Wednesday, 20 February 2019

WEDNESDAY, 20 FEBRUARY 2019

WEDNESDAY, 20 FEBRUARY 2019

The Speaker took the Chair at 2 p.m.

Prayers.

Motions

India—Attack on Central Reserve Police Force Personnel in Pulwama

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS (Minister of Foreign Affairs): I seek leave to move a motion without notice or debate that this House condemn the attack on the Indian Central Reserve Police Force personnel in Pulwama.

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

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: I move, That this House condemn the 14 February act of terrorism against Indian Central Reserve Police Force personnel in the Pulwama district, leading to a very large loss of life; offer its condolences to the people and Government of India; and express its support and solidarity for the Government of India at this difficult time, as well as offer our deep sympathy for all those who are grievously affected.

Motion agreed to.

Business of the House

Business of the House

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Leader of the House): I seek leave for the House to rise or to cease—to stop—for the dinner break this evening at the conclusion of Agnes Loheni’s maiden statement.

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

Oral Questions

Questions to Ministers

Question No. 1—Prime Minister

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

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN (Prime Minister): Yes.

Hon Simon Bridges: What has happened to the public housing waiting list in the last year?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: It has moved from being what the Salvation Army described as an “opaque gatekeeping system” where people who were in need found it very hard to get on the register and those who were on it were very easily moved off it. On this side of the House, we’ve often referred to the studies by the likes of Otago University that have pointed to more than 40,000 people—

Dan Bidois: Be honest. It’s gone up.

SPEAKER: Order! Which member made that interjection?

Dan Bidois: Sorry.

SPEAKER: Withdraw and apologise.

Dan Bidois: I withdraw and apologise.

SPEAKER: And a very serious warning to that member. He is already not in my good books.

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: We have often, on this side of the House, referenced the research by Otago University that pointed to there being as many as 40,000 people who are in inadequate housing, who are homeless, who are in overcrowded housing. What we know now is, as we expected, the housing register is now reflecting the honest face of the housing crisis.

Hon Simon Bridges: How can she say that, when the public housing waiting list has gone up by 73 percent—or 4,530 households—to 10,712?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: What I actually just said—if the member had listened—was an acknowledgment that we have always said those lists will get worse because on that side of the House they denied people the right to register their housing need. They turned around people in desperate need of housing, and they pushed people off the list. In fact, they got rid of two categories to try and hide the housing crisis in this country. We are not hiding the housing crisis; we are responding to it. On this side of the House, we are building more houses than any other Government since the 1970s. We have 1,100 houses built. We have provided roughly 1,900 public housing spaces. We have increased Housing First across the country. We’ve increased transitional housing. We will meet the need.

Hon Simon Bridges: Has she just acknowledged that the public housing waiting list, some 16 months into her administration, has got significantly worse?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: I’ve acknowledged that the housing register now reflects the crisis we have. If the member had listened, we’ve never talked about 10,000. On this side of the House, we acknowledge the research that just two years ago said the need was more like 40,000. It was that side of the House that hid it. We have stood up and said “If you need help, come to the Ministry of Social Development.”, and people are. I would ask the member not to listen to me but to listen to the likes of the Salvation Army, who in their last report acknowledged that there is a changed approach at the front line. People who need help are being acknowledged and are getting it, and that is a vastly different situation than before.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Is it not a fact that the Housing New Zealand Corporation building programme is going gangbusters and that the supply of Housing New Zealand Corporation houses is greater now than it has been for decades?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: That is absolutely correct. We have built, since we’ve come into office, 1,191 new State houses. There are 768 transitional housing places since 2018, temporarily housing more than 3,000 families each year. As I said, Housing First has started to help 521 rough sleepers. We always said we had a crisis, and we are responding to it. That last Government couldn’t even utter the words.

Hon Simon Bridges: When the Rt Hon Winston Peters refers to Housing New Zealand and the Prime Minister says that they are building unprecedented housing, does she accept what Housing New Zealand said today at select committee, which is that literally all of the houses built have been either consented or under contract under the last Government?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: The combined activity of this Government means that we are building more houses than any Government since the 1970s. What the member said is not correct.

Hon Simon Bridges: When she refers to NGOs, what does she say to Ricardo Menendez March of Auckland Action Against Poverty, who says that the Government needs more than just—

Hon Carmel Sepuloni: Good friends of National.

SPEAKER: Order! The Minister for Social Development will stand, withdraw, and apologise.

Hon Carmel Sepuloni: I withdraw and apologise.

SPEAKER: The member will start again and there will be additional supplementaries.

Hon Simon Bridges: When she refers to NGOs and their views, what does she say to Ricardo Menendez March of Auckland Action Against Poverty, who says that the Government needs more than just rhetoric; it needs to actually put in the resources required to build enough State homes?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: I’m sure that Auckland Action Against Poverty will acknowledge that this is a Government that stopped the State housing sell-off that we had under the last Government and is actually building them rather than reducing them, and Auckland Action Against Poverty would probably reflect on what a different place we would be in if 10 years ago, the then National Government were listening to Auckland Action Against Poverty

Hon Simon Bridges: What is her target, in her year of delivery, for the number of people on the public housing register, given her Government’s scrapped the equivalent Better Public Services social housing target?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: I have to say, this idea that the last National Government setting a target meant that an issue was resolved—that last Government, when the number on the national register reached 10,000, did they build more houses? No. They cut two categories from the list to arbitrarily reduce it. They manipulated the data. This is not a Government that will hide behind numbers. We acknowledge the need and we are building houses.

Hon Simon Bridges: Is the reason her Government won’t hide behind the numbers because there are none?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: I believe we are debating numbers because we, of course, have released the data around the register. Again, we very openly, when we took office, said this will get worse before it gets better.

Hon Simon Bridges: Speaking of numbers, how many State houses will her Government aim to build by the end of this year?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Over a four-year period, we have budgeted for 6,400 public housing places to be created under this Government.

Hon Simon Bridges: How many will she build this year?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: We have already built over 1,100.

Hon Simon Bridges: How many KiwiBuild homes will her Government aim to build by the end of the year?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: We are seven months into a 10-year programme and we have already built more affordable houses than that Government did in 10 years.

Hon Simon Bridges: Well, if she can’t say how many KiwiBuild homes this year, can she even say this term?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Again, as we have reiterated many times, we have stuck with our goal of 100,000 over 10 years, and, again, even one more affordable home is one more than that Government built.

Hon Simon Bridges: Can we confirm there are no targets or aims or measures for State house building or KiwiBuild this term of her Government?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Again, I find this line of questioning rich, given the last Government refused to do anything about the fact that only 5 percent of new houses were available in the affordable or first-home buyer category, and their response was to do absolutely nothing—absolutely nothing—

Hon Dr Nick Smith: Rubbish—that’s a lie.

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: —which is why we have the supply issue—

SPEAKER: Order! Who made that interjection?

Hon Dr Nick Smith: I withdraw and apologise.

SPEAKER: And leave the House.

Hon Member: Oh!

SPEAKER: There’s already been a warning on that subject—to the member next to him.

Hon Dr Nick Smith withdrew from the Chamber.

Hon Simon Bridges: Are my questions asking for deliveries, for targets, and for measures pesky to the Prime Minister?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: No, I relish in them.

Question No. 2—Prime Minister

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

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN (Prime Minister): I do.

Hon Paula Bennett: By what date can the public expect to know the question they are voting on to legalise recreational marijuana?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Again, as I have said to the member many times, the information that we’ve put out thus far is the decision to have a referendum at the 2020 general election. We are currently working through the detail of the nature of the question. There will be plenty of time, given how far we are away from a general election, for the public to know the question and engage in the debate around it. Given the member’s interest in the area, I would extend the invitation that has being extended many times by the member Chlöe Swarbrick for the member to join the cross-party group.

Hon Simon Bridges: That’s not the Government.

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: And in response to the question that the Leader of the Opposition seems to be asking on your behalf, again, this is not a Government question; it is a referendum, and any question that is asked is not a question supported by any member of the Government specifically. It’s a referendum.

Hon Paula Bennett: So when the Prime Minister makes statements that “We are working through the detail and the dates and things that people might know.”, who are “we”, and which Minister will be responsible for taking a paper to Cabinet on the legalisation of recreational marijuana?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: The member will already know the answer to that question. The Minister of Justice, Andrew Little, is the one facilitating the work on the question that will be asked, in the same way that there would’ve been a Minister responsible for the flag referendum, who may have chosen a different flag option than, for instance, the likes of John Key.

Hon Paula Bennett: Is the Government planning on establishing a citizens’ jury or working group to decide the referendum question to legalise recreational marijuana?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: When those decisions have been made, they will be made available to this House and the public.

Hon Paula Bennett: Will the Government be drafting legislation that the public can see before deciding their vote in the referendum to legalise recreational marijuana?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Again, the process and the question will be released in good time, well before the 2020 election. Again, this is the drafting of a referendum question, an opportunity for the public to engage. This is not about any one single position of a Government. I’m sure members on that side of the House are seasoned enough to understand the difference between a referendum and Government policy.

Hon Paula Bennett: Will the Government have drafted any legislation that the public can see before deciding their vote at the referendum?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: I answered that in the last question. All details around the referendum will be released in due course.

Question No. 3—Housing and Urban Development

3. MARAMA DAVIDSON (Co-Leader—Green) to the Minister of Housing and Urban Development: What standards, if any, are there for motels that are providing Government-funded temporary and emergency accommodation for people who need it?

Hon PHIL TWYFORD (Minister of Housing and Urban Development): I thank the member for the question. Since 2016, Government has been reliant on motels for emergency housing. Where motels are contracted by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development as transitional housing, officials review the property to ensure that the accommodation is of an appropriate standard and ensure that the right consents are in place. I’m advised, however, that there are no standards currently tied to emergency housing special needs grants that are given to people who then use that money to book motels. The motel quality is therefore regulated only by the local council. I do not consider this to be acceptable. Officials are going to advise me on how we can make sure that motels receiving Government money through emergency housing special needs grants meet appropriate standards. This Government is committed to phasing out the last Government’s reliance on motels.

Marama Davidson: Will there be urgent checks on all other motels providing temporary and emergency housing to ensure they meet higher standards than what we’ve seen with the Astro Motel in Ōtāhuhu?

Hon PHIL TWYFORD: So my advice is that the Ministry of Social Development (MSD) is undertaking a stocktake of all motels that are being used for emergency housing to ensure that they are of an appropriate standard and that the clients receive the same level of service as other guests. It’s unacceptable that the special needs grants for motels were established without accountability for the standards. That will change. There are things that we can do, and, currently, MSD staff meet with clients who are staying in emergency housing every seven days. Minister Sepuloni has instructed MSD to explore options for how complaints can get raised in those meetings and dealt with, and where council deems a motel unsafe, MSD will not use that accommodation until those things are remedied. All those things can be done immediately.

Marama Davidson: Is it his expectation that this will include regular and ongoing checks and monitoring to make sure that everyone, regardless of circumstances, has a decent place to sleep at night?

Hon PHIL TWYFORD: Yes. It’s my expectation that that will be one of the options considered. I want the member to know, and for the House to know, that the use of motels for temporary and emergency housing is the lesser of two evils. No one likes it, but we have delivered a massive increase in transitional and emergency housing. In fact, 3,000 extra families have been put into transitional housing since we have been in Government—3,000 families. We are committed to expanding transitional and emergency housing until motels are no longer needed to provide that purpose.

Marama Davidson: Is the Minister aware that $74 million over two years has been spent on motels and hotels, and is this the best use of Government money?

Hon PHIL TWYFORD: It is not the best use of Government money, and I would much rather that we spent that money on building high-quality, warm, dry State housing and housing provided by community housing providers. That is the single best thing we can do to alleviate the hardship caused by the national housing crisis.

Question No. 4—Finance

4. Hon AMY ADAMS (National—Selwyn) to the Minister of Finance: Are bids for Budget 2019 assessed using the Treasury’s updated cost benefit analysis model?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister of Finance): The short answer to the member’s question is no, because Treasury assesses bids using the template in the Budget guidance document that has been publicly released. The main elements taken into account in the assessment of bids, briefly, are priority alignment—i.e., alignment with the Budget 2019 priorities—the Government’s Cabinet Priorities Committee priorities, general Government direction outlined in the Speech from the Throne, the coalition and confidence and supply agreements, intervention logic, implementation readiness and evaluation, well-being analysis, cost understanding—i.e., a cost breakdown and scaling options—and cross-agency or cross-portfolio collaboration. The explanation of the costs and benefits may be informed by a cost-benefit analysis performed by the agency making the bid, which may be Treasury’s cost-benefit analysis tool or another cost-benefit analysis.

Hon Amy Adams: Is he really saying that what Treasury’s website calls the Budget 2019 version of the cost-benefit analysis tool has no role in assessing Budget 2019 bids, despite himself saying in the House yesterday that the framework which sets out the criteria for assessing well-being is being used to assess Budget bids?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: I’ll just repeat part of my original answer, which is that a cost-benefit analysis approach is one input into the bid process.

Hon Amy Adams: That’s right. It’s an input—it’s used.

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: The assessment—yes, but the member is suggesting that that’s how Budget bids are assessed. She knows that’s not the case.

SPEAKER: Careful.

Hon Amy Adams: Well, is the Minister aware that the Budget 2019 cost-benefit model, which is used to assess well-being Budget bids, has a significant error in it in which the dollar values assigned to a range of outcomes change significantly every time a user changes the order of the information, such as by sorting it alphabetically?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: The Budget analysis tool is an input to assessment. So the premise of the member’s question is incorrect. The Budget analysis is one aspect; the Treasury Budget analysis tool is one tool. The member is misrepresenting the role of that analysis in Budget assessment.

SPEAKER: No, I’m going to ask the member to ask her question again.

Hon Amy Adams: Ask it again? Certainly, Mr Speaker. Is the Minister aware that the Budget 2019 cost-benefit model used as part of assessing well-being Budget bids has a significant error in it in which the dollar values assigned to a range of outcomes change significantly every time the user changes the order of the information, such as putting them in alphabetical order?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: I reject the premise in the first part of the member’s question.

Hon Amy Adams: Is the Minister aware that that error I’ve referred to in the Treasury Budget 2019 cost-benefit analysis tool means that changing just the order of the information can change the value given to, say, avoiding heart disease from either negative $8,000 to zero dollars, to positive $45,000?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: I imagine the spreadsheet is the same spreadsheet as what was used previously, although there have been additional objectives added to it, but the spreadsheet itself—I also probably assume that the member understands that the Minister of Finance doesn’t do the spreadsheet work for Treasury.

Hon Amy Adams: Why does he consider that moving house in the last 12 months amounts to $6,000 of social benefit per person?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: It’s not me that considers that. That is an assessment that has been made by Treasury, working with other agencies such as Housing New Zealand. The member continues to conflate together different values. In fact, Treasury themselves have said that the conflation that she’s making is not a valid direct comparison.

Hon Amy Adams: Doesn’t having a Budget assessment tool that values not getting diabetes as only being worth half as much as chatting with your neighbour just prove that Auckland Action Against Poverty is absolutely right when they say that this Government has got its priorities wrong?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: The member is comparing apples and oranges, and she does know that because she has been a Minister. What the cost-benefit analysis tool does is, in one area, it looks at fiscal costs to the Government—the example she’s given around diabetes—and, in another area, it looks at wider societal benefit. Treasury themselves have said that that is not a valid direct comparison.

Question No. 5—Finance

5. Dr DEBORAH RUSSELL (Labour—New Lynn) to the Minister of Finance: Why did the Government establish the Tax Working Group?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister of Finance): The coalition Government established the independent Tax Working Group to consider the structure, fairness, and balance of the tax system. Taxes should be fair, simple, and collected. While the New Zealand tax system has for the most part met these criteria, it’s important for New Zealanders to have confidence in the tax system and that we regularly review and assess it to ensure that everybody is paying their fair share. The expert advisory group has worked for many months and has received over 6,700 public submissions. I want to thank them for their work, and tomorrow they will release their final report and recommendations to the Government.

Dr Deborah Russell: How much change is likely to be made to the tax system?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: The Government will now work through the report and its recommendations. No decisions have been made on them. I’d like to reiterate that the Government has always been clear that no changes will be implemented in this term and that there are key bottom lines—in particular, that the family home is off limits, increases to income tax and GST are off limits, and inheritance tax is off limits. Nothing is predetermined and we are not expecting to make wholesale changes to the New Zealand system, but it is important that we make sure New Zealanders pay their fair share, and the Government has already taken steps towards that with its announcement earlier this week around multinationals—something the Opposition don’t appear to care about.

Dr Deborah Russell: What is the process and time frame from here?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: As we have said, we will now take time to discuss the Tax Working Group’s recommendations with our coalition and confidence and supply partners. Together we will seek to address any gaps that the group may have found that undermine the fairness and balance of the system. In April, we will announce our decisions on any appropriate changes and introduce legislation as appropriate from there, with the aim of passing that next year, with any decisions not taking effect until 1 April 2021.

Question No. 6—Foreign Affairs

6. Hon TODD McCLAY (National—Rotorua) to the Minister of Foreign Affairs: Does he stand by all his statements on the New Zealand - China relationship?

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS (Minister of Foreign Affairs): Yes.

Hon Todd McClay: Does he now support New Zealand’s involvement in the One Belt One Road initiative with China?

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: When I last met the Foreign Minister for China, I raised with him the issue of One Belt and One Road. It is in the communiqué that he put out after the meeting was over, but what I did ask him for was: could he possibly put some flesh and some detail around the concept of a very vague document that was signed by the previous Government? That’s where things sit, and my colleague David Parker is going to such a meeting in April of this year.

Hon Todd McClay: Does he now support New Zealand’s involvement in the One Belt One Road initiative with China?

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: I want to make it very, very clear to the people of this country that this is a concept that is being worked on mutually between China and New Zealand. If you look at the original memorandum of understanding that the National Party signed, there is no flesh, detail, or certainty whatsoever. Now, we don’t believe in that sort of vague behaviour, and we’re going to do something precisely in the interests of New Zealand and, indeed, hopefully, China as well.

Hon Todd McClay: Well, can the Minister explain to New Zealand why he does not support New Zealand’s involvement in the One Belt One Road initiative with China?

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: Saying it very slowly—at a meeting with Foreign Minister, Wang Yi, in Beijing, we discussed in some detail what this could possibly mean. He said he was working on it and he’d be getting back to us. Can I say now that, with certainty, there is a meeting coming up, indeed—with other countries, including New Zealand—which the Hon David Parker will attend—[Holds up photo]—on the concept of Belt and Roads. So we will know with more precision what we’re talking about—not the kind of vague promise that ended up like this where that member had apologised to Prime Minister Key for not being better briefed about China trade relations. There it is there—not once; he had to admit he didn’t know what he was talking about, and he apologised to Prime Minister Key for not being briefed.

Hon Todd McClay: Why did he recently tell media that he didn’t have enough information on the One Belt One Road initiative and was waiting for his Chinese counterpart to send him some, but his counterpart hadn’t done so yet?

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: Because that happens to be the truth, as simple as it is. I asked him, would he be developing the concept, and he said he would get back to me, and, in a way, he is. He’s going to get back to this Government via a meeting that David Parker is attending in April of this year, and that’s just two months from now. So what we’ve got, in fact, is the possibility of a detail and understanding that we need to have to see whether or not this is a future arrangement that benefits ourselves and China. That is admitted by China, it’s admitted by the Foreign Minister of China, and that’s exactly what our position is.

Question No. 7—Regional Economic Development

7. Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH (National) to the Minister for Regional Economic Development: Does he stand by his statements and actions in relation to the Provincial Growth Fund?

Hon SHANE JONES (Minister for Regional Economic Development): Yes.

Hon Paul Goldsmith: When will he release the interest rate and terms for the $7.5 million loan announced for a hot pool at Methven, so that New Zealanders can know the size of the effective grant, if any?

Hon SHANE JONES: I may very well follow the standards of the last regime, where, for all of the loan finance provided to the recipients in terms of irrigation, nothing was released. I have sought the advice of the Ombudsman, but I am tempted to follow the tenets of the last regime, where not a single element of information was released. And, indeed, when Peter Thiel ransacked the fund of the last Government, nothing was revealed.

Hon Paul Goldsmith: Does he recall the Prime Minister saying, “This government will foster a more open and democratic society. It will strengthen transparency around official information.”?

Hon SHANE JONES: Yes, and I recall being the last man standing who has agreed to that level of transparency. In addition to that, I feel that transparency must be seen within bounds when there are two parties to a transaction—one a private sector recipient and the other the Crown—which is why the Ombudsman, who gave advice to the last regime, I understand, has been in discussions with our officials. I accept that New Zealanders ought to be reassured that when we allocate pūtea, it is done in a defensible and robust fashion, but within that context, I am taking legal advice.

Hon Paul Goldsmith: Does he accept the figures of the latest household labour force survey, which showed that while New Zealand was creating 10,000 jobs per month under the last two years of the National Government, over the past three months, it’s created only 667 jobs per month, and, if so, does he think the Provincial Growth Fund will compensate for that massive reduction in job creation?

Hon SHANE JONES: On the question of jobs, as the first citizen of the provinces, I look at things through the spyglass of optimism, and the reality is that as we make our allocation decisions, these projects and these capital investments take time to fully roll out. But I have sought additional advice, and very shortly, I will provide a figure both to the House and to the public which is inversely related to the gibberish I had from that member around about Waitangi time.

Hon Paul Goldsmith: Does he accept that if job growth had continued at the same pace that it had under National, there would have been an extra 28,000 jobs created in the past three months in this country, and is the Provincial Growth Fund in any way compensating for that lost opportunity for Kiwis?

Hon SHANE JONES: Obviously, the Provincial Growth Fund is really premised on the notion of provincial futures, and I have had precious little time to think about those dim, bleak times that he refers to.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Can I ask the Minister as to whether it’s been his experience that at these constant meetings and launches of Provincial Growth Fund projects, he and his colleagues have been seriously crowded out by National Party local politicians, mayors, and councillors who want to be in on the most exciting thing that’s happened in the provinces for decades?

Hon SHANE JONES: I was recently in mid-Canterbury and there were two contradictory signals coming out of various parts of the National Party body: number one, the sitting member—

SPEAKER: Order! That’s the end of the member’s responsibility. He has no responsibility for either parts of the National Party through it.

Question No. 8—Education

JO LUXTON (Labour): Thank you, Mr Speaker. To the Minister of Education: does the coalition Government intend to ensure better and more consistent quality in home-based early childhood education?

Hon Chris Hipkins: Mr Speaker.

SPEAKER: No, we’ll have the end of the question as well.

8. JO LUXTON (Labour) to the Minister of Education: Does the coalition Government intend to ensure better and more consistent quality in home-based early childhood education; if so, how?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister of Education): Yes. This morning, I announced that Government-subsidised home-based early childhood education will move to become a fully qualified workforce. Currently, home-based educators are not required to hold a relevant qualification. In fact, the proportion of services with qualified educators has actually been declining over the last decade. The Government has decided to move towards a level 4 early childhood education certificate as the minimum qualification for home-based educators, and we’ll be working with those in the sector to determine an appropriate time for this qualification requirement to become mandatory. It does represent a substantial shift, and we do want to minimise the disruption for parents, for whānau, and, particularly, for children. In the meantime, changes to the funding rates and the criteria will increasingly encourage home-based services to use a qualified workforce.

Jo Luxton: Why is it important for home-based early childhood education to move to become a fully qualified workforce?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: We have consulted widely and we’ve heard from educators and parents about the unique place that home-based learning holds—and, in particular, the family feel that it provides—with small groups in close relationships, particularly between the child and the educator. But we did also hear about concerns around inconsistent quality across the sector, due in part to inadequate Government oversight. Evidence suggests very clearly that an early childhood education qualification supports educators to provide children with stimulating, warm, and supportive early learning experiences.

Jo Luxton: What other changes to home-based early childhood education are being announced today?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: The move to a fully qualified workforce is one of several decisions we have made as a result of the review of home-based early childhood education that I initiated last year. Three other significant decisions are: strengthening the role of the visiting teacher, giving the Education Review Office more power to monitor the quality of home-based early childhood education, and introducing more explicit requirements on service providers to provide health and safety training and professional development for the educators looking after children.

Question No. 9—Housing and Urban Development

9. SIMON O’CONNOR (National—Tāmaki) to the Minister of Housing and Urban Development: How many social houses has this Government built that weren’t already consented or under construction under the previous Government?

Hon PHIL TWYFORD (Minister of Housing and Urban Development): I’m advised that officials were not able to compile building consent dates in this time frame for this question. This is primarily because each community housing provider and Housing New Zealand would need to compile this information, often from reviewing the consent documents for each and every development. However, I can advise the member that approximately 700 completed homes started the construction process after late 2017. I should note that this programme of work was not fully funded when we took office, but it was fully funded as a result of Budget 2018. The yearly build season is now under way, and last month Housing New Zealand had 2,155 new homes under construction. Overall, consent data shows that Government agencies, including Housing New Zealand, are building more homes than any Government since the 1970s, and we will keep ramping this up.

Simon O’Connor: Will the Minister stand by the statements of his Housing New Zealand chief executive, who told the Social Services and Community Committee today that most of those houses were started under the previous Government?

Hon PHIL TWYFORD: I don’t believe that that statement has been taken out of context in relation to the primary question.

Simon O’Connor: What does he say to first-home buyers who are missing out on a home because Housing New Zealand is buying houses at 5 percent, or sometimes more, above their market value due to his inability to construct new State houses?

Hon PHIL TWYFORD: Well, of 1,884—gross—State housing additions in the financial year that we’re talking about, only 249 homes were bought. That happens for a number of reasons. One is that we often need to acquire more homes for development or to rehouse tenants while new homes are being built. Also, Housing New Zealand was told by the previous Government that it wasn’t able to plan new housing in areas that had been previously identified for the sale of State housing—Porirua, Hutt Valley, and parts of Christchurch—so the organisation is now playing catch-up in those areas. We’re also committed to providing additional State housing in areas where we need it, and I reject the premise of the member’s question that poor people do not deserve to have homes tenanted to them.

Simon O’Connor: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I think that’s an imputation against the Standing Orders—happy, always, to be corrected, but that last point is, well, ascribing something to me that I did not say.

SPEAKER: I’ll give the member an additional supplementary.

Simon O’Connor: Thank you, Mr Speaker. When Housing New Zealand statistics show that 53 percent—53 percent—of recent State housing acquisitions were actually existing houses purchased or leased off the market, has the Minister not simply taken houses away from Kiwi families who are trying to buy their own home?

Hon PHIL TWYFORD: We’re committed to ramping up the building of more State houses, and I will say that when the last Government was in office, they reduced the number of public housing—that is, State and community housing. Five years in a row, those numbers fell under the last Government. We’re committed to building additional supply, increasing State housing, and increasing public housing overall. That’s what we’re doing. We can’t do it overnight, but we will do it.

Simon O’Connor: Does he accept, then, the view of Bernie Smith, spokesperson for Monte Cecilia Housing Trust, that the Government’s decision to pause tenure review and other Labour Government policies is “only creating further homelessness.”?

Hon PHIL TWYFORD: I think what the member means is tenancy reviews, and, actually, I disagree with Bernie Smith of Monte Cecilia in this respect. Even at the peak of the former Government’s much-hyped review of tenancies, fewer than around 200 people a year were moving on to private tenancies as a result of that policy. The only difference—and we have recommenced tenancy reviews. The key difference is that our Government will not be throwing disabled people, families with young children, and pensioners out on the street, as the former Government was doing.

Simon O’Connor: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. Seeing as it was a question on notice, is it the expectation that an answer will be eventually delivered to the House, or is your expectation that a question would have to be answered again to actually get the figures?

SPEAKER: I’m going to ask the member whether he is serious in that point of order and in bringing it up now, because if he is, he needs to have a very good look at the Standing Orders and Speakers’ rulings.

Simon O’Connor: Well, always a serious question. But while in respect to the Minister’ answer, he wasn’t—

SPEAKER: No, the member’s not asking a question—well, he might have been asking a question of me. If he wasn’t satisfied with the primary answer, he should’ve brought it up at the time.

Question No. 10—Energy and Resources

10. JONATHAN YOUNG (National—New Plymouth) to the Minister of Energy and Resources: What plans, if any, does she have to replace the $28 billion and thousands of jobs lost to the people of New Zealand, according to the NZIER report, because of her Government’s decision to ban new exploration permits outside of onshore Taranaki?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS (Minister of Energy and Resources): Thank you, Mr Speaker. Firstly, I reject the premise of the member’s questions. Problems with the source modelling that the report is based on have already been well canvassed. But, in particular, I’d like to draw the House’s attention to the fact it ignores the fact that the Government is protecting 100,000 square kilometres of existing exploration area—an area the size of the North Island—nor does the report consider new jobs that may be created via the transition. A report concluded that in New Zealand, green energy could create more than 25,000 jobs. Secondly, this Government has a comprehensive plan for transitioning to renewable energy—the growth area for jobs. Amongst other things, we’re producing a renewables strategy that will remove roadblocks and accelerate them coming on stream, and we’ve already got people on the ground in Taranaki to work alongside locals on the transition plan for the coming decades. Thirdly, that member may wish to side with the industry and claim that the sky is falling in, but we’re actually seeing the medium term for gas is firming up. We’ve just seen the largest exploration firm in New Zealand invest a further $500 million in Taranaki, we’ve seen Todd Energy investing $100 million in a new gas peaker in Taranaki, and we’ve seen Methanex advertising for high-skill, high-wage jobs in the last couple of weeks. It’s also worth pointing out to that member that Westpac’s climate change impact report carried out by EY and Vivid Economics, released in April of last year, indicated that if New Zealand took faster action on climate change, it could save $30 billion by 2050. This Government has a plan to transition away from fossil fuels over a number of decades and grow new jobs and new industries. We’re implementing it; that side of the House isn’t.

Jonathan Young: Regarding the 100,000 square kilometres that the Minister says that her Government is protecting, has she read her officials’ advice to her that states that of that particular area, the estimation is that there will be four wells drilled with a chance of discovery of less than 10 percent, or is she holding to her assertion that 15,000 kilometres of that offshore area will be producing active hydrocarbons?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: If that member wants to cling to that hope, then he needs to look to colleagues in his party that held the portfolio for failure to plan beyond a fossil fuel future, because of that 100,000 square kilometres—roughly the size of the North Island—this was identified as some of the best prospects by the industry themselves. This Government knows that we need to plan beyond a fossil future. We have certainty that we can continue to use thermal peaking for the next couple of decades, but we are not burying our heads in the sand and leaving communities and this country high and dry.

Jonathan Young: So when she talks about people on the ground in Taranaki, when participants in last week’s road map for Taranaki 2050 were asked to bring a child’s drawing of what Taranaki might look like in 2050, is this really how she’s going to replace the $28 billion and thousands of jobs that will be lost?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: I think that member actually needs to stand by the community he represents. There is actually a lot of positivity in Taranaki about the positivities. I point to the $20 million that this Government has committed through the Provincial Growth Fund (PGF) into that region, including $1 million towards a green hydrogen feasibility study that will utilise the existing skills in that area. What we have seen is a series of community workshops, because we actually do think it is important to talk to those people that will be impacted by change as it comes. That member is free to ridicule it.

Jonathan Young: So when she says she’s “not just sitting back and magically hoping the future plays out in Taranaki [that] we’ve put $20 million through the Provincial Growth Fund into various projects.”—

SPEAKER: Order! I just want to make sure that the member has a source for his assertion that the Minister said that.

Jonathan Young: She just said it now, sir.

SPEAKER: That she was magically—

Jonathan Young: Yes. Sir, she said that on TV ONE news last night.

SPEAKER: OK. I’ll go and have a look at it. The member will carry on. I’m relying on the member’s word, remember.

Jonathan Young: Sure. I can send it to you, sir. So when she says we’ve put $20 million through the PGF into various projects, is she not aware that most of those projects were in place by the previous Government prior to her exploration ban?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: For the member’s clarification, I actually said I wasn’t magically hoping, unlike those on the other side of the House. But I’m very interested to know that member is now claiming the Provincial Growth Fund for the previous National Government. I actually see that as a key achievement of our side of the House and what we’ve achieved in Government. But what we have done is commit to working alongside the people of Taranaki, Venture Taranaki, the local leadership, and accelerate the plans that they want to do. We have got Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment officials on the ground working to accelerate what the local people plan. Have we gone down there and handed out a whole new plan? No. That is not the correct way to transition plan.

Angie Warren-Clark: What other comments has she seen about the NZIER report?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: I saw one comment yesterday that said the findings of the report were a disaster. I actually think the actual disaster we’re facing is unprecedented climate change: the massive ice melt, the warming of the oceans, rising sea levels and the displacement of people, record temperatures almost every year, extreme droughts, and flooding. The commentator was, of course, Simon Bridges, and it’s time that he and his party realise that the real disaster is climate—

SPEAKER: Order! Order! There will be an additional three supplementary questions to the National Party as a result of that out of order question and answer.

Jonathan Young: Can she tell us how many tonnes of emissions will be removed from New Zealand because of her Government’s decision to ban new exploration permits, considering the NZIER report says the ban’s contribution to the global reduction of emissions is undetectable?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: Seven million tonnes. That gas, roughly, makes up 9.8 percent of our total emissions inventory in 2016, so, by rough, back-of-the-envelope calculations, that’s roughly 7 million tonnes.

Question No. 11—Māori Development

11. WILLOW-JEAN PRIME (Labour) to the Minister for Māori Development: How does Matatini reflect the coalition Government’s priorities for Māori and the cultural identity of Aotearoa?

Hon WILLIE JACKSON (Associate Minister for Māori Development) on behalf of the Minister for Māori Development: Te Matatini is the biggest showcase of Te Ao Māori to the world: approximately 1,840 performers and 46 groups who represent the very best of kapa haka from across Australasia. It is the premier cultural event in Aotearoa, with an estimated audience, over the four days, of 60,000. Our coalition Government is committed to the well-being of Māori and the revitalisation of Te Reo Māori. What better event to give expression to the value and importance of Te Reo Māori and to Aotearoa’s identity. I encourage all members of the House to attend. This is a true celebration of our identity.

Willow-Jean Prime: How can the Government support the growth of Matatini?

Hon WILLIE JACKSON: The Government is already a significant funder of Te Matatini, and the event has grown from strength to strength over the years. The Government is committed to Matatini not just at the biannual event but also with the many regional competitions that happen across the motu every year. Te Matatini Kapa Haka Festival reflects many of the Government’s priorities for Māori and New Zealand. It’s a platform for the revitalisation of Te Reo Māori and a path to improve well-being, reconnect with hapū and iwi, and create space for young Māori to express and show their pride for our culture.

Willow-Jean Prime: What role does Te Matatini play in the Government’s goals for Te Reo Māori revitalisation?

Hon WILLIE JACKSON: Te Matatini is such an important vehicle for Māori aspirations that we will make an announcement on the Maihi Karauna policy there tomorrow. We’ll be talking about how we can ensure how a million Kiwis can speak basic Te Reo Māori by the year 2040. Te Matatini is a key part of that as a vehicle for Te Reo use and cultural expression.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Could the Minister enlighten the House with a very brief but scintillating history of Matatini and its formation?

Hon WILLIE JACKSON: I think it’s probably appropriate to say that it’s well-known in the House that the Rt Hon Winston Peters is a great supporter of Māori issues and Māori kaupapa. New Zealand First, back, I think, in 1997—it was reported on Radio Waatea today—were the first supporters and public funders of Te Matatini.

Question No. 12—Education

12. NICOLA WILLIS (National) to the Minister of Education: Will he guarantee that his proposed changes for home-based early childhood education will not reduce children’s participation in early childhood education, limit labour market participation, or increase costs for parents?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister of Education): The purpose of today’s changes is to ensure that parents can be confident in the quality of education provided for their children. One consequence is that once they are fully implemented, it could be that some of the least educationally robust services may no longer be counted as formal early childhood education (ECE). This may technically reduce ECE participation, even though the same children could continue to be in the same arrangements with the same carers; just no longer receiving a Government subsidy for it. As I noted earlier, we’ll be working with the sector on the timing and other details of the changes. They do represent a substantial shift, and it’s important that we minimise disruption for parents, whānau, and children.

Nicola Willis: How will these proposals promote access to high-quality early childhood education when his own Cabinet paper says the changes may result in families being “pushed into informal care arrangements, where the Government’s levers to improve policy are limited.”?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: Because the Government will no longer be subsidising substandard early childhood education.

Nicola Willis: Does the Minister understand that right now, parents choose home-based educators because they already believe they provide high-quality care and education for their children, and, if so, why is he telling parents they are wrong?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: I’m not telling parents that they are wrong. In fact, the Government’s been very clear. We see huge value in home-based early childhood education. We do respect and acknowledge the very close relationship between the home-based educator and the child, which is very important for the child’s development. What we do not want to see is Government subsidies—significant Government subsidies—continuing to go into a sector where the quality controls simply have not been there. In fact, dare I say it, some of the money that’s been going into the sector has not been particularly well accounted for. To give the member a typical example in home-based early childhood education, most parents will be paying between $6 and $7 per hour for their child’s care in home-based ECE. That will then be attracting, if the child’s under the age of two, between $7 and $8 an hour in additional Government subsidy, though the person who is caring for the child may be receiving as little as $1 per hour of that subsidy. Money is not going to the place that it is intended to go to.

Nicola Willis: Can he confirm that he received advice that his policy may reduce the availability of home-based education, preventing some women from being able to work, such as shift workers, who may struggle to find affordable early childhood education with the flexibility they need?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: The labour market implications of the shift in policy are one of the reasons we’ve not set a specific deadline for the qualification requirements to be implemented. We will have a deadline in due course, but we want to step through that very carefully to ensure that the sector and those who are doing the home-based educating have time to keep up.

Jan Tinetti: What impact will the changes to home-based early childhood education have on the 98 percent participation target for early childhood education, which was one of the Better Public Services goals?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: As I indicated previously, these changes might technically reduce early childhood education participation as previously measured because some of the least educationally robust services might carry on but will no longer receive taxpayer funding and no longer be counted as formal early childhood education. According to the 98 percent target, this would be seen as a bad thing, even if the same children were in the same arrangements with the same carers and even if taxpayers had not been getting a good educational return from the taxpayer investment. This is a classic case in point of the risks of trying to reduce our aims in public policy to a simplistic numeric target.

Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement

Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement

Debate resumed from 19 February.

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS (Minister of Energy and Resources): I am immensely proud to take a call on the Prime Minister’s statement, and I’m proud to speak to a statement from a leader who isn’t just managing the shop, but who is leading and who is facing up to the major challenges of our time, as is our Government. I’m also proud to be part of a Government that shows a unique development in New Zealand’s political system. This is a true MMP Government. It brings together parties from different traditions to a common cause, to put people right at the centre of what it is that we do as a Government, and I am immensely proud to take this call.

All of us who have spent a bit of time in Opposition know that there are things that we can be familiar with, and one of those features of Opposition is you are often given unsolicited advice. But sometimes that advice can be very good, and it’s worth listening to. So today, I want to read a bit of advice that I think the Opposition should listen very closely to, and here it is: “It’s a shame to see that attitude in an Opposition”, this person said, “of ‘Oppose, oppose, oppose!’, rather than trying to be constructive on the issues.” Who was the person who gave such sage advice? That was, of course, Simon Bridges. Well, what a shame that he can’t follow his own advice, because this is an Opposition that is barking at every passing car, that is opposing everything, and that is so negative.

Also, when in Government, Mr Bridges said of the Opposition: “In a country where we should have a viable democracy, we should hope to have a Leader of the Opposition who could at least front up and give us some alternative viewpoint on the big issues that New Zealanders want to know about and want a straight answer from the Opposition on.” I think Mr Bridges should go back and read much of his own advice, because, meanwhile, our Government is getting on with the job.

Under our watch, New Zealand’s economy is performing well, with strong growth and unemployment near record low levels. In the Government’s own books, we’re running responsible surpluses while we’re also investing to meet New Zealand’s big challenges. We aren’t afraid to front up to those challenges, and we are prepared to lead on them. In our programme of action, we have children and families at the heart of our programme. We are lifting family incomes, we are backing our regions, we are making doctors visits more affordable, we are rebuilding hospitals and schools, and we’re beginning to shift to an environmentally sustainable economy. We are here, and we are here to make a difference.

There are huge opportunities for New Zealand in many areas, and we are determined to seize them. In the areas that the Prime Minister has asked me to take responsibility for, one of those is energy, and we are developing a renewable strategy for New Zealand that lies at the heart of our economy. This is about the detailed strategic planning of how it is that we will chart our pathway to 2035 and 2050 and beyond. We’re looking into the areas where Government action can make the biggest difference, identifying the incentives that may be needed and the roadblocks that need to be removed, and how we can help new technologies come on stream.

It’s about identifying the regulatory and policy settings our country needs to make the most that our country can be and to seize the opportunities around renewables, because we know this is where job growth will occur, and there are tremendous opportunities. We know that the price of renewable energy is falling rapidly. Wind and solar are now the cheapest energy to produce. We know from reports like those from Transpower that New Zealand will be able to meet its future energy needs from renewables alone, and then, when we do that, consumers can face lower costs. Our environment will see lower emissions, and we’ll be able to create new jobs and new economic opportunities for our country. That is why we are planning now, for the long term, a managed transition over the next 30 years towards an economy based on cheap, clean, renewable energy, instead of costly fossil fuels that contribute to global climate change.

We are already investing in this area. We are funding hydrogen projects in Taranaki. This will be the year when we will see the first projects from the Green Investment Fund, an initiative of our confidence and supply partner, the Green Party. This is where I go back to where I started my speech: my pride in being part of a Government that brings together these three traditions of three parties that puts people at its centre. We have New Zealand First with the Provincial Growth Fund, we have the Green Party with the Green Investment Fund, and all three of our parties are working together towards a common vision for New Zealand.

I have to say that nowhere is the Opposition’s constant negativity on display more than in this area. Whereas we have a comprehensive work programme in this area, all the Opposition does is criticise and cling to the status quo. Whereas we are looking to the future, their eyes are fixed firmly on the past. We are having the courage to lift our sights beyond the three-year political and electoral cycle, but they are burying their heads in the sand and pretending we never have to take action on climate change, and that is not good enough. New Zealanders can and should expect better, and we are getting on with the job in the energy transition.

One thing I’m especially proud of as we move towards the eighth anniversary of the February earthquakes is the renewed sense of momentum and progress this Government is delivering for the people of Christchurch. For too long under the previous Government, the Canterbury recovery was too slow and too messy.

Matt Doocey: How much money have you spent there? Zero.

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: Major projects like the Metro Sports Facility (MSF) and the new stadiums were years behind schedule, and in the case of the MSF, it was over $75 million over budget. We have turned that around. Mr Doocey asked what new money have we put in. Well, good news, Mr Doocey: we’ve put $300 million on the table to kick-start the recovery and speed up important projects. We’re working closely with the Christchurch City Council to return the city to local leadership, and we’re seeing the benefits of that new approach in the rapid progress we are making on planning for the stadium. We’ve been able to fast track the earmarking of $220 million for the stadium, and we are getting on with the job.

But what gives me a great sense of pride is the solving of thousands of outstanding insurance and Earthquake Commission (EQC) claims that the previous Government left trapped in limbo year after year. Since just past May, we’ve settled 72 percent of the outstanding EQC claims that we had on hand, and we’ve set up a new way of doing things. We’ve set up the Greater Christchurch Claims Resolution Service that the private insurers have now entered, along with EQC and Southern Response, so we can finally get traction on those last remaining claims in Christchurch—and have a Government that is committed to allowing people to settle their claims. The most important part of people settling their claims is allowing people to get on with their lives and returning hope to their lives after eight years. We are a Government that thinks that they deserve this. So this is a Government that is getting on with the job, that is making things happen, and that has a positive and optimistic vision for the future of our country.

New Zealand is in a strong position. Our economy is growing strongly and we’re addressing key social, environmental, and economic issues that we need to face, head on. We’re facing health, we’re facing housing, and we’re facing education. So why does Simon Bridges and the National Party seem so miserable then? I wonder if it’s because despite all the progress, what they are concerned about is the faint sound of the barbecues warming up and the sausages beginning to sizzle.

In 2014, Mr Bridges said, “the only party that [one leader of the Labour Party] has the numbers in to remain Leader of the Opposition is the New Zealand National Party.” We’d just like to tell Mr Bridges that we are rooting for you. We’re not just at-the-moment supporters. We want you to stay there for a very long time.

MATT DOOCEY (National—Waimakariri): Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. What Megan Woods, the last member who has resumed her seat, did not tell the House is that the last time, under earthquake regeneration, that Christchurch got any money was in fact under the last National Government. This Government has promised $300 million and a capital accelerator fund, and Canterbury has received zero. In 16 months, we’ve seen a country that had a Government that backed New Zealanders to now a country where we’ve got a Government that tells New Zealanders that they know better. In fact, when she talked about the Metro Sports Facility and the multi-use covered stadium, both of those projects have stalled under this Government, and that’s where we see the Government raising expectation but under-delivering. They pledged $300 million for Canterbury and haven’t spent one dollar of that yet.

What I’m looking forward to also in the Minister for Greater Christchurch Regeneration’s electorate is the promised Rolleston to Christchurch railway, pledged at $100 million. I tell you what: you don’t hear about that any more, because it’s not going to happen. That’s what we’re hearing more and more around New Zealand: the frustration, things being promised, they talked up a big game, but nothing was delivered. Of course, in the beltway of Wellington you can say a lot, but, in fact—[Interruption]—there’s Kieran McAnulty. He’s still really happy he’s finally got a job where people talk to him, unlike his last job. What they’re disappointed at is things are said in Parliament and if they’re not delivered, they affect people in everyday life. Look at KiwiBuild: a thousand homes were promised, down to 300; 47 were delivered, and now we’ve abolished all the targets. Then we had “Mr Arrogant”, the housing Minister, Phil Twyford—

SPEAKER: Order! Order! The member will withdraw that comment.

MATT DOOCEY: I withdraw and apologise.

SPEAKER: Members are to be addressed properly.

MATT DOOCEY: The Hon Phil Twyford, the housing Minister, was on camera saying about the housing crisis: “If it wasn’t that easy, the last National Government would have done it.” That’s exactly it; we didn’t say it was easy, and that’s why we were working hard on it. But when they were in Opposition they said it was easy because all that needed to happen was for the State to intervene, because of course that’s the answer, isn’t it? As long as the State intervenes, that will happen. And what have we seen? The lack of delivery in a year ironically called the year of delivery. What they haven’t learnt, and something that we spoke tirelessly about last term and got let down by other political parties, is that in fact it’s very simple to look at the formula for housing. We saw it in Canterbury with the earthquake recovery Minister, Gerry Brownlee, with the powers he got writing and drawing big circles on the map that freed up the bylaws, the red tape, and the regulation, and freed up the people who build houses—the builders—to get on and do it.

That’s why we replaced the thousands of houses that we lost from the earthquakes, to now Treasury saying we’re moving towards a surplus of housing. The formula is there. If you free up land, it increases supply and it equals demand. That is the formula, and that’s what I implore this Government to do, because in their year of delivery I genuinely hope they do well because it is New Zealanders’ lives we’re talking about. We can say what we want in the beltway, but it is New Zealanders’ lives. So I genuinely hope they do well in their year of delivery.

But it’s not what we’re seeing. Look at my electorate, Waimakariri, one of the third fastest growing electorates in the country. We’ve had huge growth and we’ve actually met the demand with housing, and under the last National Government we turned the sod and started construction for two new motorways to address the huge increase in commuters going into Christchurch City. And what does this Government do on the ground? They cancel the Belfast to Pegasus motorway, including the Woodend bypass. Now, Woodend is a small town that’s got a motorway running through the centre of it. Kids and mums walk across that motorway every day to go to the primary school. Currently, it has 18,000 car movements a day. In the next 10 years that’ll go up to 28,000 car movements.

Chlöe Swarbrick: What if you invest in public transport?

MATT DOOCEY: Pupils and parents—“What about public transport?” Get down to the regions. These parents and pupils have to cross that motorway every day. Under the New Zealand Transport Agency, those metrics triggered a new motorway. That’s what they triggered, those metrics. Now they get a safety consultation. That’s what they get. Why? Because this Government has stripped $5.5 billion out of the State highway funding to fund trams in Auckland. Now, where is that delivery going to happen for the people I represent? And it’s not only in the Waimakariri; we’re seeing it all across the country. That’s what they see as delivery.

What they’re seeing is the stripping out of an investment into vital infrastructure. Another area I want to talk about is my spokes-role of mental health. And let’s get a stocktake of what we’ve got after 16 months. Yes, we’ve had a mental health inquiry. Yes, it has listened to thousands of people and met hundreds of meetings, but where is the delivery? We’re waiting. And what we see, after the former Opposition talked up a big game around mental health funding and wait times for young people’s services—we’re going through the annual reviews at the moment. In Counties Manukau District Health Board (DHB) annual review, their mental health ring-fenced funding for the last three years before this Government came into power increased $4 million to $5 million a year. In the last year, it went from $151 million to $152 million, a bit over $1 million. Previously, it went up $4 million to $5 million every year. In the last year, under this Government, Counties Manukau DHB’s mental health ring-fenced funding went up $1 million.

A look at the wait times: they were meeting targets for child and adolescent mental health of around 73 to 74 percent. In the last year, they’ve dropped down to 70 percent. So here we have a Government that’s over-promising and under-delivering, because what we had was $100 million in Budget 2017 to fund 17 mental health initiatives that this Government cancelled that could have been delivering real support to vulnerable New Zealanders on the ground today.

Mental health workers to be paired up with emergency responders: the police were devastated when that got pulled. That was going to be a game changer. That was 16 months ago. Imagine the difference that service could have made on the ground today. And that’s what we’re hearing—all these promises but very little delivery.

As many will know, I invited parties to join a cross-party mental health group in July. We had the Minister decline that. The inquiry reported back today and, in fact, we heard from the mental health inquiry panel today in select committee. They said to us in the inquiry that they had heard the public’s call for a cross-party mental health group in New Zealand’s Parliament. Yet we have the health Minister who says “We don’t think the public wants an internal talkfest amongst politicians”, who’s not listening to the public already, he’s offside with the panel of his own inquiry, and is not endorsing his own recommendations.

We’ve seen a country have a Government that backs New Zealanders. Now we’ve moved to a country where the Government knows better than New Zealanders. You can say what you want in the beltway of Wellington but, ultimately, we’re affecting lives of people in New Zealand. This Government has said 2019 is going to be a year of delivery, genuinely, for New Zealanders; I hope it is.

DARROCH BALL (NZ First): I think we need to get one thing straight first of all—New Zealand is a great country to live in. It has been for a very long time, it has now, and it will be in the future, and we have been a great country for a number of reasons. Obviously, we’ve been in the upper echelons of the OECD rankings for all of the good stuff. We are a great country because we’ve got a great Prime Minister who’s leading us, and we’ve got the best Deputy Prime Minister that this country’s ever seen who’s leading us as well.

But if one was to just listen to the National Party speeches, no one would know that we’re a great country to live in. It’s all negative, it’s all anti, it’s all down, it’s all depressing, but that’s because—and I figured it out—they have just slipped into being the quintessential Opposition. They bark at every single car, and they are nothing but anti - whatever the Government’s trying to put forward. You see, they don’t stand for one thing. The only thing that they stand for is everything that the Government is not. With every single thing, every single idea, every single proposal, and every single project that this Government is putting forward, the National Party opposes it. That’s all that they do and all that they say, and the irony of it all is—if you have a look at everything and every single subject of what they are opposing—that this Government is actually doing something to try and clean up the mess of the almost decade when they were in Government.

Look what they’re opposing: KiwiBuild, for starters. Why do we have to have KiwiBuild in the first place? Because of a housing crisis under the making of the National Government over the previous 10 years. But what do we hear? You see, we are trying to build houses and, in fact, we are building houses. This Government has built more houses than any other Government since the 1970s. But you don’t want to hear the positives from the National Opposition. It’s all negatives; it’s all anti-KiwiBuild. You hear all the anti about the Provincial Growth Fund (PGF). Why do we have a PGF? Because of the underfunding and lack of funding and investment in the infrastructure in our regions. But you don’t hear anything positive about that from the National Party. It’s all negative; it’s all anti-PGF.

We’ve just heard about the issues currently, apparently, from Mr Doocey—about the mental health issues that we’ve got in this country. Why do we have all of the projects and all of the funding that we are doing on this side of the House in regards to mental health and the district health boards? Why are we focusing on that? It is because of the lack of funding and infrastructure and focus that the National Party had over the past 10 years. You see, this is it. They are complaining about the very things that they neglected in the first place, and they, unfortunately, have been passing their notes around to all of the backbenchers, from the front bench—all the backbenchers of the National Party—and we’re going to hear all the same negative, down, depressing things.

But the thing is, you see, that most, if not all, of what they are complaining about and the comments that they make are actually wrong. They’re totally wrong. I’ll take an example. Unfortunately, I had to endure—a few of us had to endure—a speech from Jo Hayes in the House last night, and not only was it absolutely depressing and negative but it was absolutely wrong. She made comments about our unemployment numbers and about how unemployment numbers were low. Well they are—they are 4.3 percent. I mean, we can look at the unemployment numbers under the National Government. Under National in 2014, it was over 5 percent—in fact, over 5.5 percent. In 2016, it was over 5.8 percent. Unemployment has come down under this Government.

She also was complaining about the business confidence being down. Radio New Zealand (RNZ) in January of this year said, “Business confidence has bounced back … Businesses were more positive about their own future prospects,”.

I just said before that one of the things that she said was that we are not building enough houses for people to live in. This Government has built more houses than any other Government since the 1970s. In 2013-14, just over 300 houses were built in New Zealand. This year, over 2,000 houses are available—over 2,000 houses have been delivered for people to live in.

One other thing is the relationship that she mentioned—verbosely—with China. I want to quote from RNZ on 16 February. A Foreign ministry spokesperson from China was asked about the relationship between the two countries, being China and New Zealand. They quoted, “Those insisting on such an interpretation are evidently either making a big fuss over nothing or harboring ulterior motives. On bilateral relations, a China-New Zealand relationship enjoying sound and steady development is in the interest of both countries and [both] peoples.”

This country is going in the right direction. We are being led by a great Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister. We are a great country to live in and that National Party needs to wake up and have a look in the mirror.

JENNY MARCROFT (NZ First): Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker, tēnā koe. It is my pleasure to stand and take this split call following on from my colleague Darroch Ball, who really has been highlighting the positivity of this side of the House versus the negativity that we’re hearing from the other side of this House. And I’d like to begin my contribution today by talking about how, in her speech last week, the Prime Minister spoke about leadership in this House. And I’ll begin with a whakataukī: inā te mahi he rangatira. See how he does—I’ll actually translate to “see how she does—a leader indeed.”

You know, in today’s society a leader is usually identified by the work that they do in promoting the interests and the welfare of the people. And this side of the House, this Government, this fabulous coalition Government—it is all about focusing on the people and having the people’s interests at heart. Leadership to me has two main components and the first component for me is trust—trust that the Government has its people at heart, trust that its heart is in the right place. The second most important component of leadership is vision, the ability to look into the future and face the challenges squarely rather than pretend that nothing is happening—and we saw that with the National Government where they buried their heads in the sand and they could not even acknowledge that we had a housing crisis. But we are building more houses than any Government has built since the 1970s, and that is what leadership looks like.

New Zealand First were very proud to be part of this coalition Government, and we have a fabulous leader who’s also our Deputy Prime Minister, and through his leadership let me outline some of the issues that we are focusing on.

We have enough problems with possums in this country to know that they are just one example of a good idea that went horribly wrong. Now, nobody is happy with the widespread use of 1080. The coalition Government is making great strides, though, to find more effective predator control solutions that, in time, we hope will render 1080 redundant. Now, for this coalition Government, leading and finding alternative solutions to 1080 means that we have to ensure that we can develop new technologies in trapping, remote sensing, lures and surveillance, and also data management technologies. That will also ensure that these great ideas—many are born from sheds and garages around Aotearoa—will come to fruition and there’ll be a pathway for those clever inventors to have their product be taken to the market and taken to the world. So that is what it is to be leading in a space where finding alternatives really is the way to ensure that at some point we can look forward to 1080 becoming redundant.

There are other ways that New Zealand First has been leading, and I’ll just go back to what we had been leading on in terms of free doctors visits for our tamariki. We have a proud history of taking care of the health of our tamariki, so just last year it was an absolute pleasure to join the Prime Minister, along with the Minister of Health, Dr David Clark, as we announced free doctors visits for under-14s.

We’re also making sure that we get our hospitals back up to scratch after the last Government failed to do any infrastructure planning for the 600,000 - odd new immigrants that formed the basis of their economic plan. We’ve got some good news coming for women. We’re going to get the SuperGold card turbocharged and also too, really importantly, we will restore the mana of the regions, the mana of the people in our regions after a decade of neglect.

It was New Zealand First that pushed back against the neo-liberal agenda. That was the “workhouse for the poor” agenda. That was the “law of the jungle” agenda. We have seen that “let them eat cake” mentality in all its various forms and, really, we have pushed back against that. In the last regime, we saw Ministers who were given a hand up by New Zealand’s welfare system simply to turn around and pull up the ladder behind them. The rest of society was simply left behind, but today it is our responsibility now to ensure the inherent potential of every one is actualised.

I’ll end on this whakataukī: waiho rā kia tū takitahi ana ngā whetu o te rangi. Let it be one alone that stands among the other stars in the skies.

Hon TIM MACINDOE (National—Hamilton West): Thank you very much, sir, and I’m sure you appreciated the irony as much as I did in listening to those last two contributions, in the fact that particularly the member Darroch Ball spent his entire time attacking the Opposition for being incredibly negative, having nothing positive to say, when, in fact, it was he who, through doing that, failed to mention anything positive at all, couldn’t outline his own vision for the nation, and just attacked the Opposition.

Well, let me move on. I’m sure it is only in the nation’s Parliament that members wish each other a happy New Year on 20 February, but let me do that. Let me congratulate Tamati Coffey and his partner on their very happy news of recent days, and let me also say gong xi fa cai to all those around New Zealand who are celebrating this important time: the Chinese New Year. It is, of course, the Year of the Pig, and my own children uncharitably say that that should be my year. Well, it’s not; I wasn’t born in that year, but “xin nian kuai le” to my lovely daughters as well. I know that they mean well. I do want to acknowledge a wonderful lantern festival that was on display in Garden Place in Hamilton on Saturday night—fantastic performances—but what I really loved was the fact that there was a huge crowd there reflecting the diversity of modern New Zealand. I loved seeing people of all ethnic backgrounds coming together to celebrate such a significant event. This reflects very well on our nation, and long may we continue to move in that direction.

Today is also a very significant one in this House as we welcome and say talofa lava to our newest member, Agnes Loheni, and I’m so pleased that she’s here now. We will, of course, be hearing her maiden statement in just about a couple of hours, and I know it will be a very fine address. Could I acknowledge the fine Minister she has just replaced—Christopher Finlayson—who, I think, served our country extraordinarily well and will long be remembered, particularly for the outstanding work he did in making great progress on Treaty settlements. But here, in Agnes, I think I’m right in saying, we have our first female Pasifika member in the National Party caucus, and I think that’s another really encouraging step in the right direction. She supplements our ranks and further enhances what is already the impressive diversity of the National Party caucus. She’s a woman of intelligence, experience, empathy, and very solid values, and I know that she will serve this House and, in particular, her South Auckland community very well in the years ahead.

It’s also a very significant day for my delightful and caring constituent Margaret Clayton-Greene and from my valued colleague and very good friend Kanwaljit Singh Bakshi, who both celebrate their birthdays today, and I wish both Kanwaljit and Margaret a very happy birthday.

May I, on a much sadder note, join Kanwaljit and other Indian members of this Parliament, and indeed all New Zealanders, in condemning the recent horrific attack on the Indian Central Reserve Police Force personnel in Pulwama. We extend our aroha and sympathy to all who were caught up in that atrocity and especially to the victims and their families.

We’ve heard much from the Government that this is the year of delivery. I think 2018 was described as the “Year of Working Groups” and “How on earth did that happen?”—“How did we get into Government?” Well, we’d like to see it as a year of delivery, but there aren’t many encouraging signs yet. If you look at the utter shambles that is KiwiBuild, there is no hope of that being a year of delivery—it’s a con trick. It’s certainly not going to be a year of delivery for beneficiaries, and this is a serious point: how disturbing it is to see, in good financial times, the numbers of beneficiaries going up and, in particular, a major reason for that being the misguided Government policy that has removed sanctions and that is, frankly, descending back into what Bill English so rightly used to describe as the “tyranny of low expectations”, putting far too many New Zealanders in the too-hard basket, saying, “We’ll just throw a benefit at you, and that will do.” Well, it won’t, and this must be the year of delivery for those people, not just in topping up benefits; it’s got to be about giving them the encouragement and, at times, the proper incentives to get into employment, to take up training, and to make sure that they are able to become self-reliant.

It’s certainly not a year of delivery for those who sent their children to partnership schools. It’s not a year of delivery for those in the classrooms around the country who now have seen the demise of national standards with nothing put in place to replace them, and so gradually we’ll just see less and less information that is valuable to parents going home. Well, I don’t say that national standards were a panacea and a cure-all for everything, but they gave parents vital information, and I really fear that again we will hear, as we used to a decade ago, parents saying to us, “If only I’d known at the time that my child was falling behind in literacy and numeracy, but the Government took away my right to receive that information.” Well, I say to the Government: deliver something that gives them back that vital information.

It won’t be a year of delivery for those awaiting elective surgeries and vital medical treatment. Some—of course, we hope as many as possible—will receive operations and will receive very good service in our public hospitals, but the Government has eliminated the public health targets that were set by the last Government, which meant that we were able to measure achievement and we were able to put the resources where they were needed when things weren’t moving along in the direction that they should have been, and I say “Shame on the Government for taking that away.”, because New Zealanders have a right to that information. It is right that we acknowledge achievement in the health system when it is being secured, but how will we know in the future? It’s just another way of taking away things that are important and putting nothing in place. It’s all smoke and mirrors, and Government has to be about more than just good intentions.

I say to this Government: we share, I think, probably all of your aspirations that sound so decent. All of us want to get the best out of our health system and get the best education for our children. We want our Defence Force and our police force to be able to do their jobs to the best of their ability, and across all the vital social services we all want the best. But just saying that doesn’t make it so. We actually have to have some effective measures to ensure it can be achieved, and so far this Government has been woefully deficient in putting in place a coherent programme—a plan—that will move us in that direction. We have even got a Government that can’t yet tell us how they are going to frame a referendum at next year’s general election—it’s not that far away—on the important questions of the future possibility of legalising marijuana for recreational use.

Well, it’s not good enough for the Prime Minister to come to this House day after day and say, “No, we’re not working on that legislation, and we don’t yet know what the question will be.” This is an important issue. There’s a lot of evidence, some of which just came out last week, of the very disturbing impact on young people’s mental health from recreational cannabis use. The public needs to know about this in good time to be able to make an intelligent and considered decision. So I urge all members of this House to support the amendment in the name of the Leader of the Opposition—that “this House has no confidence in the Labour-led Government because in its ambition to be measured on its vague intentions it is proving itself completely incapable of delivering good outcomes for New Zealanders.”

We in the National Party are working very hard and very positively to ensure that we will be fit to govern. I’ll just mention two things. I had the privilege along with my colleague David Bennett of hosting the first of Nikki Kaye’s education roadshows in Hamilton. Contrary to what some of the silly idiots on Twitter had to say, this was not a destructive sort of thing; there was a very constructive tone, and all people who were there were able to engage freely in positive discussion. I hope that it will lead to us being able to put forward a really attractive and appropriate education policy.

Members of this House and those who are listening will know that for weeks now I have been trying to get from the Government—particularly the Minister for ACC—a straight answer to the question of why the Government has moved away from applying the vehicle-risk rating mechanism to the setting of motor vehicle levies. OK, it’s not the front-page headline but it’s another example of illogical action by a Government when, at the same time that they’re putting a lot of money into an NZTA campaign to encourage people, quite rightly, to try to move into safer vehicles because that is such an important way of ensuring their safety during an accident, they are taking away the only financial incentive that existed for it. I’ve waited for weeks to get a straight answer. This morning, I got one from the chairperson of ACC when I asked her, “Was there any evidence?” The fact of the matter is that they were going to have a review, but this Government cancelled it. In other words, they made a decision, again, having not done the homework and with no evidence at all.

Let me just conclude by returning the favour that the Hon Ron Mark did me in the House yesterday. He acknowledged that I had joined him in a very, very impressive and memorable trip to the United Arab Emirates, Israel, Egypt, and South Sudan. I can’t in the little bit of time remaining do justice to it, but it was a tremendous opportunity for me to gain much greater knowledge of the many important aspects of peacekeeping and other deployments that New Zealanders are engaged in. Everywhere we went, we saw New Zealanders who were held in the highest regard for the fine work that they are doing, and I want to thank them. I want to acknowledge the very important contribution that Kiwi taxpayers are making and to assure them that I believe it is money well spent, and to conclude on a very positive note by saying that I was proud to be part of that delegation and very grateful to the Hon Ron Mark for his generous accommodation of me on that trip. I think he’s served our country very well, and a new friendship has been formed across the House.

MARAMA DAVIDSON (Co-Leader—Green): I am inspired. I am inspired by the people of this country and around the world who are calling for new solutions to the challenges we face. I want to acknowledge the strength of those flax-roots movements for change which are igniting the world with their ruthless honesty. The twin crises of climate change and inequality are here now. They are wicked, scary, and colossal challenges that require us to take bold action. I am inspired and I have hope because we are seeing united flax-roots movements calling decision makers to account and demanding that we take better care of our planet and our communities. James Shaw and I, and all our Green MPs, are strengthened every day in the work we do by those voices of people calling for bold change.

People are taking to the streets—school students, workers, indigenous peoples, women, unions, people from all backgrounds and experiences, from vastly different societies across the globe, who understand that everyone needs to be able to put food on the table, have shelter that keeps them safe, warm, and secure, have quality medical care and an education that allows children to be who they are as healthy active citizens in their neighbourhoods. Here in Aotearoa, people are telling us passionately that they want clean rivers and safe drinking-water. They want thriving forests and oceans, they want our native plants and creatures to be abundant, and they want to protect our Earth from further climate change. And the Greens are very clear that everyone, not just some, should be able to live safe, dignified lives in a healthy environment.

This is why I am hopeful, because this Government has ended new offshore oil and gas exploration—we cannot afford to burn the fossil fuels we already know about, let alone any more; because this Government is building State houses—we need more—led by Minister Phil Twyford, and we are working to end homelessness; because we can actually say the words “housing crisis” on this side of the House; because this Government is launching an ambitious programme to clean up water and is investing money in conservation rather than starving our Department of Conservation of resources, led by Green Minister Eugenie Sage; and because this Government has Green MP Jan Logie, who has introduced world-first Government initiatives to address domestic violence and sexual abuse.

The Greens know that business as usual won’t cut it any longer. We can no longer continue to exploit entire communities and our natural world for power and wealth to be concentrated in the hands of a few. We have had generations of ruin by design. Today, we face a level of consumption and exploitation by the ultra-rich at a level unheard of in human history. By 2017, just eight men—eight men—owned as much wealth as 3.6 billion of the poorest half of the world.

In New Zealand, two men—two men—own more wealth than the poorest 30 percent of our adult population. We didn’t get here by accident. Generations of rules made in places like this one have ensured that we have kept power and wealth propped up and have created a massive and widening gap between the few and everyone else.

The rules made here by successive Governments and politicians have seen the degradation of our environment, health, and education public services; a gutting of provision of affordable and safe housing; the weakening of protections for people who work; fair pay stolen from women, Māori, Pacific, and disabled people; standards which allow for ongoing pollution of our air and our water; activity that endangers the livelihood of native species and plants; and laws that continue to favour wealthy corporations taking from struggling households.

We have a responsibility in this new Government to make bold changes on all of these issues. For a start, we need to measure our progress in a way that is far more honest about what is going on for people in their everyday lives. We want to take account of the health of our rivers and seas and forests and soils, if we are talking about the real wealth of our country. We will not simply bow down to GDP alone while children are still going to school without a proper kai. We will measure the dignity of people in work, not just the lonely statistic of whether they are no longer receiving a benefit. We will tell the whole story because the whole story is what is needed to inspire the true enduring solutions.

The energy that is currently among young people, indigenous and Pacific peoples, the longstanding work of people struggling to make ends meet, the communities who have had barriers relentlessly and systemically placed in the way of living dignified lives, and peoples who have called out oppression and injustice—despite everything against them—are at the forefront of this change. It is their voices I am here to represent. These are the communities I come from and work with.

The Greens understand deeply that the systems and rules which ruin our planet are inextricably linked to the systems and rules that hurt people and communities. And I’m proud the Greens signed up to this Government for transformational change, because business as usual won’t cut it any more. We need bold action on climate change and inequality, and this means radical changes to how we measure success and how we protect people and the planet. The broken economic model—it’s on its way out. People around the world are waking up to this, and the people will make sure it happens. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

SIMON O’CONNOR (National—Tāmaki): I’m always worried when I come into this House and after speeches like that hear that Marxism and communism are alive and well in society—the great failed experiment with millions dead, yet being celebrated here. I don’t normally do this. I wouldn’t normally do this, but I encourage the public to listen to speeches like that from the Greens, because they’re great about acknowledging who they don’t include. They are really good at acknowledging a whole lot of groups in society. Well, they’ll always talk about human rights, because, you know, we’re all human, but they talk about very specific groups and I encourage New Zealanders to log in, listen to that speech, and then begin to see all the groups in society which they exclude. I think there’s a word for that. I think it’s called discrimination. They very carefully exclude a number of groups. And it’s probably going to be a surprise to the Greens, or maybe not when they languish on 6 or less percent, that actually the majority of New Zealanders are excluded by their opinions.

The other thing I’d mention—and as someone who’s a great believer in climate change but not in the Greens’ approach, which is, effectively, “blank-cheque-ing”—is the idea that we have climate change, therefore a blank cheque should be written out to the likes of the Greens and other communistic groups to basically say—

SPEAKER: Order! The member is in fact trifling with me for the second time today. The member knows that’s out of order.

SIMON O’CONNOR: “Communistic”?

SPEAKER: Absolutely.

SIMON O’CONNOR: Right—far left belief systems that actually just allow wholesale changes—wholesale changes. And it’s not what New Zealand wants and it’s not what New Zealand needs.

Chlöe Swarbrick: Do you speak for all of New Zealand?

SIMON O’CONNOR: But ultimately I am here. No, actually. The member asked: do I speak for all of New Zealand? No, Ms Swarbrick. I actually speak for 60,000 constituents; not unlike yourself who—which is your constituency? That’s right. There isn’t one. So, fundamentally, I disagree with the Prime Minister’s statement and am very happy to support the amendment of Simon Bridges. But the fundamental point that I want to actually bring up today is a question. [Interruption]

SPEAKER: Order!

SIMON O’CONNOR: When will this Government apologise?

Kieran McAnulty: I apologise.

SIMON O’CONNOR: And we already have an apology coming from the other side, but I think it’s unrelated. But I’m asking the House today, and the Prime Minister through her statement: when will this Government apologise? This Government promised to build houses—tens of thousands of houses. We’re up to 47. I’m asking the Government to apologise for its failure. The Government promised that there’ll be less waiting for State housing. We’ve heard today great pronouncements about the numbers of houses being built, and so forth. But, actually, when I questioned the Minister, taking his announcements of supposedly thousands of houses that this Government was building, it turned out that, first and foremost, the Minister could not answer my question that was on notice, despite the fact that, actually, officials in select committee this morning were able to give me at least an indication. But what we found out is that the majority, I understand, or at least most—I should use the absolute word used in committee today—of the houses being promoted by this Government that they have built were actually started under the previous Government—under the previous Government. No, it’s not to say that this new Government won’t get into building houses, but it would do incredibly well—when it puts out its press releases claiming that they have built 1,691 new homes that actually were, for the most part, started by the previous Government.

The other element which is really important is always the ambiguity of the English language. There’s lots of talk in the State housing space that, you know, they’re all new houses. It’s implied in the language, but actually 53 per cent—53 per cent—of the houses that the Prime Minister and then Minister Twyford trumpeted today are not new houses. They are existing private New Zealand homes that have been bought by Housing New Zealand—bought by Housing New Zealand. In fact, it came through select committee today, through my colleague the Hon Judith Collins, that, actually, real estate agents are going out and buying these houses before they even reach the market. And for the public listening, let that sink in. People will not even get the opportunity to bid against Housing New Zealand. They are already off the market.

The best analogy of failure that I can give is really the Government is not growing the pie; they’re just cutting it up in different ways. So to New Zealanders who are first-home buyers, those struggling to buy their home: know that through this Government they are competing with a $1.3 billion Housing New Zealand. They’re competing with real estate agents who are taking properties off the market to Housing New Zealand. The Government are not growing the pie in State housing; they are simply buying and taking houses off those very New Zealanders who pay the taxes to fund Housing New Zealand, I might add. They are taking houses away from Kiwis, and I think the Government needs to apologise.

I think it also needs to apologise because it promised no new taxes and then whacked those of us in Auckland with at least two. They empowered the left-wing council in Auckland to slap on a fuel tax and then passed legislation in this House to slap a further petrol tax on Aucklanders. I look forward to an apology there.

The Government promised no strikes—no strikes. Just about every day, I wake up and have to see there’s another strike in the papers; is it the doctors, is it the nurses, is it the bus drivers—who is it? We have strikes almost every day. I again expect the Government to apologise.

Along with not being open—well, sorry. They promised, rather, I should say, to be open and transparent, and we had examples again today where figures are not presented, ideas are fudged. We’re waiting for Auditor-General reports, and so forth. And of course we had a debacle around Ministers who are hiding diary entries, or rather denying that meetings happened, and I think, you know, we’ve had ministerial questions stalled for months.

We’ve had an apology, I’m sure, needed for the lack of prudent financial management—a $3 billion fund which, I think we heard today, is funding swimming pools. Free tuition fees to students—what’s that achieving? An oil ban in Taranaki—that’s the “blank-cheque-ing” that I was talking about, that we just wipe out an entire industry overnight because it’s the wonderful virtue signalling that just makes people, particularly on the left, feel all nice, warm, and fuzzy.

Speaking of those on the left, an apology to the scientific community would be welcome too as the Green Party, through its Minister, hamstrings research into genetic science and technologies. The Greens will always talk a big and strong game about science when it suits them, but they demonstrate all the blind zealotry of a religious fanatic when science says something that is wrong. I think it’s an absolute shame and it’s an absolute disgrace that the scientific community in this country has been muzzled.

I want to turn to an apology that is needed to the people of Venezuela, moving into the foreign affairs space. An apology is needed by this Government as the rights and freedoms of those people are being trampled upon. The Government has been absolutely silent on what is happening there. Again, a big game has talked about all rights and looking after people and care and kindness. Yet while a regime, a left-wing regime—I can’t use another word—enforces its will on the people, this Government remains silent, and it is a shame. As I say, they’ve mastered the art of doing nothing, and apologies are required.

But fundamentally, an election is a promise. It’s an outline of what a party would do if it were to win and be in Government. And if we are to avoid campaigns where every party promises everything under the sun to every person across the country, we politicians must be held to account. So where is the accountability and when will this Labour-led Government apologise? I suggest there really are only two possibilities. Did Labour know it couldn’t deliver—did it know it couldn’t deliver? Maybe it was disingenuous, maybe they weren’t so concerned with getting the details right, and perhaps it was just a cynical ploy to get elected at all costs. That’s possible. That is possible, but I think that’s uncharitable, and I’m not an uncharitable person.

I think the other possibility is we’re just dealing here with woeful incompetence. There’s that genuine but naive belief that they could just come on through and just sort everything out. They could just easily improve the lives of people with happy words, utopian visions, and the like—that they could change and improve the lives of everyone they care about, and that once they found they were in power they began to realise things were a little bit more difficult. But I believe that we should never ascribe to malice what could also be easily ascribed to incompetence, so I’m prepared to give the Government the benefit of the doubt on this. So I believe, and it’s where I’ll begin to end, that the failures of this Government, the need for apologies, is one based simply on incompetence. But regardless of whether it is just that incompetence, they should apologise for that too. I and five million other New Zealanders and the 60,000 people in Tāmaki are waiting for that apology.

Hon ANDREW LITTLE (Minister of Justice): That last contribution from that member highlights the very serious malaise in which the National Party today finds itself, because it’s all very well complaining about this, that, and the other thing, but where is the vision? This was a once great party, led by once great people—not one person but multiple leaders in that party—great visionaries for New Zealand, who saw a New Zealand where everybody had a house, everybody who could work and wanted to work did work, where people got decent wages and incomes, where they didn’t mind if people belonged to a union. Some of those brokers of union deals used to be in that party—people like Jim Bolger, who’s now very ably assisting our Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety in doing his wonderful work of restoring faith and confidence in work and the rewards of work once again. That is a party that is visionless, that has lost its way, and about more which I might have some more to say later.

But I actually want to get on with the good news, because there is a lot of good news and it’s all wrapped up in the Prime Minister’s statement, which charts out a long-term vision and a long-term view for this great little country of ours that we all have a responsibility for doing the best by. You see, the Prime Minister represents the aspirations of a new generation. She represents governing for a quality of life and well-being for everyone, regardless of where you live, regardless of who you are—that everybody gets to share in the greatness and the beauty of this country of ours. Hers is a Government about realising dreams and hopes that for so long—at least, for the last nine years—have been dashed and frustrated and obstructed. Hers is a leadership that is about governing to rise to the hardest challenges that we face—not the kind of three-year, cyclical, short-term stuff, but actually getting to grips with the really difficult stuff to make a difference.

That’s why we have a robust, long-term, sound environmental policy. I know members of the National Party opposite bridle and bristle and struggle to come to terms with the decision on the long-term future of oil exploration, but the way this Government has approached that is to accept what that party won’t, which is the science is telling us that we cannot carry on doing what we’ve done, decade after decade after decade—that we actually have to change what we do. We have to change our energy mix. So this is a Government, under the Prime Minister’s leadership and with the erstwhile Dr Megan Woods, that’s actually rising to that challenge.

It isn’t, as the New Zealand Institute of Economic Research and the Petroleum Exploration and Production Association of New Zealand and their unholy alliance in the last couple of days said, putting the future of Taranaki at risk. Actually, it was carrying on doing nothing that was putting the future of Taranaki at risk. Jobs were being lost in that industry because the reality is that the future of that industry was in the hands of others in Washington and in The Hague and in London and in places other than New Zealand. But we’ve taken control of that issue for ourselves, and we’ve taken control of it in the interests of New Zealand and the people of Taranaki. We’ve made a decision that preserves and keeps those jobs that are there at the moment but actually starts the hard work of thinking about what the next generation of investment and of work opportunity actually looks like. I’m very proud to be part of that—very proud to be making my contribution.

We needed a different approach. It wasn’t enough just to do what the previous Government did and manage for the economic figures. The economic figures are very important. Having a robust, resilient economy is absolutely essential. But what are we managing it for when we have hundreds of thousands of people living in poverty—children living in poverty; when we have thousands and thousands of people homeless and with no hope of getting a roof over their heads? What sort of economic management is that? So we needed something that was well rounded, that was actually rooted in the existence of people and what they needed so that they were thriving and safe and secure and doing well for themselves and their families. It’s not just about the numbers being good; it is about the life that people get to lead. That’s what this Government is about, and that’s what sets this Government apart from the one we’ve just had nine years of.

Whether people are living in poverty, and the grossness of the poverty they are living in, matters, and we have to step up and do something about it. Whether we have a health system that is responding effectively to the demands put on it—and those demands are getting greater, and people’s expectations are quite reasonably saying, “Look, we just want a system that is there when we need it and will fix us when we need it.” That’s what we were losing in this country. We now have a health Minister who’s on the job, putting more investment into it, turning the Titanic, the oil tanker, around in a health system that desperately needs attention.

The education system—I have the great privilege of standing right next to the education Minister right now, who is transforming, who is revolutionising, our education system so that it is fit for a future that is going to deliver citizens capable of working, capable of participating in all aspects of being part of the community and being part of our great democracy. That’s what we want in an education system; not one where teachers are struggling and stressed out each day trying to do their job, wondering what’s the next box they have to tick or the next piece of paperwork they have to complete, but an education system focused on the magic that happens between excellent teachers and kids who are enthused and curious about learning—that’s what we want. That’s what we need: an education system that at the vocational level is actually responding to what business and industry says they need and churning out young people who are capable of participating and contributing and doing well and making a way for themselves. That’s what you want in an education system. We were losing that—we were losing that. So thank goodness Chris Hipkins has arrived in time to turn that ship around and do great things.

The well-being approach also means that we have to look to community safety, and I’m very pleased to be charged with the responsibility—along with my justice sector colleagues the Hon Kelvin Davis, the Hon Stuart Nash, the Hon Aupito William Sio, and the Under-Secretary Jan Logie—to actually focus on those things that are going to give our communities a chance to be safer than they ever were before. This is about taking seriously issues like the appalling incidence of family violence. I give credit to members opposite, and particularly to the Hon Amy Adams. She started some great work on this whole Parliament coming to grips with that scourge of family violence. It was a great thing that we were able to continue that, put our imprimatur on it, and actually take seriously some of those issues that we know are really very serious about family violence, like strangulation, like coercion and control. We were able to pass that law with the unanimity of this Parliament to make a difference in that regard.

But we have other challenges as well. It wasn’t right that when we came into Government, we had a record number of people in prison—way off the scale for a country like ours. It wasn’t right that we had a reoffending rate for those who had been to prison that is one of the highest in the developed world and unchanged over the last 20 or 30 years, because we just did not take seriously what was needed to change lives and turn people around but, most importantly, if we’re dealing with those who have offended, to stop them reoffending again. That is the serious challenge that we’ve got, and that’s the serious challenge that we are rising to.

Also, making sure that victims are properly supported—now, who would have thought, 30 years on from when the issue of victims kind of came to the political surface and everybody was trying to respond effectively to what was needed, that we still do not have an effective regime for supporting victims right from the time that they are offended against. I’m looking forward to addressing the victims workshop in a few weeks’ time to start talking about what it is that we can do better. There is a lot that this Government has to do, a lot of challenges that we must rise to, in the criminal justice area and the family court area—major problems, major challenges, that we have to improve and get on top of there.

The other major act of justice that I’m very proud to be part of that this coalition Government has given me responsibility for is the Pike River re-entry project—to give justice to those families who were, from November 2010, let down at every step of the way by the old Department of Labour, by the police investigation at the time, and by so many other organisations and institutions. It is great to see the progress that is being made to give justice to those families. This is a Government that is about well-being and about justice, and I’m proud to be part of it.

Hon NICKY WAGNER (National): Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. I’m very pleased to speak to this debate on the Prime Minister’s statement. I think that due to the National Government’s capable and experienced leadership of Prime Ministers John Key and Bill English, and due to the stable Government during those nine years, this Labour coalition Government inherited a strong and resilient country. It had a rapidly growing economy. It had strong trading relationships and a stable Government with clear Better Public Services targets and strong and successful social investment programmes. During the National years, I think the people of New Zealand grew to expect that level of commitment and competence from their Government, and I think that in their minds they banked what National delivered as business as usual and expected it just to continue automatically with a change of the Government.

So how disappointed they must be—how deeply disappointed they must be. I do accept that the Labour coalition Government is full of good intentions and is keen to do things right, but New Zealanders know that economic stability underpins the resourcing of every Government service, every social programme, and every opportunity for the future.

This Government only pays lip service to disciplined economic management, and during this time in office has been diverted from the things that really matter most to New Zealanders. They’ve forgotten to focus on the really tough, all-important stuff that delivers efficient and effective Government and quality services for New Zealanders, and what we’re seeing as a result is the lack of their financial experience and expertise.

Right now, our economy is slowing, our growth rate is dropping, the creation of jobs is stagnating, and our essential relationships with our important trading partners are suffering. So there’s no wonder that the Prime Minister, in her statement, is proclaiming that 2019 is the year of delivery, but I can’t help think that that, too, is just well-intentioned wishful thinking. We all want to deliver.

I think about it and I really wouldn’t want to be a courier in her delivery van, because what would I be delivering? How many new houses will KiwiBuild really build? Are we sure that they’re not going to be just rebranded, cannibalised from the private sector? How many of them will sell? How much will rents go up—another $50, $60, $70 a week? How many more strikes will we have to put up with? How much more inconvenience? How much more loss of productivity because of them? How many more advisory committees, working groups, and expert panels are we going to be paying for? But, far more importantly, with lower growth and the slowing of job creation—and we’re already down from 10,000 a month to less than 1,000—how many more New Zealanders are going to be unemployed or underemployed?

Now, I’ve been around long enough to see several economic downturns, and my heart really goes out to those who may be laid off or made redundant, but worse still are those who go to work every day in a small business, without making any money, worrying about how they’re going to pay the wages on Thursday and that they might actually end up losing everything. And what’s the spin-off of all of this? The spin-off is devastating for our young people. How will they get jobs to underpin their futures when we already have the highest number of young people that are not in education, not in employment, or not in training already? So, Prime Minister, you have to get the basics right. New Zealanders are desperately awaiting any form of delivery.

Now, I listened with interest to the new Minister for Greater Christchurch Regeneration and how she talked about Christchurch. I agree with her that after eight years and all the work that was done by the National Government and the people of Christchurch, everything that we’ve done since 2010 and 2011 is now paying off. If you haven’t visited Christchurch recently, I invite you to come there. We have a modern, people-friendly, and vibrant city, and it’s beautiful.

Over the last, fabulous summer, we’ve had thousands of local people, Greater Christchurch people, New Zealand visitors, and international tourists coming to enjoy our city. We are the gateway to the South Island, and more and more people are coming through that door. They’re coming to admire and to use our new and restored facilities: our heritage buildings, our arts centre, and our new modern structures. They’re fabulous. They’re coming to walk along the Avon-Ōtākaro promenade, and we’re going to have the lantern festival there this weekend. They come to admire and pay respects to our earthquake memorial and to enjoy our new, latest exciting additions to the city, such as a world-class library—Tūranga—and also our new, state-of-the-art technology Hoyts EntX theatre.

Our city is becoming more and more diverse and alive, and we’ve had fabulous events over the summer. We’ve had the old buskers’ festival in January, and we’ve just had the Indian Holi festival. Of course, the lantern festival is coming around in the next few days, and thousands of people over the last weekend or so have enjoyed the noodle markets in Hagley Park. Christchurch is the vibrant modern city that we envisaged when the blueprint for the rebuild was developed back in 2012, and I can only encourage the new Minister to get on with making the last decisions about the last anchor projects. We still have the metro sports and the new multi-use arena and stadium to be completed. Sadly, I have to say that we’ve had very little progress since the change of Government, but I know that the Minister does want to change that.

I also agree with my colleague the Hon Tim Macindoe, who spoke just a few minutes ago, that everyone in this House has aspiration and good intention for New Zealand and New Zealanders. But, as I’ve said before, intentions are not good enough. To deliver the aspiration for New Zealanders, this Labour coalition Government needs to be absolutely committed, this Labour coalition Government needs to be competent, and this Labour coalition Government needs to take action. Finally, we want some of those aspirations delivered, and we hope this Government will get on with it. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

Hon WILLIE JACKSON (Minister of Employment): What an honour to finish the coalition Government’s speaking order on the Prime Minister’s statement. I think, as probably the most unbiased member in the House, it’s probably appropriate that I give my critique of the debate—and it’s been a brilliant debate from this side. What an outstanding contribution from our Prime Minister—absolutely exceptional. It set the agenda. It talked about what we’d achieved in the past year, turning people’s lives around, and talked about manaakitanga and āwhinatanga in the year to come.

It was a brilliant speech from Grant Robertson, who talked about the aspirations of the National Party and how they’re trying to cut mine and Peeni and Nanaia Mahuta’s relation Simon Bridges’ throat. Grant talked about it, about what Judith Collins was up to. Winston Peters—I mean, it just goes on and on and on. I can’t even recall one reasonable National Party speech. It was just disgraceful, really, and I listened to Simon O’Connor and the way he was carrying on. And Simon Bridges’ speech would be one of the worst Opposition speeches I’ve ever heard in the history of Parliament. It was desperate, it was disgraceful, and it was as bad as the attitude of the National Party members the other day who, at the Finance and Expenditure Committee, disgraced themselves, shamed their party, and shamed their history.

You must ask yourself why the New Zealand public can’t stand this party at the moment. I’ll tell you why: because they play the people; they don’t play the kaupapa. Fancy leaving people who are coming to make submissions over Pharmac, over Pike River, over sexual violence—fancy playing politics and leaving them outside. The former Speaker should hang his head in shame—hang his head in shame—in terms of what they did to the New Zealand public. That’s why they’re going down in the polls, down the tubes. No one cares what they’re saying.

But I want to reiterate, like Megan Woods said today, that the Māori caucus is 100 percent behind Simon Bridges! He is Nanaia Mahuta’s Ngāti Maniapoto relation, and we’ll back him, despite the shameful behaviour at the Finance and Expenditure Committee. Clearly, our relation wasn’t about to roll our tikanga to the former Speaker, who wouldn’t have a clue—shamed himself, shamed the office, and shamed this Parliament.

Coming back to my work as an employment Minister over the last year, when I took over as employment Minister, sadly, I found a sorry state of affairs—a sorry state of affairs. When we looked at investment and resourcing in terms of the regions, in terms of the people, and in terms of the different industries, there was no investment. There was no resourcing. Is it little wonder why we have a skills shortage at the moment—a skills shortage in nursing, in teaching, as the Hon Chris Hipkins knows, and in building?

Everything in the last nine years, in terms of what National did, was nothing. It was nothing in terms of trying to turn this economy around and in terms of making an employment policy for everyone. Was there an employment policy strategy? No there was not—no there was not. When things got bad for the Opposition, they brought in more immigrants and they kept the low-wage economy. That was their strategy: a low wage economy and more immigrants and never mind developing an economy for everyone. An economy has to be built for everyone.

What we have done is we’ve set up the lowest rate of unemployment for the last decade, seen the lowest unemployment rates for women and Māori in more than a decade. Coincidentally, we’ve also achieved the highest employment rates for women and Māori since the household labour force survey was introduced.

Employment growth has not just been confined to the major cities. We’ve seen strong growth in Taranaki, Eastern Bay of Plenty, and Hawke’s Bay, just to name a few areas. We’ve got more people in employment now: 2,664,000. And we raised the minimum wage and—surprise, surprise, National—the sky didn’t fall in. Although you keep waffling on about business confidence, business confidence is growing by the day. It doesn’t matter what the Opposition say, the polls are telling the story: no one trusts the Opposition at this stage.

Now, we also have gone out to our communities and we’ve restored the ability for young people, rangatahi Māori, to have dreams and aspirations. He Poutama Rangatahi (HPR) was created and rolled out to deliver skills training and employment back to our young people, ensuring that they don’t have to leave the Hokianga, don’t have to leave Ōpōtiki, and don’t have to leave Ruatōria and their whānau and their community. We’ve tried to give them a future that they deserve. I’m proud of He Poutama Rangatahi and the work the Government is doing to ensure the future of these regional places, and I’m proud that Shane Jones is also joining us with the Provincial Growth Fund in supporting them.

He Poutama Rangatahi is an employment and skills programme that is for young people in the four regions of New Zealand who are not currently in education, training, or employment. They come from the high-risk areas, but we want to support them. We want to support them through pastoral care, and we want to do this through community-based initiatives. Early last year, we invested $13 million from the Minister of Finance in terms of He Poutama Rangatahi, and I’ve just got to another $13 million from Shane Jones. And what have we done in terms of numbers? We’ve activated 2,300 young people. Now, the National Party’s into numbers—2,300 young people earning or learning. I’m incredibly proud of this mahi in terms of what we’re doing.

That’s the number of people who have been activated. HPR is a long-term investment in skills training and development that will lead to long-term sustainable work, and the way the programme works is a mixture of skills learning, on-the-job training, and work experience.

Right now, though—and these numbers are important, because, you know, I’ve been challenged about numbers in the House before—and always got it right, might I add. I’m going to be clear on these numbers. There are 1,461 young people enrolled and participating currently on HPR programmes. Eighty percent of those are currently training, and 20 percent are actively in work experience, job placements, or earning. Let’s have a think about that: 282 young people are now working in the four regions that have been left behind by the previous National Government. I think it’s important—282 are realising their aspirations. They’re breaking that benefit dependency—I want to be serious here—that the whole house is concerned about—the whole house is concerned about.

I’ve heard kōrero in the past before from both sides that dependency is something that we’ve got to knock out, and 282 people are now contributing to the regeneration of their whenua and local community, and another 1,180 are on their way to doing the same thing. I’m incredibly proud, along with my colleagues over there.

We haven’t just stopped there. We’ve rolled out Mana in Mahi. The Prime Minister rolled that out with myself and the Hon Carmel Sepuloni last year, with full support from New Zealand First. It was announced and we were able to visit with Downer Construction in Christchurch and Work and Income in Auckland, where we got to meet and talk with young people.

As a Minister of Employment, again, it’s fantastic to watch young people be given an opportunity in terms of apprenticeships, moving from the dole to work. We’re supporting employers supporting these young people, and we’re hoping to see a transition of their skills across the spectrum—so great.

It will come as no surprise to those in the House and those listening that I’m committed to bringing the rate of Māori unemployment down to match that of the general population. It’s so imperative that we bring this down. Last year—for goodness sake—we had two National MPs comparing this aspiration of bringing Māori unemployment down to searching for the mythical unicorn. This is the type of criticism we get from the other side. But I say to those members opposite that I’m committed to this. I said that on The Nation last year, and I reiterate that today. I won’t apologise for trying to reduce the Māori unemployment. We’ve made a great start. Māori unemployment is down to 8.1 percent, down from double digits when we took the office, and the lowest in a decade. But we can do more.

We are committed to the remaining phase of Mana in Mahi. We see the rollout of Pae Aronui directing urban youth, and we want to expand in every area. We want an economy—in summing up—that looks after everyone. The National Party ruled over a rock star economy. They ruled over a rock star economy. Everything was fine; although it wasn’t fine for Māori, for Pasifika, for disabled people, or for women. We need an economy that is for everyone. That’s certainly our belief. Employment doesn’t just mean having an income; there’s a sense of accomplishment and of physical and mental well-being that comes with it. There’s the ability to make choices and the ability to provide for yourself and your whānau. There’s the benefit of lifting kids out of poverty and knowing that they can contribute to their community and local economies. Most importantly, through employment we can break horrendous intergenerational dependency. So in the year of delivery, that’s exactly what we’re going to do. Kia ora tātou.

BRETT HUDSON (National): Thank you, Mr Speaker, and happy New Year to you. It seems a bit late to be saying that, but this is my first opportunity to speak in the House this year, so I do hope that you, Mr Speaker, and indeed colleagues from all across the House had a very good summer. I hope that if one had to mix work with a break, one was—or all people were—able to achieve the right balance.

Certainly, I had a staycation. I stayed. When one lives in the greatest electorate in the country—when one lives in the mighty Ōhāriu—there is simply no real reason to have to vacation anywhere else. We’ve got the smartest, most vibrant people. We’ve got innovative businesses. We’ve got wonderful facilities. We’ve got great outdoors—great natural attractions. We’ve got hills—hills—where one can ride their bicycle. I would have said one can ride their bicycle fast; however, I’m acutely aware of the Standing Orders and of wilfully misleading the House.

SPEAKER: Downhill.

BRETT HUDSON: Thank you, Mr Speaker. I’m just excited to be back.

But I did receive reports of someone driving hell for leather to get away from the place, and I suspect it was a probably a good thing they didn’t look in the rear-vision mirror; they might have seen that it was mutual. Or it could have been that they were simply seeking to get away in great haste to escape the train wreck that is this Labour - Greens - New Zealand First Government.

It is actually the case that they delivered some things last year. For instance, last quarter they delivered economic growth that is the lowest that we’ve had in five years. They delivered 10,000 more people unemployed. They delivered a record number of people not in education, employment, or training, with that going up 26,000 in that quarter. They found their very good friends, the Council of Trade Unions, telling them that the cost of living was outstripping wage increases. They had created a pressure on rental charges that saw median rents up $40 a week. They managed to get us offside with China and the European Union. They managed to create only 54 jobs through the $3 billion primary growth slush fund, at a cost of nearly $500,000 each.

They only managed to deliver 47 KiwiBuild homes, but they did find one secret: their working groups. In the Government’s working groups they have found a perpetual motion machine, because aside from the Tax Working Group, the most recent working group, the mental health working group—it’s recommendations are more working groups. They’ve got a perpetual motion machine where every working group is going to recommend more. We’ve already had 238 of them at an estimated cost, we would say, of $290 million, and they’re going to recommend they have even more. This Government came into office without a plan and they’re struggling to even deliver that.

When I think of, particularly Wellington—because it’s dear to my heart—we have been waiting now for pretty much the best part of a year to hear an announcement about something that is important for every Wellingtonian, whether they live in and around Wellington City, in the Hutt Valley, in Kāpiti, or even across in the Wairarapa. We were promised, and we know because we actually put this train of thought in motion—no pun intended—the Let’s Get Wellington Moving initiative. Where is it? It’s almost a year late. We’re still waiting to hear what will be proposed, to what time frame, and, importantly, who is going to pay for it. Some elements appear to have been leaked. Certainly, we have reports that the Government is likely to announce that they will fund, from the Land Transport Management Fund, light rail in its entirety. Now, the last study for light rail in Wellington, from the railway station to the airport, was estimated at $930 million, returning lifetime benefits of a mere $46 million to $93 million. Or to put another way, that’s up to $840 million of taxpayer money lost.

So what we’ve heard is the Government is going to go to taxpayers across the country and say, “We’re going to take your fuel tax”—your fuel excise money—“and we are going to spend it”—because you can’t call it an investment—“and we are going to spend $930 million or more of it on a light-rail system for Wellington that will lose $840 million.” The Government is lucky that they can’t be considered a financial services provider, because we’ve got legislation on the books now that would see them in a whole world of hurt for doing something so reckless with taxpayers’ funds.

But it is even worse. One could wonder how it could get worse, but it can. So, apparently—I’ve heard at least—that the Let’s Get Wellington Moving programme will be announced as a 20-year programme. Now, it doesn’t take Einstein to work out that it doesn’t take 20 years to build a couple of tunnels, lay some asphalt, and if one really wanted to, put down a light-rail system, although that would disrupt our city for about six years; certainly not 20. So one’s left with the thought that says, “OK, if it’s going to be 20 years, why would that be?” I have to think that it’s because they don’t actually have the money. Indeed, that’s what has been reported as well.

It’s been reported that although in the past the New Zealand Transport Agency funds State highways, the mayors of the Wellington region have been told that the Government will fund light rail to the full extent but expects the cities across the region to stump up with at least part funding, if indeed not majority funding, for the roads and the tunnels, which it is the normal course of events for the Government to fund through the National Land Transport Programme. And it does appear on the face of it that that is why Wellington is still stagnating; that is why we are still waiting to hear what we might finally get.

I’m a bit more cynical than that, I have to say. I think that the plan is that if one announces roads and tunnels 10 years down the track, one has no intention at all of ever actually delivering them—but they’ll certainly take all the cash off those motorists in the intervening years.

The other point I’d make, and time does run a bit short, is in the areas of commerce and consumer affairs. I’d first like to congratulate the Hon Kris Faafoi. He is perhaps the hardest-working Minister in the Government. He’s certainly the hardest done by, because there is no one more worthy than him of a seat in Cabinet, and yet the Prime Minister seems determined not to give him that. One can’t really fault the premise of what he’s been doing in the context of consumer protections. Unfortunately, the measures, which I think we will see, are going to evidence a Government that doesn’t understand business, doesn’t understand how business transacts with its customers, and will instead come up with solutions that imperil businesses and, ultimately, in the long run, are detrimental to consumer interests. High-interest loan measures are one example where their advisers are saying that the things that they are looking to do could cause more harm than good. The Prime Minister spun like crazy, but we can see through all of that, and we’re looking forward to the year ahead, to address this Government’s actions.

A party vote was called for on the question, That

Ayes 57

New Zealand National 55; ACT New Zealand 1; Ross.

Noes 63

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

Amendment not agreed to.

all the words after “That” be deleted and replaced with “this House has no confidence in the Labour-led Government because in its ambition to be measured on its vague intentions it is proving itself completely incapable of delivering good outcomes for New Zealanders.”

A party vote was called for on the question, .

Ayes 63

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

Noes 57

New Zealand National 55; ACT New Zealand 1; Ross.

Motion agreed to.

That this House expresses confidence in the coalition Government and commends its programme for 2019, as set out in the extensive Prime Minister’s statement

Bills

Social Workers Registration Legislation Bill

Recommittal

Hon PEENI HENARE (Associate Minister for Social Development): I move, That the Social Workers Registration Legislation Bill be recommitted to consider amendments to clause 2, set out on Supplementary Order Paper 191, in the name of the Hon Carmel Sepuloni, forthwith.

Motion agreed to.

In Committee

Clause 2 Commencement (recommitted)

CHAIRPERSON (Adrian Rurawhe): Members, the House is in committee for the consideration of Supplementary Order Paper 191 to the Social Workers Registration Legislation Bill.

Hon LOUISE UPSTON (National—Taupō): It was only yesterday that we were in this House debating a Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) that the Minister had dumped on this House at short notice. Here we are, less than 24 hours later, correcting a mistake. It’s a lesson to the Minister to make sure that she uses the time available in the select committee. The Social Services and Community Committee report-back was back in April—10 months ago—and there was plenty of time for the work to be done to ensure that the legislation before the House had full scrutiny, allowing the chance to report it, refer it back to the Social Services and Community Committee for the scrutiny it deserved. So—no, instead, we have a sloppy, sloppy set of circumstances that mean that the legislation is back in the committee stage. Actually, I think this is the first time in my coming up to 11 years in Parliament that I’ve seen this happen. So, for those that are watching it, it’s not a regular occurrence.

This is an example where the Minister decided, after the select committee reported back and after the departmental report that didn’t recommend changes in key areas, that, actually, she wanted changes herself. The problem with that is the lack of scrutiny in terms of the detail of those changes. We’ve raised multiple issues around key areas, like the qualifications, like the scopes of practice. If it wasn’t for this SOP 191 now, today—so, another SOP—guess what? Those very complex and disputed components of SOP 187, which the Minister introduced at short notice and dumped in this House, without the regulatory impact statement, I might add—there was a May 2017 regulatory impact statement that was in this House for the committee of the whole House stage—and the Minister expected a robust debate that she then actually mocked.

So what it would mean is the scopes of practice and the education components—instead of coming in in two years’ time, they would have been coming in the day after Royal assent. That would have absolutely gutted and destroyed 8,000 social workers who do critical work in New Zealand. Minister, it’s not good enough. That is sloppy. That was rushed at the final hurdle, when it should have been addressed and it should have been referred back to the Social Services and Community Committee so that it could have had the scrutiny involved.

So I want to look at a couple of particular issues in terms of the commencement, because SOP 191 relates to the change in the commencement. One of these areas that we’re talking about—just so the committee is clear—is around what social workers will be able to do or not able to do under their scopes of practice. New section 6AAB(1)(b) in clause 8 imposes a new restriction on social workers, which is that “they practise within”—within—“the terms of their individual scope of practice”. If this mistake hadn’t been picked up at more than the eleventh hour, that would have meant that scopes of practice would have had to be written this week. If the Royal assent was this week or next week, they would have had to be written in a rush, or otherwise every single social worker would be working not within the bounds of their own legislation.

What an appalling situation that the Minister for Social Development, the Hon Carmel Sepuloni, would have put an incredibly hard-working, dedicated sector of social workers in. It was an appalling position that the Minister would have put them in, and the poor Social Workers Registration Board would have had to deal with this nightmare of no making of their own. It’s just unbelievable.

The irony of this yesterday, when National members were trying to improve this particular area—so new section 6AAB(1)(b) absolutely restricts the work that social workers do. Make no mistake about it—it restricts their ability so that they have to work within a scope of practice. That would be a huge limitation and a huge issue on them. What the National members were trying to constructively do was to make improvements to that, and the Minister said that because National members had used the word “remove” instead of “delete”, we hadn’t done our work on SOPs. Guess what, Minister—guess what? The Minister in charge of this legislation is responsible for the detail, and the detail needs to be right. It is unacceptable—it is unacceptable.

The report back was in April, and members of the select committee on the National side had asked for more time to explore the issues of scopes of practice and qualifications that have been raised in the committee of the whole House stage. If the amendment on SOP 191 is not agreed to, those significant changes dumped by the Minister by an SOP will come into effect the day after Royal assent—the day after Royal assent—not in two years’ time. There’s actually quite a bit of difference in that, and I know that for the Ministers sitting opposite, who are listening to this debate and who are pretending not to, it is probably a good lesson. There’s a big difference between the day after the Royal assent and two years, but that’s what happens. That’s what happens when you remove the select committee process when, actually, it didn’t need to be removed.

National members had asked for an extension to the report back, and the Labour members on the select committee refused that request. We thought that maybe it was urgent and that maybe the Minister wanted to pass this by May or by June. Where are we now? February 2018—10 months later. In February—this month, last week—a big SOP dropped on the Table that the Minister is now actually expecting to have the support of this House for. Well, it’s shoddy. It’s absolutely shoddy. Taxpayers and, actually, the sector—the sector deserves better. The sector deserves better than to have a situation like this, which is clearly irresponsible. Actually, attention to detail is what matters. When you’re dealing with legislation, it matters.

This side of the House, over the week or 10 days that we’ve had the SOP, have worked furiously, trying to come up with tabled amendments in the committee stage to improve the bill, because the scope of practice will make it illegal for a social worker to undertake a task that is categorised as forming part of other scopes of practice. So the social workers, who are our front-line heroes in our social services, would potentially be breaking the law. But National members tried to ensure the Minister was aware of the impact of some of the changes in that SOP that was tabled, which was close to 70 pages long. But no, she didn’t engage, she didn’t consider it, and here we are wasting the House’s time, fixing up one of her mistakes.

Oh, and when we talk about wasting the House’s time, it was really interesting to hear the Minister say in the committee stage—which we have returned to today—when we were in it yesterday, that National members were wasting the House’s time. Well, when there is no scrutiny and when the select committee doesn’t have the opportunity and the public don’t have the opportunity to scrutinise legislation and to ensure it is fit for purpose, which, as of 10 o’clock yesterday, this bill clearly wasn’t—I wonder what time it was that they discovered the mistake. I wonder what time it was, because, literally, at five minutes to 10 last night—not even 24 hours ago—this bill, in the committee of the whole House stage, was being voted on.

So it would be really interesting to know what time it was that the mistake was found. I’m asking the Minister what time the mistake was found, who found it, and does the Minister understand the impact if this mistake hadn’t been picked up? Has Cabinet approved this change, by the way? It would be interesting to know whether it has been approved.

So I’ve talked about social workers being limited to work within their scope of practice, and not beyond it, but let’s have a look at the other point, which also would have come into effect a day after the Royal assent. It’s a very significant repeal, in the removal for social workers of the recognised New Zealand qualifications. Instead, it will be prescribed qualifications. Would we have had them? Would we have had them a day after the Royal assent? Good luck with that—good luck with that.

I want the Minister to understand the impact of her failure to deliver accurate legislation to this House, her failure to allow the select committee to carry out its work, and her failure for social workers up and down New Zealand if this mistake hadn’t been found.

Hon Dr NICK SMITH (National—Nelson): The irony of this Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) 191 is that it’s meant to be about ensuring the competency of social workers, and what we know from this SOP is that the Minister for Social Development is incompetent. Why? In the committee of the whole House yesterday, when we debated clause 2, I specifically took a call. I asked the Minister in the chair to reassure the committee that the complex commencement dates were correct, and the Minister got to her feet and said “Absolutely—the bits that come in straight away on Royal assent, the bits that come in at three months, and the bits that come in at two years and at five years.”, and she said that I was wasting the House’s time by raising a question.

Well, now the next day the same Minister fronts up to the committee and wants to reverse and go back into the committee stages and make amendments to that very provision. Now, I’ve put 54 bills through this Parliament as a Minister—not once have I had the humiliation of having to come down to the Parliament and say, “Hey, I’ve screwed up. I want to patch up my mistake from yesterday.” Now, I checked the Minister for Social Development. The Minister for Social Development—this is her very first bill to get through the House, and what sort of humiliation is it for her that the reassurances that she gave to the committee yesterday were false. They were wrong. So I say: why should Parliament today have any reassurance that this botched-up bill that makes 32 changes to the timing of the new social workers registration process—how come we should assure that it’s all OK today?

It’s even worse than that; the Minister in the chair, Carmel Sepuloni, has not even had the gall to get up and to say to the committee, “Hey, look, I’m sorry. I got it wrong yesterday. I gave this Parliament reassurances that I had it all OK, and it is not.” But, can I say, it’s actually even worse than that. Let’s just go through the time line. Remember that this was a bill that was previously developed by the National Government. It was reported back to this Parliament in April last year. That’s 10 months—10 months—for the Minister to get the detail of the bill right, and she introduces an SOP yesterday, and a day later says, “Oops, I have screwed it up.”

And so to the Minister in the chair, I say this: it is very unusual. It is incompetent for you to be introducing changes to the SOP that you only changed yesterday. This SOP is contradictory to what you introduced yesterday. Can any of my colleagues in the committee recall a Minister introducing an SOP the day after they introduced another SOP and saying, “I cocked it up. I messed it up. I got it wrong.”? So I say to the Minister in the chair: you owe the Parliament an explanation. You need to explain to the committee how come you got it so wrong. You need to explain to the committee why it is that the assurances that you gave to this committee yesterday were incorrect and false. Actually, you owe my colleague Louise Upston an apology. Yesterday, when she raised questions about clause 2, you said she was wasting the committee’s time. Well, she wasn’t wasting the committee’s time, because today you’re saying—

Hon Willie Jackson: You’re wasting the time.

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: Well, the member opposite says we are wasting the time of the House—actually, we were right. The Minister was wrong. Clause 2 was a stuff up, and why do we know that, Mr Jackson? We know that because we have the unusual precedent of the committee being asked to undo what it did yesterday. I say again: how can we pass legislation asking social workers to be competent when their Minister has proved that she is totally incompetent? I say again: we should continue to take calls because what the Parliament is being asked to do this afternoon is totally disgraceful. The Minister, yesterday, told this committee that she had clause 2 correct. We face the unprecedented—it’s the first time, I think, it’s happened under this Government, where a bill has had to be recommitted. That is, yesterday this bill was passed through all its committee stages. It was finished. The Government said that we’d got it all OK. It’s all ready to become law, and then the Minister and the Government have today introduced a motion to recommit it and to completely rewrite clause 2. I just say to members of the Government: don’t expect to manage your House agenda with this sort of incompetence and not expect any sort of explanation. They’re such an arrogant Government that they think they can botch the law one day, try and fix it the next, and not take a single call of explanation.

Hon Peeni Henare: That member should listen to his whips.

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: Well, I just simply ask the member opposite: does the Minister opposite think that it is acceptable for the Minister for Social Development to give a reassurance to the committee yesterday that was false and untrue, without any explanation? My colleague Louise Upston has asked: when did the Minister find out that she had completely stuffed up clause 2? Is there an answer from members opposite? Well, did the Cabinet approve the new changes to clause 2, my colleague Louise Upston has asked? Is the committee any wiser about that? Was it a mistake that was made in the Minister’s office, or was it a mistake that was made by the Ministry for Social Development? Will the Minister apologise to the members on this side of the committee that raised questions yesterday about clause 2 and was told by the Minister that we were wasting the committee’s time? Will the Minister apologise to Louise Upston when she said yesterday that the provisions in clause 2 would not work, when the Minister today is admitting that indeed Louise Upston was correct?

All we have found out today is that the very legislation in which the Government is trying to ensure competent social work has been handled incompetently by the Minister for Social Development. Again, I say to the Minister in the chair: stop the arrogance, provide the Parliament with an explanation, and explain to us why clause 2 was stuffed up yesterday, and why we find ourselves in the very unusual situation of having to recommit this legislation and having to completely rewrite clause 2.

I’d also like an explanation as to why was it that the Government wouldn’t let the Social Services and Community Committee finish its job in April last year when this bill has sat on the Order Paper doing nothing for 10 months—how does that make sense? And how does it possibly make sense for the Minister to have an SOP yesterday that she has torn up today, recommitted the bill, and is now proposing to fix up yesterday stuff up?

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI (Minister for Social Development): I wasn’t expecting to have to take a call in this debate, because, occasionally, parties can work together for the best interests of this House, for the best interests of the public, and for the best interests of the people that we are seeking to serve through our legislation. This was supposed to be one of those moments. Allegations have been made from the Opposition that I have made mistakes in the process. It’s very disingenuous, actually, and I think that the general public should be concerned about that. The Opposition knows very clearly that the Parliamentary Counsel Office (PCO) have acknowledged that it was their oversight, and that is the reason that we are back here. In fact, I was in the cafeteria at lunchtime when Simon O’Connor said to me, “Carmel Sepuloni, politics aside, I hope you’ve had a stern word to PCO.” His words to me were about why we are back here today. So I have to say that, to me, if anything, this just indicates the disarray that the Opposition is in, given that their whip gave a very clear instruction to them that we had agreement across this House that we would not re-litigate any of the debate, that we would not stand and take calls, and yet Nick Smith and Louise Upston—who Nick Smith thinks I need to apologise to—have to stand in the House and defy the whips by taking calls when it’s unnecessary.

CHAIRPERSON (Adrian Rurawhe): Order! Order! I took my time before I stood up, but it’s really inappropriate to bring the officials into the debate. This debate is about this Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) 191 and only about this SOP. So—[Interruption]—I’m on my feet. And so we need to turn our attention to this SOP.

Hon Chris Hipkins: I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. In this particular case, the Minister is not at fault. The Minister checked the SOP. The wording was correct. It was formatted incorrectly by the Parliamentary Counsel Office, who have written a letter of apology to the Minister and to the House, because, in fact, the information supplied by the officials was incorrectly presented. It is absolutely appropriate for a Minister to point those things out, because the question is: how did the House get into this situation? The Minister can’t answer that question if she can’t actually say that the officials made a mistake and have apologised for it.

CHAIRPERSON (Adrian Rurawhe): I thank the member for bringing that to my attention. It is in the Standing Orders. I’m not aware of any letter but, according to the Standing Orders, members should not bring the officials into the debate, and I felt that that had been done.

Hon Chris Hipkins: I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. We have an entire debate about why the bill is being recommitted and what the mistake was. The Minister is being challenged for not addressing that—she is addressing that by pointing out how the mistake was made and who made it.

CHAIRPERSON (Adrian Rurawhe): I’m going to reiterate what I said before, and I’ll just allow the Minister to continue.

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: So now that I’ve gotten that out of my system, can I move on to give a more comprehensive explanation of why we are back here today. So to be clear, why we have recommitted to reconsider amendments to clause 2 set out in Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) 191 today is because last night, when we voted on clause 2, we did not vote on the amendments proposed in SOP 187 for this part; instead, as the bill currently stands, the version put forward by the select committee is the current version.

The reason for the error—and I do need to respond comprehensively to the Opposition, given that the question has been raised over and over again and they’ve asked for an explanation from me in this House—was a drafting error by PCO, who failed to indicate that there were amendments to be voted on in clause 2 through the SOP. The proposed changes were not underlined and identified as changes, which was a significant oversight by PCO, which they acknowledge. PCO have acknowledged this, and we will be continuing to work with PCO to ensure errors like this do not continue to occur.

Why do we need to amend it? It’s essential that we put forward the right version of clause 2. Without the correction in the new SOP today, registration within scopes of practice and the other affected amendments will come into force on the day following Royal assent. As was discussed yesterday evening, it’s important that we get scopes of practice right, and we need to ensure all the proposed changes in the SOP come into force, as intended, to allow for proper consultation and preparation by the sector. So I’m making a point. I’m not having the stern talking to PCO that I was asked to or told to by Simon O’Connor, although I do appreciate his sentiment.

What I do want to point out is that we accept occasionally, even in this place, mistakes are made. PCO acknowledged they’ve made a mistake in this instance, which is why we’re back here today. Last night, I acknowledged that an older regulatory impact statement was put on the Table instead of the more up to date one, and we also pointed out that the Opposition submitted 10 SOPs that all had to be corrected because they all made no sense, and were also badly worded. So, actually, it’s not just PCO that have made mistakes in this process. We forgive them, and we are here to finish this off, and to get this very important piece of legislation through committee stage so we can get on to the third reading and assure New Zealanders that, actually, social workers that are in place are qualified, they are registered, New Zealanders can feel protected, the profession can feel protected, and we can move on from 16 years ago when this bill was first introduced and social worker registration was made voluntary, with the intention of making it mandatory. We can move on to the point where we finally get to that place that we actually all agree on—where social worker registration is mandatory in New Zealand. Thank you, Mr Chair.

Hon ALFRED NGARO (National): Mr Chair, thank you. There’s a statement that’s commonly said: “A little humility can go a very long way.” Really, all we’re asking for here is that the process where the committee stage had gone through—and the Minister Carmel Sepuloni is right, a mistake has been made. All it would have taken was to come into the Chamber, to recognise that, and everything would be OK. But, again, what we have is a Minister who’s now stood up, who has put fault on the Parliamentary Counsel Office, attacked the Opposition, and gone on to tell us about 16 years. We all talked about 16 years some time ago in the committee stage. Again, can I remind the Minister that we are only here, where we are now, because the mistake had already been made. The extension that was asked for was to give a shorter period of time. We would have been able to have the scopes of practice. It would have all been over—done and dusted. We are only here because of the tardiness of that Minister.

As I said when I started this brief speech: a little humility would have gone a long way. I don’t propose to talk too much longer, but I just want to say we do support the bill and its original intent. We support the scopes of practice. We’re just disappointed—like those that are out there who made submissions in regards to this. And I know you want me to look at the Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) because that’s what this part is all about—SOP 191, which recognises that mistakes have been made because the Minister and her ministry did not take the time to do the appropriate thing, which was to allow the Social Services and Community Committee to go through its process. And this is the reason why we’re here again, back in the Chamber; it’s unfortunate. I’ll finish off as I started: a little humility goes a long way. Thank you, Mr Chair.

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister of Education): I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. In the interchange earlier, members indicated that they hadn’t seen the letter of apology; therefore, I seek leave to table it.

CHAIRPERSON (Adrian Rurawhe): Leave is sought for that purpose. Is there any objection? There appears to be none. It may be tabled.

Document, by leave, laid on the Table of the House.

The question was put that the amendment set out on Supplementary Order Paper 191 in the name of Hon Carmel Sepuloni to clause 2 be agreed to.

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

Ayes 63

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

Noes 56

New Zealand National 55; Ross.

Amendment agreed to.

A party vote was called for on the question, That clause 2 as amended be agreed to.

Ayes 63

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

Noes 56

New Zealand National 55; Ross.

Clause 2 as amended agreed to.

House resumed.

Bill reported with amendment.

Report adopted.

Speaker’s Rulings

Taxation (Annual Rates for 2018-19, Modernising Tax Administration, and Remedial Matters) Bill—Amendment

SPEAKER: Before I put the House into committee, I need to rule on an amendment to clause 3 of the Taxation (Annual Rates for 2018-19, Modernising Tax Administration, and Remedial Matters) Bill in the name of the Hon Amy Adams. The member sought advice from the Office of the Clerk on the time the amendment would need to be lodged to meet the requirements of Standing Order 330. She was advised that the amendment had to be lodged 24 hours before it would be debated. In fact, Standing Order 330 requires an amendment that may have an impact on the Government’s fiscal aggregates to be lodged at least 24 hours before the House meets on the day the amendment is to be proposed. As a result, Ms Adams lodged her amendment at 3.54 p.m. yesterday when the deadline under Standing Order 330 was 2 p.m. While the amendment has been on the Table of the House for more than 24 hours now, it is technically out of order.

Where a member does not comply with the Standing Order in these circumstances—in these very specific circumstances—I do not think they should be penalised to the extent that would occur in this case. An amendment that is out of order cannot be debated or voted on. I am ruling that Ms Adams’ amendment is in order and can be debated and voted on. Of course it is open to the Government to vote against the amendment or to veto it.

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Leader of the House): I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. We’ve just had a half-hour debate about a mistake that was made by another member, despite undertakings that that was not going to be debated. The Government strongly objects to the course of action you have taken. A mistake was made on the other side of the House. They should wear the consequences of that and you should not be unilaterally amending the Standing Orders. It’s not a question of amending a Speaker’s ruling; these are the primary Standing Orders that you are seeking to change, and the Government does not support that course of action.

SPEAKER: I thank the member for his comments and I realise that it is a radical Speaker’s ruling that I have made because it does stretch by an hour and 55 minutes the technicalities of the Standing Orders. But having said that, Speakers’ rulings are for me to make, and I am making a decision as a result of advice that was incorrect, given by an agency which is my responsibility, and the Government is no worse off than it would have been if the member had received the proper advice and had lodged it an hour and 55 minutes earlier.

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Leader of the House): I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. Of course, as Speaker you have an ability and an obligation, in fact, to make Speakers’ rulings in accordance and consistently with the Standing Orders. The ruling you have just made is not consistent with the Standing Orders. I accept the Opposition were provided with bad advice. Yesterday, the Government was provided with bad advice and we just wore the consequences of that. And I’m afraid where bad advice is provided, those providing it need to tighten their act up, but simply unilaterally changing the Standing Orders is not the way to fix up the problem.

SPEAKER: I accept the member’s view that it is undesirable. It is not a good position to be in, but one of my responsibilities—a big part of my responsibility in this House—is to make sure that the minority in the House have the ability to have their say. I think it’s also fair to say that there are not many matters that are much more important than annual taxation matters. The ability to oppose and propose is something which is inherent in our democracy and our Westminster system, and, in my view, the interpretation of the Standing Orders is something which is for me. While I accept that this is a long stretch and one which I hope will not be repeated, and certainly, given the fact that I’ve made this ruling now, it will not be a precedent—it cannot be a precedent—I have made a considered decision, and I will therefore declare the House in committee for consideration of those bills.

Bills

Crimes Amendment Bill

In Committee

Debate resumed from 19 February.

Part 1 Substantive amendments to principal Act

CHRIS PENK (National—Helensville): Thank you for the opportunity to continue speaking on the Crimes Amendment Bill. Obviously, there are a number of different aspects to Part 1, and I understand other colleagues will focus on some in which they have particular knowledge and expertise. And in my case, now I’d like to focus on the repeal of section 123 of the Crimes Act 1961—that’s clause 5 within the amendment bill, the repeal of blasphemous libel. So to understand, of course, what we’re doing with this piece of legislation, we need to understand what it is that is being repealed. So it is then that we look at section 123 of the Crimes Act and the terms of that provision.

The first thing to note—[Baby crying]—as I note with some dismay that my speech has not been well received in all parts of the Chamber, but I did not think it was that bad, Madam Chair, and I fear that the Government whip is about to undertake the same action—is that blasphemous libel has a particular meaning within the law. Of course it’s within the Crimes Act, which is a code, but it’s worth taking a moment to understand the component parts of that.

First, libel has an ordinary, natural meaning, something akin to defamation, which in our civil law is relatively well defined—as well defined as anything that is a tort can be—but in this context it is libel, meaning, essentially, something that is adverse that is said, and in this case in the context of blasphemy. The difficulty of the concept of blasphemy is, of course, that it defines an action that’s unacceptable in relation to how another might view words or actions as acceptable or unacceptable in accordance with their own beliefs, and in a pluralistic society where we don’t all share each other’s beliefs that is a problematic concept in itself.

I won’t take the committee’s time—because I know it won’t be allowed by you, if for no other reason—to draw links between other problematic concepts such as hate speech, so allow me to move on, please, and consider further what exactly it is within the Crimes Act that we will be repealing by way of blasphemous libel.

So we see in the Crimes Act that blasphemous libel is a question of fact, and a question of fact means that it’s something that’s not a question of law. So there again there’s a particular meaning, but, again, the problem is in the case of blasphemy that it’s really a question of taste, and the taste of one person in these matters is very different from the taste of another. And so it is in section 123(2), again, of course, within the provision that we will be repealing in this amendment bill before us now that we see that a question of fact would be determined by a court, and that would have reference to a number of sort of nebulous concepts to do with the approval or non-approval of what has been said or done by one person.

Looking a bit further at that detail, at subsection (3), we see the expression “good faith”, and it’s slightly ironic that the phrase “good faith” is used because it might almost have a sort of religious overtone to it. But within the law it has a particular meaning, of course: I would say something like bona fides, but I think that is nothing more or less than a translation back to the Latin. So moving on from the circularity of my own argument, I would just note that it’s a difficult matter to decide what is acceptable or not, and so it is that we regard, I think unanimously in this House, that it will be worthwhile to repeal this aspect of the law, and hence that is one of the things that this amendment bill is seeking to do.

One of the other elements in defining an offence—or actually, particularly, to say what is not an offence of blasphemous libel—is the concept of decent language. And the quaintness of that expression might perhaps mask the fact that it is again a difficult concept to grasp, and certainly to enforce in a legal sense, because the concept of decency, again, will be very much a subjective one, and yet with such consequences as up to one year imprisonment, these are not matters that we should take lightly at all.

So too it’s difficult to define what is a religious subject. In many cases, it will actually be quite clear, and so the concept of blasphemous libel will be straightforward enough, at least in terms of whether it might apply in the first place, in some situations, but in others what some might regard as an article of religious faith and others might regard differently, a moral or ethical proposition or a philosophical one, again, is difficult to determine. So, for these reasons, we join with all sides of the House—as I say, I think we expect that there will be no objection to the repeal of blasphemous libel.

I think it’s worth noting in that connection, in my remaining time, that the select committee reported that they received a number of submissions on this point. Ultimately, they didn’t recommend any changes to the bill that had proposed the repeal—in other words, the select committee did support the repeal of section 123, and they did so noting diligently that submissions had been made about the possible encouragement of hate speech. As someone who believes in free speech—not as an absolute matter, I suppose, because there are always obvious exceptions to that, but certainly erring on the side of believing that people should have the right to freedom of expression—it seems, again, an undesirable thing for the State or the instruments of the State, through the judicial system, to be deciding that which is hateful and that which is not.

Anti-religious conduct was something that some submitters felt might be implicitly encouraged. I suppose, in the way that all legislation might be said to encourage a person to do a thing, in that it sends a message, in this case I think it’s worth weighing that up against the practical costs of having such a law on our statute book, and, in particular, those chilling effects that I mentioned earlier.

In my remaining time, I’d just like to state for the record that while most members of this House—perhaps all members—might regard it as undesirable to allow things that foster resentment and division and so forth, and certainly we don’t say that this is a good thing, by removing the law of blasphemous libel, the limitation of Government is such that we can’t and shouldn’t expect that everything that is undesirable be banned by way of the criminal law by this House. And so it is that I will conclude by saying that section 123 on blasphemous libel within the Crimes Act will be a relatively easy matter, I think, for most in this House to support in repeal by way of this amendment Act, and I look forward, hopefully, to hearing any comments that the other side of the House, or indeed my own, might have on that, or the Minister; not that I have any questions in that. I think that at least is a straightforward matter. I thank you for the chance to speak.

Hon ANDREW LITTLE (Minister of Justice): Thank you, Madam Chair, and I thank the member Chris Penk, who has just resumed his seat, for his contribution to this part of the debate on the Crimes Amendment Bill. Can I turn to the points that he made at the beginning of his contribution yesterday, which related to Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) 185, which is the provision relating to livestock rustling and the penalties that are now introduced explicitly for that. I thank him for his support for that, but I note the question that he posed about the phraseology in it and, specifically, the reference to “livestock or any other animal”. I understand that on its face there may be some confusion. Why talk about livestock? Why also talk about an animal when, of course, we know that livestock typically relates to animals?

The term “livestock” typically relates to animals of a particular type or category—namely, those from which the owner derives a commercial interest. And one can contrast, for example, the flock of sheep with the sheep dog. The flock of sheep, clearly, carries value, and it is often sheep that are the subject of livestock rustling. But it would be wrong if the sheep were to be, frankly, nicked and taken off the property along with the sheep dog, and this charge could apply to the sheep but not to the sheep dog. Or I might refer the member to the very tragic and brutal case of Spark—not the telecoms company but, actually, the miniature horse brutally stabbed 41 times earlier this week. It would be wrong if Spark, rather than having been stabbed was stolen and taken off the property, could not be the subject of a livestock rustling charge because it was an animal other than one from which commercial interest is derived. So I think there is a very good reason why the wording is as it is.

I just want to acknowledge, in relation to that SOP, the origins of that, because I know members will be concerned that it comes here as an SOP. It wasn’t considered by the Justice Committee along with the rest of the bill, but it was considered by the Primary Production Committee in an earlier guise, under a member’s bill advanced by Ian McKelvie when he sought to bring that along. As a result of collaboration between Mr McKelvie and Kieran McNulty and, indeed, in conjunction with myself in backroom discussions, we were able to reach an agreement that we could bring it in, with the concurrence of members opposite, to this bill and make it part of, I think, a long overdue part of our criminal code.

Frankly, it beggars belief to me that in a country that, pretty much since the inception of its European history, has been dependent on its agrarian economy to sustain and survive, we have not had an explicit charge of livestock rustling on our statute book. When you go to the Mackenzie Country—and you know the historical origins of the term the Mackenzie Country: it was an area of New Zealand built on sheep rustling, and we have not had on our statute book a crime of livestock rustling. Well, a historical step is about to be taken by this House, and we will place the crime of livestock rustling where it ought properly to be, which is in our criminal code. So that is very good.

Can I comment briefly on some of the other aspects of Part 1? The repeal of section 71(2) of the Crimes Act provides a protection for spouses of somebody who has committed a crime and they have been protected or harboured by their spouse. That immunity from prosecution no longer exists. It comes from an old historical view about one’s spouse—that two spouses were kind of one and the same thing and they were inseparable. That is not the reality of human life today, and so it is right that if one’s spouse commits a crime, there is no immunity from prosecution for obstructing the course of justice from bringing the offending spouse to justice.

In relation to blasphemous libel, I think it has been said for some time—indeed the previous Government, or a former Prime Minister, the now Sir John Key, said that this was a crime that ought to be deleted from our Crimes Act. It’s taken a while to get there, but that is now being done.

Can I just take a moment to speak on the repeal of what is known as the year and the day rule? This has been a law that has been applied controversially in a couple of cases recently, not the least of which was the fallout from the collapse of the CTV Building in the earthquakes in Canterbury. After considerable investigation and exploration of the legal niceties of it, the police and the Crown Law Office got to the point where they considered that they could not mount a prosecution on the grounds, at least in part, of the application of the year and a day rule—that is to say, section 162 of the Crimes Act.

That law was put in place at a time when science did not allow for the continuation of life when somebody had been seriously injured or injured in a way that was expected to be fatal. Of course, that is not the case any more, and people can continue to thrive and to survive for some considerable time because of the intervention of medical science. So that provision has no real application today. I know it will be a matter for Part 2, but I do acknowledge that the Hon Dr Nick Smith has lodged an SOP that provides an amendment in relation to it. We will come to that debate, except to say that I am totally and utterly horrified by that proposed amendment. We’ll come to that debate in Part 2.

I just want to say that, that issue apart, all of this should be uncontroversial. These are tidy-ups to the Crimes Act. I can tell the House that there is other work going on—a more extensive review of the Crimes Act. We need our Act both in language and in practice and in spirit to be reflective of the way life is led today and the way people conduct themselves, and to have a criminal code that has the confidence of the people and that can be practically applied by our police force and any other enforcement agencies so that people do know that when they are offended against or when they are harmed, whether it’s physically or in other ways, we have the means to bring justice for them and to bring those who have offended against them to account.

So I look forward to the remaining debate, but I think there will be a very important issue in relation to repealing section 162. It was debated thoroughly at the select committee, but there is now an SOP that does require this House to get to grips with very serious constitutional issues and issues that have been canvassed in other legislation. But we will get to that in Part 2. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Hon Dr NICK SMITH (National—Nelson): It’s eight years this week since, I think, every New Zealander was shaken by the tragedy of the Christchurch earthquake in which 115 people died in the CTV Building. The royal commission that the previous Government established rightly concluded that the engineers who were responsible for designing that building in 1986 breached the most basic standards of engineering with that building. I think every member of this House would feel the injustice of the families—that because of the one year, one day rule no prosecution could be taken for that negligence. So, on that basis, I am pleased that we have a bill that is to repeal that provision.

I was surprised to read the history that the one year, one day rule dates back to 1276. I’m not sure that in 1276 the judges of the time applied their minds to the challenge of a modern earthquake engineer and his responsibilities to design a building so that it would be resistant to an earthquake. In fact, for all practical purposes, the one year, one day rule exempts engineers completely from the liability, because it would be very unusual for a building to be designed and constructed before one year and one day was up. So its repeal is very important.

But here’s the bit that really upsets me, and I want to appeal to every member of this House to reflect on what we are doing here. If, in 30 years’ time, one of the 3,000 new buildings in Christchurch pancakes and kills a hundred people, the Government is saying that that engineer will be able to use the one year and one day law and, again, an injustice will be committed. I would appeal to this House and ask them to read the very strong statement from those CTV families that that would be unjust.

Now, just so you don’t think I’m making it up, the officials at the select committee said that that scenario was absolutely true. In 30 years’ time, if a new building that’s been constructed post the Christchurch earthquakes pancakes and kills a hundred people, Parliament is being asked to say that’s OK and those engineers won’t be accountable. That is not OK, and this Government is seriously letting down the families and the memory of those 115 people who were lost in those earthquakes.

Well, the Minister is nodding his head. Can I ask the Minister this question? If his bill is passed and a building that was designed today collapses in a major earthquake in 30 years’ time and kills a hundred people, will the engineers be able to get off on the one year, one day rule? The officials advised the committee they would. Does the Minister confirm that that scenario is correct? The Minister is silent. It’s all very well nodding his head, but I think a Parliament, on such a serious life and death issue, deserves an answer. If a build designed today fails in an earthquake in 30 years’ time and kills 100 people, will this bill let those people—those engineers that made the error—get off the hook? The answer is yes. Members on this side of the Chamber say that’s not good enough, but the Government is wanting to spit in the face of the CTV families and allow that anomaly and that injustice to continue, and that is wrong.

But, Madam Chairperson, it’s more important than that, and it’s this. What is clear in the royal commission’s report on the CTV Building is that the design flaws—[Bell rung]

CHAIRPERSON (Poto Williams): Just a second, before I call the Hon Dr Nick Smith to continue with this debate—I’ve waited until you’ve finished that part of the call—just to remind the member that actually the substantive part of this particular argument is best placed in Part 2. So if you could come back to Part 1, I’d be greatly appreciative.

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: I’m talking to clause 6, which is about the repeal of the one year and one day rule, and the implications that it has—

CHAIRPERSON (Poto Williams): I understand that. However, the substantive part of your Supplementary Order Paper (SOP)—

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: This is a very important issue. We’re talking about the biggest engineering failure in New Zealand history—

CHAIRPERSON (Poto Williams): Indeed. However—

Kieran McAnulty: Listen to the Chair.

CHAIRPERSON (Poto Williams): I can handle this, Mr McAnulty. I do not need your interaction. The substantive part of this debate with regard to your SOP should occur in Part 2. I have allowed you to traverse this by way of introduction, but, please, if we could come back to the other matters in Part 1 and then, in Part 2, I fully expect that you will traverse these arguments more fully.

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: I want to further pursue clause 6 and the implications and the incentives that it has for engineers. I think every member of this House will want engineering practice to be as safe as possible and for the incentives for people, when they know that something is wrong, to fix it. I am going to canvass the issue that occurred with the CTV Building, because it is so much behind. The Minister himself has said that this clause 6 has come about as a consequence of the lack of prosecution over the collapse of the CTV Building. And what occurred in the case of the CTV Building is that in the early 1990s, a number of engineers identified that that CTV Building was poorly designed and had flaws. And we in this Parliament should be focused on ensuring that there are the incentives for people where there are faults, particularly faults that could put at risk over 100 lives, that there are the incentives for those people to fix or at least notify the authorities of the faults that are in that building. The great difficulty I have with the bill and with the Government’s approach and the debate that we had on clause 6 in the select committee was that the Government’s policy is that there will be no incentive, because, effectively, the one year and one day rule is going to continue to apply for those buildings.

I would like to draw attention to the CTV families’ statement on this issue today. They have said, and I’ll quote it: “This bill and this clause add insult to injury for the CTV families.” And I do say to the Minister how insulting it is, when he knows the CTV families are so concerned about this bill and this part: why would the Minister add insult to injury and progress this bill in the very week in which those families, including many from Japan, are in New Zealand. When I saw this on the Order Paper today, I just said to myself, “What an insensitive Government—that they would want to progress a bill against the will of the CTV families.” [Interruption] Well, the members opposite think it’s funny. I don’t think I’ve seen a day in which New Zealanders were more grieving, were more shocked, than when the CTV Building collapsed, and I say again that it is insulting for members opposite to progress this legislation against the will of the CTV families in the very week in which we have the eighth anniversary.

Darroch Ball: Oh, come on.

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: Well, the member says “Come on.” Let me read what the families are saying: “it will add insult to injury.” [Interruption]

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

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: I say to the member from New Zealand First, and I’d ask him to reflect on what the Government is doing. I say it to him again. This bill will mean that in 30 years’ time, if we get another CTV Building, those responsible for its design—

CHAIRPERSON (Poto Williams): Order! Dr Smith, we’ve traversed this before. Thank you.

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: Let me come back to the exact quote from the CTV families group: this bill “will add insult to injury for the CTV families if the Government passes a bill that [will] allow [that] injustice [that they suffered to occur again].” I appeal to the conscience of the Green members, of the Labour members, and the New Zealand First members opposite, and say to them: how would any member in this House want any families to go through again what the CTV families did, the injustice that they suffered, and that is why we need to get the detail of Part 1 of this bill right—[Bell rung]

KIERAN McANULTY (Labour): Thank you very much, Madam Chair. It is an absolute delight to stand in here and speak in favour of Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) 185 in Minister Andrew Little’s name, seeking to bring into the Crimes Act under this SOP, a crime of livestock rustling. Good on the Minister for taking this on. I want to acknowledge the member Ian McKelvie, one of the only gentlemen in this House, who tried to bring this forward—[Interruption] I’m just pleased that people are listening.

What this shows—[Interruption] Madam Chair, I’m very surprised to see the other side so animated about the issue of livestock rustling when the previous Government had nine years to do it and they did nothing—absolutely nothing. So what they relied on was Ian McKelvie to come in Opposition and put forward this member’s bill. And he did try. He tried his best and he got some advice to say that the attempt that he had was out of scope and he couldn’t progress it any further.

We were given some options during the select committee process. They said that he either had to withdraw and submit another bill or continue as it was. And both sides of the House indicated that because it was written the way it was written, through no fault of Ian McKelvie’s, I might add, it could not progress. But what this SOP shows is that collaboration can occur in this House, despite the efforts that some people have seen from the other side this week walking out of select committees and wasting half an hour’s time here in the previous thing.

What this SOP, that I hold in my hand, shows is that there is the opportunity here, when members were willing to do so, to collaborate. So Ian McKelvie and I got together and we went to the Minister and we said, “Would you be willing to sponsor an SOP to introduce the crime of livestock rustling into this bill? They said that they couldn’t do it, because the Crimes Amendment Bill is about repealing things, taking things out of the Act. So they said we couldn’t do it, and what we needed to do was to get leave from the House in order to be able to put this SOP forward.

I think it’s important to make this point for the rest of New Zealand so that they can see that the House can work together so that we can actually address what is an anomaly, like the Minister said earlier, that in a nation like ours that relies on agriculture, with many of the members in here living in regions that rely on agriculture—in fact, there’s some members in here that represent, despite not living there, areas that rely on agriculture—that up until now there has not been a law. It is entirely consistent with the wishes of this country. The numerous people that submitted to the select committee were in favour of this. In fact, as soon as the Minister submitted the SOP, Federated Farmers, that great union of landowners, came forward and said that they were in favour of the Minister’s attempts to try and address this anomaly. Making sure that this this is going to be a crime with an imprisonment term of up to seven years sends a very clear message to people that are thinking of taking away livestock from our farms. [Interruption] It is vitally important—and I’m not too sure why they’re heckling. Perhaps they realised the missed opportunity of their previous term in Government. Perhaps they realise—

CHAIRPERSON (Poto Williams): I apologise to the member. In accordance with the decision of the Business Committee for Agnes Loheni to make her maiden statement, I will report the bill with progress and the committee will sit again presently.

House resumed.

The Chairperson reported progress on the Crimes Amendment Bill and no progress on the Taxation (Annual Rates for 2018-19, Modernising Tax Administration, and Remedial Matters) Bill and the Accident Compensation Amendment Bill.

Report adopted.

Maiden Statements

Maiden Statements

AGNES LOHENI (National): Thank you, Mr Speaker. It is so surreal to be standing here in Parliament speaking to you all. I’m a daughter of Samoan parents brought up in a crowded State house where Samoan was the only language spoken and where the Bible was the only book in the house. I almost struggle to believe that this is actually happening.

My journey started on a path laid brick by brick by my Samoan parents—a path of aspiration, resilience, hard work, compassion and gratitude. My parents are the embodiment of the Māori saying: He kai kei aku ringa; food comes from the efforts of my own hands.

Ka tangi te tītī, ka tangi te kākā, ka tangi hoki ahau. Ka tū au i raro i te mana o te iwi o Pōneke nei—tū mai Taranaki whānui. Ka mihi hōhonu ki ngā iwi katoa o Aotearoa. Tēnā koutou katoa.

[As the muttonbird calls, and the parrot calls, so too do I. I stand under the mandate of the tribes of Wellington, arise the wider Taranaki tribes. Deep greetings to all the people of New Zealand. Greetings to you all.]

Tulouna le Pa’ia maualuga o Samoa i ona mamalu fa’aleatunu’u

Le Paia i Tama ma Aiga, o Aiga fo’i ma Tama

Tumua ma Pule

O Itua’u ma Alataua

Aiga i le Tai ma le va’a o Fonoti

Sua ma le Vaifanua

O Fofō ma Aitulagi, o Sa’ole ma Salea’umua ma le launiu na saelua

Faapea fo’i le Faleagafulu ma le La’au-na-amotasi

O Tama a le Manu’atele ma To’oto’o o le Faleula ma Samoa potopoto

I grew up on the famous McGehan Close, a State housing cul de sac in Mount Albert, a street that received a lot of attention in 2007. We lived in a three-bedroom State house, where I shared a bedroom with my mum and dad and my two younger sisters. It was also a home to my grandmother, aunties, uncles and cousins—pulling together, sharing resources, supporting each other. It’s just what you did. It was a great home. The only language spoken was Samoan and the home was filled with chatter, laughter, dreams, and hope.

There wasn’t a lot of money, but we were abundantly rich in family, because family was everything. It was a family where dedication to our Christian faith was paramount and where education was seen as the key to a better life—a better future. It was a home where we were expected to succeed, and we did. My father instilled this expectation of success into us. Working long hours and often having to travel away for work, my father provided for his family and to make sure we could access the many opportunities in this land of plenty.

So I left high school with University Entrance and the senior chemistry prize. I completed a Bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering, but not before heading off on an OE, marriage, five children, and starting a business with my sisters. My journey into business was inspired by my mother’s enterprise. My mum was an expert dressmaker—self-employed, worked from home, managed the household, and served her aiga, her extended family. The soft hum of her sewing machine running late into the night as I drifted to sleep is one of my lovely memories growing up as a child; that hum meant that Mum was nearby. With all the responsibilities Mum was juggling, she still imparted a fundamental lesson to us: the place of gratitude and compassion in our lives. Her generosity and compassion for others meant she often didn’t charge for her service, particularly if people were struggling. Payment for her services was often a home-made pineapple pie or some other baked items, and Mum would gratefully and humbly receive that food.

So encouraged by Mum’s example, my sisters and I started our small business in Samoa from our home. Our fashion label reflected the fusion of our Samoan and Kiwi upbringing. It was unique and beautiful, and we’re proud of what we created. Working with my three sisters, Jackie, Gina, and Charlene, has truly been an enriching experience. We had each other’s backs and we looked out for each other, and we struggled together. That struggle meant, sometimes, as the eldest sister, I had to do the unpleasant stuff, like the time that I took the tough decision to take a gruelling drive all the way to the other side of Samoa to hand-deliver an urgent order to a customer. The fact that this customer was Hollywood rock star Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson had absolutely no bearing on my decision to make that sacrifice. That’s just what you do.

It has been a 17-year journey, where all the business mistakes you could possibly make were made, and we learnt, struggled, fell down, and got up again every time. On the way, we navigated a global financial crisis and faced the aftermath of tsunamis and a number of tropical cyclones which intimately affected the lives of our staff as well as our business. Eventually, we pulled through to the business we are today, selling throughout the South Pacific and to customers around the world. So I applaud all our small-business owners. I know the hard work that’s required and the risks they face. The vital role our small businesses play in the economy, particularly in job creation, cannot be overestimated.

I’m the product of the compassion and gratitude my mother taught me and the resilience and hard work ethic my father instilled in me. I grew up very lucky, in stark contrast to many of my Pasefika community today, because growing up, there was no one telling us that the system was against us because we were Samoan kids. There was no one telling us we were impoverished migrant Samoan families living in destitute conditions. There was no one telling us that we needed to be taught differently from all other kids because of our culture. We were not subject to the soft bigotry of low expectation that exists today—the soft bigotry of low expectation that rips hope from our children, destroys faith in their ability to overcome life’s obstacles, creates jealousy and envy in our kids, and leaves them dependent on the whims of the State that says it knows better than their own families.

These messages of envy and hopelessness—messages that lead to an insidious victim mentality and that are perpetuated by those who say they care more and are genuinely concerned for the communities I grew up in—lead to an outcome that is infinitely worse than any hard bigot or racist could ever hope to achieve. To take hopes and dreams away from a child through good intentions conflicts with the messages of aspiration, resilience, and compassion that I and my Pasefika community were exposed to as we grew up. That soft bigotry of low expectation is the road to hell laid brick by brick with good intentions.

Hope, resilience, compassion—these are the only messages that have any chance of succeeding and changing our course toward a better New Zealand. These values are not exclusive to my migrant parents; they are New Zealand’s values. They fit hand-in-glove with our Kiwi belief in hard work, enterprise, and personal responsibility. So I stand as one with our Pasefika communities and all New Zealand. Whether you’ve come from the South Pacific, Asia, Africa, or Europe, New Zealand is our home. It is our place. We are an integral part of the fabric of New Zealand’s life, and we are members of a great country where we can be anything we want to be.

You see, the solution to building great lives, building a great New Zealand, comes from resilience in our communities—communities that will lead to a great New Zealand where we can be proud of who we are, proud of where we’ve come from, and proud of the moral fortitude that will enable us to confidently face the unknown path ahead. I am here to do everything I can to ensure that all New Zealand communities and families can choose pathways for better education, be able to live with the certainty of a roof over their heads and food on their table, and where jobs underpin family futures and enable the lifestyles that are the Kiwi Dream.

Our Kiwi children deserve to dream of their potential—of lives that can be anything they want them to be, where we tell our children that working hard, being responsible, and having compassion for others builds the resilience that enables them to face every challenge life throws at them; where every child growing up in this great nation of ours can look at their achievements and say, “He kai kei aku ringa”—from the efforts of my own hands; and where a little, very shy Samoan girl living in a State house in Mount Albert brimming with family can finish a university degree, head offshore, raise a big family, run a business, and end up in Parliament, serving the wonderful people of New Zealand.

What an honour and privilege to stand before you, my National friends, and to you, my parliamentary colleagues, today. Thank you to the National Party board, and to the members of my executive, and supporters and volunteers; and our fantastic leader, Simon Bridges. Unity is our strength. A special mention to two former MPs who have inspired my journey: Luamanuvao Dame Winnie Laban, and Peseta Sam Lotu-Iiga. I have long admired their courage and resilience. I give thanks to God. I can do all things through Christ, who strengthens me.

Fa’afetai i le Atua, sa ou nofo taupa’i ma matamata nonofo e pei o upu i le Maota o le Tui A’ana.

To my friends and family, I’m so humbled that you have travelled to be with me today. Fa’afetai tele lava. To my children Mia, Hana-Peti, Waiana, Lelei-Kura, and Tahu-Potiki, you have given my life purpose and meaning. I am so proud of you all. To my amazing husband, Ward, you know that you’re my rock. And finally, to my parents, Fepuleai Frank Pelasio Loheni and Talaleomalie Filomena Loheni, no words can fully express my love and gratitude for all you have done. All I hope, Mum and Dad, is that I make you proud. Fa’afetai tele lava. Thank you.

Sitting suspended from 5.59 p.m. to 7.30 p.m.

Bills

Crimes Amendment Bill

In Committee

Debate resumed.

Part 1 Substantive amendments to principal Act (continued)

KIERAN McANULTY (Labour): Thank you very much, Mr Chair. It is marvellous to be able to summarise my contribution to this debate. What I was saying before the dinner break was I was congratulating this committee for its collaboration on this particular Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) 185. I was acknowledging Ian McKelvie for bringing this issue to the House and the Minister Andrew Little for taking this on and seeing a way forward on what is a very important issue. What we saw in the select committee process was that it was universal across the agricultural and primary sector, across rural New Zealand, that livestock rustling is a big issue. What they couldn’t understand is why, up to this point, it had not been recognised as a crime. That’s what Ian McKelvie tried to achieve, and it’s what this Government and its Minister in Andrew Little has delivered.

It sends a really good message. After all the hoo-ha and nonsense that people see in this place so often, when MPs here want to do so, they can get together, they can work together, and once again we’ve shown that at times—sadly, not often as much as we’d like—we work together for the interests of rural New Zealand. This Government once again is delivering for the places outside our urban centres, and I strongly endorse this SOP in the Minister’s name.

MATT KING (National—Northland): Mr Chair, thanks very much. I appreciate the opportunity to speak. I’m going to speak on the Crimes Amendment Bill—a riveting bill—and I’d like to speak on Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) 185, the cattle rustling section.

Kieran McAnulty: Livestock rustling—get it right.

MATT KING: Livestock. I’d like to acknowledge Ian McKelvie, our rangatira, our kaumātua—or, as Alfred Ngaro would say, our koro, which means “old man”, apparently—because this is his bill, or, essentially, the makings of his bill. It was a private member’s bill adopted by the Government. But I’d also like to acknowledge Andrew Little for displaying some common sense and including it in the bill. I appreciate that.

Being a rural farmer myself, this SOP really stuck with me, because in Northland, mostly during the night, we suffer a lot of this sort of theft and loss—farmers do—all over the place. There was a situation where a farmer had a couple of cows slaughtered. They just cut the legs off the cow—the best parts—and left the body in the paddock. One of the cows was pregnant, in calf, and they viciously killed the calf and just left it for dead—so, thousands of dollars of loss for a farmer, and quite devastating. I mean, I have breeding cows. I don’t know them by name—there are 160 of them—but they’re very valuable to me. So it’s not only the monetary loss; it’s the loss of the years of breeding and just the sheer horror when you come across animals that have been slaughtered in such a way.

Another incident we had up in Northland was some sheep being killed. It happened during the day. A pig hunter saw a couple of guys dragging a pregnant sheep across the paddock. The farmers got in their vehicles and did a bit of a—what do you call it?—vigilante-type situation and blocked the car in. One guy took off running with a gun. He had a rifle, so it was a pretty horrifying situation. Luckily, the other one stayed with the vehicle and they got them. This sort of stuff is something we don’t recommend. It puts lives at risk. Being an ex-policeman, we’d rather have people take vehicle descriptions and that sort of thing, descriptions of people, and call the police.

One farmer on average loses 200 sheep a year. That’s $20,000 worth. Cattle—Federated Farmers estimate $120 million per year in losses. So animal theft—

Ian McKelvie: Not worth much in Northland!

MATT KING: —thank you, kaumātua—especially in Northland is an ongoing, serious problem because it’s a lower socio-economic area, and so we have a lot of people who are just jumping the fence and stealing stock willy-nilly and slaughtering them in the paddocks.

I know a Pouto farmer, Ian Russell. Over 20 years, he’s lost 700 cattle and 2,700 sheep. Those are huge losses. He installed cameras to try and catch the offenders. The culprits discovered the cameras and they burned down his $600,000 woolshed. It’s a real problem, especially in the north. So Andrew Little and our kaumātua in the back there, Ian McKelvie, coming up with this law change—I for one really appreciate it. Entering agricultural land with intent to commit a crime: 10 years—the same as burglary.

Now, burglary—you know, you have to break into a shed or enter an enclosed yard. That’s burglary. But all my valuable stuff on my farm is just over a fence, in the paddock. So if you caught someone on your property, even at night, and you knew what they were up to, the only thing you could really get them for is trespass—two years. Even then, you have to warn them and they have to come on again before you can actually do them for trespass. So it’s a very, very frustrating situation.

So now the police will have the tools. If you catch someone on your property within circumstances of committing an offence, this law is going to be perfect. And if they’re carrying a weapon: aggravated burglary—14 years. And it also includes the rights to impound and seize vehicles or trailers. So this is common sense, it’s practical, it’s fair play, and it’s great for the rural community, so I support it 100 percent.

IAN McKELVIE (National—Rangitīkei): Thank you, Mr Chair. I thought I was going to be too slow to get up, but I got there. It’s a pleasure to take a call on the Crimes Amendment Bill. Obviously, from my perspective, I’m particularly pleased to be taking a call in support of the Minister Andrew Little’s Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) 185, which is, in effect, a strengthening of a bill that I had in Parliament as an amendment to the Sentencing Act. It came into Parliament, interestingly, just over 12 months ago, so it’s taken 12 months. That shows the progress of making law. I want to congratulate the Minister for picking it up in this manner, and I thank the Primary Production Committee for encouraging this course of action. I had a great deal of help from the other side of the House in getting it there, and my own support of that as well.

So the course of action was, interestingly, supported by all submitters who submitted to the original bill when it came to the Primary Production Committee early last year. The interesting thing about this for me is that the SOP creates, effectively, two new offences for theft of livestock and other animals. The Minister did explain briefly, earlier in his contribution, what the “all other animals” inferred, but I want to use a bit of an example—not quite the one Matt King would have used.

It extends the crime to include all sorts of animals, not just livestock. Ironically, the definition may not have included a racehorse or a pet dog, and I think the Minister referred to that, but the best known example of this, of course, is a racehorse who was probably the greatest racehorse to ever race in Europe. For the Irish in the room, that will be a reasonably good story. The horse was called Shergar. He was stolen from his box in the middle of the night, ironically by the IRA, which I suppose isn’t surprising given he was in Ireland.

The IRA actually thought he was worth a lot of money. He was worth a lot of money—some £10 million he was valued at. They also thought that he had one owner in the Aga Khan, so that was the reason they stole him, because they stole him for a ransom. The problem was he had 38 owners and they couldn’t get an agreement on whether they would pay a ransom or not. Some of them had insurance; some of them didn’t. Some of them probably didn’t need the money—probably the Aga Khan didn’t need the money—but it was a very interesting example of exactly what the Minister is talking about.

But it goes on from there, because Shergar was effectively gunned to death by the IRA. When you think about that, it’s very similar to the story that the Minister told earlier about the little pony down in Otago. They’re sort of tragic things, because those don’t only affect the people that are concerned, but they must have—and I don’t understand whether they do or not—a massive effect on the animal. Of course, this bill to some extent addresses that issue, and that was very much a part of the discussions we had in the course of altering the Animal Welfare Act a couple of years ago, because the sentience of animals became quite a topic. So that’s a very good reason—with two odd examples, I suppose—of why you would want to change the bill and create the new offence of theft of livestock and other animals.

The other interesting one that’s been added to this is the entry on to agricultural land with the intent to commit an imprisonable offence. What that amounts to, of course, is an interesting point, but it could be anything. So this offence, it sort of gives the police much more power—and I think Matt King referred to that—but it also gives them the opportunity to prosecute people for going on to land as they would currently be able to prosecute them for going into your house with an intent to commit a crime. I think that’s a huge improvement in the legislation to protect farmers in the event of these very unsavoury kinds of events occurring because it is—as I said in an earlier speech I made on this topic—very frightening for those people down a one-way street or a one-way road in the middle of the night, well isolated from the rest of the world, to have people sneaking around their properties and around their house, often armed. You get a bit of a fright.

So livestock rustling’s become much more prevalent as food prices have risen and the security around urban businesses have made other forms of theft a little more difficult and a little less rewarding. If you think about it, you could steal a ring out of a jeweller’s shop and you take it down to the pawn shop, and you’ll probably get about a tenth of its face value, whereas, if you steal a cattle beast—and they stole a couple of them in Whanganui just a couple of weeks ago, and they found them on the spit at Castlecliff Beach with only a few bones left. It’s quite possible that those cattle beast would have been worth a bit more than they were in Northland, Matt, but probably a couple of thousand dollars, and they may well have doubled in value by the time they got to wherever they were sold off in bits. So it’s quite a profitable business if you’ve got the energy to do it.

The other thing about these crimes is they are often created by people with plenty of energy, and you’d think they’re worth preserving, those people, because they’re not, in my view, necessarily the same type of, I suppose, crook—for want of a better word—that you might find committing some other kinds of crime, because they do require a fair bit of energy.

The other issue that I think we’re really challenged by in this—and the Minister, again, referred to it briefly in his speech—is the issue of trying to catch these people. The second change to the crime entry under agricultural land does give the police a big head start as opposed to where they were before.

Whilst I don’t think some of these crimes are particularly serious, the big issue that’s come up, I guess, in the last 12 months with the M. bovis affair is that biosecurity risks of livestock travelling around the country are significant. So for livestock to be travelling around the country in a stolen truck and with a torch in the middle of the night and being dumped anywhere in the New Zealand is hugely challenging—challenging for the farming community and challenging for the biosecurity risk of this country. M. bovis won’t be the last issue that we have that affects livestock in that respect.

So that’s a big challenge, I think, for our rural communities. It’s a challenge for our police, and it’s also a challenge in the manner in which we can capture or, eventually, capture and prosecute the people that do this. So that, I think, is a really large challenge for us all.

As I said in the introduction to the Sentencing (Livestock Rustling) Amendment Bill over a year ago—in fact, it was 21 January 2018—theft of livestock from farms is estimated to be well in excess of $120 million a year. Those estimates were put in at a time when stock were not worth what they’re worth in Northland now, but, in fact, they’re worth a lot more than that, and so that could be quite significantly more money involved in this than that. In fact, I’m sure there will be a lot more money involved in this than that, and, as one travels around the country, you hear all sorts of stories of these kinds of things going on.

The other thing that that this bill effectively encompasses in one form or another is all sorts of things that were never covered under the original Crimes Act, and that’s the potential of theft of beehives—all sorts of things that nowadays have become extremely valuable. I suppose we might see the day—we might have seen it actually—when a mānuka plant is probably worth more than some of those other plants that they travel around the country with at night. I’m not sure it has been, but it might be.

So you see that all sorts of things change in agriculture very quickly—or change in rural New Zealand or rural provincial New Zealand very quickly. And as we’ve heard so much about, I suppose, the transformation of our economy, the rural economy is certainly transforming at a great rate. The things that challenged us in the days of the Mackenzie country, when the Mackenzie country was named—and, of course, in those days they used to hang rustlers no problem at all, but we don’t do that now. But the things that have changed since those days are absolutely significant and make quite a difference.

These types of crimes are not only a threat to animals and to their property; they’re also a threat to people. And I think that one of the things that really concerns me, I guess, is in the more remote parts of New Zealand where these types of activity take place, and they take place a lot because you might find that you’ve got someone who’s, effectively—well, they may not even be poaching but they’ll be out hunting. They won’t know they’re, effectively, poaching—I suppose that a definition of poaching might be they’re on land that doesn’t belong to them or they’re not permitted to go on to. It often happens in Department of Conservation land, where you get all sorts of people without permits to go there out hunting and things like that and they’re next to or adjacent to people who live there. And it’s quite frightening for those people.

So I think it has a very nervous effect on these people and, to some extent, a psychological effect on it. So we want all New Zealanders to feel safe, whether they’re rural New Zealanders or not, and I think changes to this bill in the SOP will reassure rural New Zealand—and not only rural New Zealand—that this Parliament cares about those sorts of things and wishes to make some improvements to it. I think this has given some very real teeth to the police and to rural New Zealand, for that matter, to protect themselves in a much better manner than they have. It also sends a pretty strong message to potential rustlers that if they’re caught, they can expect to get some pretty serious treatment. I think that the treatment they get, obviously, would be dependent on the crime.

So from my perspective, I think it’s a very good addition to the bill. I congratulate the Minister. Thank you for putting it in there. And just very briefly on the Minister, the first time I ever had an association with the Minister was when Timaru had nicked McCain Foods off Fielding. So you’ve just got to be very careful. But that was some 15 or so years ago. You’ve got to be careful.

Hon NATHAN GUY (National—Ōtaki): Thank you, Mr Chair. Can I acknowledge the Minister in the chair, the Hon Andrew Little, this evening and thank him for bringing this Supplementary Order Paper through and thank him for working so constructively with the previous speaker, Ian McKelvie, MP for Rangitīkei. This is a good change, and, as we’ve just heard from the previous speaker, he worked hard on a member’s bill and officials rolled their sleeves up and got amongst it with members of the Primary Production Committee and thought there is a better way to get the outcomes that, indeed, Ian McKelvie wanted but the whole select committee wanted. So I acknowledge Minister Little for picking this up.

I was thinking about rural communities because this law change is going to help them. Often, rural communities live in places that are very isolated. When they come to find that some of their livestock have indeed been rustled and taken illegally, they feel extremely vulnerable. I guess the challenge with all of this—we’re the lawmakers in the Parliament this evening, pushing this law change through, which I wholeheartedly support—back to, I guess, the Government and society is making sure that we have the available policing resources to actually respond

Hon Stuart Nash: 1,800 in three years.

Hon NATHAN GUY: It’s good that Stuart Nash has picked up National Party policy in the election campaign, and the real challenge back to the Minister is ensuring that those police are in provincial and rural New Zealand.

The difficulty for farmers, until the National Party came in to respond to stop rustlers and report it very quickly through to the police, was cellphone coverage. And what did National do? Well, we broadened the Rural Broadband Initiative so that now farmers in most places—admittedly, not everywhere—can respond a lot quicker.

The challenge for farmers, of course, is they—when you think about sheep—might have mobs of one to two thousand ewes in a flock, and they won’t necessarily know that five have gone missing. They don’t go out there every day and count them. It’s not like a dairy farmer, that has a pretty good idea milking his or her cows every day of exactly how many are in the herd. Suddenly they get their sheep in, which they might only do once every quarter to drench them, for shearing, for dagging, or for weaning, and suddenly they realise this flock was 2,000 and now through stock rustling—and when I’m talking about stock rustling I don’t necessarily mean someone just bringing the sheep into the corner and slaughtering a couple. Unfortunately there are well-organised people that are out there with stock trucks loading them out of yards in the early hours of the morning or, indeed, bringing the horse float in and shoving 20 very valuable ewe hogget replacements on board and cutting their throats. These types of crimes need to be dealt to.

The people that are doing this will be dealt to if, indeed, there is evidence. And that’s the next thing, rural communities need to work together. Because often the talk in the pub or the rugby club, well, that needs to be followed up on. It doesn’t just happen with one individual, often there are numerous people that are doing this.

I’m pleased on the definition, Minister, that you have that nice and broad for agriculture purposes, because I was thinking back to avocados, remember the price that they got to just this season, and—

Dan Bidois: Eight dollars!

Hon NATHAN GUY: Exactly. So what do people do? They just think, “Oh well, I’m driving past an avocado orchard, I’ll just pop in and take a little bit of fruit.” Well, they’ll be done under this. Then, of course, we’ve got the mānuka honey industry. Beekeeping is worth about $300 million of exports to New Zealand. It’s growing. It’s the gold rush. It’s like infant formula was. There are hives everywhere. And, in fact, what do people do? Well, they think it’s OK to rock up their trailer or truck and take these hives. They will be dealt to under this.

The other thing that I think is really topical is cannabis reform. Minister Little’s going to be overseeing the referendum, and we’re waiting to see what the question is. But some of these cannabis growers, in fact many of them, just hop on to farmers’ land where the maize crop is growing—those of you who don’t know what maize is, it’s a corn crop, ideal for growing cannabis in amongst the rows. So therein lies another challenge—back to Stuart Nash making sure we’ve got the police resources.

Finally, can I commend Ian McKelvie, his idea getting it up. And can I acknowledge Andrew Little for supporting him to make the change that is necessary.

Hon Dr NICK SMITH (National—Nelson): Thank you, Mr Chair. We are debating a rather unusual range of amendments to the Crimes Act in Part 1 of this bill. There’s the repeal of blasphemy, which is actually an important step in the direction of enhancing free speech. We need to be able to differentiate between what is bad language, which isn’t appropriate, and that which should be unlawful and a criminal offence.

The bill also deals with the issue of an accessory after the fact, and quite appropriately a repeal that allows a wife, husband, or a partner to be exempt of breaking the law around either hiding or assisting a person who has committed an offence. With the third provision, which has been also through the select committee, is the important issue around getting rid of the—I think it’s 800 years old—800-year-old provision where death must be within a year and a day.

Now the provision I’m particularly interested in, and the committee does need to take some time this evening to debate, is Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) 185 in Mr Little’s name around the issue of stock rustling. And it is very unusual for Parliament to be asked to accept an amendment that has not gone through the select committee like the rest of the bill. It’s on that issue that I have some questions for the Minister. Now, I want to acknowledge, as my colleagues have, Ian McKelvie for this excellent amendment and for the sort of very grounded and sensible comments we had from my colleague Nathan Guy, who is so connected and practical around the issues facing our rural communities.

But I’m confused, and let me explain why. The Minister of Justice has come in to this role almost repeatedly over the last 18 months saying that his agenda is to reduce the penalties, that Parliament has for the last 20 years committed this awful business of continuously raising penalties. He’s given very bold commitments that this Government is going to reduce by 30 percent the number of people in prison. And so I’m a bit—I know my colleague Simeon Brown has tried to move some quite sensible amendments around the issue of psychoactive substances and increasing the penalties for those things that do enormous harm. But here’s the bit where the Government’s justice policy is a bit of a shambles. Here we have the Minister of Justice introducing a bill that is going to increase the term of imprisonment for a person found guilty of stock rustling from two years to seven years, and in respect of where they enter onto agricultural land with the intent of causing damage to buildings or property or livestock or machinery the person could be subject to up to 10 years.

Now I’m actually with my colleagues, Nathan Guy and my colleague Ian McKelvie, that people in rural communities are vulnerable and we are on this side of the Chamber are a law and order party, and that when people breach those laws I think those penalties are entirely appropriate. The part that I’m stunned by is that a Minister of Justice, who said that he is going to spend his time reducing penalties for crime, is backing us. And look, I’m happy to win the arguments. We are the party that won the most votes at the last election. We’re the biggest party in this Parliament. We love it when our policy is adopted. But I’d like the Minister in the chair, I’d love the Minister in the chair, to provide some explanation.

Now my colleague Greg O’Connor, who’s on the justice select committee, has been continuously arguing, along with his Labour colleagues, that their policy is one to stop increased penalties for such offences. So this is so out of step with the promises that the Labour Party has made with the very agenda that they’ve set at their justice summit with their constant criticism of us on this side of the Chamber that want to have appropriate penalties for crime. I think introducing an SOP in a committee stage where he’s proposing to increase the term of imprisonment from two years to either seven years or 10 years requires some sensible explanation. And that’s where I would invite the Minister in the chair to say how does this fit in with your broader justice policy, and how does this fit in with your criticism of previous Governments that have increased penalties.

Hon ANDREW LITTLE (Minister of Justice): Thank you, Mr Chairman. I’m more than happy to respond to the contribution that’s just been made. I think the question, if I interpret the question from the Hon Dr Nick Smith, is how to reconcile this Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) 185 with what he describes as, or characterises as, a coalition Government approach of wanting to have a more effective justice system. Perhaps the starting point is to say this: bombast and nonsense does not constitute an argument. Unfortunately for Dr Nick Smith, he thinks that if he comes here and is bombastic enough and if he fudges enough, that constitutes an argument. The real pity about Dr Smith is he doesn’t just not listen to the Government members; he doesn’t even listen to his own members.

So the first point he actually made—I thought he was going to get on to a very important point, which is about why this hadn’t been in front of a select committee. Of course, it has been a front of a select committee. His own colleague Ian McKelvie said that, said that it had been the Primary Production Committee, said that it had been debated, and said that there were issues that officials had pointed out. And it was because of that and the work that Kieran McAnulty did with Ian McKelvie that we were able to come to a resolution. The upshot was that we were able to attach it to this bill with the agreement of colleagues.

Then we come to the point about, well, is this somehow inconsistent with a policy. What this coalition Government stands for is an effective justice system, a system that responds effectively and properly to criminal offending. And the reality is when it comes to livestock rustling and the impact on the rural community there is a huge gap. It is wrong that if you go into a yard in a metropolitan area, in an industrial area, climb over the fence, get into the yard—just being there is going to get you a much more serious potential penalty than if you leapt into a paddock in the wide open with some sort of criminal intent. If you then nick something from that industrial yard in the metropolitan area you’re going to get penalised much more heavily than if you leap into a paddock and nick a beast. And that was wrong—and that was wrong.

That’s why the Hon Nathan Guy’s contribution was actually extraordinarily helpful to the committee and to those who were looking on, because it explained that, actually, that criminal offending in the rural sector—there’s almost an epidemic of it now. You see, as Matt King has pointed out, the reports from up north and the reports from down south. There is a horrific level of livestock rustling and of livestock theft, and the law should send a signal that that’s not acceptable and it will be responded to seriously and firmly by the law. None of that is inconsistent with an approach that says that when we deal with offenders, we want to change their behaviour.

Now, I actually don’t know what the underlying problem is with people who draw up huge B-trains to a farm and start nicking all the livestock. That is different to somebody who’s grown up in a wretched life and who has been exposed to family violence in their early childhood, and whose only learnt response to stress in their lives is to lash out at others. I don’t know what the livestock rustler does or what drives their criminal offending, but we know that they’re a bunch of people whose criminal offending is a result of things they’ve learnt that we can teach them to unlearn. We’ve just got to give them the attention to do it.

We know that there are people whose offending is driven by drug addiction and a whole bunch of other things, and there are people who have been out of work for so long that they’ve lost any sense of hope or any sense of will to want to make a contribution. We can turn that stuff around. That’s why we want a justice system that is effective in doing its job, and none of this, which is about sending a proper, firm signal to those who would offend against and encroach upon the rights of those who live in our rural communities and who run and manage our farms and provide our food and our protein and what have you—those two propositions are not inconsistent.

So I’m very pleased to be picking up and sharing with Ian McKelvie and Kieran McAnulty the sense of reward about bringing this change here. I know, as those members and others have said, it will make a big difference to rural communities, and boy, do they need it when it comes to livestock rustling today.

Hon DAVID BENNETT (National—Hamilton East): Thank you, Mr Chair. I’d just like to reiterate the kind words that Andrew Little said about Ian McKelvie. I think, as chair of the Primary Production Committee, it was something that Ian McKelvie was fortunate to get drawn out of the ballot. It was a bill that he took through to the committee, and I do want to acknowledge that the Labour members on that committee were very helpful—especially Kieran McAnulty—in making that bill actually transition into something we’re seeing here today, because the bill as it stood was always going to be difficult to get through this Parliament because it was going to be a major amendment to the Crimes Act in the sense of looking at some options around defences, or the rationales behind how you would incorporate it. It really came down to this option here—that is, the most practical option—and Ian McKelvie, to his credit, made that happen. He didn’t give up on it, he found that solution, and, in the end, the Minister made that happen through this bill. So I think it does show that Parliament can actually achieve some things.

But the reality is also that it is a bill that the Labour Party would not wish to have not let go through this Parliament, because they also wish to see that protection for the provincial communities, and if they had denied the bill in the select committee process—which was quite feasible—then there would have been on their heads the fact that they had not allowed some kind of sanction for that kind of crime to be more explicit in our law. So in the end, they were forced to do it by good public opinion. Our good MP Mr Ian McKelvie made the most of that opportunity and forced their hand, and here we are today, seeing it through the House. So a good win to the process, and a good use of political judgment by my good colleague.

Kiritapu Allan: That’s two minutes.

Hon DAVID BENNETT: Is there something you’re saying over there? Oh yes, Kiri Allan was one of the members of that committee, as well, and I think she needs some credit, too. She’s a good member of that committee, and worked hard with Kieran to actually make that happen as well. I can’t remember if there were any New Zealand First members that helped in this process, but that’s normal for them.

Ian McKelvie: Not since Prosser.

Hon DAVID BENNETT: Mr Prosser—yes. Well, his career in New Zealand First ended well, didn’t it? You know, I think he still wants to come back, but they’re not making room for him, for some unknown reason. They don’t like freedom of thought, I think, is the problem in New Zealand First at the moment, and Mr Prosser is not going to have his day in this Parliament again, unfortunately, due to his speaking out against the almighty leader and the champion of the provinces.

CHAIRPERSON (Adrian Rurawhe): And the member needs to come back to the bill, please.

Hon DAVID BENNETT: Yeah, I was just giving some context, Mr Chair, because it’s important that people see that side of the parliamentary process, as well, because this is a very public part, but the private parts that they don’t see are quite interesting, as well—to look at the context of pieces of legislation—and that’s really important.

I do note that the Minister had a very interesting approach to the criminal justice field, and, as somebody who’s working in the corrections field, it’s going to be interesting to see how he actually promotes those changes in people’s behaviour. Saying that it’s a matter of turning around and teaching to learn—those were his catchphrases in his speech just now. So we’re waiting with bated breath to see how that may actually translate into Government legislation and an approach to the issue of criminal justice.

The stock rustling aspect is really relevant to communities, because one of the things Ian McKelvie raised when we discussed this is we’re dealing with small communities where often the rustler is known or will be living in that community, and there may be a whole lot of social and other financial reasons why the person engages in that activity, but at the end of the day, in small communities, everyone still has to live together. It’s not going to be an offence where you’re going to be necessarily in jail for a long period of time, generally, and that person will be coming back into the community and people will engage and probably have to work and live in the same small area within the small community.

It’s important that we also recognise that it’s not generally a situation where somebody from outside comes in; it’s often a case where it’s somebody from within that area. So you do need criminal justice policies that do actually enable that person to assimilate back into that community and take a full role.

KIRITAPU ALLAN (Assistant Whip—Labour): I move, That the question be now put.

STUART SMITH (National—Kaikōura): Thank you, Mr Chair. It’s great to be back in the House and on my feet, as it’s my first opportunity to speak in this year—2019.

This Crimes Amendment Bill has quite a theme running through it, really, with the Minister of Justice’s Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) 185 picking up Ian McKelvie’s member’s bill around stock rustling. Going back—as was mentioned—to Mackenzie’s days, it was punishable by capital punishment, in fact, and it was taken very seriously. Somewhere along the way, during the lawmaking process, it got left out in the way that burglary and other theft crimes were picked up, and it really was left out on its own.

We were struck through the select committee process by the submitters who came in, and we saw how threatened some of them had felt in their own homes when a car or a truck could be heard out somewhere, or maybe a shot—what do you do? In the dark, do you go out by yourself—or the worst case, again, would be to go out armed—to try and protect yourself? That’s obviously a slippery slope, when we start to go down that path to try and protect our own goods and our own homes.

Good on Minister Andrew Little for picking this up and putting it in an SOP and into the Crimes Act. We struggled with this in the Primary Production Committee. We had lots of submissions that were heartfelt, as I said, and then advice saying, “Well, this isn’t going to work. You’re not really going to change much. As it’s written, it’s not going to work. If we try to change it, we’d be outside the scope of the bill.” We were all frustrated by the fact that we all wanted to do something, but it was quite evident that the vehicle for doing that was not going to be that member’s bill. But picking it up as an SOP and putting it into the Crimes Act was actually the way to go with it.

Then, when we look at the spousal immunity for being an accessory to the crime, I imagine that dates back well before Mackenzie’s time, that law. It’s way past its use-by date, and it’s great that this Supplementary Order Paper has been picked up and that that will no longer be the case. It’s right and proper that that comes on. I just think it’s ironic that, again, it sort of links back to days well and truly gone. And blasphemy and libel—I imagine there’ll be lots of blasphemy after your stock’s been rustled, I’m sure—that dates way, way back, and most cultures have a version of blasphemy and in our case it’s a Christian blasphemy and in others it’s of course the other religions that are prevalent in those countries. And it is a huge imposition on freedom of speech. It’s outdated. It should go, and I’m really pleased to see that it is going. But I am concerned that the new blasphemy that’s becoming very popular in the Western World today is hate speech. And again, I’d really caution—and I’d be very concerned if we ever move to try and impose a modern version of blasphemy in the form of a hate speech law, to impose on people’s freedom of expression. It is something that’s key to our democracy. So while it’s good to see this in here, I just caution all members: let’s be careful that we don’t end up in a position where we try and reinvent this blasphemy-type law in another form. So I think that that’s absolutely critical.

I want to spend the last few seconds I have on my feet to talk about the year and a day law, as well, referred to in Supplementary Order Paper 192 that’s in here. I think Dr Nick Smith’s SOP is absolutely critical in this, and I think it’s also—

CHAIRPERSON (Adrian Rurawhe): I think that’s in Part 2.

STUART SMITH: Yes, I realise it’s not in this part; I’m just linking it back in terms of the period these things all come from, and I think it goes back to 1200 or something like that. So all of these SOPs have a link in time, if you like—not back to exactly the same time, but it is ironic that we end up with our Acts that get outdated over time. It often takes a very long period for us to come to the conclusion that we need to change them. This Crimes Amendment Bill is doing that across the board really. I think it’s a fantastic and timely bill, and I commend it to the House.

Dr DEBORAH RUSSELL (Labour—New Lynn): I move, That the question be now put.

KANWALJIT SINGH BAKSHI (National): Thank you, colleagues, for wishing me happy birthday on my 19th birthday today—ha, ha! Thank you, Mr Chair, for giving me this opportunity to contribute in this debate on the Crimes Amendment Bill, which repeals three provisions. It’s great to see that the Minister of Justice himself is in the chair, and I would like to make some requests to him at a later stage. I would also like to touch upon Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) 185. The bill was originally under the name of Ian McKelvie and the Minister has taken it as part of the Crimes Amendment Bill. I don’t have a rural background, but I have been to many farms. Recently, there was a delegation from India with whom we went to see one of the sheep farms, and the visiting delegation was amazed to see that only one person at that farm was able to handle 5,000 sheep. But when we were talking to this gentleman, he mentioned about stock rustling and how people come and pinch some stock, and that was really disappointing because the impression from those people who were from India was that they were really very amazed to see how, in the whole systematic way, the whole thing is organised so that one person can handle such a big flock of sheep. So that was one issue.

Later on we went to see some of the kiwifruit orchards, and over there my friend had some beehives and he mentioned that sometimes they are being stolen—once they are up to the limit, they get stolen. So those are the things which are happening, and our country is based on agriculture and horticulture and it should not be happening. The farmers should have confidence in whatever they are doing, and they should be able to maintain it. As the Minister himself mentioned, when somebody enters a car yard or a yard and steals something, he is punished. Whereas, somebody who enters a farm and steals something, he doesn’t have any consequences. So I think, Minister, you have taken the right decision by adopting this into the Crimes Act, and I hope the people will have a lot of confidence in doing their own business rather than looking after or putting up security measures where they can have some attention.

Another issue which is very important is the recent outbreak of M. bovis. If the stock is moved around without consent and the stock is infected, that can pass on to other areas, and that is another issue which needs to be addressed, and I hope this will be addressed to this.

While you are in the chair, Minister, I would like to request of you that I have got a member’s bill, which is the Kirpan Authorisation Bill. And I hope that in the next amendment to the Crimes Act, as we discussed, you will insert that into the Crime Amendments Bill, and that will be a very good step towards the issue being raised by the Indian community. I hope that that will be part of your next amendment bill. With these words, I conclude my speech.

CHRIS PENK (National—Helensville): Thank you very much, Mr Chair. I’m pleased to have the opportunity just to change the course of the debate a little bit, only in respect of the fact that I will be speaking, perhaps briefly, not necessarily for my full, allotted time, but on the subject of spousal immunity. Various other aspects of the Crimes Amendment Bill have been pretty well covered, I think. Not to say that there won’t be more to say, of course—that’s for you to judge and not me. But without a lot having been said on the repeal of section 71(2) of the Crimes Act, I just wanted to place on record at this the committee stage the implication of what the House will be doing in—eventually it seems—passing this bill. Just to go through briefly some of the key elements of that under the three main headings, if I may. The first is consistency. The second is modernity. The third is efficacy. And then finally I will, if time allows, just briefly touch on one cost that does go along with this, not to suggest necessarily that that outweighs the other benefits.

But under the heading of consistency, I am indebted to the Ministry of Justice who provided advice to the Justice Committee in relation to this matter. They point out that this repeal, among other things, would be to bring consistency with other parts of the law, including the Evidence Act, where spouses and civil union partners don’t have immunity from being compelled to give evidence on the basis only of their marital status, and elsewhere in the Crimes Act, as well, spouses can be said to have conspired with each other to have committed a crime and that’s no defence in itself.

So just to take a step back, having covered that consistency point, just for the sake of clarity, if anyone following this is unclear, what we’re talking about is an accessory after the fact, which is to say a person who’s assisted in the commission of a crime but not participated in it such that they themselves would be charged with the crime. So that person who, if they’re married to or are a civil union partner of—and I use those terms deliberately; a point on which we’ll come back to in a moment—knowingly assists someone who has committed an offence and has given them succour, or refuge, and assisted them essentially to escape arrest after their commission of that. And so we talk about the assistance being after the fact, that is to say, following the offence having been committed.

So just to go to my second point, if I may, which is modernity. So that’s basically making more modern or up to date the concept of our criminal law, and this is really the bit that is being repealed, which is the spousal immunity, which is actually almost exactly spousal, as opposed to other relationships which in 2019 we’d regard to as being akin to that. So the wording of the Crimes Act at the moment says that a person whose spouse or civil union partner to whom that applies is the relevant person. In this day and age we have a wider concept of what a person would look like who would be able to enjoy such protection, and so part of the consequence of repealing the section of spousal immunity will be that we will remove that narrower sense that one might have expected to prevail in 1961 when the Crimes Act was passed, notwithstanding that there’ve been updates since then but, certainly in 2019, I think probably, generally speaking, there is appetite for having a broader sense of that if it were to remain and, in fact, it’s to be repealed.

And then my third point is, I promised, under the heading of efficacy. So this is just really the reasonably obvious point that if we’re removing immunity from what would otherwise be an offence, which would be to be an accessory to a crime, then we make it more likely—I suppose, on the law of averages—that crimes will be detected, because what we are doing is we’re making it harder for people to harbour those who have committed a crime and for arrests to be escapes and so forth.

I’ll just finish my time by touching on the cost, as I foreshadowed at the start. The relationship of people who are married or in analogous types of relationships is a special one and, I suppose, we should acknowledge for the sake of the record that there is a cost in that we don’t allow people to have that defence essentially—although it’s not a defence; it’s actually a standalone section in itself—but just to acknowledge that as that deliberate decision we’re making, but we’re saying that the other benefits such as I’ve outlined do outweigh that and hence we are supportive of that on this side of the Chamber.

GREG O’CONNOR (Labour—Ōhāriu): I move, That the question be now put.

Hon Dr NICK SMITH (National—Nelson): I wish to further contribute in this committee stage to clause 6 in respect to the questions around the repeal of the death being within a year and a day provision, and the reason I want to make a considered contribution on Part 1 of the Crimes Amendment Bill is to give some history as to where the provision came from. I want to give some background as to why that may have been relevant then but is not today, and then to talk about how important, in a modern context, it is that this improvement in the law is made.

Now, I was quite surprised at the Justice Committee to find there the death within a year and a day came from a common law judgement in the English courts in the year 1276. That’s a wee while ago—about 800 years.

Chris Penk: Before your time.

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: It was before my time, I assure Chris Penk I was not a member of the House in 1276, but the interesting bit was this: what the judge determined was that someone should not be held accountable for a death for an event that occurred more than a year ago because it was too difficult to be able to connect the causal affect. It actually arose in a poisoning case, where someone was accused of poisoning a person and they then died 18 months later, and they felt it was unjust. Of course, I would remind the committee that in 1276, the penalty for committing such an act was being hung, drawn, and quartered. So it was pretty tough, and it was appropriate at that time.

My point is that society today has become so much more sophisticated and complex, and that actually, there are lots of things that New Zealanders can do that may not cause an immediate death but, down the track, can be incredibly dangerous. For instance, if you are manufacturing a piece of equipment like a car, and you negligently include a provision in that item of the car—it may not be that someone’s instantly killed but it may well be that you could be criminally responsible for an accident that occurs 10 years later because you knowingly included it in the design of that vehicle. Today we live in an incredibly complex world of technologies and, actually, whether it be in terms of drugs, whether it be in terms of electronics, traffic lights, all sorts of systems, actually today, in this scientifically advanced and technological society, there can be a real connection between a criminal act of gross neglect and a death some years later that it would be inappropriate for people to be able to use this very ancient and archaic provision to not be held responsible.

I also want to make the point that actually, this is really important. This provision is only where people die. This is about death and about criminal acts associated with death. And so it is not some minor issue. During my time in various ministerial portfolios—some people may remember the awful Cave Creek tragedy that occurred on the West Coast. Actually, the acts of neglect there that caused those deaths were more than a year after the events that occurred. We could all look at the tragedy that continues to cause controversy in respect of the Pike mine. Actually, if you look at the Royal Commission’s conclusion, some of the acts of neglect that occurred around the safety systems of that mine occurred more than 12 months prior to the explosion that resulted in the death of the 29 brave miners and, again, in my view that is an example of why this one year and a day law needs to go. I have also made the point very strongly—in fact, this provision in this bill has been triggered by the frustration of not just the CTV families but all New Zealanders—that the presence of this provision and our Crimes Act enables the engineers on the CTV building to not be held criminally responsible.

So what I want to emphasize is how important and significant it is that this provision is to be repealed, that it is archaic, that it is out of date, and we should not be allowing people to avoid criminal responsibility for death as a consequence of this provision.

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

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

Ayes 63

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

Noes 56

New Zealand National 55; Ross.

Motion agreed to.

The question was put that the amendment set out on Supplementary Order Paper 185 in the name of the Hon Andrew Little to Part 1 be agreed to.

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

Ayes 112

New Zealand National 55; New Zealand Labour 46; New Zealand First 9; ACT New Zealand 1; Ross.

Noes 8

Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 8.

Amendment agreed to.

Part 1 as amended agreed to.

Part 2 Other amendments to principal Act

CHAIRPERSON (Adrian Rurawhe): We now come to the debate on Part 2, clauses 7 to 9, and Schedules 1 and 2.

Hon ANDREW LITTLE (Minister of Justice): Thank you, Mr Chairman. I think the relevant or most important part of Part 2 is what appears in the Schedule to the bill, and that is a clarification that the select committee, after its deliberations, had sought to insert into the bill. In addition to that, there is Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) 192 in the name of the Hon Dr Nick Smith that I want to speak to as well.

Just on that, I know that at the select committee it was a subject of vigorous debate about the application of—or the repeal of—the year and a day rule, and specifically about whether repealing that law but allowing, for example, structures that are in place today and that might, as a result of negligent design or construction, at some point in the future cause death would not be covered, in a sense, by the repeal. That is to say, the defence of the year and the day would still apply. And there was considerable discussion and debate. There was advice obtained about that. And the bill as reported back to the House from the Justice Committee was that even if all members of the committee were somewhat grudging in accepting that, nevertheless the committee did. There is no minority report in the report that came back to the House from the select committee deliberations. And so that is an important point.

But the real point is this—and I come back to Dr Smith’s SOP, because I said in my introductory remarks that I was, and I remain, frankly horrified that the SOP would be put up. I remain even more horrified when I’ve learnt what has happened in just the last few hours. And I’m going to come to that.

There is a very important principle about criminal law and making criminal law and that is the retrospectivity principle—that something that was not criminal today, but about which a law is made next week and is made criminal, does not mean that the action today that was innocent suddenly becomes criminal and therefore the subject of a prosecution. That is a basic principle that this House, this Parliament, every Parliament and liberal democracies and Western democracies around the world have subscribed to since time immemorial, because it is about protection of the citizen from the abuse of power in this House and by those who wield power. And that was considered and debated at the select committee.

The select committee had pointed out to them two very important provisions on our statute book that reaffirm that principle: section 10A of the Crimes Act and section 26 of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. Section 10A of the Crimes Act says, “Notwithstanding any other enactment or rule of law to the contrary, no person shall be liable in any criminal proceedings in respect of any act or omission by him or her if, at the time of the act or omission, the act or omission by him or her did not constitute an offence.” That’s in the Crimes Act right now. Section 26 of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act uses slightly more modernised language—not the language of section 10A—and it says in subsection (1), “No one shall be liable to conviction of any offence on account of any act or omission which did not constitute an offence by such person under the law of New Zealand at the time it occurred.”

But even though those provisions are on our statute book right now, Dr Smith has done an SOP that makes no reference to those provisions, so even if this committee was minded to support Dr Smith’s SOP, and if that SOP appeared on our statute book, it would not be enforceable. The courts would ignore it. The judges would just toss it aside because it is in breach of and in defiance of section 10A of the Crimes Act and section 26 of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. Dr Smith has been here for 27-plus years. He knows about lawmaking. He knows that if you want to overturn longstanding provisions on our statute book through an amendment like that, you actually have to overturn those provisions. He knows that. But he hasn’t done it. And that’s why I get to this point: Dr Smith’s SOP is not just cynical, it is contemptuous, and it’s not just contemptuous of our Crimes Act and our New Zealand Bill of Rights Act, I have to say, sadly, it is contemptuous of the emotions and the feelings of the families who lost loved ones in the CTV Building.

Hon Dr Nick Smith: You lied to them.

CHAIRPERSON (Adrian Rurawhe): The Hon Nick Smith will withdraw and apologise.

Hon Dr Nick Smith: I withdraw and apologise. Point of order, Mr Chairman.

CHAIRPERSON (Adrian Rurawhe): Point of order, the Hon Dr Nick Smith.

Hon Dr Nick Smith: I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. I’d ask you to reflect on the comments by the Minister—and I accept this is an emotional and important issue; we’re talking about the large loss of life that occurred eight years ago—to reflect on the comments he’s just made in questioning my integrity in moving amendments on this part of the bill.

Greg O’Connor: Point of order, Mr Chair.

CHAIRPERSON (Adrian Rurawhe): No, I’m going to deal with this point of order, thank you. I will take some advice on that, Dr Smith. In my opinion, the Minister hasn’t stepped over any line yet but it’s very—as both learned gentlemen know where that line is, I think we’ll carry on with the debate.

Hon ANDREW LITTLE: Thank you, Mr Chairman.

Greg O’Connor: I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. I note that Mr Smith has already been removed from the House for a very similar offence.

CHAIRPERSON (Adrian Rurawhe): Order! Order! That is not a point of order. That issue has been dealt with by the Speaker and it is not to be re-addressed again.

Hon ANDREW LITTLE: In his earlier contribution, Dr Smith described the bill as it is and my actions as spitting in the face of the CTV families. That’s what Dr Smith said. He said that it adds insult to injury. What he’s done is he’s quoted from a media release in the name of the families—and the families I’ve spoken to have not so far endorsed this—that has this quote in it. It says, “We have been badly let down by Justice Minister Andrew Little who committed to repealing this law,”—that’s what we’re doing—“which acts as a potential barrier to prosecution in a situation like the CTV building collapse.” It goes on to say that the House should not pass it in its current form and should adopt Dr Smith’s SOP.

I met with the families on two occasions and they did—they said, “We want to find a way to make a prosecution.” In spite of the advice of the Crown Law Office and the Crown prosecutor in Christchurch and indeed the police, that is their prosecutorial discretion and neither the Attorney-General nor myself as Minister have any power to do anything about that. I explained of course we wanted to repeal the year and a day rule, but there is this retrospectivity principle that is longstanding and it’s enshrined in our law. I had a conversation with the Hon Gerry Brownlee about that, because he had had conversations with a family. And he and I were in agreement that we could repeal the year and a day rule but it would not assist those families in gaining a prosecution.

And I want to speak directly to the families of the CTV victims, because there are media releases, including another media release in the name of Dr Smith, that have gone out tonight that give the impression that if Dr Smith’s SOP was passed, somehow there would be a way to prosecute those who, arguably, caused the deaths of their loved ones in the CTV Building. And I say to the CTV families, you have been very, very badly let down by the engineering profession, by the construction industry, and indeed by the law—not of anybody in this House’s making; it was a law that was on our statute book, it is well out of date and had not been repealed.

But the reality is, in light of the constitutional and criminal law principles that we are bound by, even Dr Smith’s SOP, because it fails to overturn those other provisions, will not make a difference. And that is very difficult to stomach. And I want to say to the CTV families, I’m sorry if others have given you the impression that we can turn the clock back and we can allow a prosecution to proceed. But we cannot.

But we honour you and your loved ones by repealing this law, and those who might otherwise have been the victim of it well into the future will not be in the way that you have been. I hope that you can find peace, and I do say that it is not the job of any member of this House to raise an expectation that this House cannot deliver on. I say to the CTV families who have lost loved ones: this is not a political issue, and there would not be another member of the National Party in this House who would conduct themselves in that way, who would play with your emotions at this very sensitive and difficult time. And to the members of the House I say: there will be grandstanding now by Dr Smith, but that SOP will not achieve what he appears to have tried to lead the families and others to believe it will do, because our law was so very clear. I hope that other members of Dr Smith’s caucus will remind him that this is a House of principle, we apply the rule of law properly, and we make law properly.

Hon Dr NICK SMITH (National—Nelson): What the Minister is failing to do is to focus on the issues of justice, to focus on the issues of the commitments that he made to the families, to focus on making the law so that we have the safest buildings possible in our country, and equally to ensure that the commitments made to the families are honoured. What I heard from the Minister right now was a speech of legal academic and not practice, because here’s the question: if one of the rebuild buildings, of which there are thousands—any one of those buildings, Mr Little, that have been built in Christchurch—in a major earthquake in 30 years’ time pancakes and kills a hundred people, and the engineer, in 30 years’ time, is asked whether he can be prosecuted, what the Minister’s bill says is that that engineer will be able to walk off scot free. Do members of the House really believe that’s just? Do we really want to pass a law that says that, in 30 years’ time, when there’s an earthquake and exactly the same events that occurred over the CTV Building occur, the engineer is going to walk free? And when the officials advised the select committee of that point, I said, “That’s wrong.” I said, “That breaches common sense and it is not right and needs fixing.”

Now, the Minister in the chair pretends that the officials at the committee were opposed to the provision; they actually said the points that I made were very fair—that they were actually morally challenged by the fact that in the future we could have an exact repeat of what occurred with the CTV Building. And here’s what the nub of the issue really comes down to: in 30 years’ time, a major earthquake occurs, and one of the buildings that was designed today collapses and causes the death of a hundred people. The question for Parliament is this: which is the greater injustice? Is the greater injustice that the engineer says, “Oh, but when I designed that building in February of 2019, I thought I could take advantage of the loophole of the one year, one day rule.”? Is that a really awful injustice or is the injustice for the hundred victims who have lost their lives as a consequence of neglectful engineering? That is the question.

The families have been very direct on this, and the Minister in the chair is being disingenuous. He gave an absolute commitment to the families that he would repeal the provision, and he went further—in fact, he’s quoted in the media as saying, “What occurred with the CTV Building will never occur again.” So I’ve got a simple question for the Minister: under the scenario that I paint, where a building designed today collapses in 30 years’ time because of negligent seismic engineering and kills a hundred people, will they get off scot free? Will the Minister answer that question? The Minister is silently looking at his papers because he knows that I’m correct. He knows the advice of his officials, and he knows that, in that circumstance, those families would get off.

Here’s the other point that I’d want to make to the House: surely our focus is to ensure that buildings are safer. No member of this House wants to see a repeat of that tragedy that occurred with the CTV Building in 2011, nearly eight years ago exactly. But here’s the history: five years after that building was built, engineers, including the design engineers, found out that it was deficient but didn’t do anything. So if we can pass and adopt the amendment that I have put forward, ensuring that this one year, one day law does not apply for those buildings that have been designed, it will provide a very strong incentive for any engineer who has been involved in designing a building to ensure that it is fixed.

Well, I’ll say to the Minister—and I am a Fellow of the Institution of Professional Engineers—I’ve probably designed more structures than any other member in this House. I’ll tell you what occurred in both the Kaikōura and the Christchurch earthquakes. Do you know what a technical person like myself does? You spend a month designing a building; you have a major earthquake; you actually want to go and see how it performed. How did it go? And what we will do by ensuring this provision—this loophole—does not operate into the future is provide an incentive for any engineer who’s involved in designing a building who subsequently realises that it has got deficiencies. They will have a duty of care under this Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) to ensure that that building is fixed.

I want to correct an absolutely false statement that was made by the Minister. He has claimed that my SOP, my press release, and my discussions with families have pretended that it would enable prosecution of the engineers who were involved in the CTV Building. Minister, that’s wrong, that’s disingenuous, that’s not in the families’ press release, it’s not in my press release, and it’s not in the SOP that I’ve tabled.

Let me read exactly what the SOP says, Minister: “To avoid doubt, the repeal of section 162 applies to any death that occurs after the Crimes Amendment Act 2019 comes into force.” So what does that say? That says any death that occurs from here. That’s in “after this law is passed”. Well, what the Minister is saying is this—and let’s be quite clear about it—let’s say in August this year there is a major earthquake and a building collapses and people die, the engineers responsible for that death should still be able to get off on the basis of the anachronistic one year, one day law. He shakes his head. So, under his provision, does he dispute the advice of officials that, for all those buildings—on my count, Minister, 4,300 buildings have been built in Christchurch during the rebuild. Should the engineers for those 4,300 buildings enjoy the loophole of the one year, one day law?

The Minister’s provision says, “Yes.” He says that all those engineers should be able to get off. Does the Minister not accept the advice of his officials? For those 4,300 buildings that have been built in Christchurch since 22 February in the rebuild, will the one year, one day rule apply, Minister? Yes or no. The silence is deafening. Doesn’t the Parliament deserve an answer? Wouldn’t you, if you were a person in Christchurch, want to know whether the one year, one day law applied to the 4,300 buildings that have been built in Christchurch to replace those that were damaged or demolished in the Christchurch earthquake? And the Minister won’t give the people of Christchurch a straight answer, because do you know what the straight answer is? He’s leaving the loophole open, and leaving that loophole open is wrong, Minister. It’s unjust. You have become a slave to the law and have forgotten about justice. That’s what the families are saying. That’s what I’m saying to you.

Now, in respect of the issue of retrospectivity, I have heard, Minister, a hundred arguments in this Parliament around where provisions are retrospective and not. It would be retrospective if this Parliament was proposing to pass a law to backtrack and to prosecute the likes of Mr Harding and Mr Reay, who built the CTV Building. That would be retrospective. This SOP does not do that. This bill, under my SOP, will apply only to deaths that occur after the Parliament has passed this law. And I say again to the Minister that he needs to weigh up, in a sensible sense of justice, what is the greater issue. My argument is that there is no engineer in New Zealand who expects the ongoing protection of this archaic loophole. There isn’t an engineer you’ll find who’s relying on that protection. And what the Minister is doing is allowing his commitment to families to be broken—even worse, he is breaking that commitment in the very week that they are going through the grief of the eighth anniversary—and at the same time he is compromising the safety of the seismic standards by not providing for the obligation on engineers to ensure that buildings are safe. So I again say to the Minister: try justice not—[Time expired]

Hon ANDREW LITTLE (Minister of Justice): I take the opportunity to respond to the honourable member’s questions such as they were posed in his speech. It was not appropriate, when he posed a question, for me to be shouting over the top of him, as he seemed to be expecting. I go back to the point I made earlier: if that member was serious about overturning the longstanding principle we have about retrospectivity, enshrined in section 10A of the Crimes Act and enshrined in section 26 of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act, his Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) would have been drafted to do that—to exclude those enshrined provisions—but he didn’t. He didn’t because he has said to the families, “I am going to use you for my political fodder. I am going to play with your emotions—

Hon Dr Nick Smith: I raise a point of order, Madam Chairperson. I take grievous offence at the assertion by the Minister that my motivation on this issue, as both a Fellow of the Institution of Professional Engineers, is anything other than ensuring that we have the most just law and that we have the most safe law on the serious issue of seismic safety.

CHAIRPERSON (Poto Williams): Dr Smith, I understand that there’s been a lot of heightened emotion during the course of this debate, and I can understand on both sides that we probably have toned it up a little too high. This is a very serious matter. It has the potential to be a very emotional matter. So I would suggest to both parties in this discussion that we actually take a much more professional approach. I believe that the families at the heart of this particular discussion deserve no less.

Hon Dr Nick Smith: I raise a point of order, Madam Chairperson. The Standing Orders are very clear that if a member takes offence—and I take absolute offence at the Minister’s assertion that I have moved this Supplementary Order Paper on the basis of exploiting victims of the CTV disaster. I take offence at that, and the Standing Orders are very clear that if a member takes offence, the member who has made those offensive remarks needs to withdraw them. The Standing Orders are very clear.

CHAIRPERSON (Poto Williams): Indeed they are—indeed they are. There is also the provision for the House to take offence, and what I’m saying to you, Dr Smith, is that this is a very emotive discussion at the moment. What I’m suggesting is that perhaps we all just take a deep breath and come back to the matter at hand rather than heighten further the emotions in this particular debate. There is a provision within the Standing Orders for the House to take offence. I’m suggesting we’re getting close to that, but in this case I have not taken offence at that. I would encourage the Minister to be a little more respectful of the discussion.

Hon ANDREW LITTLE: I’m obliged, Madam Chair. I do point out that I have been accused of making a promise to the families that I have not kept, which is equally outrageous too. This is a sensitive matter and, as I said before, those families and others—you think of Cave Creek as well—who have been victims, who have lost loved ones as a result of other people’s failures, about which nothing was done subsequently, this law hasn’t helped.

My promise to the families and to their legal counsel was: we will repeal the law. But tragically, regrettably, and unfortunately, we cannot do anything to wind the clock back to give us grounds to prosecute. They are entitled to feel totally let down by the system, totally let down by the engineering profession and those who were responsible for that tragic, tragic event. I remember it well, because I was on Cashel Street on 22 February 2011, hundreds of metres up the road from the CTV Building. I remember that day well. And I remember the horror that I and my colleagues I was with at the time saw when we saw a building that was standing only minutes before was pretty much gone—was gone. I’ve met the families and we’ve had that discussion, and it hasn’t been an easy discussion for them, but as representatives, as lawmakers, we can only do what we can do within our legal conventions and with the requirements upon us.

Now, of course it would be nice for those who have been victims of great tragedies, tragedies that have actually been the responsibility of the failed actions of individuals—but we cannot provide recourse, historical recourse, in every case. I’ve had that discussion with members opposite, principally with the Hon Gerry Brownlee, and we agreed. If that member wanted to overturn the conventions that bind us and that bind judges when they interpret law, he would have put it in his Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) 192, but it has arrived late and that isn’t there.

It is a matter of great regret, but this House has to act in accordance with the rule of law itself. That’s what gives credibility to the laws that this House passes. And even if that law were passed, it would have no effect, and anybody who says otherwise would be misleading those who might hold out some hope. So I say that that SOP that that member has put up will make no difference. You would have to say that at a technical level there was no need for the clarifying point in the Schedule to the Act, which is part of Part 2, but it is there because members wanted it, and clearly it was the subject of great debate at the select committee. But it is there and it states what the law is. It states the principle of the rule of law and it echoes what those principles are that are enshrined in the Crimes Act and the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act, and the SOP does nothing to change them. The SOP would have no effect. So there is no basis on which this committee could conceivably and in good conscience and acting in good faith support that SOP.

CHRIS PENK (National—Helensville): Thank you very much, Madam Chair. Allow me to start by offering my condolences to all who had been involved in that tragedy and, no doubt, remain involved emotionally through the loss of loved ones. May I also say that I understand clearly the arguments on both sides in relation to the issues at stake regarding retrospectivity in the criminal law and also the requirements of justice more generally, as set out very passionately by the Hon Dr Nick Smith.

I want to make a contribution that is somewhat technical in nature, in good faith and sincerely, in the hope that we can understand more clearly together what is in fact being proposed. Particularly, Madam Chair, I ask the Minister, through you, to consider—and, obviously, consult with his officials if he sees fit—the nature of retrospectivity that he cited in the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act, that section 26. It precludes people from becoming liable for conviction of acts or omissions that were not offences at the time they were committed. What we’re actually talking about here is an act or omission in a faulty design of engineering, and we’re using the Christchurch CTV Building as an example. But that act or omission of designing the building in a faulty way such as to cause death is already now, and was back then and will remain, an act which is criminal in nature.

So what is being repealed here in the Crimes Amendment Bill, which is the year and a day rule, so-called, is effectively a defence against the consequences of having done that criminal act. We are not, in other words, saying that something that is not criminal today will be criminal the day after the legislation is enacted. We are merely saying, in effect, that a defence is being removed. So the retrospectivity both in section 26 of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act and section 10A of the Crimes Act is actually such that the retrospectivity preclusion that the Minister has referred to would not in fact be engaged, in my view. So when the Minister says that the retrospectivity elements elsewhere in our law would need to be overturned, I don’t believe that is true because, as I say, the act or omission at stake here, that will continue to be at stake in other such situations, is already a criminal act, whether that be murder, manslaughter, or other

I don’t need to take up the full five minutes, but I did want to make that contribution because I believe in good faith that it will be helpful to us all to understand, and I would genuinely welcome a response from the Minister on that point. I will, just for the sake of completeness, say that of course if it were the case, even if I were wrong on that point—arguing in the alternative, essentially—the fact that New Zealand Bill of Rights Act precludes something does not in itself mean that the courts wouldn’t enforce the new section, as it would become if Dr Smith’s Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) 192 were successful, because, of course, the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act isn’t supreme in that way. At most they would issue a declaration of inconsistency if they saw fit.

The other provision in the Crimes Act would be more problematic, but for what it’s worth that would be relatively easily disposed of, and I appreciate that the words “despite section 10A” aren’t in the SOP, but for the sake of making as complete a technical contribution as I’m able, I do note for the committee that that would be an option open to it. So, on that note, I’ll finish there, but I would very much welcome a comment on the retrospectivity of acts and omissions versus criminality of acts under the criminal law as it currently stands.

LAWRENCE YULE (National—Tukituki): It’s a pleasure to speak to this and I do so with reverence and sympathy to the situation we find ourselves in, in this committee. I want to acknowledge the contributions of the Hon Andrew Little and the contributions of the Hon Dr Nick Smith. As an engineer myself, as somebody who knew the engineer that designed the CTV Building, and as somebody that has watched with great interest, the challenge really for us in this Parliament is not the difference between what the Minister thinks and what Dr Smith thinks. The real challenge for this Parliament is: can we do something about it? In reality the one year and one day provision means that if negligence occurs within one year and one day, there are potentially criminal charges liable, but if negligence occurs at one year and two days, then under the previous provisions that would effectively mean you could get off those criminal charges.

Now, I’m not a lawyer like many in this House are, and the contribution of Chris Penk, I think, was very succinct on the issue we’re talking about. What we’re really dealing with is buildings that are designed right up until this bill gets Royal assent, and the fact that they will still be covered by the one year, one day provision. That’s my reading of what’s said. Those 4,000 buildings are still covered. As Dr Smith said—and I understand the significant emotion—in 30 years’ time, if the same incident occurred as happened in Christchurch, that same provision could be used to null and void the negligence and criminality that goes with that. With respect, Minister, what I’m seeking from this committee is: is there a way, considering the Bill of Rights Act, considering the significance you have, rightly, told the committee about of section 10A, that we can deal with that somehow? And if it can’t be dealt with here tonight, I think it is of such significance that this bill should be delayed until we can find a solution.

Now, Minister, you shake your head. I’m not a lawyer and I’m not the Attorney-General. I get that. But what I’m saying is that we have told the families we can’t fix what happened in terms of negligence and the law. We have told them that. Dr Smith is not trying to go back there. He is trying to talk about what happens in the future. And as a member of Parliament, as a member of Parliament sitting here tonight, I am trying to find a solution as to how we deal with the buildings that have been built from since the CTV collapse until the Royal assent is gained on this piece of legislation as it’s listed.

Because what, as I read it, this legislation says is that that provision which gives an opt-out for negligence after one year and one day will apply to all the buildings that have been designed and built from the Christchurch earthquake until the passing of the Royal assent. Now, Minister, if you are going to stand up, and I invite you to—not in a challenge—and if you say to this House “We can’t do it and there is no legal provision.”—

Kieran McAnulty: He’s said that.

LAWRENCE YULE: —then, yes. But I’m not sure we’ve explored all options, because what I’ve heard from the Minister, Mr McNulty, is comments about what Dr Nick Smith is saying that are different from what he’s proposing. Nobody is trying to go back for retrospectivity for the people that, unfortunately, lost their lives. What this committee and I are particularly interested in is seeing if there is a solution, using the best legal minds we have in this Parliament and the advice we’ve got, to find a way. Because otherwise we are simply waiting and we have given all those engineers an opt-out provision from the time of the Christchurch earthquakes to the time of the Royal assent. My question to the Minister is: is there any way possible, considering the significant loss of life, considering all the investigations we’re doing at the likes of Pike River and things—is there any way possible we can solve this dilemma?

Hon Dr NICK SMITH (National—Nelson): There’s a very important question that the Minister in the chair needs to answer for this Parliament, to answer for the people of New Zealand, and to answer for the CTV families. I’ve asked it twice, my colleague has just asked it, and it is critical and may well be the subject of a royal commission of inquiry and other discussions in the future: will the one year and one day exemption be available to an engineer who has badly designed any of the 4,200 buildings built in the Christchurch rebuild?

The officials told the select committee they would be exempted and that they would be able to use that loophole. I ask again—for the Minister; he’s been nodding his head and giving all sorts of answers—why can he not answer that critical question for the people of Canterbury? Isn’t the silence deafening? Isn’t that a question that my colleagues would like the answer to? Wouldn’t the half a million people who live in Canterbury and went through the Canterbury earthquakes and have seen their city demolished and rebuilt—haven’t they seen all the tears and emotion that the CTV families—don’t they deserve an answer, Minister? Why can you not simply answer the question: will your law allow the loophole that resulted in the injustice for the CTV families to be repeated in future with a similar scenario to the CTV families’? The answer is yes, the answer is that that is wrong, and that is why the law should be changed.

Let’s just go through the scenario of the buildings. We’ve got one group of the buildings, like CTV and the Pyne Gould Corporation buildings and the like, that were built and have failed. Nobody in this Parliament is arguing that you could rewrite those laws for where people have previously died. Nobody’s suggesting that. But you have this massive group of buildings that have been built since the earthquakes, before this law has passed, and the key question is: will this loophole be available for those buildings? Our view is no, they should not. Members opposite are saying that rule—the loophole—should continue for those buildings. If we take nationwide, Minister, we’re talking over 220,000 buildings.

Of course, I acknowledge there is no question that for buildings that are designed after the passage of this law—they’re buildings that will be starting to be constructed in 2020 and beyond—quite rightly, the loophole does not apply. But, actually, whether that loophole is available to those 220,000 buildings around New Zealand is absolutely a pertinent point on which this Minister has it wrong.

Now, the Minister has said, well, you can’t do what I propose in my Supplementary Order Paper because it might breach the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. Well, actually, he’s been responsible in passing in a waka-hopping law that breached the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. We have a bill before the House right now on euthanasia that members will be debating which, we’re advised, breaches the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act because it discriminates against 16- and 17-year-olds when the age should be 18. That is not a legal impediment. Parliament is sovereign; Parliament is able to deal with that.

Let’s further deal with the issue of section 10 of the Crimes Act. At the very core of the Minister’s claim is that it is not an unlawful act to build a building that is seismically flawed, resulting in death. Actually, it is. Absolutely, it is. Here’s the silliness: the silliness is that if I as an engineer design a building today and it fails on the 364th day and kills a hundred people, I’m in the gun. But just by the anomaly of this archaic law, if it happens to be 367 days, I’m free. So it is a crime right now—criminally negligent for an engineer to build a building. So the argument he poses in respect of both section 10 and the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act is incorrect.

Let us be in absolutely no doubt: the Minister gave a commitment to the CTV families that said the CTV injustice would never occur again, and what we know with this Government’s policy is that for 220,000 buildings, if any of them are badly designed, they can still use this loophole and that injustice is repeated.

Hon ANDREW LITTLE (Minister of Justice): Thank you, Madam Chair. The couple of questions arising out of those last two contributions—Mr Penk raises, with his highly analytical view about section 10, whether or not it is about an act or omission. What it is about, and what section 10A of the Crimes Act and section 26 of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act are getting at, is that someone who is not criminally liable today for something—for a failure on their part, an act of negligence—which later causes a death, cannot be or should not be, through dint of passing a law, made criminally liable later. That’s the retrospectivity principle. So that is what is being applied here. In relation to Dr Smith, who—

Hon Dr Nick Smith: Can you answer the fundamental question?

CHAIRPERSON (Poto Williams): Order! Dr Smith, you’ve had sufficient time—order!

Hon Dr Nick Smith: Point of order.

CHAIRPERSON (Poto Williams): Dr Smith, no. Resume your seat, Dr Smith. You’ve had sufficient time.

Hon Dr Nick Smith: I raise a point of order, Madam Chair. One of the most important functions of the committee stages is for members to be able to ask questions of the Minister.

CHAIRPERSON (Poto Williams): And you have done so, and the Minister is attempting to answer those questions. They may or may not be to your satisfaction; however, you must give the Minister an opportunity—

Hon Dr Nick Smith: No. I and, actually, four of my colleagues have asked exactly the same question as to whether the loophole will apply—

CHAIRPERSON (Poto Williams): And as I say, Dr Smith—

Hon Dr Nick Smith: —to the 4,200 buildings.

CHAIRPERSON (Poto Williams): Dr Smith, as I say, they may or may not be to your satisfaction; however, the Minister is attempting to answer those questions. Now, when we come back to giving the calls to the committee, I will expect for us to be traversing some other arguments. We’ve covered this sufficiently. The Minister is attempting to answer the questions you have put to him. I call the Hon Andrew Little.

Hon ANDREW LITTLE: Thank you, Madam Chair. The Hon Dr Smith raises the point—he’s posed the question, the question that was put at the select committee too, and he got the response. That is the tragedy about why leaving it until now to repeal this law when it could have been done earlier—good grief, that member, I think, was in Parliament at the time of Cave Creek. Why wasn’t it done then? Nobody on that side of the House took an ounce of effort to repeal this insidious law. We have done so. The great tragedy is that we cannot turn the clock back and we cannot make people who we would like to have thought were criminally liable yesterday criminally liable tomorrow. That is not the way we make criminal law in this country. We have never made it that way. The real question that Dr Smith is really trying to pose is: will his Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) enable the CTV families to get something they cannot get? And it won’t. That’s the tragedy of his SOP; it is about raising false hope. If that’s the impression that he is intending to give—that he appears to have given, if you look at the statements from the representatives of the family—that is just compounding tragedy upon tragedy and, I would say, is reckless for a member of Parliament.

Hon Dr Nick Smith: I seek the leave of the committee, given that the Minister in the chair has made false statements about the CTV families group, to be able to table their statement that makes it absolutely plain that they have no expectation of my Supplementary Order Paper enabling the prosecution of the engineers responsible for the CTV building, but that it would make a reassurance that that would not occur. So I seek leave to table the statement that’s been made today by the CTV families group, dated 20 February 2019.

CHAIRPERSON (Poto Williams): Leave is sought for that purpose. Is there any objection? There appears to be none. That can be so tabled.

Document, by leave, laid on the Table of the House.

Hon ANDREW LITTLE: Thank you, Madam Chair. I refer, as I did in my earlier contribution, to the critical sentence in that statement, which is: “We have been badly let down by Justice Minister Andrew Little who committed to repealing this law, which acts as a potential barrier to prosecution in a situation like the CTV building collapse.” Yet in my conversations with them, I have been very clear, as indeed the Hon Gerry Brownlee has been, that we can repeal the law but it will not change the situation for the CTV families. I think members here and members of the public are entitled to therefore ask why, at this late stage, Dr Smith has tabled his Supplementary Order Paper—what would he be trying to achieve? Why did he go to the media before I had even taken a call in this debate earlier this afternoon and tell journalists what I had apparently said? And I hadn’t said anything. I think members who know the full facts of what has happened in the last few hours are entitled to smell a rat—entitled to smell a rat.

I think that however difficult it is to deal, when we are repealing this part of the law, with the tragedy of what we cannot achieve with it, we should do it in honour of those. Those members know—that member yelling out to me from his leather-clad benches knows. For someone who for years has lectured this House on constitutional principle—I spent 20 hours being lectured by him on the Electoral (Integrity) Amendment Bill when that was going through—

CHAIRPERSON (Poto Williams): Order!

Hon ANDREW LITTLE: The bluff and bluster and carry on—but those principles are important. When it comes to criminal law, we do not make somebody a criminal tomorrow who was not a criminal yesterday. That is the principle. Tragic as it is, there are people who may have done negligent things in the past which we won’t know about till the future, and we may not be able to get recourse, at least if there is a death. We can still prosecute them for criminal negligence. We can still prosecute them for other things, but not if they fall within this in relation to a death. That is what being a responsible MP in this House means.

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

Hon IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY (Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety): I raise a point of order, Madam Chairperson. I would like to invite you to reflect on and possibly provide the committee with a ruling with regard to the way in which the Hon Dr Nick Smith made his last point of order. I raise two issues with it: first, the fact that he interrupted the Minister to seek leave to table a document. I believe that is disorderly. It is normal practice of the House to wait until a member has completed their call to seek leave to table a document. But second, and what concerned me more, was the fact that he used a point of order to make an assertion against the Minister. I don’t expect an immediate ruling or opinion, but I invite you to consider and potentially make a ruling to the committee.

CHAIRPERSON (Poto Williams): Thank you. I thank the member for that. I just want to caution all of the members—you can resume your seat, Mr Stuart Smith. I’ve said this before: this is a very sensitive matter. We don’t need to have interjections or points of order taken that potentially score points. This is a very sensitive matter, and I ask everyone to take the matter a little more professionally. Thank you, Hon Iain Lees-Galloway. I will take that on advisement. I’m not going to make a ruling on that at this point. Before I call Stuart Smith, I am going to suggest we start traversing some other areas of Part 2, because we have well and truly completed, in my view, the discussion on the Supplementary Order Paper in the Hon Dr Nick Smith’s name.

STUART SMITH (National—Kaikōura): Well, thank you, Madam Chair, but I want to just finish on this particular point, because I have a different angle on it. We are all very sorry for what happened in Christchurch with the CTV Building, but none of us here are attempting to go back and re-prosecute that particular issue. However, I think the point has been made about the buildings that have been built since and the buildings that were built before that in other parts of this country.

I met with the group who have written a report on the Hikurangi subduction zone. I’ve had quite a bit to do with the project Alpine Fault Magnitude 8 group. We have two very clear and present dangers in New Zealand: not climate change; it is the Hikurangi subduction zone and the Alpine Fault. Both of those will go, probably in the lifetime of everyone in this room, and the buildings across New Zealand that could have been built 100 years ago, could have been built 10 years ago, or could have been built two years ago will likely collapse—some of them, at least—in either or both of those events. When that happens, if the building has been built correctly, then it’s an act of God. If there has been negligence or omission in the construction of those buildings, then we will end up with people just like the CTV victims’ families, who will be sitting there saying, “Just because it occurred a year and one day after that building was constructed, then the negligent person gets away with it.”

The offence occurred the day the construction was completed, and that time limit of one year and one day is a nonsense. Now, I accept the Minister Andrew Little’s view, and I also accept my colleague Chris Penk’s view, who has a different view on the legal niceties of it, or intricacies of it. However, I will say this to the Minister: with the Canterbury Earthquakes Insurance Tribunal Bill, the officials, on the legal niceties and that, did a 180 on their legal view as the hearings progressed. Officials have their own Sir Humphrey moments and they do need to be challenged.

Now, I am not sure which way that would end, but if, let’s say for example, the Minister is correct and Supplementary Order Paper 192, in the way it is, won’t work—let’s make it right, now. We are going to end up at some point in the future where none of us will take any pleasure in saying we warned you. All of us are responsible in this committee, debating this piece of legislation which has a significant potential impact on everyone’s lives in New Zealand, and I urge you to rethink. That’s all I have to say on this matter.

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS (Minister of Energy and Resources): I don’t want to take a very long call. I just want to make a call to remind people that we are coming up to the eighth anniversary of the first quakes in Christchurch. This is a particularly hard time for many of the families associated with the CTV. It is a hard time indeed for many of the people in Canterbury, where we reflect on events that took place where there was loss of life in Canterbury.

I’m disturbed by some of the comments that we’re hearing in this committee tonight. I can sometimes reflect on when this committee can rise above that and this committee can work in a way that is constructive. I reflect on the work that went through with the earthquake-prone buildings, where we could actually decide that there were some changes that needed to be made for the protection of all New Zealanders. This committee can rise above that. I remind members of the Opposition that that is the kind of thing that we should be doing here.

I’d like to congratulate the Minister of Justice. I have been at meetings with the CTV families with both the Minister of Justice and the Prime Minister, where they have fronted up to some incredibly upset family members who lost members in a tragedy, and had a very frank and raw discussion about what happened and what needed to be fixed. I congratulate the Minister of Justice. We have been in Government for 16 months. This has been an identified problem since the CTV Building, for eight or nine years now. The Minister of Justice has worked to fix this.

I’d remind members opposite that, actually, the date of the Royal assent would be a different matter if this law had been passed earlier. We wouldn’t be having this debate in this way. This is not new information; it is something that has been talked about for some time. The court case that came to a conclusion in late 2017 around the application of the year and a day rule was not a revelation; it was an issue that has been identified for a number of years in Canterbury. I just implore members of this committee, as we approach this special and hard day in Canterbury, not to politicise what is a tragedy and what many families suffered from. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Hon DAVID BENNETT (National—Hamilton East): Thank you, Madam Chair. I’d just like to follow from that speech and just echo those strong words that the Minister relayed to the committee, and also Stuart Smith’s intentions as well. Seeing the Minister in the chair, Andrew Little—he definitely is wanting to understand and work through those issues as well, so I don’t think there’s any problem in the committee with that. I think everyone’s got the right intentions around this room. The question then becomes: are we willing to do the next step of actually making it work? And the Hon Nick Smith has raised a particular solution that would enable that to happen.

I understand that the Minister in the chair is reverting back to the principle of retrospectivity in law and the difficulty of that. However, this is not a case where the offence is easily identifiable in that people would be caught, as typically would be the case in retrospectivity. This is a case where you’re futureproofing New Zealanders and the law for any situation that could arise in the future from activities that have been taken in the past. One of the key things that overrides retrospectivity in our law is intention, and that is a much more important part of our legal system—the intent of someone. This law does not actually enable the intent to be considered because of the strict time frame.

Nobody is intending to build a building that would create the dilemma we are talking about, but there are often cases of negligence in these situations. So I believe that the retrospectivity that we’re talking about in the committee is actually trumped in this case by looking at the intention, or the lack of intention, and the ability to do a negligence in the case of a building around that. So I just express to the Minister to think more broadly around broader legal concepts, rather than just the strict ones that I know he’s standing behind. I fully understand his argument in regard to it, and fully comprehend and welcome it, but I think that there is a broader concept in the law that actually would overtake it.

The other part of that is actually the actual pub test. You know, you could say—

Kieran McAnulty: Pub test?

Hon DAVID BENNETT: —for individuals out there, they would actually expect that whether it’s yesterday or today or whatever time, the law would apply. We have the ability in this House at this moment to actually do what the public would expect. They wouldn’t expect a rule like that to apply.

What I’m saying, Mr McAnulty, is that every genuine person out there would expect that there would not be a period of time where no offence had been identified, but that if an event that came in the future identified that there had been a problem, the law of this country would protect that person at that time. It’s not something that we’re passing, knowing that we’re going to capture anybody; it’s something we’re passing to protect people from situations that may arise that they would genuinely be expected to be protected from by this Parliament.

The opportunity is here. Regardless of who’s put it up, it’s come along. It’s here now, and we’ve got a crossroads whether we do the right thing for the New Zealand public, and what they would expect, or we hide behind—not meaning that the Minister is hiding behind it—or we use some legal concepts which are relevant and are practical but could be overturned by this House actually being more practical and reasonable for what people would expect and endeavour to see this Parliament do. Also, I think there are more general legal principles that do override the retrospectivity, and this is a unique case where you’re not looking at something you know has happened in the past; we are dealing with something that will happen in the future, and it’s a matter of whether we present the law enabling New Zealanders to be protected in that case.

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

CHAIRPERSON (Poto Williams): One more.

Hon Dr NICK SMITH (National—Nelson): Madam Chair, I wish to respond to three specific points that have been made by the Government. But, first, I want to reflect on the comment that was made that we should not be having this contentious debate in the week of the anniversary of the earthquakes, which is challenging. My view—to the member opposite, to Megan Woods—is this: the families have made plain their view that they do not support the Government on this. I was shocked, surprised, and disappointed that the Government chose to advance this legislation in this week. I would much prefer—I say to Minister Woods—that we were not debating the bill this week. That was entirely in the hands of the Government, and I assure Megan Woods the families are deeply disappointed that the Government would attempt to progress this bill in that very week.

The second point I wish to raise is that members opposite have asserted that I should have raised these issues in the select committee. The Minister went so far as to say that there was no minority report or report from National in the select committee report. So I’ll read it to him: “National members view the year and a day rule as a loophole. Having accepted this law as wrong in the past—for example, [in the case of] Cave Creek, … CTV [or] the Pike … mine for prosecution to be limited by this provision—they do not think it is acceptable to apply the provision for any act of negligence that has occurred in the past but may not come to be tested until … the bill is passed. They are concerned that [they] will be another tragedy in which people will be able to use this loophole to avoid accountability, and believe this is a stronger argument than the more pure legal argument about retrospectivity.”

How can it be more explicit? How can the Minister stand in this House and say members should have raised it in the select committee and that it was not covered in the report. Absolutely, it is. The Minister misled the House and was incorrect on that point.

CHAIRPERSON (Poto Williams): Order! Dr Smith.

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: Well, the Minister made the assertion that there was no minority report or comment from National. That was incorrect. He misled the House.

Hon Andrew Little: I raise a point of order, Madam Chairperson. I said there is no minority report; there is no minority report. I was at pains to point out the issue had been debated and canvassed well in the select committee. I only said there was no minority report. Unfortunately, Dr Smith has once again embellished something to make an assertion, and he is simply not correct—and he himself is in breach of Standing Orders—when he says I have misled the House. I’ve done no such thing.

CHAIRPERSON (Poto Williams): Actually, that wasn’t technically a point of order. That was a debating point. Could we bring this matter to a conclusion.

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: No. We’re going to respond to the points that have been raised, quite properly, by Ministers. Again, the Minister is being cute. Let me tell you why: the Justice Committee is evenly divided. It has five National members; it has five Labour members. How can a committee that has five Labour and five National have a minority? So when the Minister in the chair says there is no minority report, of course there can’t be. There can only be a National members report and a Labour members report, and that just further shows how disingenuous the Minister is being in respect to—

CHAIRPERSON (Poto Williams): Let’s bring this matter to a close, Dr Smith. We have traversed these issues.

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: No. Actually, Madam Chair, I’m allowed to respond to the point the Minister has made, and I wish to make a third point, because he has—

CHAIRPERSON (Poto Williams): At my discretion, Dr Smith—at my discretion.

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: I will absolutely speak to the points the Minister has made, particularly when he misleads the position of the families. The Minister has claimed—

CHAIRPERSON (Poto Williams): I am saying this once more, Dr Smith. We have traversed this several times.

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: I raise a point of order, Madam Chairperson. I noticed that the clock is continuing to decline—

CHAIRPERSON (Poto Williams): Yes. That’s correct.

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: —and did during the point where Andrew Little made a non - point of order, and so I ask that the clock enable me to have my five-minute contribution.

CHAIRPERSON (Poto Williams): We are actually, Dr Smith, timing it. You have about another minute and 10 seconds—2 minutes 30, I apologise. We are counting up to 2 minutes 30. We have reset the clock.

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: Thank you, Madam Chair.

CHAIRPERSON (Poto Williams): Caution. Caution—listen to the words that I have expressed.

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: The Minister in the chair asserted that the statement from the families meant that they had been misled that my amendment and our criticism and concern of this bill would enable the prosecution of the engineers that were responsible for the CTV Building. So I can only read the full statement that was made by the families that the Minister in the chair has misrepresented. They said this: “We have been badly let down by Justice Minister Andrew Little, who committed to repealing this law, which acts as a potential barrier to prosecution in a situation like the CTV Building collapse.”—in a situation like the CTV Building collapse.

The Minister’s assertion that the families had been, in their statement, claiming that the changes around the specific provision would have enabled the CTV engineers to be prosecuted is just a false statement by the Minister.

CHAIRPERSON (Poto Williams): This is repetitious now, Dr Smith.

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: Sorry?

CHAIRPERSON (Poto Williams): It is repetitious now, Dr Smith. I’ve given you several—

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: Well, no, it is a—

CHAIRPERSON (Poto Williams): No. Excuse me. I’m the one that actually makes the determination whether this is repetitious or not.

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: Well I think it’s extremely serious when the Minister of Justice deliberately misrepresents what the CTV families—

CHAIRPERSON (Poto Williams): Regardless of that. You have got about 20 seconds left of this call to make some further arguments or else I’m going to finish the call.

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: I would seek the support of the committee because Supplementary Order Paper 192 in my name is about justice, not about academic legal provision. It’s about the Government honouring its commitments that it has made to the CTV families. It’s about, as David Bennett so accurately said, taking a common-sense view of the law and not a theoretical view of the law.

CLAYTON MITCHELL (NZ First): I move, That the question be now put.

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

Ayes 63

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

Noes 56

New Zealand National 55; Ross.

Motion agreed to.

The question was put that the amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 185 in the name of the Hon Andrew Little to Part 2 be agreed to.

Amendments agreed to.

CHAIRPERSON (Poto Williams): The question is that Part 2, as amended, stand part.

Hon Dr Nick Smith: I raise a point of order, Madam Assistant Chair. The amendments include the SOP in my name.

CHAIRPERSON (Poto Williams): That’s correct. If the member would resume his seat, we will get to those provisions. Thank you.

Part 2 as amended agreed to.

The question was put that the amendment set out on Supplementary Order Paper 192 in the name of the Hon Dr Nick Smith to Schedule 1 to replace clause 2 of new Schedule 1AA be agreed to.

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

Ayes 56

New Zealand National 55; Ross.

Noes 63

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

Amendment not agreed to.

Schedule 1 agreed to.

Schedule 2 agreed to.

Clauses 1 to 3

Hon Dr NICK SMITH (National—Nelson): We are being asked to support the Crimes Amendment Bill as the name for this bill. The disappointment that members on this side of the Chamber have is that this Crimes Amendment Bill, under that name, will not meet the expectations that people would have. We would suggest that the bill with a title something like “Crimes Amendment Broken Promises to the CTV Families” would be a more appropriate title, given the Government’s decisions on the committee stage of this bill.

A further possible title that would have considerable merit would be the “Crimes Amendment Bill Allow the Loophole for the Next Hundred Years”; it would be an appropriate title.

CHAIRPERSON (Poto Williams): Do not try my patience, Dr Smith.

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: Because that is indeed—well, Madam Chairperson, I’ve seen you give speeches in this House on titles that say exactly those things about the content of the title of a bill. The reality of this bill is it’s going to allow the legal anachronistic loophole to survive on our law books for more than a hundred years for buildings that have been built this month. And, as such, we think that that should be recognised in the title of this bill.

We could also refer to the bill as the “Crimes Amendment Bill Putting Law Ahead of Justice” because what this bill does is take such a narrow view of the law, a very lawyer-ish view of the law, rather than a common-sense view of the law that we think New Zealanders would want.

A possible other title that this bill could have would be the “Crimes Amendment Allowing Another Repeat of the CTV Injustice” because, in practice, that is what—

Kieran McAnulty: I raise a point of order, Madam Chairperson. I looked at Speakers’ rulings 114/6, which clearly state that an amendment to the title of the bill must be a serious or objective description of the bill rather than an attempt to criticise its contents, and I suggest that’s exactly what that member is doing.

CHAIRPERSON (Poto Williams): Thank you. I thank the member for that. I am trying to get their point across to the Hon Dr Nick Smith.

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: I raise a point of order, Madam Chairperson. I actually checked the Hansard, and there are many, many speeches that have been given, including by the member in the Chair.

CHAIRPERSON (Poto Williams): That may be so, Dr Smith. However, you cannot bring me into the—

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: All I simply ask—

CHAIRPERSON (Poto Williams): Dr Smith, my patience is absolutely exhausted at this point. If you challenge me one more time, I will be asking you to leave the Chamber. Now, Dr Smith, I’m on my feet, and you will not get to your feet. Is that clear—do I make myself clear, Dr Smith.

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: Madam Chair, it’s sometimes unclear as to when you’re sitting down.

CHAIRPERSON (Poto Williams): Look, I’m absolutely tempted to have you leave the Chamber, Dr Smith, because you have tried my patience. You have been trivial in terms of the matters, and you’ve been trivialising my rulings.

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: Madam Chair, I meant you no disrespect—

CHAIRPERSON (Poto Williams): I’m not asking you a question—

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: Madam Chair, I mean you no disrespect. When I attempted to stand up—

CHAIRPERSON (Poto Williams): You certainly are. Dr Smith—

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: When I stood up—

CHAIRPERSON (Poto Williams): Dr Smith, that is enough. You can leave the Chamber—I’ve had enough. Dr Smith—

Hon Dr Nick Smith: I meant you no disrespect. I thought you were sitting down, and that’s why I attempted to stand up.

CHAIRPERSON (Poto Williams): You continue to backchat, Dr Smith.

Hon IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY (Deputy Leader of the House): I move, That the question be now put.

Hon DAVID BENNETT (National—Hamilton East): Thank you, Madam Chair. I—

CHAIRPERSON (Poto Williams): Dr Smith, I’ve asked you to leave the Chamber.

Hon Dr Nick Smith: Madam Chair, that is outrageous, and I ask you to reflect on what occurred when you were in—

CHAIRPERSON (Poto Williams): No.

Hon Dr Nick Smith withdrew from the Chamber.

Hon DAVID BENNETT: I don’t intend to take the whole five minutes, but I would like to just probably look at one proposed change to the name that I think might be something that could be of interest to reflect, really, what the bill is about, and that is to reflect Ian McKelvie’s great amendment, which actually is the substance of something that was going to be a member’s bill and never got to that process because an arrangement was worked out between the parties. I would like to just again thank Minister Andrew Little, who did actually work well with my good colleague to make that a reality, and probably in a quicker way than a member’s bill would have done it.

So, if anything, the name of this bill should actually reflect the unity between parties in this House to actually reflect the substance and strength of that bill. It was the cattle rustling bill, or whatever you want to call it—

Matt Doocey: The “McKelvo Rustling Bill”!

Hon DAVID BENNETT: —the “Ian McKelvie Cattle Rustling Bill”. That’s probably not the best thing for him back in his local electorate, but there could be a number of other variations on the Ian McKelvie theme.

But, if anything, that may be an option where we reflect a really substantive part of this bill that there was common ground on and that the parties have worked together on. It is in the best interests of all New Zealanders, and especially those in the rural communities, so maybe something around that tone could lighten the evening and perhaps lead to a better result in having people understand what that bill is actually delivering.

CHAIRPERSON (Poto Williams): I appreciate that.

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

CHAIRPERSON (Poto Williams): Let’s take another one or two.

CHRIS PENK (National—Helensville): Thank you very much, Madam Chair. Just briefly on the title, it had been in my mind to do something along the lines of the Hon David Bennett’s suggestion and perhaps name it something along the lines of “Crimes (Rustle Stock) Amendment Bill”, but it occurred to me that that could be the name of an actual person or, worse still, a farmer. I know that it’s outside the rules of this House to have a person’s name other than in, presumably, a private bill, and so I’ll abandon that effort.

Just on the commencement date, however, if I may, I think that it is appropriate to have the Act coming into force on the day after the day on which it receives the Royal assent. While often I think it’s helpful to have some sort of lead time after a bill becomes law so that people can understand its effect and make arrangements to comply, in this case I’m satisfied that that’s not necessary. I don’t think that anyone would need to amend their behaviour so that they would be acting in reliance in a different manner. So, for example, to remove the spousal immunity so that a spouse or a civil union partner isn’t immune from being an accessory after a criminal act—it goes to the point we were discussing before, and I won’t intend to relitigate it. But in the manner of retrospectivity or, in this case, time enough for a person to amend their behaviour to be in line with the criminal law, a person’s behaviour shouldn’t be such that they would be doing what would be an illegal act, in any case.

So I think, in fact, it is probably appropriate to have the commencement date. I’d, obviously, happily be prepared to be convinced otherwise, but for now, for the reasons I’ve said, I don’t propose any amendment along those lines or, indeed, to the name, having tried and failed to come up with something appropriate in that regard.

CLAYTON MITCHELL (NZ First): I move, That the question be now put.

Motion agreed to.

Clause 1 agreed to.

Clause 2 agreed to.

Clause 3 agreed to.

Bill to be reported with amendment presently.

Bills

Taxation (Annual Rates for 2018-19, Modernising Tax Administration, and Remedial Matters) Bill

In Committee

Part 1 Annual rates of income tax

CHAIRPERSON (Poto Williams): Members, we now come to the Taxation (Annual Rates for 2018-19, Modernising Tax Administration, and Remedial Matters) Bill. The question is That Part 1 stand part. I call Stuart Smith. No, sorry—Alastair Scott. I apologise. It’s been a long night, Mr Scott. I apologise. And it’s probably the first time I’ve called you this evening too, isn’t it. I apologise.

ALASTAIR SCOTT (National—Wairarapa): Lenses, Madam Chair—lenses, I know.

Kieran McAnulty: They don’t know him in the Wairarapa either!

ALASTAIR SCOTT: I have the same problem, Madam Chair.

He can’t help himself. He can’t help himself. But nevertheless, he knows he’s lost twice and he’s going to lose again.

If I could start off by suggesting that this bill was a missed opportunity, and I’m going to cover off a couple of points where the opportunity was lost. My first point relates to the KiwiSaver enhancements. Now, there are some good points introduced by way of the bill. The semantics is there. They’ve decided to call “contribution holidays” a “savings suspension”. We support that. The five years’ break is reduced to one. That’s also good. And there are options for contributing greater amounts: a 6 percent and 10 percent band is being allowed for. But I think the opportunity here that’s been lost is that KiwiSaver is a good concept, in my view. But the opportunity here was for the Government to encourage and enable more people to participate in the KiwiSaver scheme. There could have been greater incentive for those who are not in the KiwiSaver scheme to be part of the KiwiSaver scheme. The Government talks about homeownership as being an issue—the number of homeowners is declining, and so on and so forth—and KiwiSaver, as we know, is a fantastic mechanism to enable first-home buyers to get into their first house. That’s great. There are also incentives currently: $10,000 a person, or more if they’re a couple and if they’ve been in KiwiSaver for five years. So it’s a great mechanism in more ways than one—not just for saving for retirement. But my point here is that the opportunity was there for the Government to encourage more people to participate, because we know that those who are not in KiwiSaver could be and should be.

So I am asking the Minister in the chair, Megan Woods, to tell me and the committee, why was there not more work done—given the nine years in Opposition they had to think about their policies and so forth—to encourage people into this scheme? Because those who can’t afford to be in the scheme are not in. Those who are least well off, the poorest of us, are not in KiwiSaver, and that is a lost opportunity. The second—

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

House resumed.

The Chairperson reported the Crimes Amendment Bill with amendment, progress on the Taxation (Annual Rates for 2018-19, Modernising Tax Administration, and Remedial Matters) Bill, and no progress on the Accident Compensation Amendment Bill.

Report adopted.

The House adjourned at 9.56 p.m.