not ask for new areas to be opened up for exploration. This is, in fact, a very slow start.

I guess one of the things that came through in many of the submissions to this bill was that many people want it to be much, much faster. What they wanted was for all existing permits to be shut down straight away. We have chosen not to do that, because we know that the industry needs time to plan, and that’s what we have given them—plenty of time to plan, plenty of time to explore that 100,000 kilometres of offshore area that is still available. So we are taking it slowly.

Mr Young talked of the impact on Taranaki and the worry about jobs there. But there’s some interesting news out of Taranaki just today. The unemployment rate in Taranaki just today is 4 percent, only 0.1 percent above the national average. That’s a significant drop since this announcement was made, from 5.3 percent down to 4 percent—since the announcement to stop oil and gas exploration was made. There was a peak unemployment rate of 6.8 percent in Taranaki, but it is now down to 4 percent, even with this announcement.

In the quarter ending September 2018—the quarter since this announcement was made—the workforce has grown, with 2,300 jobs added in Taranaki despite this announcement. And the underutilisation rate in Taranaki has dropped from 14.4 percent down to 12 percent since this announcement was made. We’ve heard a lot of scaremongering from the other side of the House, saying that Taranaki would never survive, that it was a terrible shock, and that the region was reeling. The figures—the figures—on employment out today show that that is simply not the case. It is simply not the case.

Mr Young talked of investors having lost confidence in New Zealand. That’s simply not the case, either. There are investors queuing up to get involved in the KiwiBuild projects, investors queuing up to get involved in the infrastructure projects, and even as TAG Energy is leaving, it is being replaced by Tamarind, who seem to have no fear about coming into New Zealand.

So I suggest that, in fact, there has been no shock to business confidence. There was talk of a loss of revenue to the Crown, and wild figures have been bandied about in various statements. In fact, it has been said that our officials said there might be a loss of up to $7 billion. I submit that those figures have in fact perhaps been miscalculated. I offer you the submission from Sam Warburton, a Socratic gadfly if ever I met one, but he is someone whose numbers are relied on, and he says, “Actually, if you do the calculations correctly, we’re talking something more like about, oh—maybe about $1.8 billion.” He says that’s because the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment have used a super-low risk-free rate, and perhaps if you’d used a higher and more reliable discount rate then the figures would have been better.

Let me offer you Mr Warburton’s submission. In paragraph 39 he says: “According to the RIS, the oil industry does the exploration, then all the labour and capital involved in drilling”—so the oil industry is doing all the work—“[and then] takes home only 20% of the benefit with the Crown 80%.” You’d think the oil industry would be up in arms if that was really the case, but actually, they seem to still want to be here. Mr Warburton’s analysis is compelling and interesting.

May I also submit that what was compelling was the weight of submissions: over 7,000 submissions, of which 86 percent supported ceasing new offshore exploration—86 percent in favour of the bill. And even if we take out the form submissions, the submissions that were facilitated by Forest & Bird and by Greenpeace, we are left with 2:1 support in favour of this bill. That is the weight of the submissions and that was from people all over the country, including people from Taranaki. What we had from the oil and gas industry was that it was pleased to allow fossil fuel exploitation to continue, pleased to allow more carbon-heavy fuels to be burnt, and pleased to allow global warming to continue because it suits the bottom line.

I wish to refer to submissions that I have already referred to once, but I want to go back to them. From Richard Middleton is a submission that I picked out because it quotes Adam Smith—one of my favourites. He says, quoting from Adam Smith from book one of The Wealth of Nations, published in 1776, that any proposal from business “ought always to be listened to with great precaution, and ought never to be adopted till after having been long and carefully examined, not only with the most scrupulous, but with the most suspicious attention.” He goes on in this submission, which I have not quoted previously, to say, “The task before the governments of the world is not to facilitate economic growth which we now know depends on cheap and abundant energy supplies, but to prevent the worst problems of it, and to establish an economy in which more modest lifestyles ensure our children have a future.” That is what Richard Middleton advised us.

Abbie Jury advised us to walk away from the oil and gas industry which pollutes her own home in Taranaki, and Sam Netherclift, a young person who submitted to the bill—one of the many thousands of people—said something very simple indeed. He said, “I am 18 and I think it is very unfair that my generation is inheriting a world affected by climate change because of older generations.” It is time for us to start. It is time for us to take action. This is a first step, and I commend this bill to the House.

TODD MULLER (National—Bay of Plenty): Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. Governments are defined by the legislation they put forth. When you listen to the speakers on the Government side, they seek to convince New Zealand and this House that this is legislation that is leadership personified. This legislation is shambolic and it’s sanctimonious and it’s shabby, and it talks to the incompetence, in my view, that sits at the core of this Government, on this issue in particular.

Let’s step through this process. Was this commitment referenced by the Prime Minister in the Speech from the Throne? No—no specific reference at all. Was the oil and gas industry assuming it had another block offer, as it had been signalled under that Speech from the Throne? Yes. Did the Prime Minister, without any warning, stand up and say to students of Victoria University, “We’re with you. This is a global issue. There is to be no more oil in the medium to long term in the world and, indeed, in this country. Therefore, we’re banning exploration”? Yes. Without any reference or any consultation, no Cabinet paper, no assessment of the costs to the New Zealand economy and to the Taranaki economy—nothing. Then hop on a plane and then stand beside Macron and Trudeau—who, by the way, is quite comfortable, it seems, to expand their oil and gas reserves to serve the North American market.

This is a shambolic piece of legislation and it deserves New Zealand’s rejection. Let’s just step through, because after they got to that point, they then realised that, actually, they needed to have legislation. So perhaps that was a time to reflect and ask New Zealand to come on the journey. Oh no. “We’re gonna run a shortened process. We’re going to give people two to three weeks to be able to submit. We’re going to run a two-week submission process. We’re going to give individuals five minutes to talk on something that supposedly is the most substantive issue of our time.” But the opportunity for people to actually reflect on what it means was, in my view, seriously truncated and taken away.

It’s extraordinary, the process that this Government has followed—their own advice, which they skim over. In fact, what the Government has done this afternoon is reference individual submitters who echo their own perspectives. Their own officials that say the data doesn’t support this, the cost on the New Zealand economy is anywhere between $7 billion and $23 billion dollars, it doesn’t deliver against your climate change objectives—they don’t give voice to that. Their own officials’ advice has been discarded because of their own desires to be able to stand on a certain stage and pitch New Zealand’s leadership in climate change through the lens of ending oil and gas, despite the fact that, as a country, we still use it, and despite the fact that it’s not going to have any impact on our own internal consumption. They frame this up through the lens of climate change leadership.

This is not climate change leadership—this is not climate change leadership. There is significant demand for gas, in particular, as a transitional fuel around the world—significant demand. We’ve traversed this conversation, but they are not interested in engaging in it, because it is all symbols, it is all rhetoric. The opportunity exists for New Zealand to participate in that global transition, for developing countries to move from coal to gas—and no doubt renewables is part of the mix—but they do not want New Zealand and our economy to participate in that opportunity. It is a disgrace and one that this party entirely rejects. It does not have the coherence that is needed for a policy of this substance. Because, as we have discussed before, this is not theoretical; it is impacting regions and will continue to, particularly in a Taranaki context, over the medium term.

Can I deal with this view that is expressed consistently, that somehow we have to get in front of the global move away from oil and gas and begin now because we don’t want a shock like New Zealand had in the 1980s. In the 1980s, when we went through that structural reform, there was no consultation. There was no reflection of how we actually can do this at a pace that works for New Zealand. There was none of that. It just happened. And they have done exactly the same thing. They did not speak to the people of Taranaki—they did not speak to them. This was not in your Speech from the Throne, Government members.

The Government did not signal this as a priority. The Government did not campaign on it. The Prime Minister did not say it was going to be a priority. But here we are, because of the backroom machinations between the Green Party and the Labour Party to get a certain waka-jumping bill passed between the Labour Party and the New Zealand First Party. With respect, when you are dealing with the economic fortunes of 4.5 million people, you need to be more motivated than nice slogans and backroom deals with New Zealand First and the Green Party. This is the lack of authority of this Government exposed for all time. The opportunity for New Zealanders to be truly consulted about what is being discussed has been taken off the table. This view that, somehow, because existing permits have been protected, that means that normal transition resumes proves two things, actually: that, depending on who the audience is, the Government will say, “Look, we see no future for oil and gas. We are the party that hears the clamour to ban oil and gas, and we will lead.” Then, in another audience, they’ll say, “But don’t worry. We’re still going to extract domestically for the next 30 or 40 years.” You can’t be right on both of them. It doesn’t work like that—it does not work like that.

Tamati Coffey: I raise a point of order, Madam Speaker. Can I just seek your clarification, Madam Deputy Speaker? I’ve been in the House before when you’ve noted that stray, random folders sitting on desks by themselves aren’t allowed. Can you just confirm—is that a ruling?

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Yes, that is a ruling. I just warn the member that it’s not one that you would generally expect to interrupt a speech.

TODD MULLER: Well, there you go. You have a conversation around the future of New Zealand’s economic interests, and Tamati Coffey gets up and says, “Oh, by the way, there’s nobody behind a blue box.” I mean, if anything describes that disgrace of a Government—I mean, that is absolutely pathetic—absolutely pathetic. So, Taranaki, as you watch this debate unfold, be assured that the Government members have got their eyes on the prize. They want to know that there’s a National Party person behind a blue box. I mean, I ask you, if that’s the level of your intellectual rigor, I can’t wait till 2020—you’ll all be gone.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Actually, it’s not my rigor.

TODD MULLER: I understand, Madam Deputy Speaker. I understand. I’m sure. Now, with respect to this view that, somehow, domestically we have all this opportunity in front of us, submitter after submitter who actually deploys their capital—there’s a bit of interest on the Government side for this, because they don’t really connect with companies that actually deploy capital and understand risk—turned up to the submission process and made it very clear that there was a significant impact already, in terms of their lack of appetite to pursue those opportunities. Because of the ridiculous and, in our view, unjustifiable snap decision that this Government made, now reinforced by this particular legislation, the sovereign risk is significant. As those submitters unpacked why they were going to make different capital decisions over the short and medium term, what was absolutely clear was that on the Government side they didn’t even understand what was being discussed. They didn’t understand how the oil and gas sector works. They didn’t understand the long-term capital signals that are required and the regulatory certainty. They didn’t understand that. They didn’t understand what was at stake.

That is what is hugely disappointing from our side: that as we’ve gone through this process, New Zealanders’ views were not tested, regardless of what they said. This was not a campaign issue. This was not debated by New Zealand or reflected on by New Zealand; we weren’t told. This was not in a campaign. This was not a Speech from the Throne. This came out of the blue. There was no consultation. There was no connection with those who will be affected. A significant loss of economic opportunity is taken off the table, and, worse than that, from a climate perspective, we have allowed this debate to be captured by those who talk in symbols and rhetoric and waving flags of ending big oil, as opposed to the sensible, evidence-based, slow transition that needs to happen in this economy in a way that actually protects jobs and protects people’s opportunity to contribute and actually sustains New Zealand. This is a huge fail that will come back to haunt this Government.

FLETCHER TABUTEAU (Deputy Leader—NZ First): Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. First, I’d like the opportunity to address some of the comments made by the Opposition there. I suppose, first of all, I’d like to congratulate Mr Young and Mr Muller on their impassioned contributions. They’ve kind of decided where they want to position the National Party, and they’ve stuck to their guns—

Chris Bishop: Yeah, on the side of jobs and growth.

FLETCHER TABUTEAU: —and they’ve sent a message to the country. To Mr Bishop—who is doing his usual thing, but anyway—to the National Party, and to the country, I would like to say to the country, please don’t listen to those members of Parliament opposite. Please don’t hear the words that they are saying, because they are not what this Government is trying to achieve. This is not the future of New Zealand, and I hope now to outline what the future of New Zealand looks like.

I think Mr Muller spoke about legislation defining a Government. Well, I stand up on behalf of New Zealand First, in this coalition with the Labour Party, supported by the Greens, to say I am happy to be defined by this legislation, because what we are doing—and there are so many things that need to be addressed from the other side. It kind of piles on top of one another, so forgive me if I jump around. In fact, Mr Muller himself said we were “banning exploration now”. Those were the words he used in his contribution to the House, despite the very fact that every Minister and every member on this side of the House—and the reality of the legislation is that this is that line in the sand which I spoke about in the last contribution, about a transition. It is a transition that 7,000 submitters in the Environment Committee said to this Government, “Move in that direction.”

It is a transition where I personally engaged with New Zealand Oil and Gas prior to the announcement to talk to them and ask them—[Interruption] Are you guys all right over there? What they did was—

Chris Bishop: I should ask you the same question.

FLETCHER TABUTEAU: Well, actually, as I said, there’s so many wrongs being, kind of—[Interruption]

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Can we just focus on the bill in front of the House?

FLETCHER TABUTEAU: Well, it’s hard with all the distractions. Perhaps if you keep those guys in line, Madam Deputy Speaker. Sorry.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: At their risk. It’s your speech.

FLETCHER TABUTEAU: Yes. My apologies, Madam Deputy Speaker. Anyway—

Chris Bishop: Just try and make a speech. Make a point.

FLETCHER TABUTEAU: Yeah, good advice. Thanks, mate. They spoke of being fast followers. What I want to say is that New Zealand isn’t trying to keep up with Europe; we can’t keep up with Europe. They’re so far ahead of the curb, in terms of the transition to renewable energies.

Mr Young spoke about employment in Taranaki, and yet we had statistics enunciated in the House from one of our previous speakers: in this quarter, about two thousand more people being employed, unemployment decreasing, employment increasing, and the region itself going from 5.3 percent, I think it was, to 4 percent unemployment. That is actually what’s happening here. We are a Government that has deployed the just transitions programme. We are working incredibly hard to make sure that we transition forward in this renewable energy space. Can I actually take this opportunity to shout out to the local council there. They understand how hard this is right now for their town, and we all do, right? But it’s a 30-year transition. They are working with this Government because they know that this is the way forward. I commend them for that, because what they’re being told by those members opposite—and they certainly have a voice in that district, so, by goodness, it’s frustrating sometimes to hear what’s repeated back to us. It is a transition where we are working through this legislation on making sure that it is fair and just over time.

In fact, I think the Minister Megan Woods spoke of 10, 20, or 30 years, and I think in this House, actually, if the petroleum companies come to us and talk about a good reason to extend their permits, I think we’re talking about the opportunity to extend that even further. This is the opportunity now for New Zealand to move on. But to allay the fears of those members opposite, I want to point out the reality that what we have is an opportunity for those oil companies to drill now. I wrote down the numbers for the contribution last week: 20 wells going down now.

Jonathan Young: Yeah, I know. Approved by us.

FLETCHER TABUTEAU: And then 31 on the books confirmed going down now. He says approved by him—

Jonathan Young: Well, it’s the previous Government work.

FLETCHER TABUTEAU: —and yet—

Hon Dr Megan Woods: No, he was never a Minister.

FLETCHER TABUTEAU: No, no—not. But they continue, Mr Young—they continue.

Jonathan Young: Business as usual.

FLETCHER TABUTEAU: Yeah, thank you. There, he said it himself: “Business as usual”. What an insightful observation from the member opposite.

I spoke in my previous contribution about how exciting the transition to these renewable energies is. It was only last week that I met with a big transport company who were talking about hydrogen now—now. Hydrogen, right now. They are going to generate it themselves. They’re going to deploy it within their own fleet, and they’re going to do it now. That’s the commitment that they are making. I tell you what—to have that conversation firsthand was incredible. It was an opportunity. The Minister has just returned from Japan, engaging with Ministers and big business in Japan about the transition into hydrogen. She’s also been speaking about the construction of wind farms, and I acknowledge the construction this year, Minister, of the wind farm being built now.

Chris Bishop: Well, it’s not her call.

FLETCHER TABUTEAU: So—no. I acknowledge the construction. Thanks, Mr Bishop. So we are transitioning now. It’s an exciting time. So, for me, Madam Deputy Speaker, it is a pleasure to stand and commend this legislation to the House. Thank you very much.

BARBARA KURIGER (National—Taranaki - King Country): It’s a shame that the last speaker could not fulfil a 10-minute slot to allay the fears—and we on this side of the House, as well as those people from the Taranaki industry who came to Wellington to submit, have not heard anything that will allay the fears of what is going on with this bill. We heard the words “Business as usual” come up. There’s a real lack of concentration if you think that this is going to be business as usual, long term. This is short-term business that’s going on. There is nothing long term about this.

I have to ask—Deborah Russell, when that member got up to speak, she said, “If not now, when?” Well, I would say when we have a real transition, and right now we don’t have a real transition. She said, “If not us, then who?” Well, the industry is more than capable of developing a transition if they are given enough time to do so.

I would like those speakers in the Government who have speeches left to come to tell us: where are the renewable resources? All we’ve heard in question time today from the Minister, and we’ve heard it again this afternoon—yes, there’s a wind farm which is going to be developed in Waverley. Well, wow! That wind farm is great in and of itself, but it is not going to keep the lights on for very long if that is the only thing that the Minister can point to in terms of a long-term transition renewable source of energy. So we would like to know from the Minister: when will there be enough alternative energy sources to cover energy security for New Zealand, and who is going to develop this?

This is not a proud day for New Zealand. It is idealism, and idealism comes with consequences. The consequences of doing this with no plan are absolutely going to come back and bite this country in the future. This lack of plan came together from a Government who is incompetent, with no plan, they had no consultation, and the submission process left much, much, much to be desired.

It denies opportunities for other regions in New Zealand, but the disappointing thing was that Jonathan Young, myself, and others worked hard to try and ask the select committee to bring the select committee process to Taranaki so that people in Taranaki could come along and have a listen, and even that was denied. So, you know, we’ve heard members get up and make bold statements about blue boxes this afternoon and try to distract from the whole conversation. Well, actually, it would be nice if—actually, they’re not going to see any other coloured boxes when they come from Taranaki, because there are none there, because no one on the Government side of the House is brave enough to come to Taranaki, other than Andrew Little, who turned up at the time of the announcement and said that there was going to be a consultation, which actually turned out not to be the case. When the Prime Minister and the Minister came, there were no open meetings. It was all behind closed doors because they didn’t want to have conversations with the public.

We support greater coordination across Government to address climate change. We have no argument about this. We just have not seen any arguments in any of this debate that go to show that climate change will be improved globally in any way, shape, or form from this decision. In fact, we’re hearing a lot of debate and a lot of good discussion points that tell us that this is probably going to have the opposite effect.

So this bill sat in the Environment Committee as a pretence that this bill has got something to do with affecting climate change and having some positive effect on the environment. Deborah Russell herself has accused National of wanting the earth to burn. It’s all been a bit dramatic, and, actually, we’re finding out from all our sources that this is probably unlikely to have any positive effect on climate change at all.

We don’t dispute, and we support, on this side of the House, having greater investment in research and development—no argument there. But who’s going to do the research and development? The people who are best placed to do the research and development are the energy industry companies themselves. No one understands energy better than the energy companies. No one has a greater interest in securing their future by finding alternative sources, because they know—they don’t need this Government to come along and tell them that the world is changing and we need to move to some more renewable sources. They know that. They are working through transition processes in their own right, and they are using the most effective fuels, such as gas, to work through this issue to allay us having to use more products such as coal or more unsustainable products. They will be working under their own steam to provide a transition to the future. They don’t need to be forced into this situation. So there’s no argument about that.

But we can be all good and virtuous here, and we can make big announcements on the world stage, as the Prime Minister did—flying on jet fuel to make her announcement. There’ll be other countries now that will be rubbing their hands together because—guess what? There are signals up that say New Zealand’s closed for business. So why would we close our own economy down at the risk of having no improvement in climate change at all? It just seems like a pretty ridiculous thing to do.

Let’s think about it for a moment. We know that from the extractive industries, particularly from the industries that we’re discussing today—a lot of the components that we use to make up electric cars come from this industry. We know that a large proportion of those components that are used to make up electric cars come from the extractive industry. So I don’t see a long-term future in terms of these idealistic goals that this Government’s putting in place. Yes, we’re all going to be driving around in electric cars. Well, guess what? If our own extractive industries are ruined in this country, someone else’s extractive industries will provide those electric cars, in due time and with the right incentive. But then how are we going to run those cars? If we go to a completely electric fleet of cars, we’re going to need 22 more Clyde Dams, I think it is, Jonathan Young. It’s the discussion around driving more energy or the equivalent. So one wind farm in Waverley, as a plan from this Government to ruin these industries, is not going to cut the mustard.

Hon Member: They have no plan.

BARBARA KURIGER: There’s absolutely no plan. I was really disappointed with the whole select committee process. The times were cut so short. There were people coming in there, really concerned about their jobs, who were refused to get the last sentence out in their five-minute submission. We spent two minutes having a debate one day about whether a submitter who was left off the order could have had an extra five-minute presentation to make his own submission. This is poor process, this is bad legislation, and this is not going to achieve anything that this current Government thinks it’s going to.

So when this National Party caucus on this side of the House is back in Government, we will reverse this Government’s decision. We will be looking to build linkages with significant countries, because we have a lot of intellectual property with our oil industries in this country. We will be looking at putting proper research and development in advanced fuels, in energy resources, and in a process that is going to make sure that this country stays in a viable state. With the help of our knowledgable climate change spokesperson, Todd Muller, we will put the right incentives in place for climate change to make sure that we do get a proper answer. We will be working to make sure that the lights stay on in this country, because, so far, from the Minister we are getting no-end answers, no answers at all about energy security in this country. It is a bad day for Taranaki. It is a bad day for New Zealand. It is a bad decision, and on this side of the House we will never support this piece of legislation. Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker.

Hon JAMES SHAW (Minister for Climate Change): Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I’d like to start my contribution on the Crown Minerals (Petroleum) Amendment Bill by acknowledging the previous speaker, Barbara Kuriger MP, and her colleague in the Taranaki region Mr Young, who I think have advocated strongly and well for their local constituencies and their constituents, and the industries that are represented there.

So I’d like to start in that spirit, responding to a question that Ms Kuriger raised about what is the future of the energy system. I think that there are a number of things that have been conflated here. One is the present and the other is the future—those two things have been conflated. So right now there is a problem, and part of it is due to the fact that there is gas infrastructure that is damaged, and so supply is not getting through. Now, what that demonstrates, actually, is that gas infrastructure isn’t always resilient, so the answer isn’t necessarily more gas infrastructure to solve a problem of the existing infrastructure.

Ms Kuriger is absolutely correct that one new wind farm will not be able to solve our energy requirements in the year 2050. That’s right. Over the course of the next 30 years we need to build a lot more generation, as we have in the last 30 years and the 30 years before that and, actually, in the 30 years before that. Something that we tend to do when there is a requirement for more generation is we build more generation. So the fact that there is only one new wind farm announced this year is absolutely no indicator that there will be no new generation for the next 30 years. There will be plenty of new generation. Yes, as we simplify our fuel supplies towards electricity and away from fossil fuels, that will mean a lot more electricity generation is required. There are vast amounts of new energy and new investment going into this field right now.

If we were to transition our car fleet to electric vehicles—the easiest way to solve that problem is through rooftop solar and battery, the price of which is coming down enormously. So there won’t be any additional drain on the grid, because you’ll be actually generating your electricity at the point of use, which is at your carport or on your garage at home.

We do have an issue in this country, due to the unique sort of pattern that we have where we have this winter dip. It’s a very valid question: what happens during that three-month winter period? A battery isn’t going to keep us going for the three-month period. You don’t have to use fossil fuels to cover that dip. I was at an energy conference in Wellington the other day, which Mr Young was also at. One of the options that was being put around there was the idea that, actually, what you do is you massively overbuild wind—right—so that you’ve always got that baseload, even in the winter. Then you use the spare capacity in the other nine months of the year to create hydrogen, which you then export to Japan and other countries that are making a major play in hydrogen, and you turn energy into an export market in New Zealand for the first time.

At the moment we import something like $5.5 billion of fossil fuels to cover our energy needs—we import that—and that is almost exactly the same as our balance of payments deficit. We could turn that around. We could actually turn energy into an exporter, reverse out our balance of payments deficit, and actually turn energy into one of the great wealth creators for this country, entirely from renewables.

The next question that was raised was: what about the idea of gas as a transition fuel? I have to say, at the energy conference—

DEPUTY SPEAKER: I’m sorry, to the member, but we are actually speaking to a particular piece of legislation. Just because issues are raised, we’re still focused on the third reading of this bill. So if the member would then relate all that back to the bill in front of us, that would be extremely helpful.

Hon JAMES SHAW: Certainly, Madam Deputy Speaker. So one of the questions that was raised in the debate prior to me taking the floor was the question: will this bill prevent gas from being used as a transition fuel? So the question is: what does that transition look like?

One of the points that we have made a number of times—so many times, I’ve lost count—is that we actually, over the course of the next 30 years, still have a huge amount of exploration and extraction of fossil fuels in this country. There are 100,000 square kilometres of existing permits that are being explored. Onshore exploration is still open. If any of the existing exploration permits come up with a find, then those can turn into new extraction, which is in addition to the current extraction, and that could go out for decades—decades and decades, well beyond 2050, and well beyond, I might say, when the world will be wanting it.

So when the National Party says that we need to keep exploring on the basis that we need to use this as a transition fuel—if you think about it as a transition, a transition has an end point. And my question to the National Party is: when were you planning to stop exploring and extracting fossil fuels? What year did you have in mind for when we were going to stop that?

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Actually, first of all, you’re using “you” and you’re bringing the Speaker into the debate. And, second of all, I refer you to Speakers’ rulings 121/6 and 121/7. The third reading is the summary of the bill. We are summarising the bill on the floor of the House—not what another party might do in place of that, but the bill on the floor of the House. I’ve given you six minutes and I really would like you to discuss the third reading of the bill in front of the House.

Hon JAMES SHAW: Certainly, Madam Deputy Speaker. My point about gas as a transition—

DEPUTY SPEAKER: No, don’t argue with me. Would you please comply with what I’m asking of you.

Hon JAMES SHAW: My point about gas as a transition fuel is that this bill actually starts the transition. It actually says, “We need to make that transition.” It actually gives an incentive to companies to start doing things other than what they were doing last year.

I have to say, at the energy conference over the course of the last few days, it was extraordinary the number of proposals that were floating around for liquid biofuels, for new hydrogen exploration, for a number of different ways that we can solve this problem—the point being that all of those things can come on stream over the course of the next decade or two while we phase out the use of fossil fuels, which is the whole point of this bill.

I have to say, one of the other criticisms that’s been levelled at this bill is the idea that New Zealand should be a fast follower rather than a leader. I have to say that we are a fast follower. France went first, and they, actually, have gone further than New Zealand. We are following them, fairly quickly, so we are by definition a fast follower. France’s version of this legislation is not just to phase out exploration but also to phase out extraction by the year 2040. We’ve actually put no end date on when extraction would finish. What we’re saying is that we need to start this transition simply by not looking for more fuel.

One of the other criticisms that’s been levelled at this bill is the idea that it somehow does nothing about climate change. The question has been asked a number of times: do you know how much this is going to change global temperatures? I can tell you this: 100 percent of the fossil fuels that you do not burn will not add to global warming, and 100 percent of the fossil fuels that you do burn will add to global warming. That is the nature of fossil fuels.

The recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report into where the world was at in relation to our target of holding global warming to 1.5 degrees said that we literally have 10 years to turn this around, and the fastest thing that we need to bring down is fossil fuel use. That is what we have to do in the next 10 years. That is a shorter time frame than what this bill envisages. You cannot burn something like 80 percent of the world’s existing reserves of fossil fuels and remain anywhere close to within the temperature goal that we have set of between 1.5 degrees and 2 degrees of global warming. The idea that you want to supplement those existing reserves by going and looking for new reserves when you cannot burn all of the existing reserves—and we know that. It is absurd to actually consider that you would say, “Actually, it’s a good idea to go and add to those reserves, on the off chance.”

I have to say, some of the submissions talked a lot about the risk of stranded assets. I’m really worried about the risk of stranded assets, because we know that we cannot burn our existing reserves and remain under 1.5 degrees to 2 degrees of global warming. We cannot. What that means is that those assets are already stranded, and the idea of adding to that asset base, contributing to it, and saying we’re going to expand the pool of stranded assets—that is the most economically absurd idea and argument that I’ve yet heard.

So I have to say that I understand the concerns that have been well represented—

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

ERICA STANFORD (National—East Coast Bays): This Government’s number one environmental announcement to date is a complete sham. This bill is a complete sham. Jacinda Ardern’s nuclear-free moment is “greenwashing” at its absolute worst.

James Shaw comes up here today and tells us that 100 percent of what you don’t burn doesn’t create emissions, and it all sounds very good, but the problem is we’re not dealing with demand, and he knows it very well. All we are doing is cutting supply. We’re doing nothing to stop demand. He knows that. We will be burning exactly the same amount; it just won’t be produced by us. It’ll be produced by someone overseas with a far worse environmental record. We will be shipping it here, creating more emissions, and doing nothing. That is why this bill is complete and utter “greenwashing”.

As much as members opposite want to paint us as some kind of ecoterrorists for opposing this bill, they know full well there is not a single shred of evidence that has been produced to date to show that global emissions will be reduced by this bill. I sat on the Environment Committee, and there was not a single report that we were presented with that showed a reduction in global emissions—not a single one. In fact, the Government’s own eventual advice showed that the intent of the bill, to reduce global emissions, would actually not be the case. And yet here we are at third reading.

The Prime Minister, in her overwhelming desire to be seen as some kind of eco - warrior princess on the world stage, announced this policy to a bunch of university students in Wellington—we know, without any scientific advice or reports and without a cost-benefit analysis. She didn’t consult with the region, with industry, or with experts. She didn’t go there. There wasn’t a single working group, which we know they love so very much because there are 170 of them.

Matt King: 80.

ERICA STANFORD: 180. Oh my gosh! There have been 10 more since I wrote this speech. Education, Justice: millions of dollars spent, fancy croissants; here, absolutely nothing. All we have is puffery. Virtue signalling—“If not us, who?”! “If not now, when?”!—for goodness’ sake!

This is absolute “greenwashing”, and it sets a terrifying precedent. At the whim of our “great leader”, in her quest to improve her image and nothing more, here we have thousands of high-paying jobs at risk, halted investment, and an entire region at risk of ruin, throwing away anywhere from $9 billion to $23 billion dollars of revenue. On the advice that we now have from their own officials, we will be increasing global emissions rather than reducing them, which was the whole intent of the bill.

The Prime Minister sure is putting that communications degree to good use. Communicating about the environment—she’s great at it; really good. But when it comes to actually acting to protect our environment, it’s where she fails miserably, and this bill is proof of that.

And the Greens are the worst kind of accomplices—the worst kind. They bellowed and they rode that high moral horse in Opposition, objecting at every possible opportunity about process and the erosion of democracy when the legislative process was truncated.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): Order! Sorry. You’ve done about four minutes with general principles. You actually should be talking to the principles of the bill as they were returned by the committee of the whole House.

ERICA STANFORD: Thank you for your wise guidance, Madam Assistant Speaker.

The fact is that the entire world, including countries like Norway that the Greens like to hold up as leaders in the green space, know well that natural gas, in the transition that this bill talks about, is a great transition fuel to move us along the energy continuum from coal—filthy coal—at one end, to renewables like hydro, solar, and wind at the other. Natural gas will reduce our reliance on coal. It will allow us to rely on a fuel that has half of the emissions of coal while we build renewable energy and while we wait for that technology to deliver us these new energy solutions, because, without gas, when the sun ain’t shining, when the lakes are low like they are now, and when the wind ain’t blowing, under this bill, we will be burning more coal.

We heard from David Seymour in question time yesterday about Genesis ordering four shipments of coal from Indonesia—120,000 tonnes of coal to be delivered between December and February. We know that we don’t have energy security with renewables alone, and this bill puts at further risk our increase of creating more emissions, because this bill will make us burn more coal.

If this Government were actually concerned about the environment and reducing emissions in their nuclear-free moment, we’d be asking them some questions. Why aren’t we dealing with coal in this bill—the dirtiest and worst form on the transition continuum? We haven’t heard a peep from them about coal. Why isn’t coal included in this bill? Why are we concentrating on gas? That’s got half the emissions of coal. Why aren’t they dealing with coal?

And, secondly, why are they not dealing with demand? There’s nothing in the bill as reported back to deal with demand. As I said earlier about James Shaw’s contribution, logic tells us that simply stopping a fuel source but not changing the behaviour will mean only one thing. We don’t change any of our emissions. We import more oil and gas from countries with far lower environmental standards; we ship it here. All this bill is going to mean is an uptick of fuel tankers into Marsden Point. And hey, for all we know, maybe that was the deal that was done with New Zealand First to increase economic activity up in Northland.

Carbon leakage is a serious question that we have asked so many times at select committee and in this House. All it is is a transfer of emissions from one country with far lower environmental standards. This Government are not willing to look at things in this bill like vehicle efficiency. They’ve done nothing about the increase of electric vehicles or infrastructure in the bill. Of our emissions, 49 percent come from vehicles, and this Government should be focused on fixing the demand problem. Cutting off New Zealand’s supply in this bill—cutting off supply—will only increase, as I said, the number of tankers coming into Marsden Point. So what this Government are doing is saying they’re not going to fix consumption, they’re not going to worry about New Zealanders’ use of oil and gas, they’re just going to cut off the supply, and that’s what this bill does. It just transfers the importing of those fuels into New Zealand.

One of the worst things about this bill was the process, and it started with Megan Woods at the conference earlier this year, where she indicated to the parties who were at the conference that she would be consulting with the industry, that she would be consulting with the region, and that she would go the greatest lengths to make sure that happened—and they believed her.

A month later, we had the announcement and everybody was taken by surprise. Many people complained about the fact that, in coming up with this bill, the industry and the region weren’t consulted. So not only were they not consulted before they made a decision but they weren’t consulted before this bill was brought to the House.

Then we had this truncated process, where we sat in select committee and heard from submitters who only had five minutes and who’d travelled a really long way because we refused to go to Taranaki.

Matt King: They wouldn’t let them.

ERICA STANFORD: Wouldn’t go there. We tried our very best to make this as democratic a process as we possibly could, and we were stopped from doing that. Every other bill that we’re looking at—we’re going to be travelling the West Coast, we’re going to be travelling to Canterbury, and here we are with one of the biggest decisions that this Government can possibly make, and we wouldn’t travel to Taranaki. I apologise to the people of Taranaki, because this is going to ruin your economy and ruin your region. And I’m sorry that we couldn’t go. We tried—we did our very best—but Government members refused. And then they cut speakers off—to the second. We had CEOs of major companies of industries who were cut off to the second.

Angie Warren-Clark: Everyone treated the same.

ERICA STANFORD: They were all treated the same and they were all treated extremely unfairly. A massive decision that is going to affect our economy and a huge region, and they were all treated extremely unfairly.

This bill is about virtue-signalling, “greenwashing”, and image-building for a Prime Minister who cares more about how she’s viewed on the world stage than anything that will improve our environment. This bill is pure and simply environmental vandalism and we will not support it.

JO LUXTON (Labour): Thank you, Madam Assistant Speaker. I’m pleased to stand and take an opportunity to speak to this, the third reading of the Crown Minerals (Petroleum) Amendment Bill and, I have to say, such passion—such passion from the Opposition today. If only we’d seen so much passion from them in the last nine years. But, anyway, I digress. I will get on to talking about this bill.

We had Todd Muller speak before. He said, “Governments are defined by the legislation they create.” Well, I tell you what, I am proud of all the legislation that we’ve created—passed and created—but, boy, am I especially proud to be a part of a Government defined by this legislation. It is bold. It is forward-thinking. It is future-focused, and we are focused on making things better for our future generations, for our children, our children’s children, our great-grandchildren, and the environment.

We heard also from Barbara Kuriger, who talked about all the things that they would do when they were back in Government around this space. But my question around that is: why didn’t you do anything in this space in the last nine years? [Interruption] Anyway, that’s just my question to you. I didn’t hear anything previously. She also passed the comment that we haven’t seen anyone in Taranaki. Well, I’m pretty sure—but I’m happy to be corrected—the Minister and the Prime Minister have both visited Taranaki. But that’s OK, I stand to be corrected.

Anyway, so I want to congratulate the Environment Committee for all the hard work that they’ve put into this piece of legislation, and I want to thank the submitters. I heard today that there were 7,000—7,000—submissions, and 86 percent were in favour of this bill, and if that is not a mandate to move forward, and that you’re on the right track, then I don’t know what is.

So climate change is happening. It is happening whether we like it or not. What is important is how we adapt, and how we plan for it. We must not be a fast follower. That is not good enough. We must be leaders in this space, and being effective leaders doesn’t mean sitting on your hands and doing nothing. You have to make bold decisions. Sometimes they are hard decisions, but they are the right decisions. And this piece of legislation is the right decision.

So this Government is committed to being a leader, not a follower on climate change, and to transitioning and moving to a low-carbon economy. And I just want to read a submission that stood out for me from Gabrielle Pankhurst, who said, “New Zealand is a small emitter on the Global Stage but can have a big presence encouraging other nations to take action. New Zealand has led the way and had an outsized effect in the past on the nuclear threat, apartheid in South Africa, votes for women and many other policies. Let’s lead the world again when facing the existential threat of climate change.” And that just reiterates what I’ve said.

So this legislation will mean that future block offers will exclude new offshore exploration permits, and that block offers will be limited to onshore Taranaki. We’ve heard from the other side of the House about the risk to employment, but I want to talk about the fact that this Government has passed legislation—future-focused legislation—enabling people to transition from certain types of work into others with our first year fees-free getting people into trades—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): Order! Back to the bill.

JO LUXTON: Sorry, Madam Assistant Speaker. I would also like to quote from Minister Wood’s speech initially, where she said we’ve already invested heavily in the Taranaki region. I quote this: “The Provincial Growth Fund has already earmarked more than $21 million”, which includes the potential for new discoveries to make use of existing production in transmission infrastructure, and it’s with things like that that we will ensure that people are able to transition, in a just and fair manner, into new employment, should things change for them.

We’re not talking about stopping this overnight. This is about a 30-year transition. This gives industry—it gives people—time to plan, to adjust, and to change their way of thinking. We have to be sensible about it. We have to give people time to change. I am proud that our small country Aotearoa is leading the way boldly.

ANDREW FALLOON (National—Rangitata): Thank you, Madam Assistant Speaker. It’s with disappointment I rise to speak this afternoon on a failure of Government. With this bill, with this Crown Minerals (Petroleum) Amendment Bill, this Government has failed New Zealanders in four ways.

The first way they’ve failed New Zealanders is with the economy—it’s a failure of the economy. This bill will affect 15,000 jobs across New Zealand—15,000 jobs. Of those jobs, 4,500 are direct and 11,000 are in related industries. The vast bulk of those people are employed in the Taranaki region. This bill has put them on notice. This bill is the letter in the post saying, “You’ll be out of work.” This bill will end 15,000 pay packets across the country, particularly in Taranaki.

It’s not just a failure of the economy; it’s a failure of potential. In my electorate of Rangitata, this bill will end the prospect of 3,100 new jobs around PrimePort in Timaru. The Barque gas development would have created 3,100 new jobs and a billion dollars in activity in the South Canterbury and North Otago regions. We know that’s the case because the permit holder has told us that.

The Government opposite has said, “Oh, no, it doesn’t affect the existing permits; it doesn’t change anything for existing permit holders.” Well, the permit holder themselves has told us that it does. The permit holder and New Zealand Oil and Gas say that this bill makes the development of the Barque prospect materially less likely—materially less likely. They’re now struggling to find investors for this prospect because the bill has had such a chilling effect on the international oil and gas industry, and people overseas have said, “No, New Zealand is closed for business.” The way we know that is because they’ve quoted three large investment companies who’ve said that. One of them has said, “given [the] state of play in NZ at the moment I don’t think we’ll get much airplay internally. So will pass on this one.” Another said, “I’m sorry to inform you but [we’ve] excluded New Zealand from our area of interest”. The third one has said, “It’s been an education for me seeing the reaction by even discussing NZ here!” This bill has had a chilling impact on investment in oil and gas in New Zealand, even for existing permits.

The third failure of this Government is process. This bill was meant to go off, or should’ve gone off, to select committee for six months, in the way that every other bill goes off to select committee. Instead, this Government have said, “No, we’re not interested in hearing from people. We’re not interested in running a proper process. What will we do? We’ll do it for four weeks.”—four weeks. It went to the Environment Committee. They had two weeks of consultation and two weeks of consideration. Within that, they didn’t even bother to go to Taranaki—didn’t bother to go to Taranaki. The one region that relies on oil and gas in this country, and they didn’t bother to turn up. The majority of those 15,000 jobs are in the Taranaki region, and the Government refuses to go there.

The fourth failure is a failure of the environment. Deborah Russell has said at length, as the chair of the select committee, in the first reading, that we are burning the planet. She’s referred to climate change—in fact, many members opposite have referred to climate change as the reason for passing this bill. Well, what does their advice tell them? What does the Government’s own evidence about this bill tell them? It says the net impact on global emissions is uncertain but more likely to be negative rather than positive. It goes on to say that the bill “will result in a likely increase of greenhouse gas emissions in the short to medium term.” So the very reason—the very reason—that this Government has put forward this bill, they’ve failed on. On the very reason that this Government has said, which is climate change, the Government’s own evidence shows that they are wrong. Not one member opposite has ever contradicted that, because they don’t have the evidence. It’s a failure by this Government.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): I understand this is a split call. You have five minutes, Angie Warren-Clark.

ANGIE WARREN-CLARK (Labour): Thank you, Madam Assistant Speaker. When I think about controversial issues that have come to this House over the years and I think about where people sit and whether they’re on the right or the wrong side of history, I think about the Springbok Tour and our nuclear-free stance, and I think about what our grandchildren will think of this conversation that we’ve had today in this House. Absolutely—absolutely—this is the beginning of change in this country. I have a very short time today, but I am proud to stand here and speak on behalf of this Government in regards to the beginning of the transition away from oil and gas. The Crown Minerals (Petroleum) Amendment Bill is putting in place something that we have strongly looked at across many years, and that is putting in place something for the environment.

The market—the market—has not managed to do this; the Government has to step in and do this. There have been many years where there has been the opportunity for gas companies to make a change, and they talk now of stranded assets, yet climate change has been coming at us like a slow-burning train. It is here, and we need to act—we need to act. Our world is changing, and we have a crisis with global warming. What will happen to our whakapapa, Mr Müller? What will happen when our community of Tauranga no longer has half of its environment because of global warming? What will happen when the food chain breaks down? Can we eat money—can we eat money? We cannot.

What I would like to address—very quickly, because I have very short time—is leakage. Ooh, not that kind of leakage—carbon leakage. What we’re talking about here, and the argument we’ve all heard from the Opposition, is that “Ooh, we’re going to buy from somewhere worse, and it’s going to be terrible.” Well, guess what? The world isn’t sitting still. The world is moving on, and the world is looking at alternatives—looking at alternatives to oil and gas and coal—and that is the argument that the Opposition have failed to take into account when they consider that carbon leakage will occur. Carbon leakage does not sit in a context of not moving forward. The world is moving forward, and we have to keep up. We have to lead. We have to be honest, that, actually, if we don’t support our environment, if we don’t move to a just transition, of 30-plus years, people—30-plus years. We have to do this, because the market has not, and we are prepared to be bold and to do this. I commend this bill to the House.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): Just before I call the honourable member, I just want to remind members: if we’re going to refer to other members, we should do our best endeavours to make sure we get the names right.

DAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): Something I wholeheartedly agree with: that we should all treat each other with the respect of using our names as accurately as possible. For the member who just resumed her seat, I think that she actually captured—

Angie Warren-Clark: Angie Warren-Clark.

DAVID SEYMOUR: I know Angie Warren-Clark, but I think she captured something about this bill that in turn captures something about this Government. She drew on the imagery of the Springbok Tour. She talked about New Zealand’s declaration of being a nuclear-free country. She has learned the lesson of Jacinda Ardern, the woman who became the Prime Minister of New Zealand without changing a single policy and getting a 20-point bump in the polls. She learned the lesson that the way to do politics has nothing to do with the importance of how public policy works, or this bill. She learned the lesson that, somehow, spin and symbolism can overcome substance.

The substance of this bill is that it is going to be an environmental, economic, and procedural disaster, with adverse consequences for the country’s international reputation, for the way that we look after our environment, for the way that we become wealthy and invest, and for the way that we are seen in this House to respect parliamentary procedure. Let’s just tick off the reasons why this bill that is all about symbolism rather than substance will backfire on its stated intentions. It’s not going to be good for the environment. It is going to narrow the range of fuel options that New Zealanders have in decades to come. We will have one fewer option. We won’t have oil and gas found off the coast of New Zealand, because no one will have been able to look for it.

So if it just happens to be that these magical new sources of energy, peak load electricity generation that doesn’t use thermal fuels, have not come to pass, what will the options be? Well, it won’t be relatively clean-burning gas off the coast of New Zealand, and it won’t be relatively clean oil off the coast of New Zealand; it will be doing what Genesis are doing right now: importing 120,000 tonnes of coal from Indonesia—hardly a country with the kind of environmental record that we want to be patrons of.

So we’re going to end up with fewer options, and we’re going to end up using fuels that are worse for the environment and worse for climate change than the options we would have if people were allowed to look for oil and gas off the coasts of New Zealand on the possibility that it might be the best option for the economy and the environment in the future. By the way, if this Government was really serious about climate change, here is what they would do: they would ask what carbon price our trading partners are facing, and they would say, “We’re going to beat them by 10 percent, and if they increase it, we’ll increase it too.” That would actually put a real carbon tax on consuming energy and fuels, not just kneecap one industry. What does it do to the economy? What does it do to our international reputation?

When people look at New Zealand, they used to see a country that followed due process, a country that was beyond reproach for corruption, and a country where you knew that people would keep their word and your property rights would be safe. Now they look at this Government, shaking their heads in astonishment, to see a New Zealand Parliament that, with a four-week consultation, with a bill rammed through this House under extended sittings, and with all the urgency in the world but no care, can take away years of expectations of investment opportunities, can take away the certainty that investors require—and it won’t just be oil and gas; it’ll be the international business community across a range of sectors looking at New Zealand, shaking their heads, and wondering why.

This is a bill that is underlining and putting on display, for everybody to see, the politics of symbolism over substance for which this Government will become known. It’s bad for the environment, it’s bad for the economy, it’s bad procedure for the reputation of this House, and it’s bad for the whole country’s international representation as a safe place to invest, but, well, apparently it is good PR and marketing. I suspect that in the long term, the people of New Zealand will conclude differently. I proudly oppose this bill on behalf of the ACT Party.

MAUREEN PUGH (National): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I too stand with great disappointment today to speak to the Crown Minerals (Petroleum) Amendment Bill in its third reading. This is—and I support Mr Seymour—a sad day for Taranaki. It is a sad day for New Zealand, a sad day for our democracy, and certainly a sad day for our country’s economic future.

I thought this Government was going to be the main meal: New Zealand First and Labour with a side of Greens. But what we’ve actually got is a salad with absolutely no substance inside of it. If I was Winston Peters now, I’d be wondering what on earth I’d signed up for with this Crown minerals bill before us today, because it’s clear that this is a Jacinda Ardern and James Shaw show. All poor old Winston Peters has done is being—

SPEAKER: Order! The member will resume her seat. I want to remind the members of Speakers’ rulings 121/4 and 121/5. At the third reading, one must discuss the bill as it emerged from the select committee. The member hasn’t started. She’s had her introduction and she’ll now address the bill.

MAUREEN PUGH: Thank you, Mr Speaker. For the Taranaki region, in relation to the Crown Minerals (Petroleum) Amendment Bill, I feel that the Prime Minister is like the Grinch who stole Christmas. But, unfortunately under this Government, we won’t even have a lump of coal to be able to give to the naughty children—

SPEAKER: Order! Second warning—address the bill or I will terminate the member’s speech.

MAUREEN PUGH: I’d like to run through some of the risks to New Zealand from the passing of this bill today. As James Shaw eloquently put it, the reputational damage to New Zealand from the passing of this bill is a chronic shame for us. It is part of the reputation that this country has built up over many years. Another one of the consequences and the risks that we face from this bill is the consistency that business needs. It needs a firm and level playing field for the years ahead, where they have to plan and evaluate their long-term investments. So we need great big long lead-in times, and, unfortunately, the uncertainty of this passage of legislation that is going to be created across the investment sector is going to damage our reputation and that consistency that business needs.

Now, the other risk from this bill is to the investors. Now, investors—they’re probably our biggest risk of all. We need that major investment coming here into New Zealand. A classic example of the result of this bill passing through this House was the decision from Methanex, who were the second major natural gas consumer. They called a halt to their major investment of a $100 million expansion of their plant in Taranaki. The other major investment that we have seen withdrawn as a result of this legislation is Ballance Agri-Nutrients shelving a billion-dollar rebuild of their Kapuni factory. This type of legislation, this Crown Minerals (Petroleum) Amendment Bill, creates uncertainty in the sector, and this is the type of damage that we are seeing. That is before the bill has even passed through and become legislation.

So I’ve talked to the loss of income as a consequence of this bill, and we’ve heard that the Crown revenue alone is $7.9 billion. As an example of what that type of Crown revenue could have created here in this country: it could have built all of Auckland’s light rail, it could have built all of Waterview Connection, it could have built all of Transmission Gully, it could build the new Dunedin Hospital—

SPEAKER: Order! The member will resume her seat. I am now going to read to her Speaker’s ruling 121/4: “Members must confine themselves to the general principles of the bill as it emerged from the committee.” Speaker’s ruling 121/7: “Members must confine themselves to the main purposes and contents of the bill; they must not deal at length with matters not provided for in the bill.” The member hasn’t actually discussed either the purpose or the content of the bill in half the time that she had available. The member’s speech is terminated.

WILLOW-JEAN PRIME (Labour): Tuatahi māku e Te Māngai o Te Whare, he mihi poto tēnei pea, koinā te mea, ko tēnei tō tau tuatahi, kotahi, i roto i tēnei Whare. Hari huritau mō tō whai tūranga hei Māngai mō Te Whare.

[Firstly, for me, to the Speaker of the House, this is a short acknowledgment, because this is your first year, one year in this House. Congratulations on your anniversary of being appointed Speaker of the House.]

SPEAKER: And now to the bill. Thank you.

WILLOW-JEAN PRIME: Āe, ka huri ahau ki te pire ināianei, e rongo atu ana ahau i wō whakatau. E mihi ana ki Te Minita nāna i kawe mai tēnei pire ki roto i Te Whare Pāremata. E mihi hoki ana ki Te Komiti mō te Taiao me te heamana, arā ko Dr Deborah Russell, me te nui o ngā kaitono. Neke atu i te whitu mano tāngata i tono mai mō tēnei kaupapa, mō tēnei pire. Te nuinga o rātou, neke atu i te 86 paiheneti, i tautoko i tēnei pire.

Nā e hiahia ana ahau ki te kōrero mō tētahi o ngā kaitono, arā ko Te Patu Harakeke, he iwi nō roto o Te Tai Tokerau, ō rātou āwangawanga mō te whakamahanatanga o te ao. He hapū noho ki te takutai moana. E āwangawanga ana rātou mō ngā rā kei te heke mai. E kaha tautoko ana rātou i tēnei pire. Engari ko tētahi kōrero, me whakawhānui ake pea. Hei whakaarotanga; whakaarotanga tēnā mō Te Minita.

Tētahi atu o ngā kaitono nō Te Whare Wānanga o Wikitōria, nō te rōpū tauira, ko Tamatha Paul te kaikōrero. Ahakoa ehara ahau i te mema i runga i Te Komiti o te Taiao, i reira ahau i taua wā. I rongo ahau i a rātou e kōrero ana mō ō rātou āwangawanga mō ngā rā e heke mai ana. Me pēhea tō rātou ao ki te kore e whakature tēnei ture, tēnei pire i te rā nei? E hiahia ana ahau ki te mihi ki a rātou mō tō rātou tū kaha ki te tautoko i tēnei kaupapa, i tēnei pire.

Ko te kaupapa o tēnei pire ko te kaitiakitanga, ko te manaakitanga; ko te kaitiakitanga mō ngā rā, mō ngā uri e whakaheke ana. Nō reira i runga i tērā e kaha tautoko ana ahau i tēnei pire. E tautoko ana ahau i te whakairinga o tēnei pire ki Te Whare. He hōnore tēnei māku, ko tēnei te pānuitanga tuatoru o tēnei pire. Nō reira e tautoko ana ahau, e whakairi ana ahau, ko te pae tawhiti whakamaua kia tata, whakamaua kia tina. Haumi e, hui e, tāiki e.

[Yes, I will now turn to the bill—I hear your direction. I acknowledge the Minister who has brought this bill to Parliament. I also acknowledge the Environment Committee and its chair, Dr Deborah Russell, and the large number of submitters. Over 7,000 people submitted on this topic, on this bill. Most of them, over 86 percent, were in support of this bill.

Now, I would like to speak about one of the submitters, namely Te Patu Harakeke, a tribe from within Te Tai Tokerau—their anxieties about global warming. They are a subtribe living on the coast. They are concerned about the future. They strongly support this bill. But there is one statement to make: it should perhaps be broader. Food for thought—this is food for thought for the Minister.

One of the other submitters was from Victoria University, from the student group. Tamatha Paul was the spokesperson. Albeit I am not a member of the Environment Committee, I was there at that time. I heard them speaking about their concerns for the future. What would their world be like if this legislation was not passed, this bill, today? I want to thank them for their strong stand in support of this matter, this bill.

The focus of this bill is guardianship and protection; guardianship for tomorrow, for the descendants who are coming. Therefore, on that note, I strongly support this bill. I support it being passed in this House. This is an honour for me; this is the third reading of this bill. Therefore I support, I uphold it, bringing the distant horizon closer, so that we can grasp it and make it manifest. We are ready to progress together.]

A party vote was called for on the question, That Crown Minerals (Petroleum) Amendment Bill be now read a third time.

Ayes 63

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

Noes 56

New Zealand National 55; ACT New Zealand 1.

Bill read a third time.

Bills

Courts Matters Bill

Tribunals Powers and Procedures Legislation Bill

Third Readings

Hon AUPITO WILLIAM SIO (Associate Minister for Courts): I move, That the Courts Matters Bill and the Tribunals Powers and Procedures Legislation Bill be now read a third time.

These two bills are part of our Government’s efforts to provide New Zealanders with a more modern, fair, and effective justice system. I’d like to take this opportunity to thank members of Parliament from across the House for their cross-party support for these important bills and for the hard work of the Justice Committee members in examining these bills.

I will start off by highlighting some of the many changes that these bills will make, and I begin with the changes that the Courts Matters Bill is making to 16 Acts governing the operation of the courts. The amendments to the Courts Security Act will help to provide the safe, secure, and orderly court environment that people are entitled to. Court security officers will be able to deny entry to or remove disruptive people whose behaviour is causing distress to other people. They will also be able to detain people who commit minor crimes such as disorderly behaviour, wilful damage, or the possession of illegal drugs in court or tribunal buildings.

The amendments to the Criminal Procedure Act will improve the efficiency and timeliness of the criminal courts. For example, the reclassification of offences with a maximum penalty of a community-based sentence as a category 1 offence will enable defendants to plead guilty or not guilty in writing, instead of having to appear in court, and it reflects the low-level nature of offences.

The amendments to the Summary Proceedings Act will enable fines and reparations to be collected sooner. This will enhance their credibility as penalties. Furthermore, the Ministry of Justice will be able to use automated decision-making to set up arrangements to pay fines in affordable instalments. This will provide a much more efficient and effective means of setting up several thousand arrangements each year. Most people pay their fines in instalments because they cannot afford to pay them in full.

The amendments to the Criminal Procedure (Mentally Impaired Persons) Act will reverse the order of the two judicial inquiries that are undertaken to assess if a defendant is fit to stand trial in a criminal court. In future, victims and witnesses will only have to give their evidence once, instead of sometimes having to do so twice.

The amendments to the Juries Act will provide for people who are not fluent in English with a quick and simple way to defer their jury service.

I will now describe some of the changes in the Tribunals Powers and Procedures Legislation Bill. For brevity, I’ll refer to this bill as the tribunals bill. The tribunals bill will amend 22 Acts governing the operations of tribunals. These tribunals resolve disputes, deal with occupational discipline and regulation, and review the decisions of Government agencies. Around 40,000 people access these tribunals each year.

The tribunals bill will improve access to justice for people affected by the case backlog that has developed in the Human Rights Review Tribunal since 2015. I have previously spoken about one of the most challenging issues facing the Human Rights Review Tribunal, with that being the unacceptable backlog of cases and the actions this Government has taken to address this issue.

The House will know that the Human Rights Review Tribunal provides important services for people who may have had their human rights, rights to privacy, or health and disability services rights breached. Since 2015, the number of claims filed with the tribunal has exceeded its resources, and this has caused a significant case backlog to develop. What we know is that between the 2014-15 and the 2016-17 financial years, the number of new cases received by the tribunal grew by 92 percent. This led the backlog of cases to grow by 144 percent, from 52 cases, as it was at the end of 2014-15, to 127 cases at the end of 2016-17. As of 31 October 2018, there were 124 active cases on hand. In August 2017, the previous Government appointed a second chairperson for a period of 12 months to help with the case backlog, but that alone has not worked. Every day, people are waiting two years for a hearing and up to three years for a decision. Earlier this year, I reappointed the second chairperson for the same reasons.

Furthermore, and more importantly, I took a paper to Cabinet this year to amend the Human Rights Act 1993. This was needed to enable the permanent appointment of additional deputy chairpersons to the tribunal, which I know was incorporated by the Justice Committee, and I thank the committee members for doing this as it will increase the public’s ability to access justice. So the tribunals bill now authorises the appointment of more than one deputy chairperson. The new deputy chairpersons will be able to perform the same functions as those of the chairperson. This will help reduce the significant backlog.

The tribunals bill will now also include procedural changes to help further reduce the Human Rights Review Tribunal backlog. For example, the chairperson or deputy chairperson will be able to decide minor matters on the papers instead of a hearing being held. The tribunals bill will provide better consumer protection and redress. For example, the monetary threshold of the disputes tribunals will be doubled. People with disputes of $15,000 to $30,000 will have access to a quicker, simpler, and cheaper process than a court case.

The Real Estate Agents Disciplinary Tribunal will be able to award monetary compensation of up to $100,000 for financial losses arising from a real estate agent’s unsatisfactory conduct. At the moment, the tribunal can only provide compensation for poor behaviour that meets the higher-threshold misconduct.

The Private Security Personnel Licensing Authority will be able to discipline unsatisfactory conduct such as bullying. The authority can currently only discipline misconduct which meets a very high threshold.

The tribunals bill will provide 21 tribunals administered by the Ministry of Justice with the tools they need to resolve cases faster and more effectively. More tribunals will be able to strike out meritless cases and decide minor matters on the papers—that is, without having to hold a hearing to consider the matter. These tools will enable, for example, the Legal Complaints Review Officer to significantly reduce the case backlog that has developed over many years, and to decide substantive matters more quickly.

In conclusion, I know this bill may have started under the other administration, but the bill before this House is substantially more meatier and with significant changes to address the backlog that has become an issue over the past number of years. So this coalition Government, with support from its support partners, has moved with efficiency and with as much haste as is humanly possible to move this as quickly as possible through this House.

Finally, the Courts Matters Bill and the tribunals bill will improve people’s experiences of the courts and tribunals system. I commend these bills to the House.

CHRIS PENK (National—Helensville): Thank you, Mr Speaker, for the opportunity to lead off on this side of the House in relation to the Courts Matters Bill and Tribunals Powers and Procedures Legislation Bill. I talk about this side of the House rather than the Opposition, because in relation to this piece of legislation—technically pieces of legislation as cognate bills—we are in agreement with the Government. Indeed, our side of the House, when we were on the other side of the House, so to speak, did lead off that work, so I acknowledge both the present Minister and his Government but also the previous Government and, indeed, the previous Parliament—acknowledging the work of that institution’s select committee that has brought us to this place today.

I’d like to touch on a few of the themes that run through both of the bills. I’ll then comment on a couple of the aspects in particular on each of those individual ones. I don’t think I need to take up too much of the House’s time on that, but I think it’s worth noting that some of the very detailed work that’s gone into the legislation does reflect a number of broad themes that are worth encouraging. So whereas previous stages—for example, in particular, the committee stage—have been worthwhile exercises in thrashing out some of that detail, and, again, the select committee processes prior to that, I will focus on a pretty high-level response and acknowledgment of the work that has gone on to get us to this place.

So in general terms, we have some legislation that recognises that our court systems must constantly evolve if we are to regard them as modern, fair, and effective places of justice within the overall justice system and framework that we have. In relation to the—well, actually, in both pieces of legislation, these cognate bills, we emphasise in particular the time frames for hearing and resolving matters. It’s a fundamental aspect of justice that matters are heard and resolved in a timely fashion. It’s acknowledged across both sides of the House and, indeed, at all levels of the justice system, I think I’m right in saying, that the system could be and should be and indeed must be much more timely. The truism, almost, that justice delayed is justice denied is no less true today than when that phrase was first coined, and to be able to make a contribution in this Parliament to ameliorating that situation somewhat is something that we are very pleased to be able to do.

Users’ experience of the courts and tribunal system in general—perhaps, following on from the timeliness theme—as well as just user-friendliness for those who are actively caught up in the justice system, whether by choice or otherwise, is a very important thing for citizens and people of New Zealand. It’s important for them to be able to rely upon that when they have a stressful moment in their life—or a long moment or series of moments, as often is the case—so that the stress of the litigation, whether it’s a criminal or civil matter, need not be accentuated by procedural difficulties in addition to, obviously, the contentious matter—the substance of that.

So talking about, then, the ways that this will apply in terms of the Courts Matters Bill—that half of what we’re looking at—I’d like to just, perhaps, by way of example, focus on the security aspects. So the powers of the court security officer, actually, were touched upon by Minister Sio in leading off his contribution. He’s right to emphasise the matters that are strengthened in terms of security provisions. Security of these places of justice is a fundamental aspect of our rule of law. It goes to the question of access to justice, because New Zealanders must be able to feel as though they can access our courts in a way that sees them free from physical and other forms of intimidation.

It also goes to open justice, so that those who wish to observe as well as participate in the justice system can do so, again, without threat of intimidation or physical interference, and with equality before the law, as well, such that all who would come before our courts have the right to a fair opportunity to do so without external influences that are unhelpful and indeed unfair in the process.

So in the committee of the whole House we talked about some specific details, acknowledging contributions that had been made by the Law Society and, I think, also the Auckland District Law Society in relation to where the court security officers’ powers would apply—not just at the actual physical courtroom itself but in the surrounding environment—and so too the time at which those would apply; being beyond the period of the actual proceedings. I don’t intend to rehash that except to note that that’s an example of the constructive manner in which this process has been conducted by submitters, officials, and, dare I say it, the members of Parliament themselves as well.

Efficiency has been touched upon by the Minister in relation to criminal procedure, and I’ll just make that the theme of my brief remarks on the tribunals’ powers side of the legislation, and just note that the general theme of desiring to standardise procedures across more than 20 tribunals is a worthy one. It’s been achieved well, it seems to me—not to say that we can’t continue to make those ongoing improvements as this Parliament and the future Parliaments proceed, but for now, at least, there’s been a lot of work that’s gone into that standardisation project that’s helpful for people to understand how the system coheres as a whole and, indeed, those who are practising within it.

With a final specific mention to the disputes tribunal, there’s the ability of that body to be able to hear disputes of a larger scale. So a jurisdiction being expanded in that way is very helpful. In my professional life, immediately prior to entering into this House, as a lawyer I was always very keen to encourage clients not to go to court if they could at all help it, and having the ability for claims to be heard without the help—all assistance short of actual help, as we used to say—of lawyers is a worthwhile thing indeed. It’s encouraged by the operation of this legislation, which enlarges the ability of the tribunal in that way, and so that’s a very commendable aspect, as are the other ones. Hence I have no hesitation and my colleagues have no hesitation too in commending this legislation to the House.

RAYMOND HUO (Labour): Thank you, Mr Speaker. These must be the ninth or 10th bills that the Justice Committee has sent back to the House. It is very difficult to see the exact number because some of the bills were divided into different bills, so it’s very hard to tell the exact number which this extraordinarily busy Justice Committee has sent back to the House. We have had about 18 bills, in addition to inquiries, financial annual reviews, and Estimates. I want to follow the Minister and thank our officials, advisers, and submitters. I thank them for their knowledge, experience, and input.

The Justice Committee received 48 written submissions and heard 15 oral submissions. The submissions came from the judiciary, professional organisations, and interested groups and individuals. Many of the points raised by those submitters are valuable to us not only on these particular bills but also on other bills as well.

For instance, the Justice Committee is currently considering the Privacy Bill. One point raised so far concerns the jurisdictional aspects between the Privacy Commissioner and the Human Rights Review Tribunal. That would bring us to an issue that the Tribunals Powers and Procedures Legislation Bill seeks to address, which is the significant case backlog that has been building up over the past years and, as such, what kind of impact it may have with regard to the tribunal’s roles and functions in relation to the Privacy Bill, etc.

The issue relating to case backlog has existed for a while now. Since 2015, the number of claims filed with the tribunal has exceeded its resources. The chairman, Rodger Haines QC, made a very powerful submission. We are very glad to report that through the changes under this bill, we will get what he described as artificial restrictions in the Human Rights Act 1993 addressed.

Another example that I’d like to cite—

SPEAKER: Order! I apologise for interrupting the member, but it’s kai time.

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

RAYMOND HUO: Another example that I’d like to cite is the Government’s Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) 134, relating to inserting a new Subpart 9A in Part 4 of the Courts Matters Bill. The SOP amends the Senior Courts Act 2016 to restore the ability of a single Court of Appeal judge to decide minor contested matters in civil cases, instead of having three Court of Appeal judges to decide cases on those applications.

The third example is concerning the use of audiovisual facilities. In the modern era of smartphones, computers, and social media, it’s common sense—isn’t it—for the courts to be equipped and adapted to the reality. Part 4 amends the Courts (Remote Participation) Act to enable judicial officers and court registrars to allow any participation in a criminal procedural hearing via audiovisual link (AVL) technology, if AVL is available and its use is not contrary to the interests of justice. This will also enable participants such as lawyers and witnesses to appear via AVL facilities during criminal procedural hearings.

The final example I wish to cite is relating to our jury service and some language issues that potential jurors may have experienced. The Juries Act will be amended to authorise court registrars to defer jury service for potential jurors who are not confident in their understanding of the English language.

These two bills introduce a large number of amendments that will help improve people’s experience with courts and tribunals. Efficiency, business efficacy, productivity, and improved users’ experience are the keywords, and the two bills will contribute to a modern, efficient, and effective courts and tribunals system. Thank you.

CHRIS BISHOP (National—Hutt South): Thank you very much, Madam Assistant Speaker. I was commenting to one of my friends and colleagues before that it feels like we’ve been debating this legislation for ever. It seems like every time I come down to the House, we’re debating the Tribunals Powers and Procedures Legislation Bill and the Courts Matters Bill.

Simon O'Connor: Career defining.

CHRIS BISHOP: Well, “Career defining.”, my colleague Simon O’Connor says. I’m not sure about that, but they are good pieces of legislation that the Opposition wholeheartedly supports. The genesis of this legislation goes, actually, back to the last Parliament and the last Government. They progressed through the Parliament as a cognate package, really, because it makes sense to bring all the changes in together and to consider them together. It came out of very good work by the officials. I do, in our third reading of these bills, want to pay tribute to the good work of the officials, both within the Ministry of Justice but also the Parliamentary Counsel Office.

As you can see, this is a weighty tome, the Tribunals Powers and Procedures Legislation Bill—162 pages. It’s fair to say it makes the operation of our tribunals and our court system more efficient, and it makes a whole series, a whole suite, of changes that will generally make things more efficient and more effective. Just to give you one example, if you go to subpart 11 to do with the Legal Services Act, we’re talking about changes like the insertion by clause 133 of new section 55A “Procedure”: “Forms for use in the Tribunal may be approved by the chief executive of the Ministry after consulting the Tribunal.” Very small, very discrete changes—a lot of the time they’re clarificatory changes.

When we were on the Justice Committee in both the last Parliament and, latterly, in the new Parliament, we did hear about a series of changes—a lot of clarifications and a lot of “for the avoidance of doubt” provisions, I think it would be fair to say. Look, it’s been through a thorough process. We did consider it extremely thoroughly at the Justice Committee. I think it’s fair to say the Justice Committee is the hardest working committee in the Parliament, and I’m not just saying that because I see Greg O’Connor waving at me across the House; I am saying that because as much as it seems like we’re always debating this bill—and finally we won’t be, because it’s going to get its third reading—it feels like the Justice Committee is always sitting. It’s like rust: never sleeping. We’re always sitting, and we’re always on the go. I know that there’s more legislation coming from this activist Government, but we will give it the due consideration that it deserves in due course.

MARK PATTERSON (NZ First): Thank you, Madam Assistant Speaker. It’s actually my first opportunity to address the House and, indeed, the nation in my new role as chief whip of New Zealand First.

Hon Members: Hooray!

MARK PATTERSON: Thank you—enough. I am aware of the convention around discussing the whereabouts of other parliamentarians, but I will say that it has not been a naked grab for power. It is a temporary, acting position.

It is a pleasure to rise on behalf of New Zealand First in support of this bill. I commend Minister Sio on shepherding it through. As has been referenced, this is a bill that started under the previous Government. I believe the Hon Amy Adams may have been in charge of the early part of this bill.

When I first looked at it—just sort of the headline—I thought this must be some sort of reasonably trivial piece of legislation, but, in fact, it is not, as Mr Bishop referenced in his last presentation. The cognate nature of these two bills, the Courts Matters Bill, which actually amends 14 Acts, and the Tribunals Powers and Procedures Legislation Bill, which amends 20 Acts—within them, there are some fairly significant changes to our laws and some pretty important clarifications. I would also like to commend the Justice Committee, under Raymond Huo, who is the chair, and—as Mr Bishop said in his previous address—the officials, because I think to trawl through the detail of these amendments and changes is pretty mind-numbing, actually, and it speaks to the calibre of the officials that we have that they can come up with tidying-up legislation of this sort.

The Courts Matters Bill—to start with that—there’s a couple of high-level matters I’d like to touch on there. I’ve actually never been in a court, it occurred to me when I was preparing for this bill, and I’ve never had an ambition to be a lawyer—for good reason—but the powers going to the court security officers are I think a really important provision within this bill. Giving the court security officers the ability to remove and detain people, and increasing those powers since the Act of 1999—that meant that courts were manned by security guards more, and more so than by police officers. There were actually 78 weapons intercepted in courts in 2014-15, and 327 people were removed from courts. It’s really important that courts, of all places, are safe and secure places, where people feel free to express their opinions.

The other one within the Court Matters Bill is the audiovisual provisions within the court system, and I think that’s really just bringing this up to date with the 21st century. There are already audiovisual provisions for defendants, but now witnesses and counsel can also beam in through audiovisual means. So I think that’s a really important step up, because justice not only needs to be done but it needs to be seen to be done, and I think this is a good example of us advancing that cause.

With the Tribunals Powers and Procedures Legislation Bill, there are actually 21 tribunals under the Ministry of Justice, and 30,000 New Zealanders access those services every year. Some of them are quite significant ones, like the disputes tribunals and the Tenancy Tribunal. Of course, one we focused on here within this bill is the Human Rights Review Tribunal, and we have seen quite a backlog building up. As of June this year, there were 135 cases waiting to be heard, and that backlog has jumped by 144 percent since 2014. So this was a building problem, and this legislation bolsters the ability to deal with those backlogs. We have brought in the new role of deputy chairpersons so that we can clear that backlog, and we can add some efficiency and speed into our disputes tribunals.

Also, the Real Estate Agents Disciplinary Tribunal—they’re lifting the threshold for fines in that to $100,000 for losses incurred through poor performance, and I think that’s a really significant lift. When we look at the value of real estate transactions now, where even a modest home is in the hundreds of thousands of dollars—and pushing towards a million dollars, I see in Wellington during the week—$100,000 is not unreasonable, I would have thought, in terms of losses incurred through shonky real estate dealings.

It also provides for District Courts to oversee cases for fines under $350k and I think that’s up from $12k—anything over $12k used to have to go through the High Court. Now, the District Court can deal with cases under $350k. So I think that’s a step forward in the right direction too, to add flexibility to our system.

So I’m only really giving a very short, high-level overview of what is an incredibly complex set of clarifications and changes to regulations. It is actually really impressive work by the officials and the select committee, to wade through that. We’re accepting that you’ve been very accurate with your job, because there’s a lot in there—hopefully, nothing’s slipped through. I don’t think there are any New Zealand First members on that committee, so we’ll take your word for that, surely. I’m glad—actually, I’m not, because it looks dry as old chips, the stuff that’s going through there. But, with that confidence in the select committee and confidence in the parliamentary process and the officials who have got this bill in good shape, I will, on behalf of New Zealand First, commend this bill to the House.

Hon MARK MITCHELL (National—Rodney): Thank you, Madam Assistant Speaker. It’s a pleasure to stand and take a call on this, the third readings of the Courts Matters Bill and the Tribunals Powers and Procedures Legislation Bill. I just want to start by acknowledging a couple of fine young security officers that are down working in the Gisborne court. I was down there about six weeks ago with the Hon Anne Tolley. We went to the court and we met all of the staff there, and they were telling me about some of the issues that they have to deal with—bearing in mind that there’s plenty of unsavoury characters, also, that have to actually access and use our courts. They are often carrying—and the last speaker made reference to it—all manner of weapons, knives, etc. They carry a fair bit of risk in their job.

I want to acknowledge Cary Walker, who is working there as one of those guards and actually had a long and distinguished career in the Gisborne police as a police dog handler, and I was lucky enough to work with him as well. He is now working at the courts as a court security officer. They were very happy and very pleased to see the changes that were being made to extend the powers of court security officers to deny entry and to remove and detain people who possess illegal drugs or who act threateningly or abusively, or commit minor crimes on court premises. Up until now, they didn’t have the powers to be able to actually act and detain and to be able to deal with those people. So this is a very, very good change that is contained within this bill.

I’d just very quickly like to also refer to the change that’s being made around the threshold for a claim that’s going to the disputes tribunal. The monetary limit has been has been lifted from $15,000 to $30,000. The reason why I really like this is because this was my member’s bill that I brought to the House, and it was picked up and it was included in this bill that we’re now speaking to. It actually originated with one of our policy groups, with one of our National Party branches in Auckland. They brought this as a remit to our regional conference and we thought it was a very, very good bill. We picked it up and I had it in the biscuit tin as my member’s bill. The reason why it is so good is because, actually, the disputes tribunal means that essentially small to medium sized businesses can have access to a tribunal process which is much quicker and more efficient, and it’s also a lot less costly than having to take a claim to court. Often, if they had a claim under $15,000, when you think about it, it really didn’t probably make sense for them to take it to court, because the costs of actually going through that process were probably going to cost them more than the actual claim and the money that they were trying to get back. So it also, by increasing the threshold, means that, again, instead of them giving up a claim, they can now have the confidence that they can actually bring that claim to the disputes tribunal and it can be dealt with—anything under $30,000.

So I’m very happy to stand, take a short call, and support and recommend this bill to the House. Thank you.

GOLRIZ GHAHRAMAN (Green): Thank you. It’s a pleasure to rise to speak to this omnibus of laws that we are passing tonight, given that they fix a lot of longstanding gaps and holes and areas of the criminal justice system where we’d fallen behind, so as to make our system more efficient, more productive, and, hopefully, more fair as well, since we should always be prioritising interests of fairness over expediency. There are some interests of expediency that do serve fairness, and we’re addressing those in these bills, as well.

Everyone has said repeatedly that these are technical and complex changes, but one of the ones that jumped out at me, because I’ve had experience of it in the criminal justice system, is the reversal of the procedure whereby a defendant might be found unfit to stand trial. This was always a really problematic area, especially in defending someone that might be unfit to stand trial for mental health reasons, where the court required that the person essentially go through a hearing where they’d be found, on a balance of probabilities, to have committed the offence before they could access the two psychiatric assessments that they needed to show that they couldn’t, in fact, fairly stand trial. So it was always difficult and felt almost unethical as a lawyer, in dealing with someone that might have really serious mental illness, to take them through that process where they, effectively, had to admit that they might have committed an offence—where you are dealing with people, for example, with dementia, where the fairness issue arose because they couldn’t tell you if they had an alibi and they couldn’t tell you where they were at a certain time. So to put them through that process before they could even get the psychiatric assessment seemed a little bit perverse. But we’re correcting that with this bill. So that’s one thing that, even though it’s very technical, is a real fairness issue that we’re addressing tonight.

We’re giving security guards powers to detain people for disorderly behaviour. I think it might look, on paper, like something that—and it is a very minor charge, but when we bring it into the context of the court and we look at the very sensitive issues and the really traumatic process that people are going through, whether they’re a defendant or a witness or a victim, that disorderly behaviour can really mean that our process is unfair. It might mean that a defendant is unable to properly process what’s happening and instruct counsel. It may mean that a witness is intimidated and isn’t able to give evidence in the way that they should. For victims, it can cause lifelong trauma. So it is important that we have powers to conduct proceedings in a way that’s safe, and we’re providing for that as well tonight.

Apart from all of that, there’s the audiovisual link (AVL) and some of the more, sort of, technology-based changes that we’re making. So hearings might be held through a screen, essentially, zoomed into the courtroom. We’re still living in the 20th century in most New Zealand courts. Some people have to physically come in, even for the most minor appearances. So two changes that’ll help with expediency there are the AVL systems, and I would guard against expanding that beyond the very minor hearings that we’re applying them to in this bill, given that, of course, people do have a right to be present at their hearings and to properly instruct counsel and to be involved in the hearing in real time. But where there is a very technical appearance, requiring someone to come to court can be really arduous and time-consuming as well.

The other change that we’re making on that kind of level is that pleas can be entered for offences that carry only a maximum of a community-based sentence in writing. So to bring someone to court to enter a plea, they can wait around for hours, it adds to the court list of oral hearings that day, and our courts are hugely overworked. We’ve seen court staff go on strike only this week, and that is because most courts are now sitting well beyond hours because of the caseload and the backlog. So for people to be able to enter pleas in very minor types of charges is going to really help with that.

Moving on to the Tribunals Powers and Procedures Legislation Bill, one thing that I would celebrate hugely is that we are about to address the backlog in the Human Rights Review Tribunal, and again we’ve heard over and over again that now the backlog is up to about two years—so people are waiting—and there’s 135 cases in waiting. And it’s really important to remember the kinds of cases we’re talking about. You know, it’s discrimination. and it’s members of very vulnerable communities. My personal experience of dealing with people that have been through the tribunal has been in the family carers’ case, where family members of profoundly disabled persons took a fair pay claim against the Government and won. They won at the High Court and won at the Court of Appeal, and the Government kept appealing, but they won. They had a right to be paid fairly, because members of the disabilities community have a right to choose to live at home in the community and to have their care provided for. Of course, we know that the previous Government passed a law to cut them off from the Human Rights Review Tribunal—

Hon Ruth Dyson: Under urgency too.

GOLRIZ GHAHRAMAN: —under urgency, with no consultation, to cut this vulnerable community off from the Human Rights Review Tribunal. But this bill is addressing just that kind of issue. People have a right to access that tribunal. The right to justice includes the right to timely access to justice. And tonight we’re providing for that, and, of course, we have committed to repealing that little piece of legislation that cut the families off, as well. So I commend this bill to the House. Thank you, Madam Assistant Speaker.

SIMEON BROWN (National—Pakuranga): Thank you, Madam Assistant Speaker. Look, thank you for the opportunity to be able to take a short call on—

Simon O'Connor: No, take a long one.

SIMEON BROWN: —I’ll take a long one then, shall I? I’ll seek leave for another five minutes as well, shall I? No, I won’t do that—the Courts Matters Bill and Tribunals Powers and Procedures Legislation Bill, which are going through their third readings. I think these are bills which are cognate and cover a range of different issues, but the issue that I’m keen to touch on is the issue regarding the Courts Matters Bill, which in particular is about ensuring that we have open justice but we also ensure the safety and security of our court systems. I think the principle here, which is important to note, is that we have open justice. Justice must be done but also seen to be done. But we also must ensure that our justice system is kept safe and is kept secure so that it can work on behalf of all New Zealanders and make the decisions which are required.

I think some of the very important changes that it makes here are really around clarifying the powers that court officers have in being able to enforce the rules and to ensure that our court system operates in a fair and appropriate manner. It also ensures that those who do seek to disrupt the courts are able to be held to account for doing that. It is a serious offence to be holding our courts in contempt, whether it’s disrupting what they’re doing or the important work that they’re doing, and there’s a range of different players in that who could be trying to cause that disruption.

This bill gives some clarity around the area of the court definition, in terms of the space that it holds between the building and the road. Now that will be included. It ensures that the court officers have more powers around what they can do, giving them the ability to use reasonable force when pursuing an escapee. Court security officers will be required to allow persons removed to re-enter if the officer is satisfied. So all of these are, I think, well balanced in terms of saying that we want to ensure that those who do offend are held to account but that we also allow them access back to the courts if there is an issue. I think also, importantly, it adds drug paraphernalia from the Misuse of Drugs Act 1975 to the list of offences allowing court security officers to act.

So, essentially, this is updating what it allows our court officers to do. It allows them to intervene where necessary and to be able to ensure that the smooth running of the court isn’t disrupted, and, where it is, that appropriate action is taken to ensure that those who are disrupting the courts are held to account, but then they are allowed to have that access back into the courts as soon as possible once they’re satisfied that person won’t reoffend.

So I commend this bill to the House. There’s a whole lot more involved in these bills, in the cognate bills, which I won’t be covering here tonight. But I just want to thank all those who have played a part in bringing this legislation to this stage, and I commend the bills to the House.

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

GREG O’CONNOR (Labour—Ōhāriu): Thank you, Madam Assistant Speaker. I must start by endorsing the comments of Chris Bishop, the member from Hutt South, who talked about the very hard-working Justice Committee. We do have rather a lot of work going through, but it’s quite good to consider a bill like this, because it does cover quite a range of issues. I was quite surprised when I saw it. The Court Matters Bill and Tribunals Powers and Procedures Legislation Bill—before I opened them for the first time I thought this is going to be pretty dry and this is going to take a long time. But, actually, it was quite interesting, because so much of what life goes about it was actually dealing with—so many of the things that do irritate people on a day-to-day basis.

I would just like to sort of point out two parts of it that particularly those listening at home will wonder how we can get sort of so excited about such a bill, get so interested, and wax lyrical for so long about such a bill. One of the issues was the Human Rights Review Tribunal. Clearly, in our modern age, so often people do seek redress for those things that they find offensive or irritating or merely annoying, and they look for review, for tribunal, for some sort of redress, and the Human Rights Review Tribunal often is that place. As a result, there’s been quite some backup under the current legislation. There’s a chair. Last year there was the ability to appoint a deputy chair, but that didn’t seem to make any headway. So Minister Aupito William Sio took a paper to Cabinet, a very sensible paper, which has now been included in this bill, which gives the ability to appoint one or more deputy chairpersons—something that you might imagine is very commonsensical—and that is designed for one reason: to reduce the backlog. I’m not in any way casting aspersions on any of the cases that have come before that tribunal, but it certainly means that those cases that perhaps do need a little more time than others do get the requisite attention—so, again, a very sensible part of the legislation.

The second is to do with the Courts Security Act. As a younger police officer, it was always almost something of a disciplinary duty to end up in court looking after court duty. It was actually a good time. We actually built a relationship with those that came through the courts. It often held one in great stead later on. But that’s been replaced now, and it’s court security officers. In fact, you may have read, Madam Assistant Speaker, just over the last couple of days that there was quite a major incident in New Plymouth court that had to be sorted out by court security—and, of course, ably assisted later on by police. So it is a very volatile environment, and it’s important that we give those that are looking after that environment the powers to do so.

Again, this Act, the Courts Security Act, is to be amended to make sure that those court security officers who are tasked with a very difficult task of keeping warring factions apart—it sometimes, some of those, makes the Middle East look like almost like a boy scout playground with some of the incidents that can happen there. So we do need to empower those people, and that’s what this legislation actually does: giving the ability to seize drugs and to seize weapons, and, interestingly enough, also it includes—because a lot of these things can go outside, and, of course, inadvertently it means that the court security officers lose their security as soon as things move outside—verges and grounds outside. So it’s a very commonsensical piece of legislation that I have no hesitation in commending to the House.

Hon DAVID BENNETT (National—Hamilton East): Thank you, Madam Assistant Speaker. I just want to thank you for your great role as an Assistant Speaker of this House as well. That’s two Speakers in two days that I’ve praised—the first one I didn’t really want to have to, but I had to—but this one’s genuine praise.

When we come to this bill, it’s very good to see that there is support amongst the House for this, because when it comes to the courts and tribunals of this country, they play an important role in making our justice system work. I just want to first of all pay tribute to all those people that are involved in our courts and tribunals system, whether it is the advocates on the prosecution or defence side, or the judges, or all those staff that make sure they tick along nicely. You deal with some of our most difficult situations that can be quite personal and can be quite difficult to deal with in the heat of the moment. I think this Parliament owes those people a moment of gratitude and thanks for the good work they do. Anything we can do in this Parliament to assist them in their work to make their job easier is something that I think we should be very proud of.

This bill has, essentially, got two main parts to it. One is the Courts Matters Bill and the second one is in regards to the Tribunals Powers and Procedures Legislation Bill. So, basically, together those pieces of legislation really simplify and enshrine a better system so that we have a more effective courts and tribunals system.

I also wish to pay tribute to Chris Penk, who is an exemplary new member of this House, who has done a lot of work in the courts area. As we go into the election campaign in a few months’ time, I’m sure that you will see Chris Penk’s—

Hon Tracey Martin: A few months’ time? A by-election! A by-election!

Hon DAVID BENNETT: Is that something over there from New Zealand First?

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): Hang on—settle down. Settle down. Let’s carry on with this debate, thank you.

Hon DAVID BENNETT: Yes. It’s a shame when New Zealand First has to interrupt speeches, when their great leader would never do such a thing. But I’d like to pay tribute to Chris Penk, who’s doing a great job in this area as well. I’m sure we’ll see many more reforms come through under his name that will be just as good as this but, actually, better, more advanced, and for the betterment of our system. Thank you, Madam Assistant Speaker.

Dr DUNCAN WEBB (Labour—Christchurch Central): Thank you, Madam Assistant Speaker. I was a bit upset with the whip for New Zealand First who said that this material was as dry as old chips, when in fact this is just like a steaming piece of fish, really, because it’s a fantastic bill.

If I could just say that particularly the Tribunals Powers and Procedures Legislation Bill is really, really important. What I want to really focus on here is the central place that tribunals play in access to justice. In particular, the disputes tribunal here is really being brought up to date with, for example, its own registry so that it can be managed separately from the District Court, have its own training and management of its referees, and so on—and also the ability to use audio-visual links as well. This is simply modernisation. As a member on the other side said moments ago, the increase of the jurisdiction to $30,000 is really, really important because, for many people, the disputes tribunal—a very simple, very straightforward tribunal with no lawyers—is really the only way they’re going to access the justice system in a speedy way and a cost-effective way.

The other thing the bill does is tidy up a number of things around things like vexatious litigants, litigants that don’t turn up, and really the ability to move things along. So Subpart 4 of Part 1, that deals with disputes tribunals, is one little part of this bill, but it really is indicative of what the bill does as a whole, which is to modernise tribunals, which probably serve one of the most important parts in our justice system for many New Zealanders who don’t see the higher courts at all. So well done to Minister Sio. I absolutely commend this bill to the House. Thank you, Madam Assistant Speaker.

Hon MAGGIE BARRY (National—North Shore): Thank you, Madam Assistant Speaker. I rise to speak in brief to the third reading of this Courts Matters Bill. I’ve spoken at the previous readings and don’t intend to take up too much time in the House. But I think it is worthwhile to emphasise that this is a bill, along with similar pieces of legislation, which is seeking to streamline, to get rid of the old and the unnecessary, to ensure that courts run efficiently and well and safely. I think many of the measures that have been brought in are what I would describe as very common sense.

So the Courts Matters Bill amends 14 Acts governing court security. In particular, with this bill and hearing the submissions, I remain surprised that it hasn’t been done many years earlier. The idea that people would come into a courtroom environment in possession of drugs, possibly under the influence of drugs, doing violent acts and illegal acts within the court area, and that there wasn’t really the power of any of the court officials or security officers to deny entry and to remove or detain—how foolish is that. This is a bill whose time has come.

It is a group of bills that enjoys cross-party support, and was indeed begun under the last Government. A great deal of work was put in by the Hon Amy Adams in ensuring it was in a state of readiness. I commend also the Ministers on the Government side now who have ushered it through, because it is important that these sorts of sensible reforms really do get done because, I think, it improves the public’s perception of the justice system. It was said earlier that justice delayed is justice denied, and I think there have been a lot of instances where, particularly with tribunals—and the Tribunals Powers and Procedures Legislation Bill has made a number of common-sense recommendations that are going to free up 21 tribunals.

When I was the Minister of Conservation there were a number of entities whose time had passed. This is a bill that, for example, enables the Birdlings Flat land to wind up. The commissioner has finished the work. There is no need for it to continue. Similarly, with the Real Estate Agents Act, there are strike-out powers that are inserted across 13 Acts, but they can only be applied if a party was not present or represented at a hearing where they were required to be. So adding in the transitional provisions and making the changes means that the public will get better justice from real estate agents who have not done what they ought to have done.

So I think that, in all, the way that this bill has been put together makes perfect sense. It clears up things that should have been done long ago. It makes things more efficient, safer, and more cost-effective. Who would not agree with this bill? I commend it to the House.

JAN TINETTI (Labour): As a member of this Parliament who has not sat on the Justice Committee, who went through this—

Hon Ruth Dyson: Bet you wish you were now.

JAN TINETTI: I do wish I had been on that select committee when I read this bill. I have to commend that select committee for the work that they have done, and also the Minister. The reason I say that is that I don't think this bill is like either steamed fish or old chips. I really believe this is a very, very good bill—I don't like either of those things—I think it’s a really good bill. The reason I say that is because I think that a test of a bill is if someone like me, that has not sat on that select committee and actually understands it, the essence of it—having read it today, I actually think this is incredible, the work that this particular select committee has done. I commend all of the members on that committee.

The fact that this bill will improve people's experiences with courts and tribunals is absolutely critical to the ongoing work of the court system in this country. Most importantly, the reduction of time that it will take to resolve matters in the courts and the tribunals, and for people to feel safer in those situations, is just a wonderful, wonderful addition that this bill is actually making.

The one area that I actually read through that I was most intrigued with was the work that the select committee did around the Human Rights Review Tribunal and the fact that they have taken on the Minister's paper—the recommendations that he took to Cabinet—to actually make that work now go through a lot quicker. We had such a backlog in that particular area that it was quite worrying, because that is an area that is critical for many, many people. We've heard those arguments here tonight and I don't need to re-go over those at all. So I'm really delighted with this particular bill and I commend it to the House.

Bills read a third time.

Bills

Fire and Emergency New Zealand (Levy) Amendment Bill

First Reading

Hon TRACEY MARTIN (Minister of Internal Affairs): I move, That the Fire and Emergency New Zealand (Levy) Amendment Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Governance and Administration Committee to consider the bill. At the appropriate time, I intend to move that the bill be reported to the House by 1 April 2019.

This is not a very large bill, to be perfectly frank, but it does a couple of things that are very, very important. So if you don’t mind, I will every now and then just check my notes to make sure that I don’t say that it does something that it doesn’t do, or forget to say something that it actually does do, just for clarity.

For more than 150 years, the fire service organisations have played a critical role in the safety and protection of our New Zealand communities, but the role of the organisations has changed and it has grown. Fire services have become our first defence to the effects of climate change—responding to flooding, land slips, and bigger and more intensive wildfires. They increasingly attend non-fire emergencies, such as motor vehicle accidents, medical incidents, hazardous substance emergencies, and natural disasters. A modern fire and emergency service is also central to the resilience of our communities, not only leading the response in times of emergency but through community recovery as well.

Fire and Emergency New Zealand (FENZ) came into existence on 1 July 2017 to better meet New Zealand’s changing emergency needs. To create a unified organisation has been no mean feat. Forty organisations have come together, bringing with them a total workforce of 14,000 people. Of these people, 11,000 are volunteers who give their time for free to serve their local communities. Despite the challenges of unification—it is a large job—Fire and Emergency New Zealand has continued to seamlessly deliver services in communities around New Zealand. They have attended 82,567 incidents in their first year.

The main purpose of the Fire and Emergency New Zealand (Levy) Amendment Bill is to amend the commencement date for the new levy regime that funds those activities. It is essential that this change be made prior to 1 July 2019, as this is when the new regime would have come into force. I therefore recommend that the time-critical amendments in this bill progress through the House as quickly as possible.

FENZ is funded by a levy on property insurance. This is implemented by insurance companies and insurance brokers. At the moment, the levy regime that existed before the fire services were unified last year is still in place, with a transitional levy rate to fund FENZ’s initial few years and some of the costs of the reforms. Under the Fire and Emergency New Zealand Act, a new levy system is set to take place on 1 July 2019, as I previously mentioned. It also makes some changes to the way that the levy is calculated, and this is part of the concern and the reason why we need also to take a delay, as the current levy system does not reflect the scope of services that Fire and Emergency New Zealand carries out.

To implement the new levy regime, insurance companies and insurance brokers will need time to change their systems and their business processes. Since the passage of the FENZ Act, officials at the Department of Internal Affairs have worked closely with insurance companies and insurance brokers on planning for the implementation of the new levy. This work has revealed that a number of changes to the new levy regime will be required for it to work properly. The time needed to complete this work and to ensure that the new levy regime operates properly means that the current date of 1 July 2019 is not achievable for the commencement of the new levy. It has also highlighted some serious concerns about the unintended consequences of the levy calculation.

If I can just mention, for example, a very large national property portfolio insured at, say, $4.5 billion against fire and $25 billion against material damage will have their levy rise from $4.7 million per year to $18.5 million per year under the current levy calculation. A large national portfolio of older building stock insured with the indemnity value of $1 billion and replacement value of $3.8 billion would see their current levy rise from $1 million to $2.81 million. This is a problem, and this is the problem that I inherited when I came and sat in this seat, and this is the problem—why I brought this bill to the House now.

The levy calculation was always going to be complicated. This is not a comment or a criticism of anybody in particular; this is merely an explanation about why we need the time. To dramatise that, this would be the increase for large property owners in New Zealand, and these would be our supermarkets, many of our churches, and so on and so forth. This is too large an increase for any major business or our churches and so on to be able to manage in the time frame that we have been given. We need more time.

The Department of Internal Affairs and Fire and Emergency New Zealand need more time to work with these businesses and these organisations to make sure that we get what is a fair levy across all of the people of New Zealand who will need Fire and Emergency New Zealand services, because that is what this is supposed to be about. This is about making sure that Fire and Emergency New Zealand has the amount of money it needs to provide what is the expectation of New Zealanders for the service that they will provide. So the extra time will also provide more information about what FENZ’s costs are before setting the levy rate to fund it.

The Government therefore intends to move the commencement date back by one year, to 1 July 2020. The bill achieves this by setting a backstop for transition to the new levy regime at 1 July 2021. The backstop date of 1 July 2021 will ensure that if it later becomes apparent that the commencement of the new levy regime by 2020 is not achievable, we can change that date by Order in Council. This will save the need to come back to the House.

The bill will also make a number of other changes. It will exempt the collections of public museums, public art galleries, and whare taonga from the levy from 1 July 2019. Cabinet approved this exemption in 2017, which was intended to be made through levy regulations in July 2017. As these levy regulations are tied to the commencement of the new levy, without an amendment delaying that regime by a year it would also mean delaying this exemption for those collections. We are therefore bringing the exemption forward, as we could see no reason to continue charging the levy on collections insurance.

The bill also makes amendments to clarify that the FENZ levy rate may be set for a period other than three years, and that the surpluses or deficits of levy income in a previous levy period must be taken into account when setting the levy. I would like to emphasise it is essential that this bill pass prior to 1 July 2019. If that date is not achieved, there is a material risk to FENZ revenue that FENZ revenue will be disrupted. This was a date that was set in by the prior Parliament, and, again, it is not a criticism of anybody at that time; this is merely a recognition that the work that needed to be done was more complicated than recognised by the Parliament at that time.

FENZ needs revenue certainty so that it can continue to deliver its fire and emergency functions uninterrupted. This is important for the safety of our communities across New Zealand. Providing certainty about the rest of the levy regime will require some legislative amendments. The Government is currently working through the drafting of these amendments and intends to introduce a second FENZ Act amendment bill in the new year. The amendments in that bill will be technical and will finalise the detail of the new levy regime. We have to get these right.

I move that the Fire and Emergency New Zealand (Levy) Amendment Bill be reported to the House by 1 April 2019. I commend the bill to the House.

Hon JACQUI DEAN (National—Waitaki): Thank you, Madam Assistant Speaker. National is pleased to support this bill through to select committee. I do have a question already.

Hon Nathan Guy: Oh, that’ll be a goody.

Hon JACQUI DEAN: Yeah, well. The Minister very well set out the provisions in the bill and the necessity to extend the date out by three or maybe two years. The question I have—and it’s something we will explore in the select committee process and when we come to the committee of the whole House—is: has the Government thought about the impacts on the insurance contract law reform work that is being undertaken by the Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs at the moment? I don’t know, but that was a piece of work which was generated under our Government and should be bringing some improvements into insurance contract law in New Zealand, and I do wonder whether that has been taken into account by officials. So that is something that absolutely the National Party will be looking out for when we open for submissions on this bill at the select committee. But we do support it.

The commencement date, 1 July 2019, is—what?—seven months away now. The Government have had a year—yes, the Government had a year—and here we are some months out from the commencement date and suddenly they realise that that date is not achievable. And that’s fine. We support the bill and we support pushing out the date of commencement, because Fire and Emergency New Zealand has our support. From every little corner of New Zealand, Fire and Emergency New Zealand turn out on weekends, and at midnight, and in the middle of family celebrations and weddings and funerals; they turn out for us and so we, of course, will support them in the passage of this bill, which really pushes out—it’s not a big bill—the commencement date by three or two years.

So, there’s not much to say because I think, apart from the matter I raised initially around “does this work interface well enough with insurance law reform work”—and I think that is a critical question and consideration and I do look forward to contributions from the Government side of the House. That aside—and we will look carefully at that—we do support this. Of course we support Fire and Emergency New Zealand and doing all we can—after all, it was this Opposition’s legislation initially—to bring this bill through with amendment, if need be, but we do look forward to supporting it through to select committee.

Hon STUART NASH (Minister of Police): Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. Let me first start by saying that I think Minister Martin has actually done a fantastic job of taking a bill that did actually need quite a lot of work and shepherding it through the Cabinet process and bringing it to the House.

The member who just spoke, Jacqui Dean, asked some questions and I have no doubt Minister Martin, in the very, very thorough way she does things, has thought of this because, I can tell you, that she does approach these issues in a very, very thorough way.

Unfortunately, this is one of these bills—as the previous speaker alluded to—that was put forward by the previous Government. We have had to pick it up and we have had to make changes. I think what happened is perhaps there was a level of consultation which wasn’t robust enough to actually get to the bottom of the issue, and that is the fact that this is a fantastic idea, but if you don’t give those who are responsible for implementing the bill enough time to actually get their systems sorted, then we end up back in Parliament with an amendment bill trying to make it right.

But we are here doing this and, as mentioned, Minister Martin’s done a great job. I would, however, like to reiterate Minister Martin’s point where she said that these small volunteer fire brigades are the backbone of our communities. I’ve got an electorate with rural communities and usually, without exception, you go to the smallest ones—Matawai, for example, at the top of my electorate—the fire station there, the volunteer fire brigade, is the backbone of the local community. The fire station is where everyone gathers, they meet, and you have your barbecues, and you find out what’s going on. The men, and the women these days, are out there helping and the thing that most people don’t realise is—they probably do, actually—in fact a lot of the work, the majority of the work, that the fire brigade does is not actually putting out fires in these in small rural communities, it’s actually attending motor accidents and all of the other emergency events that go on, when in fact the volunteer fire brigade is really the only, and certainly the first, responders in any community.

The new levy system will be an improvement on the current system. It includes new, modern provisions such as anti-avoidance mechanisms, and improves audits and information powers for Fire and Emergency New Zealand (FENZ). This is important, not only for transparency for those who pay the levy, but also for FENZ themselves. What we do know is that if there’s a transparent regime and there are processes in place that allow those who pay the levy, or who are interested in what happens with the levy, to find out what goes on, then it makes for the much better running of an organisation. So that’s happening.

There’s one other point I would like to make, and that is that—[Interruption]

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): Order! Order! I’m sorry to interrupt the member. Could you get closer together if you want to have a conversation? Thank you.

Hon STUART NASH: The bill also exempts public museums, public art galleries, and whare taonga from paying the fire and emergency levy, from July 1, 2019, in keeping with the original plan.

The Minister gave an example; let me give another example if I may, and that is Te Papa. For example, under the proposed structure, their levy was going to go from $3 million to $4.5 million. So a 50 per cent increase, and we just feel that—well one thing in Labour, of course, is that we love a strong cultural and creative sector, to the point that the Prime Minister herself has taken on this portfolio. Labour believes that this sector is vital to our national identity. Helen Clark—the previous Prime Minister, of course—had this portfolio as well. The economic development around museums and galleries deserve support, and certainly from government, to maintain its sustainability, hence the reason why we are exempting museums and galleries and whare taonga from the levy.

This is a good bill. It’s a necessary bill. As mentioned, the Minister’s done a fantastic job of shepherding this through the Cabinet process. Her papers have been fulsome. The rationale is very sound. It is good—it is good—the Opposition is supporting this bill because it’s one of those ones that actually cuts to the heart—

Andrew Bayly: It is our bill.

Hon STUART NASH: Well, Mr Bayly is right. The original bill was the previous Government’s bill, but they got it so wrong to the extent we’ve had to bring it back. We’ve had to bring an amendment bill back, unfortunately. Unfortunately, it’s up to this Government and Minister Martin to actually get it right and make sure it’s able to be implemented. That’s what we’re doing. In fact, this is one of these bills—[Interruption]

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): Order! Order! We were doing so well.

Hon STUART NASH: It is one of these bills that shouldn’t be in the House, because they should have got it right the first time. But it is up to Minister Martin. She’s doing a fantastic job. We support this, and there we go. Thank you very much.

Hon NATHAN GUY (National—Ōtaki): Thank you, Madam Assistant Speaker. It’s a great opportunity to take a call on the Fire and Emergency New Zealand (Levy) Amendment Bill—one that we do support. We’ve just heard an interesting contribution from Stuart Nash. I won’t bother debating a whole lot of things that he said, because some of it made sense, but I must say some of it didn’t.

This bill is an important one. When I think back to when I was the Minister of Internal Affairs, from 2009 to 2011, it was a great, responsible job to be the Minister of Internal Affairs because it was such a wide ministry. In fact, at the time, we brought in Archives New Zealand and the National Library, so we made it even bigger. But, importantly, the engagement that I had with the New Zealand Fire Service at the time was very important, and the thing that I liked most about dealing with the team at the New Zealand Fire Service was the focus that they had on the volunteers. Yes, paid firefighters are important, but so are the thousands of volunteers up and down the country. I have numerous small fire stations in my Ōtaki electorate. In fact, on Saturday night, I will be at a celebration for the Paraparaumu Fire Station, where they have a fire service gold star.

But what officials used to tell me when they came into my office was that the Act was out of date and needed modernising, because when they turned up to motor vehicle accidents—and a lot of the 111 callouts that they have are, unfortunately, to motor vehicle accidents—they wanted to know if they were mandated to do that ahead of the ambulance, because on some of occasions, particularly in rural communities, they would get there a lot quicker than ambulances. Then we think about the USAR—the urban search and rescue. They are a great organisation, and they really stepped up for the Christchurch earthquakes. Were they mandated to do the role that they played? In fact, when we put the call out internationally, we had numerous numbers of USAR teams that came to Christchurch from around the world, and then what happened was we had requests at various events—tsunamis, earthquakes—around the world for our New Zealand USAR team to travel and be deployed into these various countries. Were they mandated to do that? Well, as it turned out, they weren’t. So modernising the Act was very important.

I want to acknowledge Paul Swain, who did a huge amount of work at that period of time to do the review. Actually, interestingly enough, he is now the chair of the New Zealand Fire and Emergency—what are they called now? New—

Hon Tracey Martin: Fire and Emergency service.

Hon NATHAN GUY: Fire and Emergency New Zealand—and I thank the Minister for that. Paul Swain, I think it’s fair to say, has a huge amount of support right across the House for the work that he did in terms of the Swain review, as it’s commonly known now, and, indeed, what he’s doing in his leadership of this relatively new organisation. The other person I want to acknowledge is Peter Dunne, who chaperoned through the new Act in 2017.

Focusing now on this amendment bill this evening, there’s really a couple of aspects to it. It’s clear that Minister Dunne might have been a bit ambitious on his time frame for setting the levy, so it’s only fair that that gets pushed out a little bit to give the insurers and the brokers time to upgrade and, potentially, resize their hardware and software, which they need to do to have a mechanism to collect the levy. The other one is the importance of allowing some exemptions for public museums and the like—we support that.

Also, it’s interesting—Minister Martin will have some work ahead of her in terms of setting the levy. She’ll need to be considering the number of motor vehicles and the number of properties that are insured, and we know that, actually, those numbers—well, motor vehicle numbers are going to continue to grow in New Zealand. Insured properties—a lot of properties are insured because they have mortgages. But, as they get through the period of having a mortgage, then they don’t—often, they let their insurance lapse.

The exemptions, as I’ve talked about—and I know from my experience as a Government Minister in the past that setting levies is always a bit of a headache, because if you set it too high, then, effectively, you’re taking too much money off the taxpayer, and if you set it too low, it’s difficult for Fire and Emergency to do their job. So those things will be teased out and debated in the committee stage.

On this side of the House, we support the bill. Thank you.

Hon CLARE CURRAN (Labour—Dunedin South): Thank you, Madam Assistant Speaker. Actually, I think it was July last year when the bill that created Fire and Emergency New Zealand went through the House.

Hon Member: Is that all?

Hon Tracey Martin: Yep.

Hon CLARE CURRAN: Yeah, it feels like a while ago, actually. I remember speaking in one of the stages of that bill, and it was the night of the Christchurch fires, which gave a certain significance to this bill—the importance of our fire service, for one thing, but it also brought into sharp relief the importance of getting it right, the importance of getting our emergency services right, the importance of having our civil defence systems working effectively, and the importance of having good decision-making structures in place and chains of command.

Madam Assistant Speaker, I’m sure that you’re very well aware of all of these issues, coming from Christchurch yourself, but, actually, that night spurred an inquiry, which took place before the election, into those very things. Now, I know it didn’t directly impact on this bill, but the fire service, which—I was just looking at your speech, the Hon Tracey Martin: 40 organisations, a total workforce of 14,000 people, 11,000 of whom are volunteers, which is the most extraordinary thing, you know. Big ups to Fire and Emergency Service New Zealand. But what a massive feat to bring all of that together, so I want to acknowledge Peter Dunne for the work that he did around that, but now Tracey Martin has to take that and make that work, and make the financial side of it work, which is this levy system. So that’s why we’re in the House tonight talking about increasing the transitional arrangements for the levy.

Obviously, that’s important. We’ve got to get it right, just as we have to get our civil defence system right, and behind that sits the decision-making processes. So I am very much in support of this—an improvement on the current system. Thankfully, sense was seen, and the exemptions that a number of speakers have mentioned tonight around the museums and galleries—and I just want to make reference to my own city and an impassioned plea from the director of the Otago Museum, alongside a whole lot of other directors of our museums who appeared before the select committee last year and talked about the impossibility of putting a value on our cultural collections. The financial impact if the levy applied to them, which would’ve been a 300 per cent increase, was completely unsustainable. So thank you for seeing sense across the country on our cultural collections.

I just want to end on the note of giving a shout-out to the volunteers and the fire service in my own city, particularly in Portobello down the Otago Peninsula, where they spend most of their call-outs attending car accidents and emergencies that affect people, whether it’s—you know, other than car accidents, but accidents of some sort; sometimes, it’s fires. Consequently, their training and their responsiveness—and they mostly have day jobs—are extraordinary, and I think that’s fantastic. Also, as far as the other end of my electorate, Middlemarch, and all of those in between—they’re the people that turn up that are incredibly professional, that are flexible and able to attend to any emergency, really. We need them, we need to value them more, and we’ve got to get the system right that sits behind them. Thank you.

Hon SCOTT SIMPSON (National—Coromandel): Thank you, Madam Assistant Speaker. It’s a pleasure to take a short call in this first reading debate on the amendment bill that’s before the House in the name of the Hon Tracey Martin. It’s a small, technical bill, and, as my colleagues on this side of the House have already indicated, National will be supporting this bill through to select committee. In doing so, I think that we will be keen to see what kinds of submissions come through the select committee process. I suspect that they won’t be too numerous, because the bill, as I said, has a fine and detailed aspect to it. It’s not a particularly controversial or, indeed, complicated piece of legislation. It simply amends the time frame for the setting up of the new levy-based system, because it became apparent that more time was needed.

I don’t think that there’s any question of blame about how this was required. This change to Fire and Emergency New Zealand was the first significant change to our fire and emergency service structure since the 1970s, and, before that, much of what was already in place had been there for a good deal longer than the 1970s. So it’s quite a big piece of change for those people involved in Fire and Emergency New Zealand.

I’m very pleased to see that a small change that has been included in this bill relates to an exclusion from the levy liability for public museums, galleries, and those sorts of places where high-value collections are stored and protected for the benefit of citizens, for visitors, and, of course, for the future heritage of the country. It became obvious, I think, when the bill was first introduced and passed, that the prospect of incredibly high insurance premiums on antiquities of immeasurable value would mean that an exclusion was required for organisations like museums and galleries. So I’m pleased to see that that has been included.

I have the pleasure and honour of representing the Coromandel electorate in this Parliament. It’s an electorate that is dominated by a range of beautiful towns and communities across the region. In each of those towns and communities, there is a volunteer fire service, and I am always humbled by the work and the commitment and the effort that is put in by volunteers. Throughout my entire electorate, all the fire services are provided on a voluntary basis, be they traditional volunteer fire brigades or rural brigades. They, of course, are now going through a transition phase of merging into the new entity. That at times can be challenging and is a bit of a journey for all those involved, but I’m pleased to say that so far so good. Yes, there are some challenges to get through, but I’ve been very impressed with the level of goodwill in terms of moving this service forward.

As somebody else mentioned earlier on in the debate, the nature of the service has now changed considerably, and I know that in my electorate these days, regrettably, increasingly the work done by Fire and Emergency New Zealand is actually for road accidents, road crashes, and that sort of thing. So the service needs to change in order to accommodate those changes to the work that is being done, but I just wanted to place on record my grateful appreciation to volunteers not only in the Coromandel electorate but nationwide. They do a sterling job on behalf of their communities and us as New Zealanders. I commend this bill to first reading.

Hon EUGENIE SAGE (Minister of Conservation): E Te Māngai o Te Whare, tēnā koe. I don’t always agree with Mr Simpson, but I agree with every word he said then, because, similarly, living in an area where the 11,000 volunteers who are part of Fire and Emergency New Zealand are out attending to road crashes, you hear the siren go off in the middle of the night and you think of the volunteers who are leaping out of bed to get down to the fire station, to get the trucks out, to go off to the equivalent of ambulance call-outs, as well. They do an extraordinary job on behalf of all of us throughout New Zealand.

This exercise, which took place as a result of the Fire and Emergency New Zealand legislation in 2017, of merging the urban and rural fire services, of merging fire and emergency, was a massive one. I congratulate all of those involved in terms of developing into a single organisation and bringing all the back-office people together with the service personnel. They are often in very challenging situations that I personally wouldn’t want to be in, where people have been injured in road crashes and the like, and I really express my appreciation for the huge work that they do.

This bill is not changing the way Fire and Emergency New Zealand is funded, but it is ensuring that the levy which has been carried over, the transitional levy provisions, have a longer lead-in time before the new levy is implemented. It changes what’s called the back-stop date to 1 July 2020 so that the new levy system must be implemented by 1 July 2020 or, if it is ready to go, earlier. That can be done by Order in Council.

I note that the principal Act, the Fire and Emergency New Zealand Act 2017, provided for a levy regime which ensured that there was a stable source of funding for Fire and Emergency New Zealand, that the levy system was universal so that costs were shared amongst all of those who benefit, that it was equitable and commensurate with the benefits, that it was predictable, and that it was also sufficiently flexible to adapt to change. So, of course, ensuring that the new levy fits all of the criteria which are in the principal Act, that the Government works with the insurance industry, is a big exercise. The reason for this bill is because the insurance industry—because, of course, the levy is applied to property through insurance contracts and brokers—made it very clear that they needed more time in terms of looking at the way their services work, the way their contracts were designed, and the way their IT systems operated.

As the Minister Martin said, we need to get this right, because Fire and Emergency New Zealand costs around $460 million annually, and the levy needs to be appropriately set. As the Minister also noted, there will be further legislation introduced into the Parliament early next year, which will be more comprehensive in terms of how the levy will actually operate, but this bill is a small and simple one which is simply seeking to clarify the current regime so that you don’t get uncertainty with the carry-over of the transitional provisions. There’s a clear deadline for when the new levy regime is to be introduced, and it is quite critical that it passes the Parliament before 1 July next year, when originally the new levy was planned to come into force.

So it’s a small, perfectly formed bill. As others have said, the Minister is doing a very good job in picking up this very complex amalgamation of the services, fire and emergency, to deal with all sorts of situations—not just fire but flooding, road crashes and the like—and ensuring that they function to the best of the capability of everybody involved and provide services that are very challenging and that a lot of us wouldn’t want to be doing. So, again, I express my gratitude both to the professionals involved in Fire and Emergency New Zealand and to the 11,000 volunteers, and commend this bill to the House.

ANDREW BAYLY (National—Hunua): Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. It’s a pleasure to be talking on the Fire and Emergency New Zealand (Levy) Amendment Bill. I’ve got to say that it’s a lovely night, isn’t it, Madam Deputy Speaker? This is one of these rare occasions when this House comes together. It’s a beautiful thing, and I know what the common denominator is—that is, this is a good National Party bill, and everyone’s coming together over it.

I’ve got to just acknowledge all the members of the Government and thank them for supporting our bill. Of course, it’s a pretty simple amendment, this bill, which is about pushing out the levy. I think many people have canvassed what it’s about, because, basically, it’s giving a bit more time for the insurers and the brokers to put in place the right arrangements before they impose the levy. The other aspects are that we’re going to exclude galleries and those types of entities from paying a levy, which, in my view, I think is very good.

I’ve got to say that, like the rest of us before, I just want to acknowledge the fine people, the men and women of the Fire and Emergency New Zealand, but also, more importantly in many ways, their families—their families who have to watch their loved ones go out late at night, early in the morning, or even during work. They down tools—and they might be self-employed—and go out to sometimes some quite horrific occasions. It’s not only the accidents that the previous members spoke about but also the fires, and also just those small things in the community that help. To me, they are the heart of the small communities of New Zealand.

In my electorate of Hunua, I’ve got 15 of these fire brigades. Only just the weekend before last, I was up in a beautiful part of my electorate called Āwhitu at Pollok celebrating the Āwhitu fire brigade annual medal awards. Of course, many of them were receiving them, and I always make a point of going there if I can, to these medal awards, because in my view, they deserve it—much like the police. They do a fabulous job on our behalf.

I can only just commend this bill. I think it’s an excellent bill, and I think it’s just some tiny recognition of the wonderful thing that these men and women do on our behalf in our communities. Thank you very much.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): We now have a split call.

MARJA LUBECK (Labour): Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. Tēnā koe e Te Māngai o Te Whare. It’s a real pleasure to take a call on this first reading of the Fire and Emergency New Zealand (Levy) Amendment Bill. Before I get into this bill and the details of it, I’d like to congratulate my colleague Mark Patterson on his promotion to chief whip. Mark is an absolute top bloke, and I know he’ll do a great job in keeping his team whipped and in check.

Hon Members: Acting.

MARJA LUBECK: Acting. This bill amends the Fire and Emergency New Zealand Act 2017, the FENZ Act. All the bill’s amendments are all levy-related to fund FENZ. As we have already heard, rural and urban fire services were unified across the country into a national organisation, Fire and Emergency New Zealand—FENZ—in July 2017. I also would like to acknowledge that fire service organisations have kept our communities across New Zealand safe for more than 150 years.

In fact, many of us MPs would have learnt firsthand during the International Firefighters Day on 4 May this year that, increasingly, these people not only do things like putting out fires and helping rescue people and animals but deal with issues such as road accidents, medical accidents, slips, floods—you name it, they’re doing this. That’s a workforce of 14,000 and, as we’ve heard, 11,000 volunteers dedicating their time and their families’ time to play a critical role in keeping our communities safe.

Minister Nash previously mentioned these organisations as the backbone of our communities, and he mentioned a particular station at the top of his electorate. I too would like to do the same thing. In Leigh, right at the top of Rodney, is the Leigh fire station, with an incredible volunteer group that is keeping our community safe.

So at the time that the urban and rural fire services were unified, there was a transitional levy regime established, and the planning was—as we’ve heard—that this new levy would take place from 1 July 2019, but, obviously, this particular date is not achievable. So what this bill does, again, is it amends the commencement date for this new levy-based system. As we have already heard from Minister Martin, that is because insurers and brokers will need more time to make considerable changes to their particular systems, but we also want to have more information to understand what FENZ’s costs are before we are setting any new levy rates to fund it.

So, again, this is a very short bill. Apart from extending the transitional levy rates for FENZ and delaying the commencement date for the new levy regime, the bill also deals with levy exemptions, and they have already been mentioned, so I won’t repeat those. Lastly, the bill also makes some amendments to clarify that levy rates can be for periods shorter than three years.

So, all in all, it’s a very sensible, practical bill. Thank you, Minister Martin, and I commend it to the House.

IAN McKELVIE (National—Rangitīkei): It’s a privilege to take a call on this bill, and I agree with all the nice things that have been said about the fire service and all those people that give their time voluntarily, and all that sort of stuff, in the name of supporting our communities. It’s a fantastic organisation. However, I have some interesting issues—

Hon Members: “However”?

IAN McKELVIE: Well, first of all, we are supporting this bill to the select committee. But, having come from a long period of experience in the insurance industry and, I think, some 15 years on various insurance boards, and being an ex-mayor who’s watched this very difficult topic raised with councils as well, my view on the bill is slightly different, and I think there’s room for some discussion on it in the future, because it is extremely difficult to levy insurance companies when people don’t insure things. I guess the challenge I’ve got with this is that’s going to become more and more prevalent as it gets more and more difficult to get insurance, and I think we’re going to have half of our community, in due course, not insured. We’re seeing that already with earthquake insurance. We’re going to see it more and more frequently with other forms of insurance.

So I think the difficulty in the future is going to be—not in my time, and I’m not going to die in a ditch over this, but I have had significant experience in the insurance industry and I understand the challenges that this bill creates. My view is that it should be applied to rates, but that’s certainly not National Party policy—that’s my personal view.

So I think that there are some challenges in the course of this bill, and it will be very interesting to see where we get to in the course of the select committee discussions on it. It is an important issue for our community. It is an important issue for all—particularly those in rural New Zealand, interestingly, because we are more isolated, more fraught, and have more challenges with some of this stuff.

The other thing I’m concerned about with respect to this bill is the manner in which it’s being applied, and the manner in which the fire and emergency services have been reformed, in my view, is going to lead to significant increases in cost, and I would be a little nervous as to where the costs might get to in the course of this levy situation. So I think there’s a couple of things that I find interesting with it and find quite concerning, and I’m sure it’s an issue that the select committee will need to get its head round in the course of considering the discussion on the bill.

So whilst I absolutely support the fire service—or Fire and Emergency New Zealand, as it’s now known—and all the activities they undertake, I do think there are some challenges in the way we set these levies. I do think there are some challenges in the potential future costs, particularly to those people who are paying the levy—in other words, the people of New Zealand who are insured. So I’ve got a great deal of pleasure in supporting this bill to the next stage, and I look forward to the discussion in the select committee on it.

MICHAEL WOOD (Labour—Mt Roskill): Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. In October of each year, I conduct a heritage tour around the streets of my community of Three Kings in the electorate of Mt Roskill, walking around sites of certain built and cultural heritage significance. One of the buildings that is a highlight of that tour is the old Mount Roskill fire station, and what is notable about that is that it was one of the earliest and first public buildings in the growing community of Three Kings. It was built in about 1930, and at that time there really weren’t any other public buildings around. What that points to is the fact that fire and emergency services are totally central to the safe operation of our communities. In the case of my community, it was the first building you built, because your community was vulnerable until you had that service.

It’s something that I think about a bit. My family has many roots in the community of Thames, and the Kenney side of my family has about seven or eight generations of voluntary firefighters going back in that community, and that’s something that my family has been immensely proud of. So, along with other members of this House, I’m very pleased to be supporting the bill this evening.

The work that we in this House have gone through over a number of years, and it was primarily led—let’s acknowledge him—by the Hon Peter Dunne, in bringing together the fire and emergency services was a pretty monumental piece of work, actually, but probably a necessary one, and what we’re doing in this bill, really, is ensuring that we get the implementation right. There are a couple of issues which have popped up. The first one is around the setting of levies and the ability of insurers and brokers to adapt to the new regime, and I don’t think there’s any particular reason that I’m aware of that we would look to hold anyone to account for the fact that we’re not able to get those set as quickly as possible. That was envisaged to happen in 2019. This bill looks to extend that out to 2020 or 2021, depending on the circumstances, and it seems that there are just pretty fair reasons for that. It’s simply very difficult to get the systems in place to have levies set appropriately by insurers and brokers.

I’m quite interested in the second major change in the bill, and that is the change to have an exemption in respect of the collections of public museums and public art galleries and whare taonga. I think this is a really important one. It’s interesting to look back to when the original legislation first took effect. I think Te Papa’s insurance levy jumped from something like $3 million per year to $4.5 million per year—it was a 50 percent increase. Of course, if you think about it, the collections of many of these cultural institutions are incredibly valuable, so that has a flow-on effect to how much the levy increase might be, but at the same time as having a stock of incredibly valuable goods, these are institutions that don’t necessarily have a commensurate amount of revenue coming in to support those kinds of increases. So I think the change within this bill—and this is in new clause 25A in schedule 1, to be inserted by clause 8, which, effectively, exempts the collections of museums, public art galleries, and whare taonga—is an important one, just to make sure that while we are getting this regime right, we’re not unfairly penalising cultural institutions that are very, very important.

So I think those two small changes are very sensible. They’re about making sure that this legislation, which has wide support, continues to be supported by being responsive to those needs that have been identified. Because of that, along with my colleagues and, I think, everyone else in the House, I’m very happy to commend the bill to the House. Thank you.

MATT KING (National—Northland): Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. Look, I’d like to talk about—in relation to this bill—this levy that pays the bills. Being a former volunteer firefighter myself, only for two years—I can only claim two years—I’d like to acknowledge—

Marja Lubeck: 11?

MATT KING: Oh yeah, OK. A couple of guys over there have done a bit more than me. I’d like to acknowledge the volunteers. I went to an award ceremony for a guy called Luers Crump from Kaikohe and he was getting his 50-year medal for service to the Fire Service. So he’d been supporting the community as a volunteer firefighter for the same amount of time that I’ve been on this earth. Another guy, Richard Penney—25 years—a guy of similar age to me, or maybe a bit younger; I don’t want to offend him. He got his 25-year medal. And then another guy Jack Winwood from my local brigade, whose done 50 years, not continuous. He’s probably done about 60, but it was broken up, so he got his 50-year medal a while back too.

So I’d like to acknowledge those volunteer firemen and the communities that they serve in my little patch up North. They do a great job. They get called out in the middle of the night all the time. I had the pager on me for two years and it drove me nuts, so I acknowledge the work they do. They attend all manner of accidents and structure fires, and that sort of thing. So the levy will be paying for this.

I remember the day I first rolled up to training and I got given all this expensive firefighting gear and breathing apparatus to try on and all the kit. I had no idea what to do. I was a junior in the Ōkaihau Fire Brigade with a whole lot of very experienced people around me, including my neighbour, who’s been the chief there for a few years and does great work. I recall going down to training in Christchurch. It’s invaluable training. It’s lifesaving sort of training. One thing you don’t want to be if you’re a volunteer fireman is scared of heights, and you don’t want to be scared of confined spaces. I tell you what, that’s what I’m scared of—heights and confined spaces.

So we had to climb up the ladder at this training facility in Christchurch. It was two or three storeys up. As you can imagine, I was very scared. They ask you a question at the top to try and clear your head, and I couldn’t answer anything. I couldn’t even speak. I was so scared. But I got over it. I managed it. I fought the battle.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: It’s a really interesting story but it has absolutely nothing to do with the bill.

MATT KING: OK. I’ll finish up with one short story, one tiny story: structure fire—my first structure fire. I went there with all these volunteer firemen and fought a huge structure fire for six hours, until I was exhausted, with all these amazing men and women around me in the middle of the night. The next day, I was called out to investigate the cause of that fire, because I was an investigator, and what had happened was this young fella had gone into a shed at the back of the building and was sniffing petrol, using a lighter as a torch. So that’s what caused the fire. So, anyway, I commend this bill to the House.

KIERAN McANULTY (Labour): Thank you very much, Madam Deputy Speaker. Here I was thinking we were going to hear from Matt King about levies. Instead, he shamelessly used this opportunity to tell us about his two years in the fire brigade. So let me tell you about my seven years—

DEPUTY SPEAKER: No.

KIERAN McANULTY: No. No, I’ll weave it in so it’s relevant to the speech, because that’s what a good MP does. But it is wonderful and I do want to acknowledge Matt King and all the other volunteers that serve our communities, and don’t be so hard on yourself, sir—two years is still two years more than most, and so good on you. But it is wonderful to be able to stand here and say that my service record is bigger than Matt King’s, so that’s marvellous.

But, anyway, our communities rely on volunteer firefighters, and it’s not just to fight fires, as we’ve heard many times tonight. Even in my short tenure of seven years, I noticed a lot more of an increase in the demands on the time on the fire service, be it for a motor vehicle accident or assisting with a medical incident—including, I regret to say, many suicides—and for our communities that rely on the service, it needs to be properly funded, and the system that funds it needs to be up to scratch.

I think of those communities in the Wairarapa electorate, where the Hon Ron Mark and I live—I think we’re the only MPs in here that live in Wairarapa. So stretching all the way up the Central Hawke’s Bay are those very small communities like Norsewood and Pahīatua that revolve around those services, or our rural firefighting services that were brought in amongst the wider Fire and Emergency New Zealand restructure, who up until recently have had to share essential things such as boots and helmets, and who used trucks that are older than many of the MPs in this House. It was not a situation that was sustainable, and it was not a situation that could ensure the safety of our rural communities or our smaller communities that rely on volunteers.

The fact is that that change—you won’t hear me arguing against it, on the whole, but the bill that originally brought it in did not bring in a structure that actually, over the test of time, was fit for purpose. I commend the Hon Tracey Martin for identifying that and bringing forward this bill to the House to make the changes that are necessary.

For 150 years, this country’s been relying on volunteers to look after their communities. Now, obviously, with my background, I’ve been focusing on the volunteers, but it’s not just them. It is those that actually are employed in fire and emergency services, as well—our comrades in the service—who are dedicated and, for pretty relatively low levels of pay, given the risk that they put to their lives, are doing it because of their love of the role and their love of their community. The reason they have so many people signing up to become a firefighter—a permanent firefighter—way more than there are places demonstrates people’s commitment to the role and the opportunity to serve the communities.

It’s not an easy role, and that’s why it’s so important to fund these things properly. These people put their lives at risk, at no notice. Those that work full-time do so on a roster system. Those that volunteer are on call 24 hours, seven days a week, and any situation where those services are not adequately resourced and those resources are not adequately funded, I think, is a shame on this country. We, as a country, should not rely on the goodwill of people and then not adequately resource them.

So I do stand in support of this. I stand in support of the pragmatic approach to fixing the previous legislation and to take the opportunity to send a message to those who serve our communities, be it through paid positions or volunteers. I invite members here, if they haven’t had an experience or who have perhaps an opportunity to go find out more about their local volunteer services, to go and do so. Even here in Wellington, go down to the waterfront when the next firefighter combat challenge is under way. They call it the toughest two minutes in sport. I went down this year to watch Bevin Wolland and my cousin Bryce O’Donnell take part—

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Can we come to the bill.

KIERAN McANULTY: —and they were talking to me about this bill, Madam Deputy Speaker.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: I don’t think so.

KIERAN McANULTY: No—you caught me out there. Look, I may as well take the cue and congratulate the Minister again, and I very proudly commend this bill to the House.

Bill read a first time.

Bill referred to the Governance and Administration Committee.

Hon TRACEY MARTIN (Minister of Internal Affairs): I move, That the Fire and Emergency New Zealand (Levy) Amendment Bill be reported to the House by 1 April 2019.

Motion agreed to.

Bills

Earthquake Commission Amendment Bill

Second Reading

Hon DAVID PARKER (Attorney-General) on behalf of the Minister responsible for the Earthquake Commission: I move, That the Earthquake Commission Amendment Bill be now read a second time.

I’m proud that New Zealand, despite our high level of risk, has amongst the highest, if not the highest, rate of residential insurance in the world. The Earthquake Commission Act contributes to this by providing affordable insurance against natural disasters. The series of natural disasters across New Zealand in the last eight years has emphasised the importance of insuring property against such events. Many households with damaged property have been able to repair their houses and move on with their lives only because they were insured. The Canterbury earthquake sequence has been one of the world’s costliest natural disasters, and the Kaikōura earthquake added additional strain on the system. The $6.1 billion in the Natural Disaster Fund in September 2010 has been all but depleted with the Earthquake Commission (EQC) recently needing to call on the Crown guarantee for the first time since its inception in 1944.

As the natural disaster insurance system, including EQC, has been put under considerable strain in the last years, we’ve learnt that the system isn’t perfect. This Earthquake Commission Amendment Bill proposes a set of changes to the Earthquake Commission Act. The changes are common sense and can be made before we undertake a full review of the Act.

I would like to acknowledge the previous Minister, the Hon Gerry Brownlee, who in 2012 began a review of the Earthquake Commission legislation. I’d also like to thank members of the Finance and Expenditure Committee, officials, and submitters for their contributions and work on the reported-back bill.

The changes we’re seeking to make are the first substantial changes to be introduced since the current Act was introduced in the early 1990s. The public inquiry into the Earthquake Commission, which will commence shortly, is the first step in a fuller review of the Act. Learning from the experiences of the people of Canterbury, the biggest test of the Act in its 74-year history will identify further areas for improvement. I anticipate that a further, more substantive EQC amendment bill will be developed following the Earthquake Commission inquiry.

This bill, as reported back from select committee, proposes four amendments to the Earthquake Commission Act 1993. These amendments will increase the cap for EQC building cover to $150,000 from $100,000 currently, both plus GST; secondly, remove EQC cover for personal property and home contents; thirdly, lengthen EQC claim notification time limits; and, fourthly, clarify EQC’s authority to share and publish information, including to facilitate the settlement of EQC and private insurer claims. The proposed amendments will improve the operation of the EQC Act by simplifying the speeding up of claims handling while retaining the overall scheme. It also resolves issues with the EQC Act previously identified by the Ombudsman and the Canterbury Earthquakes Royal Commission.

Increasing the cap—the changes proposed will increase the monetary cap on EQC residential building cover to $150,000, plus GST. Despite rising building costs, the cap hasn’t been adjusted from the current level of $100,000, plus GST, since the EQC Act came into force in 1994.

On the removal of content cover—EQC insurance cover for personal property being removed will free up scarce organisational resources, increasing EQC’s ability to cope with major disasters to houses themselves—homes. Diverting resources to claims from personal property contributed to delays in resolving higher-priority residential building and damage claims. I understand that private insurers are willing to take this cover on.

Terms of the claim notification period—these changes enable EQC to accept claim notifications for up to two years after a natural disaster, rather than the current inflexible three-month time limit. EQC will be able to accept notifications between three months and two years from the date of damage if EQC is satisfied that the insured person’s failure to make a claim within the three-month time limit has not materially prejudiced EQC’s ability to assess the claim. The bill as reported back with the support of the majority of the committee proposes that the bill provide for regulations to be made to either extend the two-year deadline or, alternatively, EQC can consider accepting claims in exceptional circumstances more than two years after the damage-causing event. Some members have expressed concern about the impact of this proposal on EQC and insurers’ reinsurance contracts. This specific proposal affects EQC claim deadlines, not insurer claim deadlines, so I’m advised it should not affect reinsurance for insurers. EQC’s discussions with its insurers indicate that the changed claims deadline is not expected to have any significant impact on EQC’s reinsurance contracts.

On information sharing, changes clarify EQC’s authority to share information. These changes will support effective implementation of the EQC Act and settlement of insurance claims. Specifically, EQC may release information that it holds for the following purposes: to prevent or lessen a threat to public health or public safety or to the life or health of any individual; for the administration of the EQC Act or the performance by EQC of its functions; to facilitate natural disaster preparedness, response, or recovery, including the settlement of insurance claims by insurance companies; and, lastly, by making property-related information publicly available. In response to concerns expressed by the Office of the Privacy Commissioner in submission to the select committee, the drafting of the information-sharing provisions has changed significantly between the bill as introduced and the bill reported back now. The bill also requires EQC to have appropriate protections in place to maintain the confidentiality of personal information. These information-sharing provisions also address recommendation 94 of the Canterbury Earthquakes Royal Commission.

When will these changes take effect? That’s covered by the bill. The bill proposes that the changes to contents and building cover will apply to insurance contracts entered into from 1 July 2019. Insurers have been consulted on and support this implementation and the associated transitional provision. This will enable both insurance companies and those who seek insurance to protect their interests with alternative arrangements in respect of their contents. The changes to claim lodgment deadlines and information provisions are proposed to take effect from enactment. On behalf of the Minister, I commend this bill to the House.

STUART SMITH (National—Kaikōura): Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. It is a pleasure to speak to the Earthquake Commission Amendment Bill. It was a good process that we went through in the Finance and Expenditure Committee.

As the Minister said, we have a very high penetration rate of insurance in the New Zealand market. That is largely due—particularly for residential property—to the Earthquake Commission (EQC), and that is for a very good reason. So you could be forgiven for thinking that there is cross-subsidisation by having a flat rate for EQC, which is actually true. It’s called flat pricing, or it can be a community rating that it can be referred to as. High-risk buildings and buildings in high-risk areas pay the same rate as low-risk buildings and buildings in low-risk areas, and that’s for a very good reason. If we don’t have that system in place, then we won’t have the level of penetration in the market which, inevitably, when we have an event—say, a Christchurch event—will lead to the Crown having to step in to ensure that the city gets back on its feet in a very timely manner. So the Earthquake Commission was brought in for very good reasons, and it works really well. However, it does need to be updated, and this amendment bill is very timely.

National will be supporting the bill, as you might well have guessed by now, but there are a couple of caveats that I would like to point out as we go through. Removing the contents cover and extending the residential building cover to $150,000, perhaps counterintuitively, actually lowers the exposure to EQC in a Wellington-type event, and that is because in an earthquake a lot of buildings suffer from minor damage right through to catastrophic damage, whereas in a tsunami or volcanic event, buildings tend to be destroyed and not so many suffer only minor damage. By removing that contents cover and increasing the cap to $150,000 plus GST, it is a much better situation for those people who suffer damage, but, as I said, it is, counterintuitively, a little less exposure for EQC.

Getting that number right is about balancing where you shift the risk from the insurance companies to the EQC, or the other way around, and if we don’t get that balance right—if it’s too much risk on EQC—then that’s bad for everybody in New Zealand. If we put it all on the insurance companies, that raises the price of insurance, making it unapproachable for many people, who won’t get involved. So I think $150,000, when we looked at it in the select committee, was the right number. There were a number of people who submitted who wanted it to be at $200,000. However, that, I believe, would not have been the right number. It would have put too much risk on EQC and taken it off the insurance companies. I think that the balance that we struck was right.

With regard to extending the claims limit—the period in which you can make a claim—it was 30 days, and it was extended to three months during the Canterbury earthquakes. This bill will extend it to two years. We had reservations about that and the submitters at the select committee also had significant reservations about that, and I think for very good reasons. I think that what will have to go with this is a very good campaign to ensure that people realise they are really putting themselves at risk if they don’t make a claim in a timely manner. There is the materially prejudiced caveat for the insurance companies—for EQC, at least—and there’s also the issue with their own insurance companies. If a claimant leaves their claim for a significant amount of time, it can be quite difficult to ascertain what damage was caused by an earthquake and which particular earthquake, and where the liabilities lie, and that would be quite dangerous ground for a claimant to go down.

Also, I think, in most insurance contracts, an insured person, if it’s their dwelling, and if they vacate that dwelling for more than 60 days—well, it varies, but in most cases it’s 60 days—without informing their insurance company, their insurance is, in fact, not valid. So the insurance company may not accept the claim. If they’re a landlord, they usually have to visit and inspect their property every 90 days. So this two-year period doesn’t actually line up with industry practice, and I think it is a bit dangerous, going down that track. I understand totally the reason why we might want to do it—we all feel sorry for people who fall outside that—but we look at what happened in Kaikōura; where 99 percent of claims were all lodged before the three-month date. So it’s a very small number that would be affected. However, it’s not good when it is, and I accept that.

What isn’t in the bill which I think I would like to highlight is that in the Kaikōura event, we had a memorandum of understanding (MOU) between the Earthquake Commission and insurance companies that wished to sign up to it, where the claims were made to an insurance company which was then a claim to EQC. Currently, as the law stands, a claimant goes to EQC and makes a claim, EQC assesses the claim, and if it’s over the cap, they then have to go and join the queue and talk to their insurance company. It’s a really silly process and it’s slow, and it slows everything down. In Kaikōura, that was all worked around with the memorandum of understanding. It was recommended to be in the bill—a lot of submitters came to the select committee saying it should be in the bill. However, as the Minister alluded to, it will be, apparently, put in a later bill. However, natural disasters don’t wait for bureaucratic processes, and I argue that it should be in this bill, and I’m drafting an amendment to put it in there. I think it’s really important that it be in there for everybody’s sake.

Also, having insurance companies run the process and manage it is a much more efficient system, where they actually have a far greater standing army than EQC does. So when a large event happens, the insurance companies have all the processes in place to ramp up their effort to get around and assess those claims. But, of course, at the same time when that happens, if we don’t have that ability, insurance companies are going to be competing with EQC for the same resources. Insurance companies are far better placed to do this, and I would argue that we should have that in this bill. There’s no reason to delay it. It’s not that hard. All of the reasons that EQC put up against it were, basically, around audit and accountability processes. But insurance companies are not insurers on their own; they also take reinsurance, so they have audit and accountability processes. Reinsurance companies from Switzerland or the UK, where, often, they’re based, have very strict processes on their insurance assessments. They are randomly audited and all of the paperwork is gone through, because those reinsurers don’t want to pay up what they don’t have to, either. It’s exactly the same as it would be for EQC, so I think that’s absolutely a silly argument because it’s all covered, and it was covered in the MOU. I know there were lots of random audits on those processes, as there should be. Everyone should have those good processes in place to ensure that we all have confidence in the system.

So, as I said, I’ll be putting that amendment forward in the committee stage, but we do support the bill with those caveats, and I commend it to the House.

MARK PATTERSON (NZ First): Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. It’s again a pleasure to get up and speak on behalf of New Zealand First in support of the Earthquake Commission Amendment Bill, and a thoroughly sensible piece of legislation and amendment it is. Of course, we’re amending the Earthquake Commission Act of 1993, but the genesis of this Act goes back to the old Earthquake and War Damage Act of 1944. Every time I consider this piece of legislation, I think of those far-sighted legislators back in the 1940s who put in these provisions to protect our economy from major shocks—excuse the pun with the quakes—and to futureproof our insurance systems. It was just those far-sighted provisions that saw us have $6.1 billion in the bank when the Christchurch earthquake struck—the first of them—on 4 September 2010. But, of course, as we heard from Minister Parker before, we’ve just recently had to trigger the Government guarantee. I think we were down to about $240 million - odd in the kitty after a series of quakes—obviously the Christchurch ones, but then, more latterly, the Kaikōura sequence.

I think the bill has been relatively well traversed. It’s quite a simple bill. This is, in fact, the low-hanging fruit. Of course, there is a wider review under way, and there will be a more root and branch overhaul of this Act, but this is the low-hanging fruit. There are just these four sensible changes. Of course, the raising of the cap to $150,000, up from $100,000—that cap was set in 1994, and property prices, obviously, have gone up considerably since then. But there is, as the previous speaker Mr Stuart Smith alluded to, some moral hazard in this. We require people to be insuring themselves, so we don’t want to set the threshold too high, where individuals consider that they do not have to take responsibility for their own actions. So I think that we’ve got that—the Finance and Expenditure Committee have come back reinforcing that $150,000 limit.

The removal of the cover for contents is, once again, thoroughly sensible. The complexity of that—trawling through people’s vases and televisions and microwaves—just clutters the whole process and also probably does open itself up for a little bit of fraud too. Of course, being a Cantabrian, I know that Cantabrians wouldn’t have indulged in that sort of behaviour, but it may be possible to occur in other places. I think removing that $20,000 cap for contents is a sensible measure. Of course, there has been quite a lot of deflation with household items, too, over the ensuing years. The claims notification period from three months to two years—I think that again just takes some of the pressure off getting the claims in, and I do note there is provision under exceptional circumstances to extend that again beyond the two years, so that is again pretty sound thinking, I think.

The information-sharing provisions: now, there were 470,000 claims in the Christchurch sequence and 38,000 in the Kaikōura sequence. So the volume of claims and anything we can do to simplify that process and the sharing of information—I did actually note in my first reading speech that I thought that was the area that the select committee would have to look at hardest. I note that the Privacy Commissioner made some reasonably significant recommendations to the select committee that have been picked up on in part. There are provisions like that public health has to be under threat, or public safety. It does allow property-related information to become publicly available, but it does also have some safeguards to protect individual privacy. So once again I think the Privacy Commissioner will have been a very useful contributor to that select committee process and, no doubt, his views carried some weight.

I note the implementation of the bill from 1 July 2019, and I think that can’t come too soon. The run of misfortune we’ve had with these significant natural disasters means that the low-hanging fruit that these amendments represent needs to come in sooner rather than later. So I think that’s also a thoroughly sensible course of action. So, without further ado, I will commend this bill at the second reading stage to the House on behalf of New Zealand First. Thank you.

ALASTAIR SCOTT (National—Wairarapa): Thank you Madam Deputy Speaker. I too have pleasure in supporting this bill in the second reading, the Earthquake Commission Amendment Bill.

I’d like to kick off by acknowledging all the work that the Earthquake Commission (EQC) have done in the past since the Christchurch earthquakes. The last speaker mentioned 470,000 claims—a huge amount of work, a huge amount of resource that had to go into the process of dealing with these claims, and, as noted previously, many of these claims were claims regarding contents. As we’ve heard, this amendment bill will exclude contents from the EQC’s liability, if you like, or obligation. That burden will fall on the private sector, and the residents will pay their premiums through the private sector with regard to their contents. That’s OK. That’s a good thing. It makes the EQC focus on what it’s good at. If we look at the number of buildings, the number of claims for buildings, as I understand it, was 167,000. So we can see a huge number of those claims were regarding contents, which will no longer be the case.

We’ve also touched on the cap increasing from $100,000 to $150,000 plus GST, and that has not been adjusted since 1993-94, but, looking at the CPI index as I was coming in this afternoon, the real number should really be around $160,000 if you allow for inflation. So it hasn’t really changed. The number hasn’t really risen, and I wonder whether the Finance and Expenditure Committee gave some thought to the fact that inflation will continue and the number $150,000 will continue to be eroded in real terms. So we’ve seen no real increase in the cap, but we have seen a decrease in the obligations that the EQC has to the public of New Zealand vis-à-vis the removal of contents. I just thought I’d point that out.

The other change has been the time for claiming increasing from 30 days up to two years, and even beyond in certain circumstances. But, as has been noted, that flexibility is there to give flexibility for people in unusual circumstances. As has already been noted, most people—99 percent of people, I think, was mentioned—claim within the three months, and for good reason: for certainty to enable their claim to be real, to be justified, and to be credible to the insurer. So while most will continue to claim within that 30 days to three months, let’s say, it is a good thing that that period of time has been given to allow for some flexibility. I take on board what the Minister has said, that that uncertainty really makes very little, if any, difference to the reinsurance market—the cost of reinsuring these claims that might be over, say, three months.

So it is a very good bill because it enables the processes that the EQC is obliged to participate in to be much more efficient and effective, and to be much leaner and meaner, if you like, and much less of a burden on the taxpayer and the administration of the EQC. For that reason, I commend it to the House.

Dr DUNCAN WEBB (Labour—Christchurch Central): Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. It was a real pleasure to sit on the Finance and Expenditure Committee, which considered this bill. It was good for a number of reasons, but, most importantly, so that we could get the Earthquake Commission in shape for the future, because its performance historically in respect of the Canterbury earthquakes left something to be desired.

It is important to note that that $150,000, as the member who just spoke observed, won’t do what originally the Earthquake and War Damages Commission was intended to do, which was to replace, more or less, an entire average house. Really, it is just a first level, a first layer of insurance. But it has gone up significantly, and that is important because what we found in the Canterbury earthquakes was that by far and away the vast majority of houses, in fact, were dealt with entirely by the Earthquake Commission, and increasing that amount by 50 percent will be proportionately another significant number, meaning that people won’t have to deal with their private insurers.

Can I just say that I think the greatest improvement in this bill at the select committee was the extension of time for claims. Now, it is quite correct to say that 99 percent of claims are made within three months, and obviously there’s a real incentive to do that, but it was a real concern in the committee that there would be people who didn’t make a claim for very valid reasons. Perhaps they were not particularly able, didn’t realise that their house had been damaged, or didn’t see the magnitude of the matter. Or perhaps they were ill or in hospital or even overseas. Conceivably, they could even have died between the time of the earthquake and the time for making a claim, and the matter was left to their estate. So all of those kinds of situations are really quite valid reasons where the claim might not have been made. To have that hard cut-off was really quite inappropriate. So it was very, very good to see a little bit of indulgence—

Hon David Parker: Didn’t know they needed more than one claim for more than one earthquake.

Dr DUNCAN WEBB: Minister Parker makes a very good point that in multiple events they may not have realised they had to put multiple claims in. So it is for all of those kinds of situations.

What this bill actually does is make this much more aligned with the insurance industry, which in fact has no particular limit on the making of claims. They can only bar a claim when the insurer can point to prejudice in that delay.

There are some other important points in there. In terms of information disclosure, the Privacy Commissioner was extremely helpful. It is absolutely appropriate for the Earthquake Commission to gather data on things like land quality or how foundations respond in earthquakes, but they need to do so in a way which is entirely consistent with the privacy principles whilst at the same time pursuing one of their objectives under the Act, which is to ensure preparedness for earthquakes.

This is a bill which, to my mind, was greatly improved at the select committee. It is an amendment bill. If I could say one small thing about the contents matter, contents, in fact, are easily insured by private insurers. They were covered for $20,000, which is not a catastrophic loss for most people. So, once again, there’s a tidy-up to streamline the process, to make claims resolution much quicker.

So look, the next event that comes once this bill has passed into law will be managed more quickly, more fairly, and more effectively, and the Earthquake Commission will be much better placed to be a great insurer of first resort into the future. I utterly commend this bill to the House.

IAN McKELVIE (National—Rangitīkei): Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. It gives me a great deal of pleasure to speak to the Earthquake Commission Amendment Bill in its second reading. I, unfortunately, didn’t get the opportunity to participate in the select committee process, but none the less I’ll have an opinion, as I usually do. Interestingly, I live in a house that had the chimneys bowled off it in 1931 by the Napier earthquake. They didn’t learn, because it got bowled again in 1942 by the Wairarapa earthquake—

Dr Duncan Webb: How old were you then?

IAN McKELVIE: —can’t believe that, can you—and not a cent of that was covered by the Earthquake Commission, because it wasn’t there. None the less, the Earthquake Commission is one of those gems that we have in New Zealand—and I guess ACC is another example of a gem that we have in New Zealand—that is hugely valuable to our society and to our community.

One of the interesting things about the Earthquake Commission is that if it wasn’t here, we’d probably find it extremely difficult to get private insurance for earthquakes—we’d find it extremely difficult to get private insurance for a lot of things, probably—because it gives the insurance companies the certainty that they require to participate in our market, and anyone who tries to insure anything other than a house in Wellington will have found in recent times that that’s not that simple. I guess—as I pointed out in the debate on the last bill—it could become more and more difficult to collect the money that’s required to run these things if we were to run it on an insurance-rated base because, as I stated earlier, more and more people are not insuring. More and more people are finding it difficult to get insurance, and so, eventually, we might not get the cover we require to ensure that these bits of legislation are covered and that things like the Earthquake Commission are covered by these things in the future. I don’t think that’s an issue at the moment, but it may well become one in the future.

I think lifting the cap is eminently sensible. I think removing the cover for contents is also sensible, and it probably should never have been in place.

Also, Stuart Smith made some really interesting points, which I tend to agree with, and I think that at some stage in the future, that will inevitably be considered in the course of this bill. As I said earlier also, I spent a lot of my life involved in the insurance industry and have looked at a lot of these things from an insurance company perspective, not necessarily from a Government or a public perspective. I think that his point he made around the point that insurance companies may well be better to administer this thing from start to finish was sensible. I also think that they are in a much better position to manage this. They have the infrastructure and the people in place to do it, and I think the first Christchurch earthquake most certainly proved that in most cases, they were better equipped to deal with these issues than the Earthquake Commission was. So I like the ideas that Stuart Smith raised in the course of his speech—I think they do have a lot of merit.

We do, of course, live in one of the most fragile parts of the world from the perspective of events, whether they are storms or earthquakes. You could well call it the Shaky Isles. As Dr Seuss once said, “Today was good. Today was fun. Tomorrow is another one.”, and they come pretty quick in New Zealand, so things change from day to day and change very rapidly. So I do think this is a good start, to bring this piece of legislation up to speed, and I certainly support that. But, as I said, I do think there’s the opportunity for us to review these things further, and no doubt it will—like a lot of other things we have to do in this country—be reviewed pretty frequently, because we do seem to have these events. Of course, it was only last week that this place shook a fair bit, and so they come pretty quickly.

So I’ve got a great deal of pleasure in commending this bill to the House. I look forward to the debate on Stuart Smith’s proposal in the committee of the whole House stage, and we’ll see how it goes. Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker.

Hon EUGENIE SAGE (Minister of Conservation): Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I’m pleased to have a brief call on the Earthquake Commission Amendment Bill. The previous speaker, Ian McKelvie, referred to future inquiries. Well, of course, Minister Parker noted that the Minister responsible for this bill, the Hon Megan Woods—there is a further major inquiry into the Earthquake Commission (EQC) planned, and there will doubtless be quite significant changes to the principal legislation as a result of that. But, in the meantime, this bill is typical of the work that the Minister, the Hon Megan Woods, is doing. It’s a very good bill. It’s a common-sense bill.

It’s good to see that National is supporting it, because, of course, two of the changes that are in the bill in terms of both the increased cap and the removal of EQC insurance cover for contents were part of the recommendations that came out of the review in 2015 and were flagged by the previous Government. The removal of the requirement for EQC cover for contents is a good measure to ensure that claims are dealt with more speedily after natural disasters, because of the huge number of claims that came in after the Canterbury quakes that related to contents, and, of course, it recognises that while the loss of belongings and damage to those is extraordinarily stressful, it is a lot less than the loss and damage to homes. So that makes sense. The increase in the cap on residential building cover from $100,000 to $150,000, plus GST—that also makes sense because it hasn’t changed since the Act came into force.

One of the other major changes was enabling a much longer limit for the lodging of claims, and it was really pleasing to see the work that was done by the Finance and Expenditure Committee here, because the bill as introduced provided for that limit to be extended up to two years, but the select committee proposed that there be an ability for Government to pass regulations to allow EQC to accept claims beyond that two-year limit if the damage couldn’t reasonably have been discovered within the time or if there was absence, incapability, or other disability. It also allows the ability for Government to pass regulations that in exceptional circumstances, EQC could also accept claims longer than two years. Of course, the claims still do have to be lodged as soon as practicable, but it was something that the Ombudsman had said several times—that the limit for lodging claims should be extended.

Again, in the area of information sharing, the changes in the bill here are to assist the EQC in sharing information to reduce the risk to public health or public safety. Again, the select committee adopted some useful changes as a result of the submissions. There were only a small number of submissions on the bill—some 16, and I think only about nine of those went to a hearing. But, again, it showed the benefits of the work of the select committee, ably chaired by Parliamentary Under-Secretary Michael Wood. The new framework in the bill for requesting information from EQC and encouraging EQC to share claim-related information will encourage more proactive release by the commission.

So it’s a small bill but it is a good bill, and it presages further work that will come out of a much wider review of the legislation and recommendations there. So I commend the bill to the House.

Hon NICKY WAGNER (National): Thank you very much, Madam Deputy Speaker. I’m really pleased to speak in the second reading of the Earthquake Commission Amendment Bill. I’m pleased because the legislation does need to be amended. Having fit for purpose legislation in a country like New Zealand, which is so earthquake-prone, is actually essential.

The work that underpins these amendments began back in 2012 to 2015 under the previous Government. At that stage, it was a response to the Canterbury earthquakes. There was developed a discussion document to update the 1993 legislation to update it in light of our experience, which was considerable. That discussion document was a significant piece of work. It covered nine quite broad areas, and, unfortunately, this bill only covers four of them. So the most complex, the most difficult, and the most challenging areas haven’t been dealt with.

The legislation does need to be updated urgently. It needs to be modernised and it needs to be streamlined because it is absolutely essential that the Earthquake Commission (EQC) can respond as effectively as possible to support New Zealanders in case of an earthquake but also under other natural disaster conditions. So this bill covers the most obvious, the most straightforward, and the simplest issues—in other words, the low-hanging fruit. That’s useful, but, unfortunately, it doesn’t do the job properly.

I, like anybody else who’s lived through a significant earthquake sequence, was reminded for the need for this legislation last week when we had our little shake in the House. The Earthquake Commission is a unique organisation. It’s a really Kiwi organisation, begun in response to the Napier earthquakes, and it’s served New Zealand well over the years. I’m very aware that it needs to continue to provide that service, and do it better if possible. So I think we’re duty-bound to as quickly and as effectively as possible incorporate all the learnings from the Canterbury earthquakes. It’s interesting, because in Canterbury over the past few years, we’ve learnt to love to hate EQC, and I say that it’s because—it is only because—of the Earthquake Commission that New Zealanders are so highly insured.

Pretty close to 100 percent of New Zealanders are insured, and that’s generally because the banks won’t give you a mortgage unless you’ve got insurance, but that is out of step with the rest of the countries around the Pacific Rim. When you look at places like Japan or the United States of America, it can be that their households—only about 15 percent of them are insured, and so I’m very grateful to the Earthquake Commission, particularly when we had significantly large meetings straight after the earthquakes, where people were very agitated about what was going to happen to their homes, and because virtually everybody was insured, the questions were things like “When is my house going to be fixed? How can it be fixed? How can it be repaired?” In contrast, in other countries, where perhaps 85 percent of the people aren’t insured, it would have been a totally different conversation.

So, getting back to the bill, the four amendments that are there are a step forward, but they don’t go far enough. The first, which is removing the EQC insurance cover for contents, is an absolute no-brainer. In times of a major disaster, the Earthquake Commission needs to be absolutely focused on the big picture—in other words, looking after people and their homes, and getting them fixed or repaired or rebuilt. The insurance industry’s perfectly capable of covering contents and personal effects, and I think this amendment will help streamline services and improve the effectiveness of EQC, so it’s the right thing to do.

Raising the limit of the EQC residential building cover cap is also a sensible thing to do. Presently, it’s $100,000, plus GST, but that was set way back in 1993. So, to increase it to $150,000, plus GST, is appropriate and the right thing to do.

One of the problems that we had during the Canterbury earthquakes was getting sufficient and accurate information about damage to settle claims as quickly and as effectively as possible, and so the amendments to this bill allow for more transparency in terms of sharing information to facilitate settlements and to inform disaster preparedness, response, and recovery. Basically, it will enable a much more proactive release of information for the public good.

The fourth issue, which is extending the time of claims from 30 days to three months and then, under regulation, to two years—and even longer under exceptional circumstances—at first glance, seems to be a pretty good thing to do for EQC customers, but there are significant issues around this that really haven’t been dealt with in this bill. One of the most difficult and challenging areas in the Canterbury experience was about reinstatement of cover after a seismic event. We had over 15,000 earthquakes, so some people had significant damage at several or more seismic events, and to get the accurate apportionment of damage costs in each event was a huge and difficult problem.

The apportionment of damage is absolutely fundamental to EQC and private insurance costs, and any extensions of the time frames for claims will have an impact on these responses and the dollars that are involved. So this is a significant area that needs to be looked in further amendments to the bill.

So, as I’ve said, National is pleased to support this amendment bill. It will improve the Act, but there is still an awful lot more work to do, and the most difficult issues need to be wrestled with because they haven’t been included here. So yes, we support the bill, but more work needs to be done. Thank you.

JO LUXTON (Labour): Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I’m really pleased to rise and take a call on this, the Earthquake Commission Amendment Bill. I think it’s probably fair to say that the people of the South Island, particularly in the Christchurch area, have been—some of them especially—to hell and back in the last eight years at least, and I can only imagine, or begin to imagine, the stress that they have been under when making their claims for their earthquake damage.

As my colleague Duncan Webb said before, the amendments that are going to be made to this piece of legislation are going to ensure that—he says—when this happens again, it will enable these things to be acted on or managed more quickly. I really do pray that that doesn’t actually happen any time soon, but I think it’s really important that people will be able to know that their claims and worries will be able to be dealt with in a much more timely manner, given this piece of legislation. Obviously, there’s going to be a far larger review under way, but what these particular changes do is make some immediate amendments that will ensure that things can happen in a far quicker and more managed way, and I think that that is very important, particularly for people who have been through this issue before.

One thing I would like to talk about is removing the contents cover. Now, we know that your personal belongings are very personal, very precious, and very special, but I think the priority has to be around ensuring that there is the money available to fix people’s homes and dwellings, because people need those. They’re essential—we need to have homes and dwellings to live in. Our contents, although precious, can at some point be replaced.

I don’t want to hold up the House any longer. Everyone that has spoken before me has pretty much said all that needed to be said, so, without further ado, I wish to commend this bill to the House.

JO HAYES (National): Thank you. It is my pleasure to stand and speak on the Earthquake Commission Amendment Bill, a bill that is a good first-steps type of bill. As my colleagues have already traversed quite a lot of the area that I wanted to talk on, I just want to acknowledge the people of Canterbury and the devastation that happened through the Canterbury earthquakes of 2010 and 2011, and also the people from Kaikōura. I think that, as I said, this is a really good first-steps bill. There are, as the Hon Nicky Wagner said, a few other areas that could have been included in this bill around the points—the hard parts around the role of the Earthquake Commission. I think they did a grand job, and this bill will actually help, hopefully, to improve the way that they deliver their services to the people of Aotearoa New Zealand.

I too, like the previous speakers, will be short with my delivery, with my contribution tonight, because I think that there are so many people out there who are waiting for this bill to receive its Royal assent, and I’m not going to stand in the way of that. So I’m very privileged and proud to commend it to the House. Thank you.

KIERAN McANULTY (Junior Whip—Labour): It’s been a long day—it’s 9.58 p.m.—and therefore I seek leave for the House to rise early.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Well, leave is sought; I’ll put the leave. Does anyone object to that? There is objection.

Hon RUTH DYSON (Labour—Port Hills): What a sad way to end what has otherwise been an incredibly positive debate on an issue that there’s clear agreement on. I want to say to the junior whip for the National Party that he’s part of the Canterbury team that understands not just why this is needed but why a much more comprehensive review of the operation and the scope of the Earthquake Commission is needed.

This is a great start. I’m delighted that it’s received such rigorous attention from the Finance and Expenditure Committee. It’s come back in very good shape. I was a bit disappointed that the Hon Nicky Wagner said it wasn’t going far enough, because we’ve had all those opportunities, but I certainly look forward to this legislation being well-supported and being implemented. It will be of great benefit to the people who need cover in the situations such as we’ve found ourselves in in Canterbury.

MAUREEN PUGH (National): Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I too tonight take a very short call on this Earthquake Commission Amendment Bill in its second reading. As has been traversed tonight, this bill is including some of the content of a discussion document that was actually released in 2015 and—

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

Debate interrupted.

The House adjourned at 10 p.m.